Maybe I am exceptionally dumb, but I've never understood the theory of Natural Selection - it says that life adapts to the environment, and those who adapt successfully survive, right?
My confusion is this - adaptation requires mutation at the genetic level as well, doesn't it? I mean, the Darwin's Finches can learn a certain traits, but the distinctive differences in their physiology meant some tinkering at the DNA level, didn't it? Growing a new type of beak is not like building biceps, is it?
So how did it all happen? Did a series of ground-living Finches clamber up a tree, tried a new diet of insects instead of their staple seed, choked on it and died at first, then gradually liked it over a few generations, and then were helped by random mutations to help them be arboreal and insectivorous? So did this process take like a million years of dying losers on the trees before one generation casually mutating?
My discomfort is with the apparent randomness of the mutation. If life was that random, what are the odds of the level of biodiversity we have on this little green planet? I'm not trained, but it looks staggering to me.
Not that I believe that one uber-guy waved his magic wand and created this wonderful planet teaming with stunning variety of life forms at one fell swoop. I mean, why this planet in this galaxy in this part of the universe, specifically? Why bacteria and orchids and platypus and panda and humans, and not others? Why would he decree that "may the finch have the mutation but let the trilobites die out and oh, let me create the shark which doesn't need mutation at all!"
The point is, although I've vaguley worried about it, I never gave it a deeper thought. My middle-school science teachers did not exactly encourage such debates - the message has always been, "memorize the damn thing, regurgitate in the exams, get the scores and MOVE ON!"
Not until I stumbled into the "Evolution, Intelligent Design, and the Third Alternative" debate in a pot-bolier (Black Order, James Rollins) I picked up at the grocery store. Although the check-out guy highly recommended the book (or may be because he did), all I had expected was a remix of the thriller genre formula. You know that one - American hero+international villain+imminent world destruction+smart-alecky conversation+sex+action = triumph of good over evil.
Of course the book had all of it in spades - it even used Himmler's SS and Nazis (I mean, this is 2007 for crying out loud, let's have some new villians!). But it also presented the Quantum Theory of Evolution, put forward by Johnjoe McFadden in his book Quantum Evolution.
It's all based on Max Planck's quantum theory, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and Schrodinger's cat - at a sub atomic level, stuff has the potential to be a wave and a particle, it is uncertain how it is at any given point, but it collapses into one reality or the other when observed/measured. It's called the Copenhagen interpretation: according to this, a system stops being a superposition of states and becomes either one or the other when an observation takes place - but I'm just showing off now.
Ergo, all our DNA carry the potential to be either way (for example, heat resistant or not) and they fall into a reality when they encounter a measurement, which is the environmental force... or that life form's consciousness. It's true - quantum theory has an explanation about consciousness too! To read excerpts from this book, visit http://www.geneticengineering.org/evolution/mcfaddenc8.html. Then evolution takes over, making the ones with favorable mutations survive and those with unfavorable ones go exticnt.
So, no Guy in the Sky in his Little Lab or a passive Earth waiting for a one in a ten-to-the-power-41 chance of the right combination - life has the potential and usually uses it. Intelligent Design (ID) is driven by you and me and the thermophiles!
Be that as it may, I didn't realize the Evolution/ID gangs were so deeply divided or the matter is so hotly debated. For an acidic and very convincing pro-evolution, anti-ID war cry, read this Guardian article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/sep/01/schools.research. Or to figure out how "...at its root, Darwinian theory is tautological. What survives is fit; what is fit survives," read George Gilder's article at http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=3631.
My confusion is this - adaptation requires mutation at the genetic level as well, doesn't it? I mean, the Darwin's Finches can learn a certain traits, but the distinctive differences in their physiology meant some tinkering at the DNA level, didn't it? Growing a new type of beak is not like building biceps, is it?
So how did it all happen? Did a series of ground-living Finches clamber up a tree, tried a new diet of insects instead of their staple seed, choked on it and died at first, then gradually liked it over a few generations, and then were helped by random mutations to help them be arboreal and insectivorous? So did this process take like a million years of dying losers on the trees before one generation casually mutating?
My discomfort is with the apparent randomness of the mutation. If life was that random, what are the odds of the level of biodiversity we have on this little green planet? I'm not trained, but it looks staggering to me.
Not that I believe that one uber-guy waved his magic wand and created this wonderful planet teaming with stunning variety of life forms at one fell swoop. I mean, why this planet in this galaxy in this part of the universe, specifically? Why bacteria and orchids and platypus and panda and humans, and not others? Why would he decree that "may the finch have the mutation but let the trilobites die out and oh, let me create the shark which doesn't need mutation at all!"
The point is, although I've vaguley worried about it, I never gave it a deeper thought. My middle-school science teachers did not exactly encourage such debates - the message has always been, "memorize the damn thing, regurgitate in the exams, get the scores and MOVE ON!"
Not until I stumbled into the "Evolution, Intelligent Design, and the Third Alternative" debate in a pot-bolier (Black Order, James Rollins) I picked up at the grocery store. Although the check-out guy highly recommended the book (or may be because he did), all I had expected was a remix of the thriller genre formula. You know that one - American hero+international villain+imminent world destruction+smart-alecky conversation+sex+action = triumph of good over evil.
Of course the book had all of it in spades - it even used Himmler's SS and Nazis (I mean, this is 2007 for crying out loud, let's have some new villians!). But it also presented the Quantum Theory of Evolution, put forward by Johnjoe McFadden in his book Quantum Evolution.
It's all based on Max Planck's quantum theory, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and Schrodinger's cat - at a sub atomic level, stuff has the potential to be a wave and a particle, it is uncertain how it is at any given point, but it collapses into one reality or the other when observed/measured. It's called the Copenhagen interpretation: according to this, a system stops being a superposition of states and becomes either one or the other when an observation takes place - but I'm just showing off now.
Ergo, all our DNA carry the potential to be either way (for example, heat resistant or not) and they fall into a reality when they encounter a measurement, which is the environmental force... or that life form's consciousness. It's true - quantum theory has an explanation about consciousness too! To read excerpts from this book, visit http://www.geneticengineering.org/evolution/mcfaddenc8.html. Then evolution takes over, making the ones with favorable mutations survive and those with unfavorable ones go exticnt.
So, no Guy in the Sky in his Little Lab or a passive Earth waiting for a one in a ten-to-the-power-41 chance of the right combination - life has the potential and usually uses it. Intelligent Design (ID) is driven by you and me and the thermophiles!
Be that as it may, I didn't realize the Evolution/ID gangs were so deeply divided or the matter is so hotly debated. For an acidic and very convincing pro-evolution, anti-ID war cry, read this Guardian article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/sep/01/schools.research. Or to figure out how "...at its root, Darwinian theory is tautological. What survives is fit; what is fit survives," read George Gilder's article at http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=3631.
Comments
Beautifully written.
Maybe its time you stop the faux modesty - the whole "Maybe I am exceptionally dumb...." schtick, eh?