Gould turned Goldschmidt’s “hopeful monster” hypothesis from pariah to mainstream with his theory of punctuated equilibrium—which has been well-borne-out in every good, gene-level-detailed computer simulation of evolution that I’ve seen.
That is simply bizarre. I’m going to have to ask for references. Two references, in fact.
One would be a quote from any mainstream evolutionary biologist other than Gould which uses the phrases “hopeful monster” and “punctuated equilibrium” in the same paragraph. If you cannot find one, a quote from Gould would do. According to wikipedia, the association of the two ideas is a creationist distortion. Googling the two phrases seems to bear that out.
The second would be a link to any paper reporting a good, gene-level-detailed computer simulation of evolution which backs up your claim.
It appears that you’re right about my misstating the connection between hopeful monsters and punctuated equilibria. I’m not familiar with Goldschmidt’s work, and inferred (and overstated) the similarity with punctuated equilibrium based on my spotty understanding of it. I removed that sentence.
About simulations reproducing punctuated equilibrium: By “gene-level” I only mean that they simulate organisms with many genes, not that they’re accurate to the level of genes. The presence of other organisms in the simulation will also suffice. One good reference is “Co-evolution to the edge of chaos: Coupled fitness landscapes, poised states, and co-evolutionary avalanches”, by Stuart Kauffman & Sonke Johnson, in Artificial Life 2, 1991. I stopped following this literature about 15 years ago, so maybe things have changed.
Approaches such as Jonnal & Chemero (“Punctuation Equilibrium and Optimization: An A-life Model”) are fundamentally incorrect. The mechanism shown in simulations is not that the mutation rate changes; it is that the size of “avalanches” released in an equilibrium state where different genes and/or species are co-adapted has a power-law distribution.
That is simply bizarre. I’m going to have to ask for references. Two references, in fact.
One would be a quote from any mainstream evolutionary biologist other than Gould which uses the phrases “hopeful monster” and “punctuated equilibrium” in the same paragraph. If you cannot find one, a quote from Gould would do. According to wikipedia, the association of the two ideas is a creationist distortion. Googling the two phrases seems to bear that out.
The second would be a link to any paper reporting a good, gene-level-detailed computer simulation of evolution which backs up your claim.
It appears that you’re right about my misstating the connection between hopeful monsters and punctuated equilibria. I’m not familiar with Goldschmidt’s work, and inferred (and overstated) the similarity with punctuated equilibrium based on my spotty understanding of it. I removed that sentence.
About simulations reproducing punctuated equilibrium: By “gene-level” I only mean that they simulate organisms with many genes, not that they’re accurate to the level of genes. The presence of other organisms in the simulation will also suffice. One good reference is “Co-evolution to the edge of chaos: Coupled fitness landscapes, poised states, and co-evolutionary avalanches”, by Stuart Kauffman & Sonke Johnson, in Artificial Life 2, 1991. I stopped following this literature about 15 years ago, so maybe things have changed.
Approaches such as Jonnal & Chemero (“Punctuation Equilibrium and Optimization: An A-life Model”) are fundamentally incorrect. The mechanism shown in simulations is not that the mutation rate changes; it is that the size of “avalanches” released in an equilibrium state where different genes and/or species are co-adapted has a power-law distribution.
For the first, this paper by Gould agrees with Wikipedia. Creationists are a silly folk.