Evolution, Me or us?

[ecoli]

Many have tried (Miller & Urey for instance), and all have unfortunately failed.

 

They didn't really fail. They created organic molecules out of inorganic ones. That's the basis for life.

[ecoli]

I think you are missing the point. If there were no competitive advantage in being large there would not be any large animals. (Equally, if there were no competitive advantage in being small there would not be any small animals.)

 

Exactly. There just filling different niches in the environment.

[reverse]

from what you just said, I have realized that the way to win the evolution game is not to be the last man standing.

 

it is to be the last group of life forms each efficiently utilising their particular niche.

 

there is no point for example to have people photosynthesise light.

plants do that and pay the price for it.

[Sayonara]

There is no "win". The game never ends.

[reverse]

and it even spills over into other areas,

 

machines evolving...(cars are way cooler now than the first model T)

 

and Social structures, evolving – like the corporate for example, they take over and compete with each other, just like mother nature intended.

[Hellbender]

My opinions/knowledge on the following..

 

1 : Creatures evolve to greater complexity

 

The statement is the fuel for the thinking that evolution is nothing more than a straight line towards more and more complex animals. It seems this way because simply traits are built on other traits and so on and so on. Its like a upside-down pyramid. Living things estabilish more and more traits coded in their genes, making the more recent group appear as if they are the pinnacle, and in a sense they are, but not for the traditional reaons.

 

[/u]2 : A human being is a collection of smaller life forms.

 

I need clarification for this statement. Humans, like members of any relatively recent group of animals have an very long family tree. In a needlessly figurative sense, all of these animals have some trait or traits that one of their direct ancestors had/have. BUt I didn't understand the question, so I may be a little off topic here.

 

3 : unused structures remain latent within the genetic coding and may be re-expressed at a later date.

 

This is an odd statement. What later date are we talking here? I am a literalist to the very core, because assumption is a very dangerous thing. Do you mean to say that if I needed scales or gills (which at least one of my ancestors had), I could concentrate and grow a couple of gill slits and cover my body with cycloid scales? If that is it I would say lay off the old Spider-Man comics. All joking aside, I think you meant that ancestral traits such as the ones above will be expressed at some point (or this "later date") in the form of a mutation. While I have never seen much to verify this, it is certainly concievable.

 

4 : people are highly specialised worms - with fancy sensors and limbs and other energy storage and distribution systems tacked on.

 

Why not take this further and say that humans are merely self-replication molecules with fancy stuff added on. Again, in a needlessly figurative sense this is true.

 

5 : In that primeval pond at the dawn of time we looked fairly similar to the microscopic viruses that are now competing for life with us.

 

Using the word "we" denoted the fact that we identify ourselves as the ape Homo sapiens. Considering the fact that our species wasn't aound at the dawn of time, I can assure that this wasn't so. If you mean our ancestors looked scarcely different, then I would agree with this statement.

 

6 : It is the most foolish thing to think of a person as an individual organism because we can not synthesize sunlight directly, therefore are at best symbiotic.

 

These are all philosophical questions, but I will try my best. Depending on how you define symbiotic this statement is either correct of false. Animals, fungi and protists are all dependant on some source of food;we cannot make our own food. But then again neither can plants, which are reliant on the sun for food. Every living thing is dependant on something for the raw materials required to carry out life's functions.

[slickinfinit]

Im very comfortable with the fact that god created all life.What im not comfortable with is someone from a scientific stance using the cup-a-soup theory as though it had any scientific basis in fact.When clearly it is no more credible than alien visitation,relieving themselves behind bushes and polluting the earths environment with its bacteria.When something cannot be scrutinised by the scientific method its a guess..so the answer to what pond/soup...should have been multiorganicatany.

The only reason u believe in god is because your parents told u to, I would assume that u are the type of person only believes in what you find comfort in believing. The honest truth is god is a creation of primitive man made to help us cope with a world we cant comrehend. We came from the primordial-soup all science fact points to this, the evolution of chemistry into complex living molecules seems reasonable to me and even Stephen Hawkings thinks god is not needed for the universe to exist and I agree. It amazes me how humans out themselves on a level of importance greater than primordial soup or any other life form, we all live and we all die and how can u assume u are of divine creation when a amiba is not?

[Sayonara]

Hellbender, what are you basing all of that on?

 

Please don't misuse the tag.

[Hellbender]

Huh? Basing what on? I didn't realize I had to base my opinions and factual knowledge on anything. I thought the purpose was to provide my opinion on the statements. I didn't mean to mess up the underlining, I am new here and I apologize for that mistake. Looks pretty crappy huh?

[Sayonara]

Yes, it's a bit crazy.

 

Obviously you must base your opinions on something. If you don't tell us what that is, you might as well just write that you think the smell of blue is pretty.

 

Not to mention that some of it is self-evidently wrong, and we can't do much in the way of explaining why without knowing where you got it from.

[Hellbender]

oh ok well I base my opinions on current evolutionary knowledge and findings. I didn't see anyone else giving sources, so I didn't think I had to. To tell you the truth I read so much about it that it would be impossible and a silly waste of time to provide all my sources. Please explain what is self evidently wrong with my discussion. I noticed the topics in the original post were kind of open to semantic discussions and I personally hate that. On #1 I always have a problem expressing what I think about that cohesively, I guess I am a little scatterbrained. And tired.

 

BTW don't you think it would be simpler if you just could click the "U", type what you want underlined and have the underline show right there and then click it again to make it stop underlining (as in Microsoft word) instead of bothering with the funny little symbols next to the word? Just becasue this is a science site it doesn't mean you can't keep it simple.

[Hellbender]

oops allow me to make a quick correction. I figure I am already in the whole, not two hours into being a member of this site for my underlining errr typo.

 

But then again neither can plants, which are reliant on the sun for food.

 

I meant plants can make their own food, but for the sake of argument, they cannot make food without the sun, making them dependant on something as well.

[Sayonara]

"Creatures evolve to greater complexity":

Not necessarily so. It's a general trend, but adaptation is not always the same as sophistication.

 

 

"A human being is a collection of smaller life forms":

Not true at all by current definitions of the words "human being" or "life forms".

 

 

"Unused structures remain latent within the genetic coding and may be re-expressed at a later date":

Yes, this needs clarification. It sounds pretty wrong to me, given the mechanisms of selection.

 

 

"people are highly specialised worms":

No, people are not worms of any kind. Worms are worms. Tell us who said that so we may mock them heartily.

 

 

"It is the most foolish thing to think of a person as an individual organism because we can not synthesize sunlight directly, therefore are at best symbiotic":

Whoever said that doesn't understand what an individual is.

[Sayonara]

Oh. Forget what I said about "self-evidently wrong".

 

The inconsistent underlining made me think one of the questions was part of your reply.

[Hellbender]

oh wait a minute those numbered items were the original post started by "reverse" I think. Those aren't claims I am making at all, I thought some were erroneous too, especially the worm one. Read the original post of this thread (they should be there) Sorry for the confusion.

[reverse]

Aww,

I was concentrating on the other thread and missed all the fun in this one.

 

You did know that reason is full of holes didn’t you?

it's only a model of reality so therefore as inadequate as hell.

 

aww don’t tell me you thought it was bullet proof or something .

 

aww man...what are they teaching at these school these days.

 

just winding you up.

 

but seriously, what don't you like about the worm idea?

try de evolving the human form using common sense and reverse extrapolation.

what do you end up with?

[Sayonara]

yeeee! SCIENCE is JUST making STUFF up!

 

 

^ That's what you sound like.

[Gnieus]

"Unused structures remain latent within the genetic coding and may be re-expressed at a later date":

Yes' date=' this needs clarification. It sounds pretty wrong to me, given the mechanisms of selection.

[/quote']

 

Hello everybody,

 

I can't really see how this does not fit in with the mechanisms of selection. If evolutionary stress is present and one of genes that worked in the past gets activated by mutation and works now, why should it not invade into a population? This could also be a strategy for the gene to "survive" periods were it is not useful and provides the organism [the communality of interest] with a ready made sets of workable solutions..

 

Not saying I am right, but why do you see it as wrong?

[Sayonara]

I can't remember the reasoning I had at the time, but it probably had something to do with the genes before and after mutation.

 

Skye is better at that stuff than me - I hated genetics at uni.

[Gnieus]

I can't remember the reasoning I had at the time, but it probably had something to do with the genes before and after mutation.

 

Hmm, but the mutation wouldn't be in the actual gene, but the genes that control the switching on and off? Would that change the actual gene that is activated?

 

Also might not a library of ready made solutions be possibly more effective than going through the whole chance thing again? After all it has been shown, that evolution speeds up in times of selection pressure. Adding a process like this to what we already know, would speed things up, potentially. Why should life/genes not have learned to deal with the mechanism how to produce mutations/adaptions in a more efficient way. We accept it readily elsewhere. Behaviours are solution banks to anticipated future problems/situations.

 

But if the geneticists say no, than it will obviously be no and it's guess work by now. So let's see.

[Sayonara]

Having a "back-catalogue", as it were, of previous adaptations and so forth would be handy in evolutionary terms, but I doubt there'd be any genetic mechanism that could look up and retrieve the correct entries.

[Aardvark]

Having a "back-catalogue", as it were, of previous adaptations and so forth would be handy in evolutionary terms, but I doubt there'd be any genetic mechanism that could look up and retrieve the correct entries.

 

It would be a very useful adaptation. The individual having the ability to alter its own genetic expressions according to circumstances.

 

If an organism was bred in a deliberately constantly changing environment it might be possible to artifically select for some sort of genetic redundancy mechanism. But the selective pressures would have to be extreme.

[Gnieus]

Having a "back-catalogue", as it were, of previous adaptations and so forth would be handy in evolutionary terms, but I doubt there'd be any genetic mechanism that could look up and retrieve the correct entries.

 

No, what I mean is, that a mutation that activates an existing functioning gene [a limited number of functioning solutions] is more likely than a random mutation [either unlimited or at least a higher number of possibly useless solutions].

 

Just a probability thing. All what has to happen then, if organisms are in stress that the control gene activates the back catalogue randomly more often. Still many failures, but with less likelihood of getting a unhelpful mutation, as if it is just random per se [chemical/radiological etc]. That comes into it of course too. Additive not exclusive.

 

Nevertheless for new problems this is of course useless.

[Sayonara]

It would be a very useful adaptation. The individual having the ability to alter its own genetic expressions according to circumstances.

I was thinking more like environmentally-directed changes to the genetic "template" during gamete production, to increase the offspring's local fitness. That sort of thing.

[Mokele]

The main problem I can see is that, while a gene is inactive, it is, obviously, not under selection. As such, mutations will accumulate in the gene, especially since there's no selection acting to remove those mutations. When the gene is finally "re-activated", it will likely be in a mutated form.

 

If the mutations are all on introns, or are silent (like they don't change the actual amino acid being coded for or don't alter the overall protien structure), then the animal gets lucky and the gene is back. If not, well, it's still back, just not in way it was when it left.

 

Iirc, these sorts of re-activations of old genes do happen, though.

 

Mokele