The standard way to empirically validate a logically or mathematically derived theory is to first check that it does not contradict known facts and then derive from it predictions about new facts or relationships to be tested by new experimental observations. For example, Einstein's general theory of relativity was validated by observing that it correctly predicted Mercury's orbit around the Sun and that the light rays of remote stars were deflected by a predicted angle when glancing a large mass such as the Sun. It is therefore important to offer some predictions of the BioPert theory to be empirically verified. In this section we do that with a number of such predictions.
Plotting the evolutionary dates from Tree of Life (ToL) vs the human embryo milestones, we get the following report:
Which is summarized by the following figure:
The fact that this data shows a monotonic ascending, almost linear, relation between embryo development milestones and evolutionary milestones is indeed strong evidence that evolution works by appending new: structures, tissues, MCGs & related GeNets to preexistent structures. In other words, it seems that evolution does not, substantially, revisit or re-invent previously successfully "discovered" MCGs or GeNets. The embryogenesis process apparently simply executes reasonable facsimiles of the embryogenesis processes of all the ancestral groups in the order of evolutionary discovery and finally executes the NEW computations.
This computational strategy minimizes the degree of rework of the overall computation and it is compatible with generating, at all times, embryogenesis processes that can bootstrap viable offsprings. The latter observation is [computationally] significant. It is, in fact, fundamental for a bootstrap process that it respect all the precedence relationships which prevail among the various cell/tissue types.
The last assertions depend only on the monotonically ascending property of the relation between embryogenesis and evolutionary milestones. The nearly linear character of the relationship is quite surprising and should have significant implications for both evolutionary & embryogenesis computations.
The recent discovery of a missing link between fishes and tetrapods suggests a verifyable prediction from the BioPert theory . The discovery is described in the following links:
As it can be seen from the cited sources the Tiktaalik Rosae, also jokingly called fishapod, had articulated forelimbs exhibiting primitive: shoulders, elbows and wrists, while the rear limbs were probably fish like fins. In other words evolving from fishes to tetrapods the first limbs to become adapted for use on land were the front ones. If the BioPert model is correct, this fact would lead to the prediction that all of its descendants, and thus probably all tetrapods, would exhibit, during embryo development, a delay between the development of forelimbs and rear limbs. In fact, in the case of the human embryo, the forelimbs differentiate into forearm, arm and shoulder at around the 38th day, while the rear limbs differentiate into thigh, leg and foot around the 42nd day. The average conversion factor between evolutionary time and human embryo development time is (see graph above):
G= 252 MYA/57 days = 4.4 MYA/day
Thus a 4 days delay would correspond to about 18 MYA between the appearance of the fishapod and the appearance of the first true tetrapods. That is, this theory predicts that tetrapods appeared circa 357 MYA.
On Sept. 21, 2006 the world wide press reported the discovery of an unusually well preserved skeleton of a 3.3 MYA female child. The link below is to
On the same day the discovery was reported by the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) as follows:
The most significant aspect of this discovery is that Selam skeleton is ape like from the waist up and homo like from the waist down as far as it was extracted from the rock bed. Its feet were not yet extracted at that time. 3.3 MYA was (see above) right in the middle of the speciation process that eventually separated humans from chimps. Selam appears to be "human" like in the lower part of the body and chimp like in the upper part. This would make sense since the lower part of the body is more impacted by an evolution towards a mixed life style of ground based (bipedal) and arboreal locomotion. The BioPert theory would consequently predict that the portion of Selam's BioPert for her basin, legs and feet would be much closer to present day human BioPerts than the rest. In other words the BioPert theory predicts that once Selam's feet are uncovered they will be found to be more similar to human than to chimp feet.
An even more dramatic prediction than the above two is why we, as well as many more vertebrates, have some vital organs that are duplicated and others equally or even more vital that are not. There is little doubt that having two kidneys, ovaries, testicles, lungs, arms, legs, etc. affords considerable survival advantage. One then must wonder why organs such as pancreas, liver, spleen, gallbladder are not duplicated as well. The BioPert theory of Nested Derivative Descent (NDD) supplies a straight forward answer to this puzzle. In fact, such organs would not be duplicated if they arose before bilateral symmetry evolved (bilateria). If these organs had begun evolving in pre-bilateria ancestors guts they would not have bilateral symmetry. On the other hand, later bilateral descendants could not easily subvert the generation of such internal organs but would have a strong tendency to retain the non-symmetric gut BioPert. This would also suggest that the BioPert for the sense organs (sight, sound or pressure) had bilateral symmetry much earlier than the emergence of the bilateria. There is an obvious advantage, even for very primitive animals, to sense their environment equally or near equally in multiple directions.
The NDD theory implies results that, while wondrous and brilliant, are not necessarily good engineering designs. Thus, far from seeing the operation of an intelligent designer, we see the far from perfect results of a series of bootstrap processes, each of which can bootstrap into existence viable animals, but with the successive descendant designs forced into sub-optimality by decisions made long time before & under drastically different conditions.