[Taxacom] Factual tectonic and biological correlations

[John Grehan]

Robin,

Its a long time since I considered such issues in their general philosophy,
but I do recall the debates over contingency vs laws of operation,
particularly when it came to issues concerning the evolution of biological
differentiation. I doubt I could now say anything particularly insightful
on the biological side other than the observation that biogeographic
vicariance may be viewed as evidence that whatever the contingency of new
variation, it does not lie so much with the local environment as is often
assumed.In biogeography Croizat sometimes referred to laws of averages -
that it was possible to generate systematic principles of organization such
as evolution = space + time + form, or that dispersal = translation in
space + form making etc.

John Grehan


On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 10:15 PM, <Robinwbruce at aol.com> wrote:

>  John,
>
> While browsing through some old biology books I came across Brian
> Goodwin's comments on biology with respect to it trying to break free of
> Weismann's dualism of organism -
>
> "While it is always possible that biology is basically different from the
> exact sciences in being dominated by historical accidents and lacking
> systematic principles of organization, it seems much more likely that this
> view has arisen as a result of a conceptual development which stresses one
> aspect of the subject, the contingent and the particular, at the expense of
> the other, the necessary and the universal" p. 222, A relational or field
> theory of reproduction and its evolutionary implications, B.C. Goodwin; in
> Beyond Neo-Darwinism: Ho and Saunders, 1984.
>
> This resonated with me with respect to the on-going biogeography threads
> and I thought it worthy of sharing.
>
> Robin
>
>
>
>  In a message dated 03/05/2014 19:54:59 GMT Daylight Time,
> calabar.john at gmail.com writes:
>
> As I have noted in earlier postings, one of the most important
> considerations in biogeography is the potential for spatial analysis to
> render information that helps with understanding how the ability to
> disperse actually functions in the formation of allopatry (vicariance)
> rather than relying on speculations about dispersal ability to explain
> allopatry (and as noted on this list, quite often generates mysteries,
> puzzles,  paradoxes, enigmas and other perplexities (perhaps one day
> someone should write a paper giving a full list of publications of this
> kind) rather than any definitive insight.
>
>
> With panbiogeographic approaches (whether or not ‘panbiogeographic’ in the
> formal sense) that look at the spatial relationships between distribution
> boundaries of differentiated entities and tectonic boundaries, it is
> certainly a relevant and necessary issue for modern evolutionary biology to
> address the fact (yes it’s a fact) that there is as much correlation
> between distribution and tectonics as there is. In the almost frantic rush
> to embrace molecular clocks, the science of biogeography has, for the most
> part, experienced a 20-30 year period akin to the Dark Ages of Europe.  Now
> even with the misrepresentation of molecular ages as actual or maximal
> having been shown to be a fiction, the writers of the fiction continue to
> push their way forward, as if somehow reasserting the misrepresentation
> will make it all true.
>
>
> The above opinions aside, Heads’ book does give many factual examples of
> biological and tectonic correlations. These examples are, in my opinion,
> where modern biogeography needs to make a new start – to address the
> spatial evidence and if correlations are to be denied as representing cause
> and effect, to provide evidence that is better than misrepresented
> molecular ages or simply saying “I cannot believe it” (or words to that
> effect).
>
>
> John Grehan
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