On the Origin of Stasis (Part I)

By Art Battson

Art Battson is the director of instructional resources at the University of California, Santa Barbara and is associated with Access Research Network. This article is edited and reprinted with permission. Copyright Access Research Network. Articles by Michael Behe, Phillip Johnson and others are posted there.

"I am well aware that there is scarcely a single point discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result could be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts on both sides of each question, and this cannot possibly be done here."

Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859

Charles Darwin was well aware that scientists could come to directly opposite conclusions from those set forth in his Origin of Species. Although his theory could account for minor evolutionary change and the diversity of finches, Darwin knew that he had to virtually ignore the natural history of life on earth in order to maintain any hope of accounting for the origin of the phyla and the major disparity between arthropods and anthropologists.

Darwinian theory is in conflict with the most prominent features of earth's natural history. First of all, geology does not provide the transitional forms for the major groups Darwin's theory demands. In 1859, the conflict with paleontology was the most serious objection to the theory and over the years the gap between data and theory has only grown wider; today scientists acknowledge fewer transitional forms than Darwin thought existed. Species typically arise suddenly and "fully formed."

The second conflict between Darwinism and natural history is the phenomenon of stasis (stability, non-evolution). Geology reveals the stability of forms rather than their gradual transformation into substantially different body plans. The stability of the higher taxa in particular suggests the existence of natural processes which prevent major evolutionary change from occurring in a gradual step-by-step basis.

Finally, what we see in the fossil record are 75 to 100 different body plans (phyla) suddenly appearing fully developed (disparity) as ancestral to many different species (diversity). In other words, disparity precedes diversity. Evolutionary theory predicts that those fully developed body plans (disparity) emerged as a result of gradual minor changes among the descendants of a common ancestor. Thus, diversity ought to precede disparity, but that is not what we see. The fossil record shows disparity from the beginning without a hint of descent from a common ancestor.

Had Darwin developed a theory to explain the empirical data of natural history, he would have come to directly opposite conclusions. He would have developed a theory to explain why species do not gradually transform into substantially different body plans on a gradual step-by-step basis. The phenomenon of stasis and the stability of the major body plans are based upon an abundance of data and our theories describing the natural world should explain that data. The empirical evidence suggests the need to develop a theory based upon natural history, rather than one which must explain away its key features. Although neo-Darwinian theory helps to explain minor evolutionary change, a theory of "macrostasis" that explains the stability of the major body plans (presumably covering many millions of years) needs to be developed.

We must first understand the ordinary rules of stability and the pervasive patterns of natural history before we can speculate on the origin of the major body plans. We must also understand that, ultimately, questions of origins are metaphysical. The questions of microevolution and macrostasis, however, are clearly empirical, i.e., can be observed in actual specimens.

Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology

Darwin saw evolution as a slow and stately process. He pictured organisms gradually transforming from one species into another over immense spans of time. Evolution, he believed, had to occur through "infinitely numerous transitional links" forming "the finest graduated steps." Darwin was a strict adherent of gradualism and the notion that "nature does not make leaps." He spelled this out very clearly in his Origin of Species:

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down [Darwin].

There was one major stumbling block to this view of life: the fossil evidence. In a chapter entitled "On the Imperfection of the Geological Record" he readily admits:

... The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, (must) be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory [Darwin, p. 292].

Despite the serious problems the geologic evidence presented, Darwin believed that the passage of time would reveal the enormous number of transitional forms his theory demanded. However, such was not to be the case. David Raup, former curator of geology at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, put it this way:

Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded ... ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information ...[Raup, 1979]

The paleontological case against gradualism was serious in Darwin's day and time has only made matters worse. Stephen Jay Gould, professor of geology and paleontology at Harvard University, explains:

The history of most fossil species include two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:

1. Stasis - most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless;



2. Sudden appearance - in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and "fully formed" [Gould, 1977].

Gould honestly admits that the neo-Darwinian synthesis is not supported by the fossil evidence and "is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy [Gould, 1980]."

Although stasis is the dominant feature of the history of life, exceptions to the general pattern of stasis can be cited. Examples of transitional series can be found at lower taxonomic levels [Taxonomic level: in taxonomy, living things are classified according to a hierarchy of levels or taxa, taxon being the singular term for a category by which organisms are classified. The seven major categories or levels (taxa) are kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. One or more species belong to a genus; one or more genera (plural of genus) belong to an order, etc.] At higher taxonomic levels (phylum, class, order), however, transitional sequences range from scarce to non-existent. Evidence of gradualism between phyla, classes and even orders is either non-existent or is much disputed. Certainly, no pervasive pattern of gradualism exists. George Gaylord Simpson acknowledged this decades ago as he described the situation in these terms:

This is true of all thirty-two orders of mammals...The earliest and most primitive known members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous sequence from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed ...

This regular absence of transitional forms is not confined to mammals, but is an almost universal phenomenon, as has long been noted by paleontologists. It is true of almost all classes of animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate...it is true of the classes, and of the major animal phyla, and it is apparently also true of analogous categories of plants [Simpson].

Recent research on the origin of the higher taxa confirms what paleontologists have known for decades.

Taxa recognized as orders during the (Precambrian-Cambrian) transition chiefly appear without connection to an ancestral clade via a fossil intermediate. This situation is in fact true of most invertebrate orders during the remaining Phanerozoic as well. There are no chains of taxa leading gradually from an ancestral condition to the new ordinal body type. Orders thus appear as rather distinctive subdivisions of classes rather than as being segments in some sort of morphological continuum [Valentine].

The origin of classes and phyla constitutes an even greater difficulty for neo-Darwinian theory. Compounding the problem is the small window of time available for the origin of the vast majority of phyla. Recent research has squeezed "Biology's Big Bang" down to a few million years [Kerr; Bowring]. When one compares the period of time it has taken Darwinian processes to modify the beak of a finch with the period of time virtually all the major body plans appeared in the Cambrian explosion, it becomes difficult to believe that a gradual accumulation of microevolutionary changes had much at all to do with the origin of the higher taxa.

Darwinian evolution predicts the regular presence of transitional forms. The fossil record reveals their regular absence. It also reveals a natural phenomenon which until recently was virtually ignored by paleontologists. That phenomenon is stasis. The tragedy of Darwinism is that it has impeded the progress of science by turning the attention of biologists and paleontologists away from the empirical data and distracting them from developing theories which explain the pervasive natural phenomenon of stasis. For over 130 years scientists working within the Darwinian paradigm have attempted to develop theories to explain data which, on the macro level, do not exist (Figure 1).

Writing in the introduction to the 1956 reissue of the Origin of Species, W.R. Thompson commented:

"The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity. This is already evident in the reckless statements of Haeckel and in the shifty, devious and histrionic argumentation of T. H. Huxley ...

"To establish the continuity required by the theory, historical arguments are invoked even though historical evidence is lacking. Thus are engendered those fragile towers of hypotheses based on hypotheses, where fact and fiction intermingle in an inextricable confusion [Thompson]."

The fossil data clearly show patterns of stasis rather than of major evolutionary sequences and it is this phenomenon to which scientists must turn their attention. As Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould put it: "Stasis is data [Gould, 1991]." Scientists cannot afford to lose sight of this abundant historical evidence. Gould recently described the importance of understanding stasis in these terms:

... we must understand that nothing happens most of the time — and we don't because our stories don't admit this theme — if we hope to grasp the dynamics of evolutionary change. (This sentence may sound contradictory, but it isn't. To know the reasons for infrequent change, one must understand the ordinary rules of stability.) The Burgess Shale teaches us that, for the history of basic anatomical designs, almost everything happened in the geological moment just before, and almost nothing in more than 500 million years since [Gould, 1988].

It is entirely conceivable that natural processes alone are insufficient to overcome what Gould has referred to as "the ordinary rules of stability." Kurt Wise, a former doctoral student of Gould, has suggested that there might be at least four distinct levels of stasis: molecular-level, population-level, species-level, and higher taxon-level stasis. Although Wise believes that the first three levels of stasis are violable, he points out that there may be a mechanism preventing change in higher taxa which is inviolable. Rejecting Gould's metaphysical assumptions, Wise concludes that natural processes probably exist which prevent major evolutionary change from transforming the baramin, or originally created kinds, into significantly different body plans:

It is probably only the stasis on the level of higher taxa which is both valid and differs qualitatively from the other levels of stasis. Only higher taxa lack demonstrable evidence of change ... Higher taxon-level stasis could conceivably be the result of what might be called Baraminic Stasis — the permanent constraint of organisms under natural conditions to stay within the bounds of their baramin [Wise].

The concept of the baramin is synonymous with the concept of the "created kind" and is anathema to scientists who believe that the origin and diversity of life must be attributed to purely mechanistic processes. The goal of science, however, should not be to develop a naturalistic "creation account" in an attempt to explain the origin and diversity of all life by purely materialistic means. Instead, the goal of science should be to most accurately describe the pervasive patterns and phenomena found in nature even if those natural processes prevent major evolutionary change from occurring. Science needs a diversity of ideas unencumbered by philosophical naturalism. Scientists need a theory to explain the phenomenon of higher taxon-level stasis and a theory to explain why species do not appear to gradually evolve into something substantially different.

Conflicts Between Darwin and Geological Succession

Before The Origin of Species was written, the geologic time scale in its modern form was already fully developed. In fact, geologists who were creationists built the time scale based on fossils [Raup, 1981]. Scientists of Darwin's day did not equate geologic succession with evolution, nor should we today. One reason is that geological succession does not reveal how new species came into existence, it only reveals when. Another reason is that the order of appearance found in the fossil record is, as a general rule, systematically backwards from the major predictions of Darwinian theory.

Geological succession is often looked upon as primary evidence for the fact of evolution. Amoebas appear before fish, and fish before philosophers. In the popular view, this succession from simple to complex is evidence for evolution. Geological succession, however, does not necessarily proceed from simple to complex. For example, trilobites, among the most advanced of the arthropods, are the first arthropods to appear in the geological record. Darwin lamented over the complexity of the vertebrate eye, confessing that "to suppose that the eye...could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree [Darwin, p. 217]." Yet some scientists believe that the schizochroal eyes of some trilobites possessed the most sophisticated optical systems ever utilized by any organism [Levi-Setti]. David Raup has stated that the trilobites " ... used an optical design which would require a well trained and imaginative optical engineer to develop today....[Raup, 1979]" The early metazoans were anything but simple. The complexity of the early metazoans, however, is but a wrinkle in the irony of Darwinism. The real irony lies in the general systematic order of appearance of the taxa in the fossil record.

Continued in Part II

References

Bowring, S.A., Grotzinger, J.P., Isachsen, C.E., Knoll, A.H., Pelechaty, S.M., Kolosov, P., "Calibrating Rates of Early Cambrian Evolution," Science, vol. 261, 3 September 1993, pp. 1293-1298.

Darwin, C. (1859), The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (Reprint of the first edition), Avenel Books, Crown Publishers, New York, 1979

Gould, S. J. (1980), "Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?" Paleobiology, 6(1), p. 120.

Gould, S. J. (1988), "A Web of Tales," Natural History, October, pp. 16-23.

Gould, S. J. (1991), "Opus 200," Natural History, August, p. 16.

Gould, S.J. (1977), "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History, vol. 86, May.

Kerr, R. (1993), "Evolution's Big Bang Gets Even More Explosive," Science, vol. 261, 3 September 1993, p. 1274.

Levi-Setti, R. (1975), Trilobites: A Photographic Atlas, University of Chicago Press, pp. 23-45.

Raup, D. (1979), "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, vol. 50(1), p. 24, 25.

Raup, D. M. (1981), "Evolution and the Fossil Record," Science, 17 July, p. 289.

Simpson, G. G. (1944), Tempo and Mode in Evolution, Columbia University Press, New York, p. 105, 107.

Thompson, W. R. (1956), Introduction to The Origin of Species, (Reprint of the first edition), Charles Darwin, Everyman Library, no. 811, Dent.

Valentine, J.W., Awramik, S.M., Signor, P.W., and Sadler, P.M. (1991), "The Biological Explosion at the Precambrian-Cambrian Boundary," Evolutionary Biology, Vol. 25, Max K. Hecht, editor, Plenum Press, New York and London, p.284.

Wise, K. (1991), "Changing Stasis," Origins Research, vol. 13, no. 1, p. 20.