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Illegal Beings: Human Clones
How Long is Short?
libfemme ( 05/30/2004, 04:19:28 )Yes, the punctuated equilibrium model says that a species often will remain stable (unchanged) for long stretches of time, then change in a "short" period of time. Short in this instance being a duration of about a million years more or less. That is not the same thing as a bird coming out of a reptile egg in one afternoon.It helps if you understand the difference in magnitude between a billion and a million. How long would it take you to count from 1 to a million if you counted a number every second? Answer 11 1/2 days. How long would it take to count to a billion the same way? 31 years. Is 11 days considered a short period of time compared to 31 years?Life has existed on this planet 3 billion years. Therefore a transition period of a million years is, by comparison, considered a short burst.Punctuated equilibrium says change happened suddenly in relationship to the Earth's age, not in relationship to your personal sense of time.Donald R. Prothero, describes gradualism vs punctuated equilibrium this way:Instead of the "rolling ball" metaphor so favored by evolutionary biologists, perhaps species are more like a polyhedron, which can roll rapidly over from face to face, but resists change when it is sitting on one of its stable faces (Gould, 1980b). Change only occurs when the threshold necessary to tip it over has been exceeded, and then the polyhedron will resist further change until that threshold is once again reached. Between stable states (the faces), however, the transitions are very rapid. This kind of phenomenon is very similar to catastrophe theory (Schubert, 1992) and other theoretical models of discontinuous change (Masters, 1992).From PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM AT TWENTY: A PALEONTOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE http://www.skeptic.com/01.3.prothero-punc-eq.htmlIt doesn't sound like you've spent any time studying evolution. It is a big subject, covering all species that have ever lived over all time on the Earth. All aspects of evolution can't be understood from reading one paragraph on the back of a wheaties box.If you have questions, jump in and starting reading about it. Check your local public library for an introductory book on evolution. Start with Darwin certainly, but don't end there. Move on to Mayr and Gould, and especially Richard Dawkins.At least read "1" book on the subject. Pick one with lots of pictures if you like.
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