ScienceDaily is reporting a team of biologists has demonstrated that evolution is a deterministic process, rather than a random selection as some competing theories suggested. "When the researchers measured changes in 40 defined characteristics of the nematodes' sexual organs (including cell division patterns and the formation of specific cells), they found that most were uniform in direction, with the main mechanism for the development favoring a natural selection of successful traits, the researchers said."
Is it 'deterministic' or 'random' that a positively charged object is attracted to a negatively charged object, or is it merely a consequence of the way things are?
It is an unfortunate man who counts another as an enemy--the more you hate 'em, the more you risk becoming like 'em.
Referring to scientific facts in terms of 'faith' and 'belief' is rather an unfortunate choice of terminology. There's no need to believe in facts. There's no need to 'have faith' in random mutations--you can prove to yourself that such things happen, and thus have no need for 'faith'.
Elk. Elk. Elk. Moosen live in Sweden. Elken live in Deutchland. And whoever heard of a critical moose? Is that when you have enough moose that fission becomes self-sustaining?
It's possible to think a particular church hierarchy is despicable without finding Christianity itself objectionable. It's unfortunate that you don't see the distinction, particularly given the overwhelming evidence of the existence of groups which have splintered from the church over the years as a result of similar frustrations.
You offered a German proverb, I'll swap you an English one: you threw the baby out with the bathwater.
Hume--and Kant--are also a lot 'smarterer' than me;-)
However, Kant did come up with quite a plausible theory for why Hume was not quite right about that (and in doing so, essentially invented epistemology as a separate area of study). Whether or not he successfully demonstrated that his theory was correct is (still) an open question.
Very briefly what he supposed was that any experience whatsoever of the 'world' is only accessible through certain features of our perceptual and cognitive apparatus. Chief among these are time and space, but in addition, there are twelve a priori categories, including "causality and dependence" according to which experiences are ordered.
To put it in plainer language, time and space have to do not with reality as such, but with how we perceive reality, while the categories (including causality) and reason allow us to systematize our experiences. It's possible to think of time and space as analogous to being stuck in a space suit with a yellow-tinted visor. You can look through the visor, but everything will look yellow. You can't really be sure that everything--or anything--is yellow, but the only way you can see anything at all is to see it as something yellow.
The practical upshot of this is that according to Kant, while (contra Hume) genuine scientific inquiry is possible without recourse to faith in causation etc, and while our experience is of a real world, there are definite limits to human knowledge:
because time and space are properties of our perceptual and cognitive apparatus, it is absolutely impossible to discover what the world might be 'like' without reference to them, and
the answers to most of the traditional metaphysical questions--such as questions of the existence of god or the immortality of the soul--cannot be determined scientifically.
For more information, you can go to the Stanford Encyclopedia [stanford.edu], or to the source [cuhk.edu.hk], but when reading Kant, always be sure to take the proper precautions: take adequate food and water, allow plenty of time to get back before dark, and always let somebody know where you're going...
Deterministic selection might be obvious. But can anyone offer an explanation how the very first instance of a successful trait comes about?
I have faith that the first instance of a long neck was due to one or more coincident random mutations.
This says nothing about the way in which a trait arise--merely that the selection process that determines which traits are likely to be passed on is not random.
Also, there's no reason to have faith in this. Leave faith to the religious folks--these are facts, which are true whether or not you 'believe' them.
While it's good to verify things, you do realize that this proves nothing, right? It is merely in line with the one theory that we have for this sort of thing. It doesn't go anywhere near proving it. To prove that evolutionary selection is deterministic, you'd have to show that it was true for all cases, and that's a bit difficult. What this experiment shows is that for the species tested, traits considered, over the time analyzed, nothing abnormal was observed.
There is no "competing theory", just Darwin's. There are those of us that believed that it the selection of traits was deterministic, and then there are... creationists. Those that are in between don't make up a significant population in the scientific community. Also note that this study is irrelevant for the evolution/ID debate, since this is supposed to determine how evolution goes about, not whether it goes about.
While I don't think that this experiment wasn't worth doing, I don't think it's news. It's like going out to measure the mass of a photon and discovering that it's less than you can measure (yes, I know this has been done; it wasn't very exciting). It doesn't break anything we thought was fine, and doesn't prove anything we didn't already know: it simply puts limits on how wrong our theory can possibly be.
ID is about HOW Evolution Occurs. It occurs Intelligently. ID says Evolution's theory that it is entirely nature's luck is incorrect.
No, "Intelligent Design" is a way of claiming the development of the species is/was directed by God without invoking the 'G' word. It still ascribes the development to an external intelligence which designed the system from scratch. Organisms self-selecting beneficial genes is not what they're talking about when they say "Intelligent Design".
This is why I would like to have clarified why people seem to think that the concept of Creationism is even at odds with Evolution.
Personally, I would find it much less insulting as a deity if people realized I was an absolutely incredible systems programmer able to start a ball rolling with some precursor components and have all of earths current life unfold from them as planned. It would kind of belittle the effort to say He just snapped his fingers.
I hear the rebuttal constantly that the words of mankind are unable to contain the meanings God would be trying to impart on the writers, and this type of complexity would be EXACTLY the kind of thing mankind would be unable to even conceptualize millennia ago.
Creationism and Evolution are not mutually exclusive. The roots of creationism are simply unable to be tested or verified by humanity currently so it remains a leap of faith to believe that God designed the layout of dominos. We can't even say if there was a START to the universe, or whether it is some bizarre infinite system, or a finite-yet-recursive system or what.
For the die hard ultra-fundamentalist AS WELL AS the hardcore ultra-atheistic, keep in mind that NOTHING can be known to be 100% accurate, maybe a bunch of nines of significance based on what we know but never 100%. Even the probability we determine based on what we know would be in the same boat (IE: see Newtonian mechanics, almost correct, 'works' depending on frame of reference).
If we could, humanity would have no need for faith, as everything would simply be. Seeing as that would leave even less room in existence for free will, I'm definitely glad things are not that way (despite some things done in the name of faith or in the name of science).
DISCLAIMER: I'm still one who prefers the random swerving to being a gear in a deterministic system, but that doesnt mean what i'd like the model of existence to look like is correct.
creationism: 1. the doctrine that matter and all things were created, substantially as they now exist, by an omnipotent Creator, and not gradually evolved or developed.
2. the doctrine that the true story of the creation of the universe is as it is recounted in the Bible, esp. in the first chapter of Genesis.
Keep in mind, "Creationism" != "Religious faith". There are plenty of people who believe in God and who accept the scientific theory of evolution. But they are not creationists.
That's a bizarre definition of "creationism". It's been my experience, after decades of interacting with large numbers of creationists in various contexts, that the "creation-is-incompatible-with-evolution" types are but one small faction among many.
You may want to reconsider reference.com as a reliable source of unbiased information on controversial subjects.
Really? I always thought that to be considered Creationist one simply had to believe that God engineered all that is, regardless of how.
When people talk about "creationists", they generally mean the ones that believe the world is a few thousand years old, that man and monkey are not related (why, the very idea!), and/or any of the many scientifically laughable fairy tales found in old religious fairy tale texts. Those kinds are bad not because they believe in some Skydaddy, but because they actively refuse to acknowledge scientific fact. It's an issue of willful ignorance. I consider myself fairly rational. If I personally witness Jesus his bad ol' self coming down right in front of me, walking on water, and then hanging out with me all day to explain why Born-Again Christianity is the TRUTH, I'd very much be forced to consider the possibility that such might be the case. Conversely, the Creationist Nutter faction refuses to see what's before their very eyes, instead clinging to some internal definition of TRUTH that increasingly conflicts with observable reality.
For the "creationists" who believe God coded up the source for the universe in one marathon 6-day hacking spree and then typed "root#make universe" which set off the Big Bang, well, where's the point of argument? The lesser "why" of the mechanics is pure science, and the greater "Why" of the motivation for making it that way is pure abstract philosophy. The two never conflict, or even really overlap.
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday January 18 2008, @08:48PM (#22104012)
Just to be clear, so we don't assume any misconceptions here about Einstein and religion:
I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind. -- Einstein
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. -- Einstein
In 1929, Boston's Cardinal O'Connell branded Einstein's theory of relativity as "befogged speculation producing universal doubt about God and His Creation," and as implying "the ghastly apparition of atheism." In alarm, New York's Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein asked Einstein by telegram: "Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words." In his response, for which Einstein needed but twenty-five (German) words, he stated his beliefs succinctly:
"I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."
The rabbi cited this as evidence that Einstein was not an atheist, and further declared that "Einstein's theory, if carried to its logical conclusion, would bring to mankind a scientific formula for monotheism." Einstein wisely remained silent on that point.
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
If you think that science deals in facts, you're mistaken. Science is more a process of coming up with explanations for the observations that we have. For example, we see something, we come up with a theory and then set out to "prove" the theory correct. Unfortunately, we find historically, that the scientific proof of things is almost always flawed, as it was with newtonian physics, but is frequently good enough to get by.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding here. Science never proves that a theory is "correct" -- theories never become facts -- science instead proves that a theory has useful predictive power. Newton's laws of motion remain "proven" on this basis: the engineering calculations needed to put a man on the moon, for example, were done with deliberate disregard for relativity, for Newton's laws had just as much useful predictive power after Einstein as before.
A hypothesis doesn't get called a theory until it has demonstrated substantial predictive power, and so is almost never found to be "incorrect" later. Instead conditions are discovered under which the old theory doesn't make useful predictions, and the new theory is "more general", or accurate to more decimal places, etc.
Natural selection can be easily verified in a laboratory setting, with reproducible results. Keep nuking bacteria, and eventually you'll wind up with a population that is more resilient to the doses of radiation that you're giving them. We can also statistically observe which DNA sequences are advantageous/disadvantageous. The evidence for natural selection is extensive and largely unambiguous.
Evolution is part of the larger picture, and isn't really possible to test or reproduce, as it explains the consequences of natural selection. "Proving" evolution requires lots of indirect/consequential/incomplete evidence, and the extensive use of statistics (which helps indicate trends and correlations, but can't actually *prove* anything) to interpolate/extrapolate what evidence we have.
It follows from logic that if species breed randomly, and the mutation doesn't greatly affect an organism's ability to reproduce, the short-term effects of natural selection won't propagate to the long-term, which leaves us with a paradoxical situation wherein Natural Selection is required for evolution to occur, but that the population dynamics associated with natural selection simultaneously prevent long-term evolution from occurring.
The significance of this study is that we now have some evidence that the "species breed randomly" assumption might not necessarily have been a good one.
As always, further study on the matter should be pursued.
You are correct in describing facts and theories, but "evolution" can refer to both. This article explains it well I think - Evolution is a Fact and a Theory [talkorigins.org].
Hopefully this will be an effective means of shutting up the old saw of "there's no way that 'simple random chance' could produce the creatures of today from the creatures of yesterday!" and all that other nonsense.
O'course, it'll probably be misquoted endlessly by the 'intelligent design' folks, given that--at least superficially--it could be seen to "endorse" the concept of a directed design, rather than being an inevitable consequence of the process.
Creationist Interpretation : "God came up with something he liked, so he repeated his design; I mean it must have taken awhile to design millions of organisms, He must have recycled ideas somewhere"
Creationist Interpretation : "God came up with something he liked, so he repeated his design; I mean it must have taken awhile to design millions of organisms, He must have recycled ideas somewhere"
Whats really intresting then is that while a whole bunch of stuff is recycled, the pattern makes a tree where recycling never seems to occur among plants-mammals-birds, so no four cycle breathing for mammals, no bird milk, no bat fruit.. really strange that with all the shortcuts that were taken, so much separation would be faithfully preserved.
From what I picked up in bio, it was known to work as such:
Assume Mutation
(1) If mutation not hindrance, animal likely to live and likely makes babies.
(2) If mutation is boon, animal more likely to live and more likely makes babies.
(3) If mutation is hindrance, animal less likely to live and less likely to make babies
From there, you consider whether or not the mutation is recessive/dominant which determines if the babies get the mutation (then referred to as a trait).
Repeat many many times and you get a separation of a special line.
The proper combination of factors being: mutation = beneficial, mutation dominant, mutated animals screw like proverbial rabbits.
The way I understood the article, observed mutations tended to be favorable to begin with. In other words, instead of the mutations being random, they are more likely to be favorable than unfavorable. So there seems to be some sort of mechanism that selects beneficial mutations BEFORE procreation or death kicks in. I'm not sure though if that's simple misreporting on the part of the author of the article.... wouldn't be the first time.
So there seems to be some sort of mechanism that selects beneficial mutations BEFORE procreation or death kicks in
You never see stuff like people with 2 alleles for sickle cell disease, because they don't make it to birth. Likewise, very bad mutations are selected against at a very early stage. However, mutations are random, there's no way for a cell to control where some cromosome will change.
I was confused, too. Here's the reference to the actual paper:
Karin Kiontke, Antoine Barrière, Irina Kolotuev, Benjamin Podbilewicz, Ralf Sommer, David H.A. Fitch, and Marie-Anne Félix Trends, Stasis, and Drift in the Evolution of Nematode Vulva Development [current-biology.com] Current Biology (November 2007), 17, p. 1925-1937.
TFA [sciencedaily.com] seems to be misrepresenting the research somewhat. They claim that there is a divide in evolutionary theory between "random inheritance" and "deterministic inheritance." However, the actual article is describing the difference between unbiased (stochastic) and biased (selected or constrained) evolution of variation. In both cases the usual random genetic variation with fitness selection would occur.
The scientists are not claiming that evolution is deterministic or guided, but rather that there are strong selections and constraints that bias some variations to be more likely to appear than others. In their words:
We propose that developmental evolution is primarily governed by selection and/or selection-independent constraints, not stochastic processes such as drift in unconstrained phenotypic space.
As an example of a constraint, they mention "generative constraints" (i.e. fitness is selecting for a certain feature, and there are multiple ways of achieving that feature, but one's genetic heritage will bias one implementation over another). Their evidence for the drift in variations being generally "biased" is based on the occurrence (over generations) of various traits: for instance they observe fewer "reversals" (reappearance of traits that were previously common) than would be expected if the variability were entirely stochastic/random.
This is, in any case, my understanding of the paper... but I'm a chemist/physicist, not a biologist! (So hopefully a biologist in the crowd will further explain this paper.) Overall, however, I think the article doesn't summarize the work properly, since they are suggesting that evolution is highly directed and deterministic, whereas the paper is instead analyzing the "degree of bias" that is inherent to the selection effects of evolution. For instance, the scientific paper doesn't claim that evolution can't produce non-advantageous mutations.
I've always thought that the rate of mutation should be alterable as well.
Depending on the creature, it may take more effort or less effort to ensure the integrity of its DNA. Some creatures can take massive doses of radiation and survive, some can survive massive exposures to what would be carcigenic in humans, etc.
So shouldn't evolution heuristically arrive at a rate of mutation that is beneficial to a species?
I thought this was obvious, but maybe I should write a paper on it.:p
Somehow, I feel that this is indeed novel: as far as I understood it, evolution was taken to be the process by which RANDOM mutations are passed on based on how they affect survival and reproduction rates.
This seems to say that the mutations aren't random, but that they are biased into a specific direction - one that is more advantageous to begin with. As an example, this would indicate that instead of there being random variations of the length of the neck of the giraffe, the mutations tend, on average, to favor a longer neck to begin with.
I'd say that's pretty new and spiffy. Did I miss something?
The article makes it sound like this proves that natural selection isn't a stochastic process, but in a couple of places they contradict this. It wouldn't make sense for natural selection to be deterministic. My understanding of natural selection is that it's more or less a random walk with drift toward a point determined by the nature of the selection pressures. Reading between the lines, I'm guessing that this new research shows that the drift term of the process is much larger than the error term, not tha
Mutation is partly random, but selection definitely is not. Genes and traits are selected for by their ability to pass themselves on to the next generation. That's a criterion, not "randomness". Note: mutation is definitely not always random, either. Organisms have developed extensive systems for modifying and altering how much mutation they incur, and what part of the genome receives those mutations. Look up, for example, the bacterial SOS response, in which bacterial colonies under stress will suddenly
But that's the point of the article - most mutations seem to be beneficial, according to their sets of criteria. This is what I think is new in the article.... though I'm also suspicious that the journalist might have simply misunderstood the scientist. Wouldn't be the first time.
Nobody ever said the selection was random, except for some pinhead creationists who didn't know what they were talking about. Mutations are random, and selection is the process by which those individuals with advantageous mutations survive while those with disadvantageous mutations do not.
Wow, this is a triple convergence of a bad and confusing title, summary and article (which is a summary of the actual journal article) which is unusual even for slashdot.
This really isn't about Darwinian evolution which involves random mutations and selection of the favorable ones. However, there are some characteristics which are neither advantageous or disadvantageous. There is a debate about how many characteristics are "neutral". For example, did large noses appear because they are advantageous (for warming air perhaps) or because they just worked out that way by chance. So the original paper asked this question about worm vulvas and found that nearly all the characteristics that they looked at did NOT arrive by chance but were selected for (i.e. were advantageous in some way).
It is important to note both possible results would be consistent with Darwinian evolution. The only questions being addressed are the mechanism (does evolution go through mostly neutral phenotypes before a favorable phenotype is selected) and the extent that characteristics are neutral. For worm vulvas, it appears that the vulvas that form are biased towards the most favorable ones.
The title of the post is misleading. This is not intended to be a confirmation of the modern evolutionary theory. This paper is about HOW actually evolution of certain aspects of the nematodes happen, not about whether evolution happens or not at all.
The modern theory of evolution considers three different mechanisms in which evolution occur:
* Natural selection (the only one described by Darwin), which consists in the differential reproduction of organisms (let's just say organisms, to keep it simple) determined by inheritable traits (adaptive traits.
* Genetic drift, which consists in the "random" change in the frequency of a gene in a population.
* Genetic flow, which consists in the transference of genes among populations.
From the summary of the paper:
"We propose that developmental evolution is primarily governed by selection and/or selection-independent constraints, not stochastic processes such as drift in unconstrained phenotypic space."
Put simply, this paper says that natural selection is the prevailing mechanism in developmental evolution.
Sorry about my bad English. Not a native speaker.
You bring up a point that many do not understand. Evolution says nothing about how life or DNA started. It simply explains how once life started with DNA, the process by which it evolves. Similarly the "big bang" theory says nothing about how the universe started. It explains how it expanded and changed from a hot, dense, nearly uniform state to its cold, sparse, unevenly distributed state. There are hypotheses about life starting with an RNA world, or starting with undirected metabolism, but these are completely separate from the theory of evolution, for which we have ample evidence.
Your other point seems to do with the fact that some evidence is not completely explained by evolution. In science, there is always some observation left unexplained, which is why Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum theory superseded Newton's laws. It does not mean that there must be a supernatural explanation for the observations that are currently unexplained.
Ah, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, but did this deterministic development mechanism evolve deterministically or randomly?
Re:Ah, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Referring to scientific facts in terms of 'faith' and 'belief' is rather an unfortunate choice of terminology. There's no need to believe in facts. There's no need to 'have faith' in random mutations--you can prove to yourself that such things happen, and thus have no need for 'faith'.
Re:Ah, but... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Ah, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Ah, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Ah, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
You offered a German proverb, I'll swap you an English one: you threw the baby out with the bathwater.
Parent
Re:Ah, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hume--and Kant--are also a lot 'smarterer' than me ;-)
However, Kant did come up with quite a plausible theory for why Hume was not quite right about that (and in doing so, essentially invented epistemology as a separate area of study). Whether or not he successfully demonstrated that his theory was correct is (still) an open question.
Very briefly what he supposed was that any experience whatsoever of the 'world' is only accessible through certain features of our perceptual and cognitive apparatus. Chief among these are time and space, but in addition, there are twelve a priori categories, including "causality and dependence" according to which experiences are ordered.
To put it in plainer language, time and space have to do not with reality as such, but with how we perceive reality, while the categories (including causality) and reason allow us to systematize our experiences. It's possible to think of time and space as analogous to being stuck in a space suit with a yellow-tinted visor. You can look through the visor, but everything will look yellow. You can't really be sure that everything--or anything--is yellow, but the only way you can see anything at all is to see it as something yellow.
The practical upshot of this is that according to Kant, while (contra Hume) genuine scientific inquiry is possible without recourse to faith in causation etc, and while our experience is of a real world, there are definite limits to human knowledge:
For more information, you can go to the Stanford Encyclopedia [stanford.edu], or to the source [cuhk.edu.hk], but when reading Kant, always be sure to take the proper precautions: take adequate food and water, allow plenty of time to get back before dark, and always let somebody know where you're going...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I have faith that the first instance of a long neck was due to one or more coincident random mutations.
Re:Ah, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, there's no reason to have faith in this. Leave faith to the religious folks--these are facts, which are true whether or not you 'believe' them.
Parent
Re:Ah, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Two points:
While I don't think that this experiment wasn't worth doing, I don't think it's news. It's like going out to measure the mass of a photon and discovering that it's less than you can measure (yes, I know this has been done; it wasn't very exciting). It doesn't break anything we thought was fine, and doesn't prove anything we didn't already know: it simply puts limits on how wrong our theory can possibly be.
Parent
Re:Ah, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Ah, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Is the following a fact or faith?
What say ye?Hint: ISATRAP
Parent
Re:Ah, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Ah, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Ah, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I would find it much less insulting as a deity if people realized I was an absolutely incredible systems programmer able to start a ball rolling with some precursor components and have all of earths current life unfold from them as planned. It would kind of belittle the effort to say He just snapped his fingers.
I hear the rebuttal constantly that the words of mankind are unable to contain the meanings God would be trying to impart on the writers, and this type of complexity would be EXACTLY the kind of thing mankind would be unable to even conceptualize millennia ago.
Creationism and Evolution are not mutually exclusive. The roots of creationism are simply unable to be tested or verified by humanity currently so it remains a leap of faith to believe that God designed the layout of dominos. We can't even say if there was a START to the universe, or whether it is some bizarre infinite system, or a finite-yet-recursive system or what.
For the die hard ultra-fundamentalist AS WELL AS the hardcore ultra-atheistic, keep in mind that NOTHING can be known to be 100% accurate, maybe a bunch of nines of significance based on what we know but never 100%. Even the probability we determine based on what we know would be in the same boat (IE: see Newtonian mechanics, almost correct, 'works' depending on frame of reference).
If we could, humanity would have no need for faith, as everything would simply be. Seeing as that would leave even less room in existence for free will, I'm definitely glad things are not that way (despite some things done in the name of faith or in the name of science).
DISCLAIMER: I'm still one who prefers the random swerving to being a gear in a deterministic system, but that doesnt mean what i'd like the model of existence to look like is correct.
Parent
Re:Ah, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Yes they are, at least for the standard dictionary definition of creationism [reference.com]:
creationism:
1. the doctrine that matter and all things were created, substantially as they now exist, by an omnipotent Creator, and not gradually evolved or developed.
2. the doctrine that the true story of the creation of the universe is as it is recounted in the Bible, esp. in the first chapter of Genesis.
Keep in mind, "Creationism" != "Religious faith". There are plenty of people who believe in God and who accept the scientific theory of evolution. But they are not creationists.
Parent
Re:Ah, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
You may want to reconsider reference.com as a reliable source of unbiased information on controversial subjects.
Parent
Re:Ah, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
For the "creationists" who believe God coded up the source for the universe in one marathon 6-day hacking spree and then typed "root#make universe" which set off the Big Bang, well, where's the point of argument? The lesser "why" of the mechanics is pure science, and the greater "Why" of the motivation for making it that way is pure abstract philosophy. The two never conflict, or even really overlap.
Parent
Re:Ah, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
"If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part."
Richard Feynman
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
-- Albert Einstein
Parent
Re:Ah, but... (Score:5, Informative)
I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind. -- Einstein
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. -- Einstein
Parent
Re:Ah, but... (Score:5, Informative)
But the sources for relevant Wikipedia articles [wikipedia.org] are credible primary sources. (Brian, Dennis (1996), Einstein: A Life, New York: John Wiley & Sons, p. 127, ISBN 0-471-11459-6 [wikipedia.org]) To save you some time, I've added some line breaks but retained the context [aip.org].
Now for the second quote [wikipedia.org]:
Parent
Re:Ah, but... (Score:4, Informative)
A hypothesis doesn't get called a theory until it has demonstrated substantial predictive power, and so is almost never found to be "incorrect" later. Instead conditions are discovered under which the old theory doesn't make useful predictions, and the new theory is "more general", or accurate to more decimal places, etc.
Parent
Who comes first? (Score:5, Funny)
The chicken leans over to the egg and says; "I guess we answered that question."
Parent
In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
Evolution is part of the larger picture, and isn't really possible to test or reproduce, as it explains the consequences of natural selection. "Proving" evolution requires lots of indirect/consequential/incomplete evidence, and the extensive use of statistics (which helps indicate trends and correlations, but can't actually *prove* anything) to interpolate/extrapolate what evidence we have.
It follows from logic that if species breed randomly, and the mutation doesn't greatly affect an organism's ability to reproduce, the short-term effects of natural selection won't propagate to the long-term, which leaves us with a paradoxical situation wherein Natural Selection is required for evolution to occur, but that the population dynamics associated with natural selection simultaneously prevent long-term evolution from occurring.
The significance of this study is that we now have some evidence that the "species breed randomly" assumption might not necessarily have been a good one.
As always, further study on the matter should be pursued.
Parent
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Thus eliminating the usual trite rhetoric (Score:3, Interesting)
O'course, it'll probably be misquoted endlessly by the 'intelligent design' folks, given that--at least superficially--it could be seen to "endorse" the concept of a directed design, rather than being an inevitable consequence of the process.
God Recycles (Score:3, Funny)
Re:God Recycles (Score:5, Insightful)
Whats really intresting then is that while a whole bunch of stuff is recycled, the pattern makes a tree where recycling never seems to occur among plants-mammals-birds, so no four cycle breathing for mammals, no bird milk, no bat fruit.. really strange that with all the shortcuts that were taken, so much separation would be faithfully preserved.
Storm
Parent
Re:God Recycles (Score:4, Funny)
-- GOD
Parent
Wait... what's different here? (Score:5, Informative)
From what I picked up in bio, it was known to work as such:
Assume Mutation
(1) If mutation not hindrance, animal likely to live and likely makes babies.
(2) If mutation is boon, animal more likely to live and more likely makes babies.
(3) If mutation is hindrance, animal less likely to live and less likely to make babies
From there, you consider whether or not the mutation is recessive/dominant which determines if the babies get the mutation (then referred to as a trait).
Repeat many many times and you get a separation of a special line.
The proper combination of factors being: mutation = beneficial, mutation dominant, mutated animals screw like proverbial rabbits.
How is this different from the new findings?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wait... what's different here? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Wait... what's different here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Karin Kiontke, Antoine Barrière, Irina Kolotuev, Benjamin Podbilewicz, Ralf Sommer, David H.A. Fitch, and Marie-Anne Félix Trends, Stasis, and Drift in the Evolution of Nematode Vulva Development [current-biology.com] Current Biology (November 2007), 17, p. 1925-1937.
TFA [sciencedaily.com] seems to be misrepresenting the research somewhat. They claim that there is a divide in evolutionary theory between "random inheritance" and "deterministic inheritance." However, the actual article is describing the difference between unbiased (stochastic) and biased (selected or constrained) evolution of variation. In both cases the usual random genetic variation with fitness selection would occur.
The scientists are not claiming that evolution is deterministic or guided, but rather that there are strong selections and constraints that bias some variations to be more likely to appear than others. In their words: As an example of a constraint, they mention "generative constraints" (i.e. fitness is selecting for a certain feature, and there are multiple ways of achieving that feature, but one's genetic heritage will bias one implementation over another). Their evidence for the drift in variations being generally "biased" is based on the occurrence (over generations) of various traits: for instance they observe fewer "reversals" (reappearance of traits that were previously common) than would be expected if the variability were entirely stochastic/random.
This is, in any case, my understanding of the paper... but I'm a chemist/physicist, not a biologist! (So hopefully a biologist in the crowd will further explain this paper.) Overall, however, I think the article doesn't summarize the work properly, since they are suggesting that evolution is highly directed and deterministic, whereas the paper is instead analyzing the "degree of bias" that is inherent to the selection effects of evolution. For instance, the scientific paper doesn't claim that evolution can't produce non-advantageous mutations.
Parent
Re:Wait... what's different here? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always thought that the rate of mutation should be alterable as well.
Depending on the creature, it may take more effort or less effort to ensure the integrity of its DNA. Some creatures can take massive doses of radiation and survive, some can survive massive exposures to what would be carcigenic in humans, etc.
So shouldn't evolution heuristically arrive at a rate of mutation that is beneficial to a species?
I thought this was obvious, but maybe I should write a paper on it. :p
Parent
Am I missing something? (Score:5, Interesting)
This seems to say that the mutations aren't random, but that they are biased into a specific direction - one that is more advantageous to begin with. As an example, this would indicate that instead of there being random variations of the length of the neck of the giraffe, the mutations tend, on average, to favor a longer neck to begin with.
I'd say that's pretty new and spiffy. Did I miss something?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
My understanding of natural selection is that it's more or less a random walk with drift toward a point determined by the nature of the selection pressures. Reading between the lines, I'm guessing that this new research shows that the drift term of the process is much larger than the error term, not tha
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Note: mutation is definitely not always random, either. Organisms have developed extensive systems for modifying and altering how much mutation they incur, and what part of the genome receives those mutations. Look up, for example, the bacterial SOS response, in which bacterial colonies under stress will suddenly
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Most interesting (Score:5, Funny)
Finally, there is an answer (Score:3, Funny)
They might even be able to write a mathematical expression for it.
interesting career choice (Score:5, Funny)
Link to cited paper (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.current-biology.com/content/article/fulltext?uid=PIIS0960982207021938 [current-biology.com]
The Recursive Nature of Life. (Score:3)
WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
-jcr
What the article is REALLY about (Score:4, Informative)
This really isn't about Darwinian evolution which involves random mutations and selection of the favorable ones. However, there are some characteristics which are neither advantageous or disadvantageous. There is a debate about how many characteristics are "neutral". For example, did large noses appear because they are advantageous (for warming air perhaps) or because they just worked out that way by chance. So the original paper asked this question about worm vulvas and found that nearly all the characteristics that they looked at did NOT arrive by chance but were selected for (i.e. were advantageous in some way).
It is important to note both possible results would be consistent with Darwinian evolution. The only questions being addressed are the mechanism (does evolution go through mostly neutral phenotypes before a favorable phenotype is selected) and the extent that characteristics are neutral. For worm vulvas, it appears that the vulvas that form are biased towards the most favorable ones.
This is not what you all think (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Missing the point DNA never really evolved ! (Score:5, Interesting)
You bring up a point that many do not understand. Evolution says nothing about how life or DNA started. It simply explains how once life started with DNA, the process by which it evolves. Similarly the "big bang" theory says nothing about how the universe started. It explains how it expanded and changed from a hot, dense, nearly uniform state to its cold, sparse, unevenly distributed state. There are hypotheses about life starting with an RNA world, or starting with undirected metabolism, but these are completely separate from the theory of evolution, for which we have ample evidence.
Your other point seems to do with the fact that some evidence is not completely explained by evolution. In science, there is always some observation left unexplained, which is why Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum theory superseded Newton's laws. It does not mean that there must be a supernatural explanation for the observations that are currently unexplained.
Parent