The Evolutionary Use of the Terms, Primitive, Intermediate & Lineage (2024)

by Laurence D Smart B.Sc.Agr., Dip.Ed., Grad.Dip.Ed

Email: laurence@unmaskingevolution.com

Webpage: www.unmaskingevolution.com

[Free to print and distribute. Copy must be in full.]

A large percentage of the general public has had some science education and is able to understand evolutionary media releases. However, a problem has arisen over the past 10-20 years where some evolutionary jargon has changed meaning. These alterations in meanings have not been passed on to the public, nor to the science teachers who have been teaching evolution to the world's younger generation. As a result of these changes, the public are not correctly interpreting what evolutionists are writing or saying.

The general public understand the meaning of the following evolutionary terms to be:-

Evolutionists have redefined these four terms, giving them 'technical' meanings to fit in with the modern interpretation of fossils using cladistics and phenetics. These two modes of fossil interpretation are now preferred by palaeontologists and do not require that an ancestor, or lineage (phylogeny) ever be identified.

Cladistics and phenetics are two styles of studying systematics (the classification of living things). Phenetics studies the overall similarity between whole bodies. Cladistics studies the way a single character is distributed throughout groups of organisms. The words defined above derive their new meaning from phenograms and cladograms, the 'tree' diagrams produced by the phenetic and cladistic analysis of fossils.

When palaeontologists say that they have "Discovered the ancestor of an organism", or that a particular organism is "An intermediate between two others", or that they "Now know the lineage of humans", the public interpret these statements as meaning that scientists have proved these as facts of evolution. In reality, the evolutionists are only making statements of probability, possibility and conjecture, based on systematics. Modern palaeontology, therefore, does not require that actual ancestral fossils have to be found for evolutionists to make what they regard as 'factual' statements.

• "Non-palaeontologist readers ... should be aware of several common occurrences within the professional paleontologic literature which could conceivably be confusing ... for instructional purposes, some authors illustrate a series of fossils which show a progression in morphology, but which are not chronologically successive. These therefore are not evolutionary sequences, even though they resemble such." R.J. Cuffey, Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, Vol. 24, No. 4, 1984 p:264

The early Darwinists believed that they would easily find the history of the evolution of all organisms in the fossil record, but this failed to materialise. Despite this lack of evidence, many evolutionary trees have been displayed in museums and textbooks.

• "In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found - yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks." D.M. Raup, Science, July 17,1981 p:289
• "... biologists may simply pick out species at different points in geological time that seem to fit on some line of directional modification through time. Many trends, in other words, may exist more in the minds of the analysts than in phylogenetic history." N. Eldredge "Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks", McGraw-Hill Pub Co: New York, 1989 p:134

Under pressure from creationists to prove their phylogenic trees directly from the fossil record, the constant failure forced evolutionists to look for a theoretical basis for identifying lineages. Phenetics and cladistics provided the tools for this method. This has been very handy, because it has lifted the burden off evolutionists to provide the physical evidence.

Using indirect analysis and inference, palaeontologists can now make hypothetical statements on evolution from the fossil record that they believe is as close as they can get to the truth. The problem arises when the media, science teachers and the general public receive the information, and interpret the statements as fact. For example, when a palaeontologist says that a particular organism is, "An intermediate between two others", they are actually referring to the fossil's systematic relationship derived from phenetic or cladistic interpretations. This derivation is always missing from the evolutionist's discussions or media releases. Meanwhile, the general public interpret this same statement as meaning that the excavators have actually found the true (real) intermediate - ie, the organism that was actually the evolutionary step between the other two. The two interpretations of the same statement mean two different things. This is why evolutionists can make 'rash' hypothetical statements while their readers and listeners are interpreting them as fact. This helps to convey the illusion that evolution has been proved.

Evolutionists use the term "primitive" and "ancestral" to describe an organism, when they compare it to another, if it is:-

(1) An ancestor of the other

(2) Simpler than the other

(3) Of an older geologic age than the other

(4) In a group that lacks some of the characters in the other

(5) Classified in a higher taxonomic group than the other

There are therefore five possible interpretations of the words "primitive" and "ancestral", but only meaning #1 is the one presumed by the public.

• "To most comparative biologists, the concept of primitive and derived characters has evolutionary connotations, but it need not be interpreted in this way only." J. Cracraft "Systematics, Comparative Biology, and the Case Against Creationism", in L.R. Godfrey (ed.), "Scientists Confront Creationism", W.W. Norton and Co: New York, 1983 p:172

For this reason evolutionists can say that "Bacteria are the ancestral form of multicellular organisms", not because they have been proven to be so, but because they are simpler than multicellular organisms. The statement is true, but it sounds like an evolutionary lineage, when it actually says nothing about lineage at all.

Also, the statement, "Ancestral fossil specimens confirm that evolution has occurred", is ambiguous - it appears to say that evolution has been proven. This was done by creating the illusion of ancestry, rather than by speaking from the physical facts.

The use of the terms "intermediate" and "transitional" both convey the idea of evolution as a fact, yet there is a lot of confusion in their interpretation.

• "Each species, then is an intermediate in some sense of the word; all species possess primitive and derived characters ... Most evolutionists would not claim, of course, that these intermediate forms are necessarily the direct ancestors of a later group." J. Cracraft "The Scientific Response to Creationism, in M.C. La Follette (ed.) "Creationism, Science, and the Law: The Arkansas Case", MIT Press, 1983 p:146

Many evolutionists refer to a species as an intermediate between other species if they all have a pattern of nested similarities. This is determined from a cladogram.

• "[The general public] typically seem to misunderstand the meaning of transitional in taxonomic science. I was taught that a transitional form is one that shows morphological genetic traits connecting two distinct groups. To my knowledge, biologists never insist that the "intermediate form" must fall on a direct line of ancestry. Typical transitions are chimeras or mosaics, combining significant characteristics (and patterns of characteristics) from the two groups." K.E. Nahigian, Letters to the Editor, Creation/Evolution, Issue XXVIII, Winter 1990-1991 p:46

Evolutionists prefer to use the terms "intermediate" and "transitional form" rather than "chimera" or "mosaic form" as the former convey the illusion of evolution as a fact.

The meaning of the terms "intermediate" and "transitional" have changed over time, depending on phylogenetic fads and fashions of the day. This explains why many so-called intermediates have been added to and removed from evolutionary trees without evolution losing face.

The systematic re-definition of "intermediate" also permits transitions to co-exist with their descendants, making evolutionary lineages immune to criticism.

• "In a branching hierarchical system an intermediate and one of its descendants can co-exist in the same time plane, along with the descendants of the common ancestor of both of them." A.N. Strahler "Science and Earth History - The Evolution/Creation Controversy", Prometheus Books: Buffalo (USA), 1987 p:423

For this reason palaeontologists can insist, for example, that Seymouria is the transition between amphibians and reptiles, even though it was found in Permian rocks, while the first reptiles were found in Carboniferous rock, 20 million years 'older'. Such re-definitions make the determination of lineages immune to the fossil sequence.

(iii) Lineage/Phylogeny

Evolutionists have redefined "lineage" and "phylogeny" in terms of cladograms.

• "It is possible, then, to deduce phylogeny, that is, genealogical history, by a careful, logical analysis of which organisms share which characters. A genealogy derived in this way may be considered a hypothesis, always subject to possible revision." D. Futuyma "Science On Trial: The Case for Evolution", Pantheon Books, 1983 p:55
• "Notions of this kind can be looked upon as phylogenies - as historical statements of ancestry and descent. But they are different in character. They include no ancestral taxa ..... This shift in meaning of the term phylogeny from a Darwinian to a cladistic sense marks a revolution in biological systematics." G. Nelson & N. Platnick "Systematics and Evolution", in M. Ho and P.T. Saunders (eds.) "Beyond NeoDarwinism: An Introduction to the New Evolutionary Paradigm", Academic Press, 1984 p:153-154

Palaeontologists today who favour the systematic analysis of fossils even criticise their colleagues of former times who used the fossil record in the geologic column to create lineages. However, the general public still believes that lineages are based on the order of fossils in the geologic column.

• "One of the factors contributing to the controversy within contemporary paleontology over the identification of transitional forms has been the historical predisposition of palaeontologists to lend more weight to the stratigraphic sequences of their fossils than their comparative systematics. Thus, some paleontologists have used stratigraphic position as an important criterion for identifying ancestral taxa." J. Cracraft "The Significance of the Data of Systematics and Paleontology for the Evolution-Creationism Controversy", in F.T. Awbrey & W.M. Thwaites (eds) "Evolutionists Confront Creationists", Proceedings of the 63rd annual meeting of the Pacific Division, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1984 p:202

Using the systematic analysis of cladograms and phenograms, rather than presenting physical facts, has therefore allowed evolution to change without contradiction itself.

• "... modern history shows that evolutionary theory is plastic and can accommodate dramatic changes in our knowledge of the fossil sequence. For example, Eldredge [in] 1982 uses Peripatus, (a lobe-legged, wormlike creature that lives in rotting logs in the Southern hemisphere) as an intermediate between two of the major phyla on earth today - the segmented worms and the arthropods. Evolutionists felt it was so clear that they traditionally used it as evidence for evolution. They used it as evidence where they desperately needed it - as an intermediate form between higher levels of the Linnean hierarchy. Nonetheless, new fossils from the Cambrian era have now forced evolutionists to change their position. Gould [in] 1992 removes Peripatus from its status as an intermediate. He argues that Peripatus (and its group, the Onychophora) represents, not an intermediate, but a separate unique group whose closest relatives appear far earlier, in the Cambrian explosion." ReMine p:418

Also, by using jargon interchangeably when being questioned by anti-evolutionists, palaeontologists give evolution the appearance that it has all the answers - creating the illusion that evolution is a fact.

SOURCE: W.J. ReMine "The Biotic Message: Evolution Versus Message Theory",

St Paul Science: Saint Paul (USA), 1993 p:291-297, 409-418