The Genius of Charles Darwin

Guest

Channel 4 is showing an excellent programme on Darwin and evolution presented by the dreaded Dawkins. He's also explaining how genes are inherited. There have been a few discussions on evolution on Politics.ie in which a very uneven understanding of the Origin of Species was shown.

I find Dawkins a poor polemicist against religion, but pretty good on evolution.

Guest

Here is a youtube piece on the complexity of cells which purports to contain a challenge to the orthodoxy of Darwin's model of evolution

Guest

The complexity we see is, according to Darwin, an illusion built on complex interactions of simpler things - cells, which in Darwin's day were simple indeed. Today we know that cells aren't simple blobs of protoplasm as Darwin thought - some cells look like this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellum

"Proton motive force, two gears - forward and reverse, water cooled, stator, rotor, u-joint, drive-shaft - it's not convenient we give them these names - these truly are their function" one guy says there.

Is this something which evolved in little leaps and steps?

Guest

Guest

cactus flower wrote:: Yes.

No way!

How?

Guest

Did you watch that brilliant video I posted? It's brilliant and at the end it says:

The Brilliant YouTube Video wrote:

Charles Darwin offered a way to test his own theory; in Origin of the Species he wrote

Charles Darwin in Origin of the Species wrote:: If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down

Come on - a driveshaft and set of gears very gradually appear over millenia? Pf!

Guest

Auditor #9 wrote:

Did you watch that brilliant video I posted? It's brilliant and at the end it says:

The Brilliant YouTube Video wrote:

Charles Darwin offered a way to test his own theory; in Origin of the Species he wrote

Charles Darwin in Origin of the Species wrote:: If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down

Come on - a driveshaft and set of gears very gradually appear over millenia? Pf!

I don't have any problem with it. That's what evolution is about. The ideas in this link are cool:

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/beyond_darwin

Guest

cactus flower wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

Did you watch that brilliant video I posted? It's brilliant and at the end it says:

The Brilliant YouTube Video wrote:

Charles Darwin offered a way to test his own theory; in Origin of the Species he wrote

Charles Darwin in Origin of the Species wrote:: If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down

Come on - a driveshaft and set of gears very gradually appear over millenia? Pf!

I don't have any problem with it. That's what evolution is about. The ideas in this link are cool:

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/beyond_darwin

Quote :: At the collective level, said Woese, bacteria exhibit patterns of organization and behavior that emerge suddenly, at tipping points of population variation and density called "saltations." Natural selection still favors -- or disfavors -- the ultimate outcome of these jumps, but the jumps themselves seem to defy explanation solely through genetic changes or individual properties.

Such jumps don't just call into question whether evolution is capable of producing sudden rather than gradual change. That debate raged during the later stages of the last century, but has been largely settled in favor of what paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould termed punctuated equilibrium. By contrast, Woese invokes yet-to-be-quantified rules of complexity and emergence. These, he said, may also explain other exceptional jumps, such as the transition from protein fragments to single cells and from single-celled organisms to multicellular ones.

There - they say it themselves - punctuated equilibrium - which I understood as the "appearing jaw" in Leakey - the fossils of a fish species are preserved clearly with successive generations evident in the record then suddenly the fish has a jaw ! the generation before didn't nor is there any gradual appearance of any kind of jaw.

Now, there could be mutations which survive but look, these small cells above have a level of complexity which stretches Darwin to the thought of 1000 monkeys on 1000 typewriters for 1 million years coming out with Shakespeare's works. How can random mutations create components like in the flagellum above - components which fit together perfectly and were, it appears, designed for one another ...

Guest

Lots of organisms are very complex. But in fairness, I may not be fully grasping why you find this particular complexity hard to accept as a product of natural selection. Its not like Shakespeare's works. Its a process of environmental adaptation and finding of habitable niches in ecosystems.

Guest

cactus flower wrote:: Lots of organisms are very complex. But in fairness, I may not be fully grasping why you find this particular complexity hard to accept as a product of natural selection. Its not like Shakespeare's works. Its a process of environmental adaptation and finding of habitable niches in ecosystems.

Look, if I take a small gearbox apart which possesses similar complexity to that of the cell above and if I put those pieces in the back of a car to roll around as they wish, how long would it be before those pieces somehow moved together in such a way that they slotted into each other again?

That cell above has very similar components to a human-made gear and crank system - practically identical. The theory of random mutations on which Darwin's model is founded means that such components will have similar random chances of appearing that the pieces of my bike-gears rolling around in the boot of my car will have of accidentally re-assembling themselves. I'm not giving you an analogy because you are dealing with more or less equivalent conditions if one of your assumptions is that the process is random and there is no conscious design of any kind. How long will it be before those pieces get back together?

In nature's scenario it's even harder - first those pieces have to randomly appear designed for each other before they fit together at all ...

Guest

Auditor #9 wrote:

cactus flower wrote:: Lots of organisms are very complex. But in fairness, I may not be fully grasping why you find this particular complexity hard to accept as a product of natural selection. Its not like Shakespeare's works. Its a process of environmental adaptation and finding of habitable niches in ecosystems.

Look, if I take a small gearbox apart which possesses similar complexity to that of the cell above and if I put those pieces in the back of a car to roll around as they wish, how long would it be before those pieces somehow moved together in such a way that they slotted into each other again?

That cell above has very similar components to a human-made gear and crank system - practically identical. The theory of random mutations on which Darwin's model is founded means that such components will have similar random chances of appearing that the pieces of my bike-gears rolling around in the boot of my car will have of accidentally re-assembling themselves. I'm not giving you an analogy because you are dealing with more or less equivalent conditions if one of your assumptions is that the process is random and there is no conscious design of any kind. How long will it be before those pieces get back together?

In nature's scenario it's even harder - first those pieces have to randomly appear designed for each other before they fit together at all ...

I'm not well up on crankshafts, but perhaps this virtual mathematical approach will persuade you about complexity and evolution. This source looks at evolution over 15,000 generations of a virtual life form btw, I hadn't realised that evolutionary studies had moved on so much from the boring stand-off between gradualists and leapists (obviously, there are leaps). It all looks very interesting now, with genetics and ecology entering the equation.

Time is a big player in evolution. No one is trying to design anything in order to make it work, There is no design, only what happens. It is not sensible, its random. Things that work are a happy accident.

A random example - sickle-cell anaemia is a nasty painfull disease that is associated with some populations: it turns out that it also provides some protection from malaria. If conditions were present in which malaria became more deadly, more people with sc disease would tend to survive better and dominate future populations. Perhaps in time, people with less disabling forms of it, provided it still protected from malaria, would thrive more than other populations. So it could look like a happy plan that worked, but all that happened is that the ones that didn't work so well didn't survive.

Guest

Quote :: Time is a big player in evolution. No one is trying to design anything in order to make it work, There is no design, only what happens. It is not sensible, its random. Things that work are a happy accident.

If we start up the "Quotes of the week or month" again that'll be one. Very succinctly said - no design, not sensible, random ...

Now, as I understand it it is based on the smallest random unit, the gene. This is part of a cell and is responsible for creating various effects in a body - blue or brown eyes gene, the five fingers gene, the pigment gene and then there are genes which control other genes and switch other ones on when others still are ready. For example there is a gene which says "start growing the [arms] now" which if transplanted from a fly into a mouse will grow mouse arms rather than fly arms so that gene is more like a robot that has a function to take one part and screw it onto the next, it's insensible in itself and simply depends on parts given to it by the gene before in the sequence, whether that was fly or mouse. A fella who studied both biology and computer science once told me that DNAs is like one long chain of computer code, with instructions and super-instructions.

Now, the cell itself has its own genes to manufacture itself you'll say and this is the question. Those genes at that level only produce components which happily fit together or unhappily don't. Somehow there is a gene which instructs the body to do the instruction "grow the [next bit]" and it is a universal component. Isn't that a neat component? It exists.

Maybe it's a fallacy to use the car analogy again but in your example someone presumed all the rules beforehand and programmed them into a computer and it turns out it looks right .. Hmm. They do this with Global Warming models using computer simulation as well. What if one of the rules is God and they forgot that?

So let me use the car analogy again to describe the flagellum. Some pieces are very small compared to the overall and in themselves do not do anything - a jubilee clip for example

The Genius of Charles Darwin Hose_clip

in itself nothing - it needs hoses and joints to clip onto and clip together. This is the basis of that flagellum - the flagellum has an outboard motor made of parts which were each proposed by genes as "insensible components" which thankfully all fitted together to convert a tail-like protrusion into a very efficient ... outboard motor, almost part for part.

I've no doubt that natural selection has a major part to play in evolution but this thing for me defies the laws of gradualism because the thing is made of components - accidentally arising independently of each other like bits of your engine, yet somehow fitted together over time....? Can you imagine it ... the gene creates that tail, then it creates by accident a part that drives that tail that fits that tail exactly and why a part shaped like that i.e. the exact fit of the tail? Look at all the little components around the tail and there are gears in there too. All these simple components were genetic accidents according to Darwin - flukes which given enough time may happen. But how much time does it take even for that simple set of components to somehow find each other swimming around in a soupy protoplasm of ancient biology and link together?? I would say infinity - that's how long.

There is design and intention and purpose in that small cell and its multi-component assemblage of an outboard motor and I'd quicker believe it was engineered by aliens than the pieces just randomly fell together over millennia.

Guest

Arrgh no. My lovely post is lost. Will have to get back to this later.
In the meantime, this will have to do:

Quote :: All claims about the probability of certain organic structures developing "by chance" completely leave out all of the facts about reality and instead treat atoms like simple numbers. The most common phrase used to describe the improbability of life developing on its own is the question: "What is the chance that monkeys banging on a typewriter are going to produce Shakespeare?"

Monkeys banging on typewriters have nothing in common with the chemical processes that give rise to structures however. Nature does not operate randomly, it operates according to constant laws, which always dictate behavior.
Assuming that monkeys bang at "random", there would be no greater chance that a money would hit the letters ABC in sequence than that they would hit JDW in sequence, but the chemical world does not work that way. Atoms have properties. What are the chances that the following atomic structure would form "randomly", H₂O? No different that the formation of HCN or N₃ or O₃ or H₃ or C₂H if you consider atoms to operate randomly, but atoms do not operate randomly, and the formation of water is not only more likely than the formation of those other chemicals under certain conditions, but some of those combinations aren't even possible (at least without the proper ionic notation). This is because atoms have properties, they don't operate "at random".
Furthermore, probabilities change based on conditions. For example, the "odds of being struck by lightening" are 576,000 to 1, but these odds go up if you are in a lightening storm, and they go up even further if you are outside in a lightening storm, and they go up even further if you are touching a metal flag pole in a lightening storm.
The chances of "getting attacked by a shark" are low, but they are impossibly low if you are on top of a mountain, while they are very high if you are swimming off the coast of South Africa in the middle of bloody water. Simply stating that the chance of X occurring in the universe is Y is, for the most part, a completely useless statement.
Anti-evolutionist claims of probabilities demonstrate the uselessness of their own calculations. For example:

Some example probabilities:
1. SETI Message in the movie Contact - 1 in 10^339
2. Single ticket winning a 6 number lotto - ~1 in 10^7
3. Formation of the minimum set of the required 239 protein molecules for the smallest theoretical life - 1 in 10^119,879 (Rough Estimate)
source: http://www.newcreationism.org/Discerning_Intelligent_Design.html

Interestingly, the linked article discusses physical laws when talking about contingency and then throws out the effect of physical laws when discussing complexity.
This example treats the formation of a set of protein molecules like a lottery number, however lottery numbers and chemicals are nothing alike. Numbers do not have properties. Lets say that my 6 digit lottery number is 123456. If the number 1 is drawn then the chance that the next number will be 2 is the same as the chance that it will be 0,1,3,4,5,6,7,8, or 9. However, when a chemical reaction takes place the formation is not random at all. When carbon comes into contact with other atoms, such as oxygen or nitrogen or hydrogen, it will react with those atoms in a set way, and if a carbon ion comes into contact with water it will form CH₄ every time. As chemical reactions proceed, the chance of the next step in the reaction being X is never random, which is exactly why we have a science of chemistry.
The chance specified in the example above for the "random" formation of 239 protein molecules is simply a mathematical calculation that treats every atom in the equation like a simple number, as if molecules were lottery tickets.
What are the chances of a snowflake "randomly" forming?

Trillions and trillions of snowflakes spontaneously form every year, without the need of any supernatural intervention. Why? Because the properties of water are such that under the right conditions snowflakes will inevitably form. What is the chance that the structure above would be formed naturally without any "intelligent design"? If one calculates the odds of this occurring the same way that anti-evolutionists calculate the odds of life forming then one would come up with an equally impossible number. The calculation would take the number of atoms in the snowflake, and then take the number of atoms in the universe, and then use a constant to determine the number of chance interactions these atoms have, and then calculate the chance that these random interactions would result in this near perfectly symmetrical pattern. The anti-evolutionist calculations basically ask, "What is the chance that if I threw a handful of sand grains on the floor that they would happen to fall into a pattern that resembles a snowflake?"
But that's not how snowflakes form, they aren't the products of simple random arrangements of atoms; they are the products of atoms whose properties dictate that under the right conditions these patterns will arise. The conditions under which snowflakes form are rare. They require that there must be vaporized water in an existing cloud system, a certain density and composition of air, and temperatures in which vaporized water will directly crystallize. Snow does not fall on the other plants in the solar system any more than life exist on the other plants in the solar system (that we know of), does this show that there has to be a supernatural reason for the formation of snow on earth? Of course not, it just means that the conditions for snow are right on earth, while they are not right on the other plants.
What are the chances of a snowflake forming anywhere in the universe? Low, but at present on earth a limited set of conditions persists so that snowflakes form trillions and trillions and trillions of times. The occurrence of phenomena is all about the right conditions. If those conditions exist then the "chance" of a phenomenon occurring approaches 100%.
Snowflakes are examples of forms that appear to have been designed, which nevertheless have formed without intelligent guidance an almost infinite number of times on earth, with each formation being independent of the others. In the case of life, the unguided formation of life only had to happen one time, and from that point on it was self perpetuating. Snowflakes don't self-perpetuate, each one has to develop independently. If one is to look at chance the way that anti-evolutionist do, the chance that trillions upon trillions of snowflakes would form is much lower than the chance that just one cell would form. But, of course, this itself is an absurd game, because, as we know, the real world doesn't work that way. Molecules and chemical structures are not numbers and lottery tickets, and the chance of the "random" formation of any given protein or component of life cannot be calculated with any mathematical equation that we can develop, because knowing the chance of something happening requires knowing the variables that have to be fed into the equation, and right now we simply don't know enough to accurately perform such a calculation.
Furthermore, snowflakes are the products of near spontaneous formation, but life is not. The formation of life is the product of a process, in which each step in the process provided the basis for the next step. The formation of spherical rocks can be used as an example of processes in nature.

The almost perfectly spherical rocks above were all formed naturally, without any "intelligent design", yet what are the chances of this "randomly" occurring? The chances of this randomly occurring are next to zero, but there are millions of such round rocks on earth because they don't randomly form.

http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/understanding_evolution.htm

Mechanics are not adequate to describe processes and organisms. The processes are incremental over millenia, sometimes very gradual and sometimes with leaps.

You might enjoy a visit to this place, where they found the fossils of fish who walked around there years ago. The essential is that genes mutate, there are lots of random variations and the most useful ones perpetuate themselves.

Look at this little lad -

The Genius of Charles Darwin Handfish2

If hands turn out to be get more useful to fish, we will a lot of his type around.

http://content.ll-0.com/failte_news/failte_news_e_a000890110.JPG?i=091007093950

Guest

He's a nice fish and I confess I didn't read all of the above yet but I'll try. I read to where it said that things aren't random, there are laws.

This I agree with. Why else would anything happen? Why is there the urge to survival at all? Biology is based on chemistry which has fewer laws and chemistry is based on physics which has fewer laws still so ultimately there are laws governing the universe and they reverberate into cellular and other forms of life.

Questions about what these laws are and how they operate get lost in the flurry of theory and dispute. It could be though, that God is a Quantum Mechanic.

Guest

Auditor #9 wrote:: He's a nice fish and I confess I didn't read all of the above yet but I'll try. I read to where it said that things aren't random, there are laws.

This I agree with. Why else would anything happen? Why is there the urge to survival at all? Biology is based on chemistry which has fewer laws and chemistry is based on physics which has fewer laws still so ultimately there are laws governing the universe and they reverberate into cellular and other forms of life.

Questions about what these laws are and how they operate get lost in the flurry of theory and dispute. It could be though, that God is a Quantum Mechanic.

Why do you need there to be an outside concious deus ex machina in this, when the machine itself is self-evidently operating perfectly well without one?

In order to survive "urge to survival" is a big advantage - that is one of the reasons that creatures that have it have been successful in surviving and mutliplying.

Guest

cactus flower wrote:: Why do you need there to be an outside concious deus ex machina in this, when the machine itself is self-evidently operating perfectly well without one?

In order to survive "urge to survival" is a big advantage - that is one of the reasons that creatures that have it have been successful in surviving and mutliplying.

I mightn't say the "outside influence" is conscious - rather that there may be laws, like gravity, that affect biological components indirectly. Many systems operate on the principle of avoiding too much expense of energy for instance - isn't this one guiding rule that's fundamental? A system which does a similar job using less energy will have a survival advantage over another. Depending on the environment and availability of energy of course.

Reducing the 'urge to survive' down to protein components - that would be interesting.

Guest

Auditor #9 wrote:

cactus flower wrote:: Why do you need there to be an outside concious deus ex machina in this, when the machine itself is self-evidently operating perfectly well without one?

In order to survive "urge to survival" is a big advantage - that is one of the reasons that creatures that have it have been successful in surviving and mutliplying.

I mightn't say the "outside influence" is conscious - rather that there may be laws, like gravity, that affect biological components indirectly. Many systems operate on the principle of avoiding too much expense of energy for instance - isn't this one guiding rule that's fundamental? A system which does a similar job using less energy will have a survival advantage over another. Depending on the environment and availability of energy of course.

Reducing the 'urge to survive' down to protein components - that would be interesting.

This is one of the best bits about why its not about a set of components joggling about in the back of your van:

Quote :: Trillions and trillions of snowflakes spontaneously form every year, without the need of any supernatural intervention. Why? Because the properties of water are such that under the right conditions snowflakes will inevitably form. What is the chance that the structure above would be formed naturally without any "intelligent design"? If one calculates the odds of this occurring the same way that anti-evolutionists calculate the odds of life forming then one would come up with an equally impossible number. The calculation would take the number of atoms in the snowflake, and then take the number of atoms in the universe, and then use a constant to determine the number of chance interactions these atoms have, and then calculate the chance that these random interactions would result in this near perfectly symmetrical pattern. The anti-evolutionist calculations basically ask, "What is the chance that if I threw a handful of sand grains on the floor that they would happen to fall into a pattern that resembles a snowflake?"

But that's not how snowflakes form, they aren't the products of simple random arrangements of atoms; they are the products of atoms whose properties dictate that under the right conditions these patterns will arise. The conditions under which snowflakes form are rare. They require that there must be vaporized water in an existing cloud system, a certain density and composition of air, and temperatures in which vaporized water will directly crystallize. Snow does not fall on the other plants in the solar system any more than life exist on the other plants in the solar system (that we know of), does this show that there has to be a supernatural reason for the formation of snow on earth? Of course not, it just means that the conditions for snow are right on earth, while they are not right on the other plants.

What are the chances of a snowflake forming anywhere in the universe? Low, but at present on earth a limited set of conditions persists so that snowflakes form trillions and trillions and trillions of times. The occurrence of phenomena is all about the right conditions...Furthermore, snowflakes are the products of near spontaneous formation, but life is not. The formation of life is the product of a process, in which each step in the process provided the basis for the next step. The formation of spherical rocks can be used as an example of processes in nature.

Guest

Interesting - crystals 'grow' spontaneously, don't they? What kind of process is that? It's a sort of pattern with structure appearing out of the void ... now, I understand there are conditions under which this will occur and there may not be anything too mysterious about it in terms of conscious design but why isn't it the case that we speak of the components of life that way? That these little things (proteins) in a cell or in a strand of DNA just pop into existence like small nuts and bolts and together they create the machine that is a living being? It's the Darwinists themselves who seem to give life a purpose: to survive, to replicate, to ...

I found a debunking of the flagellum theory that I have to share with you - it seems like the 'irreducible complexity' argument using this particular cell has been flagellated to death. This dude is pretty funny in places (once Mad

)

Apparently the guy Behe was involved in a legal trial about this ... ??

Guest

Auditor #9 wrote:: Interesting - crystals 'grow' spontaneously, don't they? What kind of process is that? It's a sort of pattern with structure appearing out of the void ... now, I understand there are conditions under which this will occur and there may not be anything too mysterious about it in terms of conscious design but why isn't it the case that we speak of the components of life that way? That these little things (proteins) in a cell or in a strand of DNA just pop into existence like small nuts and bolts and together they create the machine that is a living being? It's the Darwinists themselves who seem to give life a purpose: to survive, to replicate, to ...

I found a debunking of the flagellum theory that I have to share with you - it seems like the 'irreducible complexity' argument using this particular cell has been flagellated to death. This dude is pretty funny in places (once )

Apparently the guy Behe was involved in a legal trial about this ... ??

I agree with you that evolutionists sometimes use unhelpful language in describing the process, but that is how the process works, some surviving and some not surviving, and it is all about fitting into a niche in the environment in which it is possible. It is not motivated, it just happens. Where motivation starts to come in, is that a creature who loves life is more likely to successfully struggle to stay alive. So love of life is something that is intense in all concious living creatures.

Guest

This one might interest you Auditor #9 (from today's Breaking News)

"'Junk' DNA linked to evolution of human hands and feet Print

Human hands and feet may owe their existence to so-called "junk" DNA that was once assumed to have no purpose, a study has shown.

Scientists believe mutations in the DNA might have "humanised" the limbs of our ape ancestors.

As a result, humans developed hands that could manipulate tools and weapons and feet that allowed them to stand upright.

"Our study identifies a potential genetic contributor to fundamental morphological differences between humans and apes," said study leader Dr James Noonan, from Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, US.

In the past decade scientists have discovered that non-coding DNA sequences previously dismissed as "junk" can regulate gene activity.

Unlike genes, they do not provide instructions for building proteins. But some of these non-coding stretches of DNA determine whether particular genes are switched on or off.

Their biological importance is highlighted by the fact that many have been "conserved" in species as distantly related as chickens and humans.

The new study involved searching vast non-coding regions of the human genome to identify regulatory sequences whose function may have changed since humans evolved from apes.

One sequence, given the name HACNS1, was found to have evolved rapidly in humans compared with chimpanzees and macaque monkeys.

By creating mouse embryos with the HACNS1 sequence, the scientists were able to observe how it affected limb development.

The biggest impact was at the base of the primordial thumb in the fore limb, and the great toe in the hind limb.

The results, published yesterday in the journal Science, provide tantalising evidence that functional changes in HACNS1 may have contributed to adaptations in the human ankle, foot, thumb and wrist.

However, it is still unclear which gene or genes have their activity affected by the sequence"

I find this very illuminating, but am disturbed by the idea of mice with opposing thumbs. We might be hearing from them in writing any day soon.

Androids randomly occurring with more than usual manual dexterity would have had a big survival and reproduction advantage over those without. Hence we get to dominate the planet (if you discount rats and insects).

Guest

Auditor #9 wrote:

cactus flower wrote:: Why do you need there to be an outside concious deus ex machina in this, when the machine itself is self-evidently operating perfectly well without one?

In order to survive "urge to survival" is a big advantage - that is one of the reasons that creatures that have it have been successful in surviving and mutliplying.

I mightn't say the "outside influence" is conscious - rather that there may be laws, like gravity, that affect biological components indirectly. Many systems operate on the principle of avoiding too much expense of energy for instance - isn't this one guiding rule that's fundamental? A system which does a similar job using less energy will have a survival advantage over another. Depending on the environment and availability of energy of course.

Reducing the 'urge to survive' down to protein components - that would be interesting.

There isn't an "urge to survive" in evolution. It is simply that those organisms that do pro-survival things are more likely to survive, so most organisms have behavioural adaptations that tend to help them survive.

Take a bacterium which moves away from bleach. The bacterium doesn't do that "to survive". It has three possible responses to poison - move away, move towards, do nothing - which could be randomly determined by mutation. Those that have the "move away" version are more likely to survive than the others - and therefore their descendants will be most common in the population.

Guest

ibis wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

cactus flower wrote:: Why do you need there to be an outside concious deus ex machina in this, when the machine itself is self-evidently operating perfectly well without one?

In order to survive "urge to survival" is a big advantage - that is one of the reasons that creatures that have it have been successful in surviving and mutliplying.

I mightn't say the "outside influence" is conscious - rather that there may be laws, like gravity, that affect biological components indirectly. Many systems operate on the principle of avoiding too much expense of energy for instance - isn't this one guiding rule that's fundamental? A system which does a similar job using less energy will have a survival advantage over another. Depending on the environment and availability of energy of course.

Reducing the 'urge to survive' down to protein components - that would be interesting.

There isn't an "urge to survive" in evolution. It is simply that those organisms that do pro-survival things are more likely to survive, so most organisms have behavioural adaptations that tend to help them survive.

Take a bacterium which moves away from bleach. The bacterium doesn't do that "to survive". It has three possible responses to poison - move away, move towards, do nothing - which could be randomly determined by mutation. Those that have the "move away" version are more likely to survive than the others - and therefore their descendants will be most common in the population.

That is not strictly true, although I think I do understand what you mean to say by it. Organisms with no conciousness, like bacteria, would clearly not survive if they were in a hostile environment. Some bacteria, like those in stomachs, exist in what would seem to us to be intolerable acidic conditions. I don't know if there are any bacteria that have evolved to take evasive action from bleach. If they had, yes, their populations may tend to be larger, although most populations are dependent on the total amount of viable habitat rather than occasional limited disasters like a bleach attack.

Presumably over time there is a probability, if there is enough contact between bacteria and bleach, that some mutated bacteria will survive contact with bleach and we will get resistant forms who can live in it, or even off it.

The "urge to survive" only applies to more complex life forms that have conciousness, can recognise threats and can take purposeful action. The "urge to survive" is present in humans as it presents an advantage in survival and those individuals and groups with strong "will to live (and reproduce)" are more likely to survive adversity and pass their characteristics on.

I'm not sure what you mean by an "outside influence" Auditor #9. Organisms evolve in interaction with (and in dependence on) their changing material environment as a whole, of which gravity is one aspect.

Guest

cactus flower wrote:: The "urge to survive" only applies to more complex life forms that have conciousness, can recognise threats and can take purposeful action. The "urge to survive" is present in humans as it presents an advantage in survival and those individuals and groups with strong "will to live (and reproduce)" are more likely to survive adversity and pass their characteristics on.

Hmm. Certainly the "urge to reproduce" is not normally a matter of thoughtful decision, and the "urge to survive" often manifests itself in ways that are instinctive and not infrequently incorrect, which again suggests it is not always 'purposeful action' - an example might be the human tendency to huddle together under attack, which is generally fatal in modern warfare.

Guest

ibis wrote:

cactus flower wrote:: The "urge to survive" only applies to more complex life forms that have conciousness, can recognise threats and can take purposeful action. The "urge to survive" is present in humans as it presents an advantage in survival and those individuals and groups with strong "will to live (and reproduce)" are more likely to survive adversity and pass their characteristics on.

Hmm. Certainly the "urge to reproduce" is not normally a matter of thoughtful decision, and the "urge to survive" often manifests itself in ways that are instinctive and not infrequently incorrect, which again suggests it is not always 'purposeful action' - an example might be the human tendency to huddle together under attack, which is generally fatal in modern warfare.

Are you speaking for yourself on that one, Ibis ? Very Happy

Au contraire: "hit the deck" is still the command when there are incoming shells and I would contend that scattering is a more common response than huddling ( same goes with any species that was once hunted by carnivorous predators).

Intuition is precisely useful when there is no time to think. When it comes to prolonged adverse conditions, morale, determination, optimism and so on all come into play.

Guest

I didn't watch the programme, but I understand Dawkins bemoans the current idea of intelligent design, and the fact that evolution is no more accepted now than it was a century ago.

To me that begs the question as to why acceptance of evolution should be the status quo. Has science become a popularity contest? In my view, such public mudfights do little more than drag science down to the level of ID.

I don't like the idea of the scientist in his ivory tower, aloof from the herd and oblivious to the everyday consequences of his actions. Eugenics and the atom bomb should have put paid to that idea. But neither should they rate their success by how popular their ideas are. There is a balance to be struck and evolution has often come out on the pathetic side. I reckon that the reason evolution is often singled out as the chief fiend in science (how much of science is contrary to the bible?) is because of the bellicose nature of the debate from the time of Huxley onwards. It became the posterchild of science, and has suffered all the humilations that that post entails.