Re: Is evolution accelerating?
- From: "g" <gillawton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 13:53:20 -0500 (EST)
"IRR" <iotarhorho@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:drgc5m$8dp$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> "g" <gillawton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:drbgii$18kv$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>
>> "IRR" <iotarhorho@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:dr9oi0$h27$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>
>>> "dkomo" <dkomo871@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>>> news:dr8dtu$2s3s$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>> Consider these evolutionary steps:
>>>>
>>>> 1. From the formation of the earth to to the first multicelluar
>>>> organisms took perhaps 4 billion years.
>>>>
>>>> 2. From tiny organisms to the first mammals took 400 million years.
>>>>
>>>> 3. From the first mammals to the first primitive monkeys took 150
>>>> million years.
>>>>
>>>> 4. From monkeys to hominid species such as chimpanzees took something
>>>> like 30 million years.
>>>>
>>>> 5. From hominids to walking erect took 16 million years.
>>>>
>>>> 6. From walking erect to humans painting on cave walls took 4 million
>>>> years.
>>>>
>>>> 7. From cave paintings to the first permanent settlements took some
>>>> 10,000 years.
>>>>
>>>> 8. From settlements to the invention of writing in Sumeria took about
>>>> 4,000 years.
>>>>
>>>> At this point biological evolution was surpassed by cultural evolution.
>>>> Humans could now store, recall and widely share their thoughts and
>>>> insights. And now it was:
>>>>
>>>> 9. 4,000 years to the Roman Empire.
>>>>
>>>> 10. 1,800 years to the Industrial Age.
>>>>
>>>> 11. 169 years to the moon.
>>>>
>>>> 12. 20 years to the Information Age where we now find ourselves.
>>>>
>>>> And
>>>>
>>>> 13. ?????????
>>>>
>>>> --adapted from _Radical Evolution_, Joel Garreau, p. 58
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> In exponential growth
>>>>
>>>> dN/dt = k * N
>>>>
>>>> where the change in a quantity N is proportional to the current value
>>>> of
>>>> N, and
>>>>
>>>> N = N0 * e^(kt)
>>>>
>>>> is the solution to this differential equation and is the equation of an
>>>> exponential curve.
>>>>
>>>> If, roughly speaking, N represents the complexity of an organism, then
>>>> do the above steps show evidence of an exponential growth curve for
>>>> human evolution? And can evolution be considered "progressive" in this
>>>> case?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --dkomo@xxxxxxxx
>>>
>>> The whole reason evolution works is because it gives what are
>>> essentially
>>> physical chemical systems a "memory" -- a way to not have to start from
>>> scratch every time there's an equilibrium shift. So each generation's
>>> progeny has this pre-programmed baseline upon which selection can act,
>>> which
>>> is exactly the sort of system where you'd expect non-linearity-vs.-time
>>> behavior. No need to invoke Lamark, Nemesis, magnetic reversals, etc.
>>>
>>> So I guess I don't see what is so "Radical" about this, though I suspect
>>> (re: the multitude of popular physics nonfiction with "God" in the
>>> title)
>>> an
>>> author in need of a good straw man to punch up on.
>>>
>>> What's more interesting is that, on a different scale, one might argue
>>> that
>>> evolution has grown increasingly tepid, especially following the
>>> Phanerozoic/Cambrian transition, e.g. the total number of distinct folds
>>> that all proteins are built from (a la legos) may only be in the low
>>> 10,000's -- most of which were already around by the time multicellular
>>> life
>>> began. All depends on how you define/measure things like scale and
>>> complexity.
>>>
>> Here are my layman's thoughts on the issue of our reconstructing anything
>> more than wild guesses about the rates of change, over time, in
>> biological
>> evolution.
>>
>> Unless someone comes up with evidence that the syntax of genetic coding
>> has,
>> itself, changed at times which we can pinpoint, and in ways we can
>> identify
>> and measure quantitatively... anything we say is just a wild guess.
>
> Forgive me, but it's not obvious to me what you mean by "syntax of genetic
> coding". If you are referring to the "universal" genetic code, there are
> many good examples of lineages in which that has changed, and in some
> cases
> a robust fossil/historical record to connect them to.
Forgive me, as well, for being in process of trying to make sense of
something as I go along, rather than memorizing things first and then trying
to back into making sense of them. I am trying to wrap my mind around the
overall idea of *syntax* in the mathematical sense of an underlying
algorithm for which any
gene scenario would be but a part. This is a top-down conceptual approach
and may seem alien, but it is something that worked for me as a creative
problem and turn-around specialist in a commercial context totally unrelated
to biological things. Explaining the approach would take too long here and
might require a lot of "getting used to," because it is something I had a
lot of trouble getting across to administrative superiors who promoted me
for getting results that saved or earned millions of dollars, even as they
criticized my methods (or explanations of them). Sorry not to be able to
explain it.
But what I envision is that there are some mechanisms at some level that
have formed a consistent logical underpinning of everything that has
happened over the course of the origin of genes, themselves, as well as
underpinning the process in accordance with which genes do all the things
they do today.
I perceive (in my odd top-down conceptual way) that biological sciences do
not HAVE sufficient detail of data to evaluate and compare (conceptually)
what "goes on" with DNA from a bottoms up approach comparable to what such
an approach in comparing and analyzing risk versus reward parameters from
bottom up in deciding whether a particular stock is a good investment at a
given time.
The logical infrastructure into which all the veritable DNA events would fit
into a single (highly complex) algorithmic process would not be altered by
such things as changes in DNA of a species over time. (And, as a matter of
fact, I have a problem even with such a conceptualization as "a species over
time" because one species, over time -- geologically or evolutionarily
significant in span -- may become
several species. Thus, I would feel more comfortable with a concept that
might be conveyed by a term
such as a "species ramification segment." Why segment? Well, because if we
were to talk about the entire gaumut, every time we speak of speciation, we
would have to refer to the whole process from first living thing to every
diverse thing (assuming there was only one first thing, and that we had
sufficient detail of certified data to define what came first... which we
don't). However, we can pick up from a point such as, for example, first
(known) mammal to current diversity of all mammals. Or we could just start
out with, say, an early hominid and come forward, taking all the veritable
freeway exits, to get to a current hominid.
The way I think (which may sound alien or illogical to some individuals at
first blush) leads me to make an assumption that there is what might be
called a set of "rules" (although that terms suggests something not quite
correct, to me. Instead of "rules" I would imagine that there is a set of
"things" and "operations" which shall be teased out of an astronomical
plethora of seemingly disparate findings, that underlies the entire process
from time the first gene came to exist and function (assuming that happened
only once, and hence that all genes now existing descended from whatever
mechanism initiated that first one) to now. (Keeping in mind that, given
enough time, events which all would have to converge into a similteneous
that might happen only once in a billion years would tend to occur three
times in three billion years. Or, they might only tend to happen once per
Earthlike world.)
Assuming that there is (or HAS to be, as I perceive the whole or the
situation of genes in today's reality to be) an underlying set of "things
defined" and "logical operations whereby they behave," what I would call the
SYNTAX is those operations.
Just as in the evolution of the science of (general) chemistry never made
much sense until many bits and pieces of information resolved into the
currently familiar table of elements, I believe there has to be some
division beyond which we are not dealing with biological evolution but
abiological things (which have their own evolution). Just as an enormous
amount of "control" and "predictability" have resulted from understanding of
orbitals of atoms, I believe there are ultimate units of bio-evolutionary
events which, if broken down any farther, would be going beyond biological
things and events as surely as the study of sub-molecular things and events
go beyond the productive focus of the field of chemistry per se. Whether
the ultimate unit beyond which we are dealing with is "the gene" or not, I
am far to naive to know. That is to say, I am not certain that "the gene"
is the equivalent, in biological occurrences to "the atom" in predicting
elements as chemists did, by virtue of orbital relationships which said that
between two known elements there could be predicted to be a yet unknown
element with certain predictable
qualities and... viola... sooner or later the formerly unknown but predicted
element was found.
As I have indicated elsewhere, although I know next to nothing about details
of cellular chemistry, I believe I am safe in saying that relationships
between switchings within them are not of a merely electronic nature, nor
merely of a chemical nature, but a far more complex juxtaposition of the
two...
which makes biological events equivalent in complexity of their underpinning
operations to the product of the sum of all electronic phenomena as
multiplied by the sum of all chemical phenomena.
Just as engineers are able to utilize gravity and manipulate many things
with respect to it, all the while not knowing even what it is... I believe
many answers yet to be found in respect to the intermingled
hardware/software of biological "things" and their operations (qua
interactions among themselves) will be found, more and more, to share in
findings of electro-chemical (or chemo-electrical) relationships.
This is nothing new. I am not saying that. It has long been known that
nerve synapses are neither solely chemical nor solely electrical but
electro-chemical. What I predict (although it is only an imaginary fiction
until and unless it can be tested and supported empirically) is that THERE
WILL BE FOUND A KEY wherewith can be predicted what enzymes will be
produced by a given genetic sequence. I feel that an enzyme might need to
be looked at NOT as a chemical entity but as an electro-chemical entity,
having properties interrelated between the logical behaviorally syntaxes of
both.
You asked that I forgive you for asking. Glad you did. My answer may raise
more questions (and objections) than it resolves. It all merely swirls in
my head and seems headed toward some synthesis that it may never arrive at.
And, there may be nothing there TO BE arrived at. But you asked. And
this is the best I can do for now. So, let me submit that it is not you who
should ask forgiveness, but I.
In a nutshell, I sense that a consistent syntax consists for all things
biological, at a level of some set of units of electrochemical relationships
the players and game rules of which are not clear to me, and may never be.
But I sense that a new synthesis is approaching which will arise out of much
of the very data that is pouring in from many areas of genetic research,
molecular biology, cellular biology, paleontology, evidence DIRELY NEEDED
AND IMPORTANT from new and developing methods of extracting information
left by soft tissue in earliest substrates whereby corruption of the
evidence does not result from the extraction methods themselves.
It is happening. Or, at least I "feel" that it is. I cannot, however, say
how, or how much longer it will take. Perhaps someone reading this post,
and even might be skeptical, might provide some piece of evidence, or some
new view of the evidence, that will coax the model into being. Visionaries
like me might be playing with nothing but dream stuff. But... my strange
way of looking at things has resulted a few times in persuading a person or
two to try something that worked, even to the tune of millions of dollars,
and even though the results got attributed to coincidence or luck. Maybe
just once more.
Maybe not...
g
>Scientists have even
> been able to manipulate the code, both in its alphabet and in how it is
> translated into protein. We have substantially more information from
> chromosomal DNA (if this is what you're referring to?) that gives, in many
> cases, a very good ability to pinpoint when and what changes have taken
> place.
>
> Ultimately of course, this is all inferential, i.e. we observe these
> events
> as discrete changes that have taken place over N bacterial generations or
> between 2 lineages that diverged X years ago. But by nature, all forms of
> measurement are discrete at some level (our own senses, for example).
>
>> The unknown variables are exponential in number. No one has even
>> succeeded
>> as yet [...] and how well that trait
>> *viewed singly* continued to work as externalities changed in each and
>> every
>> geographical location in which the single trait got distributed over.
>
> Because no one has succeeded in observing how a trait manifests in each
> and
> every case ever, what? Science is a failure? Biologists should throw
> their
> arms up in despair and weep? What's your point?
>
>> Bottom line is, it looks to this layman as though some guessers place far
>> too much confidence in opinionations not even based upon actual evidence
>> coming in these days, while placing little faith in the evidence that IS
>> coming in. The WORK of just documenting the evidence we already know
>> exists
>> (in the form of the DNAs and RNAs of individual humans and plants and
>> animals, and which remains to be done, is of staggering volume, and that
>> is
>> just the work we already KNOW is available to the technology we already
>> have... but which is just going to take millions of man hours to carry
>> out... and the work that is barely begun with tracing out the enzymes and
>> proteins coded for... before we can have data banks to make anything
>> resembling exhaustive comparisons and analyses... that seems
>> uninteresting.
>>
>> But armchair calculations of dimly known historical things... now that is
>> something some humans delight in suggesting they understand and can draw
>> great sweeping conclusions upon.
>
> Historical things all start off "dimly known", and I'm thankful there are
> some well trained folks that have both the intelligence and the diligence
> to
> work out the details (there are a few regular contributors to this group
> who
> are well respected among their peers for providing insight and tools for
> tackling such details using knowledge of biochemistry and genetics).
> These
> are monumental tasks for certain, and what I can garner from your attitude
> makes me glad you're not involved with any of them.
>
>
.
- References:
- Is evolution accelerating?
- From: dkomo
- Re: Is evolution accelerating?
- From: IRR
- Re: Is evolution accelerating?
- From: g
- Re: Is evolution accelerating?
- From: IRR
- Is evolution accelerating?
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