It would be, if was an argument, and not declaration of my position. My argument, you’ll recall, is that without a proper standard, one cannot measure stuff, which includes relative optimality of biological design.
Eh? Only if innovative engineering designs are imaginary too.
No. There is no comparison between engineering designs and biological designs. The difference is that engineering designs have no evolutionary history. One can start a new design from scratch every time, and employ new materials. You do not have to mangle the components of an existing bicycle into a working motorcycle, which is effectively what happens in living designs under natural selection.
Your “imaginary standard” must take into account the evolutionary history as well. If it doesn’t, who’s to say all the intermediates leading up to the biological system under scrutiny would have been successful? A dramatic example, that I’ve just read about in The Greatest Show on Earth , is the laryngeal nerve of the giraffe, which takes a huge and ostensibly unnecessary detour of several feet down and then up the animal’s neck. It could only be because the nerve passed through some fixed configuration in the fish-like neckless ancestor, and had no choice but to elongate with the development of the reptilian/mammalian neck. It was never rerouted in a way that an engineer might have logically done.
Now, if a fish-giraffe intermediate with a rerouting mutation ever saw the light, it certainly didn’t survive. We know nothing about this imaginary elegantly rerouted precursor of the modern giraffe, except that it either never evolved, or it became extinct. The only proof we have of a system that works, is that of the modern giraffe, because its alive and its here.
Not having one overarching standard doesn't mean we can't think of ways in which a mouse's or monkey's hand design can be improved to better meet their ends
Very well. Please describe an improvement to a contemporary monkey’s hand that will ensure a nett increase in the animal’s survival fitness, while remaining a plausible incremental outcome of the hand’s evolutionary history, so that each of the imaginary design’s predecessors allow for the survival of all of the monkey’s intermediate forms, each one under its own set of selection pressures.
Naw, just pulling your leg. We can just agree to disagree.
If you want to use the “less than optimal” argument to counter IDeologies, that’s fine by me. But we must also guard against giving it the status of a serious scientific measure. “Optimum” usually has a specific meaning in science, such as the measurable(not imaginary) temperature at which an enzyme works at its fastest.
I grow weary of repeating the obvious
There is no need to repeat anything. I am perfectly capable of scrolling either up or down.
Mintaka
Although, of course, it still relies on imaginary standards.