Now, we have enough information to judge the varacity of the quote as presented.
It is a fairly simple manner to read through Bob's comments of the quote to see what it is that he claims about the quote.
(From my perspective, I find that Bob's opinions of the quote seem to have changed through the years. At one time, it seemed to me that he presented the quote as being a straight "admission" that horses did not evolve. Lately, he has tried a more subtle approach where he instead says that the quote is an admission that the original horse series "never happened.")
Bob basically asserts that before the time of Simpson, that there there was a fraudulent horse series passed off as true. Look at some of the words that he specifically uses. In the first post, Bob asks "did someon [sic] ARRANGE a set of fossils and then SHOW THEM to the worldAS IF such a smooth orthogenic transitional sequence had actually been found IN the fossil record just as was fraudulently presented!"
Bob shortly thereafter says
"
Answer - it was ARRANGED in fossil order sequence and then published AS IF that arrangement had actually been found IN THAT SEQUENCE in the fossil record! When in fact - it had not!"
So what Bob is claiming is that fossils were fraudulently put into an order in which they did not occur in the fossil record, that this was done on purpose, and that Simpson is admitting as much.
That simply is not so.
Now if Simpson has said that "The transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus never happened in nature," Bob might have had a case to be made if the rest of the context still supported such a statement. But there are two key words in there.
"The uniform continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus ... never happened in nature."
Those words, "
uniform" and "
continuous," are the key to understanding the passage.
Bob's assertion that the fossils that comprised the early series were not found in the order in which they are presented is patently false. Stratiography strongly supports the horse series as it was arranged then and today.
Here is an image, from a creationist site no less, that shows the modern tree and when and where the specimens lived. It shows that assertions that are often made, such as the fossils were not found in the right order or that the actual line was from fossils from the world over (one that Bob has also made in the past), just are not true.
http://www.biblicalcreation.org.uk/images/MacFadden.gif
The fossil horse from before Simpson's time were in the correct order, just there were few of them. The limited number of fossils led to an incorrect assumption of monophyletic evolution. Also called orthogenetic. This is where evolution happens in a straight line, with little or no branching, and at a fairly stead pace.
By Simpsons time, enough fossils had been discovered to show that the actual pattern was phyletic, or highly branching. Hence the quote from Simpson that "
[h]orse phylogeny is thus far from being the simple monophyletic, so-called orthogenetic, sequence that appears to be in most texts and popularizations." And the statement that the "line from Eohippus to Hypohippus exemplifies a fairly continuous phyletic evolution"
All of these together show us that Simpson was pointing out that horse evolution was not "uniform" and "continuous" as had been previously thought. He was not at all suggesting that there was somehting fundementally wrong with the old horse series. Just that the mode and tempo of change was misunderstood because the record was not complete at the time.
The starting and endpoints were correct even in the original series. The known fossils in the original series were even in the right order, contrary to Bob's claims. They just didn't have all of the data. And as that data came in, nothing about the horse series changed except the pace of change and the depth of knowledge.
Now these are my assertions about the quote. Look at the full quote in context to see if it fits.
Look at the sentence immediately preceding Bob's quote. "
The evolution of the horse family included, indeed, certain trends, but none of these was undeviating or orthogenetic." Sound familiar?
Look at the sentences immediately after Bob's quote. "
Increases in size, for instance, did not occur at all during the first third of the whole history of the family. Then it occurred quite irregularly, at different rates and to different degrees in a number of different lines of descent. Even after a trend toward larger size had started it was reversed in several groups of horses which became smaller instead of larger." Notice that Simpson is not saying anything about fraud or about the fossils being in the wrong order or about mistakes that were made. He instead is discussing how the horse fossil record was anything but a "uniform continmuous transformation."
He uses the reduction of the toes as an example of another jerky transition in the horses.
He then says. "
In the history of the horse family there is no known trend that affected the whole family. Moreover, in any one of the numerous different lines of descent there is no known trend that continued uniformly in the same direction and at the same rate throughout. Trends do not really have to act that way: there are not really orthogenetic."
Again, we see that it is the pace of change that Simpson is addressing. There is nothing of the sort that Bob alledges.
Simpson finally concludes that the evolution of the horse "
is still a classic example of evolution in action."
Now, I have made a well reasoned case that the message that Bob presents about the quote is not one that is grounded in either fact nor in the context of the quote.
If Bob really thinks that he is presenting the quote accurately, then he should be able to show that I am mistating that quotes that I use to support my assertions. He should be able to show from the wider context that his interpretation is the more reasonable. And he should be able to show that the facts of nature agree with his assertions. (For example, he could show documented evidence that the horse fossils were really found way out of order.)
