04.28.09
Gaps, fossils, and the eonic effect as an example
The confusion over fossils and gaps in the evolutionary record can be clarified by looking at the eonic effect, and one might start with this short essay from World History And The Eonic Effect.
If we look at the eonic effect most of the puzzles disappear, and we can see what a ‘gap’ argument should really be. Unfortunately this isn’t about fossils or genetics in this case, but we do see what is best called ‘punctuated equilibrium’, albeit applied to a portrait of historical evolution.
There are certainly gaps to be seen in the eonic effect. But the gap is about the spontaneity of the periods of transition, their lack of causal antecedents in the sociological periods prior to the period of rapid emergentism. Thus these ‘gaps’ aren’t really gaps, more like fullnesses. The intervals of fast transition show complete continuity in an historical sense, and yet innovations appear in strong clusters. The result gives a perception of historical discontinuity.
The essay cited invokes the analog of acceleration vs velocity.
If you are in a car that accelerates, you feel the force causing a change in velocity. Although velocity is continuous, the acceleration shows a net discontinuity in the sense that it moves from zero to a peak of force back to zero. The ‘history’ of the car’s motions thus shows continuity at all points in the sense that each moment connects with the previous, and yet a descriptive account might well portray the ‘discontinuous’ interval during which accelaration changed the velocity of motion.
Thus we see that continuity is never violated, and yet a concept of discontinuity also applies.
This can’t exactly resolve the situation with fossils, but the basic overall logic is, we suspect, something similar.