Re: Lamarck's Tree
- From: "g" <gillawton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 02:00:50 -0500 (EST)
"Robert Karl Stonjek" <rstonjek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dq8r1u$2cfv$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Lamarck's book of 1809, Philosophie zoologique, presented a model of
> evolution that included spontaneous generation, a drive toward ever
> greater
> complexity, and a largely parallel evolution. But later he talked of a
> common ancestral form and even drew up a 'tree of life'.
>
> Does anyone have a copy of this Lamarckian tree? If so, point me to it or
> send me a copy.
>
> Also, I read
> "Darwin followed in his father's footsteps and at age 16 went to Edinburgh
> to study medicine. This was at a time before anesthesia when surgery was
> done quickly on screaming patients strapped to the operating table. After
> watching two operations on a child that went badly, Darwin quit medicine.
> In Edinburgh, he met Robert Grant, a marine biologist whose interest in
> the
> similarity of the structures of animals of different species led Grant to
> support Lamarck's suggestion of common origins. Darwin's diary however
> shows that he was not convinced of these notions."
> http://www.atheistalliance.org/aaw/AAWFEB02.htm
>
> Does anyone have more details on "Lamarck's suggestion of common origins."
> Much appreciated.
>
> Kind Regards
> Robert Karl Stonjek
>
> PS I note that anesthesia came into common useage about the same time that
> the cinema began to replace live entertainment - I'll let you draw your
> own
> conclusions....
Robert,
First let me address the issue of spontaneous generation. I anyone should
come up with a bona fide instance of it, that would certainly blow out of
the water a virtual consensus that it ain't going to happen.
On the other hand, scientists years ago made a tentative list of what things
would have to happen interstitially in between there being a few basic
chemicals, chemical compounds, electromagnetic circumstances, and some
motion such as waves of water and air currents and such... to end up with
something fitting a definition of "alive," and set out to see how many of
the things on that list, if brought together as they very easily COULD have
come together over a brief few millions of years, and various researches
have one-by-one achieved first one and then another and another... of the
interstitial reactions in laboratory. Not each and every necessary
increment has been produced yet, but now and then another one gets added to
the list. Also, from time to time something is discovered to be an
additional necessary event and, likewise, some previously thought necessary
event gets bypassed.
In other words... the ability to produce life in a laboratory gets a little
closer and a little closer and a little closer... as research continues and
more is learned from many different avenues of examination of chemicals and
electromagnetic relationships and molecular and submolecular interactions.
Hence, the general idea is not that life could not have followed from
non-life, by a long, very involved, very high number of increments of
coincidence which -- while statistically remote in the span of a single
human lifetime -- are immensely within statistical probabilities over the
span of several million years.
In a very crude sense researchers ARE searching for something remotely like
the notion of spontaneous generation. However, prior to Louis Pasteur
scientists were thinking in terms of a spontaneous generation that they
thought occurred in what they THOUGHT was water that did not contain any
living thing. They would get some pond water and let it sit and then
discover living things in it. Or they would boil some pond water, to kill
whatever was in it, and then leave it out for a few days and find something
living in it. What they did not understand is that such things as
microscopic spores will get into anything that is not hermetically sealed
with non-permeable bonds.
This (my) account of what has been going on with attempts to determine how
life might be initiated in a laboratory within less than the span of a
single human lifetime (rather than millions of years) is a very crude one.
If you would like to get a far more sophisticated and detailed and
well-document account, you might wish to consult the NASA-sponsored web
sites which provide information about what planetary probes (such as the
Mars probes) are designed to look for, and how, and why. In order that
probes might recognize not only carbon-based life, water-reliant life,
oxygen-reliant life, methane-related life, sulfur-related life, ultra-violet
dependent life, radio-activity dependent life, convected heat-energy-related
life... those who work with the engineers designing the probes NASA sends
out have to do a lot of thinking about what life forms we currently know of
have in common, how some are very similar to the average on Earth while some
are very dissimilar... etc. Then they have to spend a lot of time in
contemplation and in discussions of what OTHER kinds of scenarios MIGHT
enable some kind of life form a little bit different or a lot different from
any yet found on Earth. That sort of thing. And they have pulled together
from a vast number of the best ideas and best experimental results from some
of the brightest in many different branches of bio-research, and brought
together some of the top minds to discuss how and why certain samples might
be obtained, kept uncontaminated, and either returned as samples to Earth or
tested on site, and information radioed back to Earth.
I personally tend to think that answers are more likely to come from sources
such as that, rather than from armchair quarterbacking about things Lamarck
said, or Darwin said... or doing half-baked philosophizing about the
subject.
I do not mean to be facetious. All I wish to do here is emphasize that some
of the brightest and best informed heads are comparing notes, and holes are
being punched deep into the earth, and space probes are being sent many
thousands of miles out into far reaches of our solar system seeking
information on which to base upgrades in our thinking on such questions.
And please believe me when I say this... but I don't think those guys are
very hung up over something Lamarck or Darwin or some such person was saying
based only on what was cutting edge a century-and-a-half to almost two
centuries ago, for crying out loud.
But if it's just some long ago history you are interested in, then I hope
somebody will be kind enough to help you with that old stuff. Meantime if
you have difficulty finding any sites dealing with the things I have
discussed above, let me know and I will try to retrace the steps I took a
few month back, when I spent several days reading up on what is going on in
the twenty-first century on this subject.
g
Maybe you know all this already. Then again, if you did,
.
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