SCT: How the Raven Said “Nevermore”

Origin of the avian syrinx:
A case study in how
Darwinians beg the question

This article by David Coppedge was published anonymously in Science & Culture Today (formerly Evolution & Science Today) on March 27, 2019.

How the Raven Said “Nevermore”
Science & Culture Today
March 27, 2019

Does Darwinian evolution explain how things came to be? This has been its greatest success, according to many scientists, historians, and journalists. Darwin provided a mechanism that drew together a huge number of disconnected observations and organized them into a theory of progress — the tree of life — that explained the origin of novelties both small and great. And yet when we look in detail at the explanations for specific traits, we often find the notorious Darwinian “just-so stories” that convey no serious explanation at all. 

Click to watch a dramatic adaptation of Poe’s “The Raven” by John and Jenny Wise.

If something exists and looks advantageous, there must have been some mysterious “selection pressure” that forced it toward its current level of “fitness,” whatever that is (presumably, the fact that it exists). But since natural selection is synonymous with motion toward fitness, this reduces to, “Evolutionary pressure caused evolution,” or simply, “It evolved because it evolved.” Let’s see how this style of reasoning works by examining a paper that purports to explain the origin of the syrinx in birds.

“It Evolved Because It Evolved”

Mammals have a larynx; birds have a syrinx. The primary difference is in the location of the sound generator with respect to the windpipe (trachea). In mammals, the vocal folds are at the top, and the resonator (windpipe) is below. In birds, the vocal folds are at the bottom, and the resonator is above. Both mechanisms work extremely well. Humans can produce three-and-a-half octaves from bass to soprano, with all the history of song bearing witness to its effectiveness. Birds also exhibit tremendous range and variability with the syrinx organ, from croaks of ravens to sweet songs of the nightingale and the elaborate, rapid cadenzas of meadowlarks. How did the sound generator move from one end of the resonator to the other, and why? ….

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