Darwin re-visited

[Michaelangelica]

NB

This is not a thread for Darwin Denialists but it is for those who would like to discuss, explore their understanding of, or disagree with, or even add to, or expand on Darwin's theories-- but not as Darwin's ideas conflict with the literal interpretation of the Bible.

 

Robert A Heinlein.

"Specialization is for insects."

 

Ghost in the Shell

"Over specialize and breed in weakness"

It is interesting to note that the most vulnerable to the next Bird Flu are those with the best immune systems

Those between 15-20+ age group

How does this gel with Darwin's survival of the fittest (for the given environment)?

[Kayra]

It is interesting to note that the most vulnerable to the next Bird Flu are those with the best immune systems

Those between 15-20+ age group

How does this gel with Darwin's survival of the fittest (for the given environment)?

 

perfectly I would think :phones:

 

Those best suited to survive the bird flu.. will.

[Michaelangelica]

perfectly I would think :naughty:

 

Those best suited to survive the bird flu.. will.

 

I can't see Darwin's theory working that well in the 20C.

Has anyone ever though virus's may have their own agenda?

or

that modern medicine may have skewed the Whole Harmonious System?

 

First send all your youngest, best, child bearing age people to war, kill them. Then follow up with bird flu and wipe out another 18 million of both sexes at child bearing age. Kill those with the best immune systems. Perhaps the Viruses are selecting us by getting rid of those with good immune systems?

 

Start another war next generation, drop an atomic bomb or two.

To me fittest means those that are fit, not those that disappear from some random, man-made historical event like War.

 

 

It seems the 20C is selecting for old and decrepit.

These are the ones that are surviving.

 

Those from northern Europe have some protection against AIDs from historical brushes with many plagues. Those in Africa do not. I can see natural selection working here. But what are we losing? The fastest and finest Athletes come from Africa. (along with some genes for malaria resistance) Is that sensible evolution? I guess it does not need to be "sensible" but you have to ask "Who is winning here?"

 

My Grandmother, born in Ireland, was one of 13 children. Her six brothers died in WW1, her 6 sisters died in the bird flu outbreak of 1918.

She left her mother and migrated with her husband to Australia. So how does that make me fit?perhaps it might if i developed "Pacifist Genes"?

I may have an aboriginal link on Grandfather's side(not talked about) which gives me lactose, sucrose and fructose intolerance that no doctor wants to know about. How does this make me fit for 20C?

 

I think random appropriation of interesting genes via bacteria and viruses and blind luck,is a better explanation of evolution than Darwin's Natural Selection. (you can include a bit of it in the 20c mix) It is far too simple and neat a theory.

It may have worked before we had modern medicine to save people from birth problems(EG prematurity etc),and old age problems(heart disease, cancer).What about vaccination for say smallpox, how is this "natural selection"?

How does IVF gel with Darwin? Those denied fertility by genetics are helped produce by science. where is the "natural selection" in that?

Modern sanitary engineering is saving us lucky ones from Cholera and other nasty bacteria (along with anti-biotics). How is this preparing us for the rise of the eventual super bug?

Our pigs are fatter because of penicillin. How is this helping Natural Selection"

 

Of course if you question Darwin you are immediately branded a religious fundamentalist...

[Eclogite]

Your reasoning is flawed because you have started from a faulty premise.

 

Fitness is not absolute, it is relative. As condtions change the characteristics that define fitness for the new environment change also.

 

It is irrelevant whether the environment is natural or man-made. Last time I checked man was a product of nature.

[Michaelangelica]

Your reasoning is flawed because you have started from a faulty premise.

 

Fitness is not absolute, it is relative. As conditions change the characteristics that define fitness for the new environment change also.

 

It is irrelevant whether the environment is natural or man-made. Last time I checked man was a product of nature.

Perhaps. . .

perhaps not

NATURAL selection is now no longer "natural."

It is man made. That has only really happened in earnest in the 20C.

Beginning with the first technological war (WW1) and the fist pandemic ( Bird flu)that did not leave any resistance genes as did the plague.

Man might be a product of nature but he has taken that product and shapes it in ways no longer natural

The processes of 19C Darwin don't apply in the same way now as that they did in 19C England.

 

As the devil said "You have to admit the 20th Century was mine."

 

My faulty thinking is that I think natural selection should improve the species ability to survive.

Some of the things we do (War, technology,medical interventions) are difficult to explain in those terms.

Viruses that select for the fittest childbearing age humans (HIV/AIDS, bird flu) are also difficult to explain in darwinnian terms. Perhaps they are just bad luck?.

How are the survival genes are to be passed on?

Not by decrepit old buggers like me.

[Kayra]

NATURAL selection is now no longer "natural." It is man made. That has only really happened in earnest in the 20C.

 

For mankind, in all but third world nations, this is true. It is also true of all domesticated animals. It is not, however, true for domesticated insects.

 

Beginning with the first technological war (WW1) and the fist pandemic ( Bird flu)that did not leave any resistance genes as did the plague.

 

??? Could you expand on this statement please?

 

Man might be a product of nature but he has taken that product and shapes it in ways no longer natural

The processes of 19C Darwin don't apply in the same way now as that they did in 19C England.

 

Darwin is alive and well. It is based solely on the environment that life exists in. The fact that mankind can changed his environment practically at will does little to dispel Darwinism, and will only prove it is true.

 

As the devil said "You have to admit the 20th Century was mine."

 

That would be Al Pacino that said that... mind you, he was playing the devil at the time. :eek2:

 

 

My faulty thinking is that I think natural selection should improve the species ability to survive.

 

Natural selection does not select for the survival of the individual. It selects for the survival for the species. Otherwise, it would have never selected for the altruistic traits we social creatures display every day.

Natural selection has endeavored to see that we survive by creating a system of reasonable mutation that ensures diversity in the population. The result is that even in the face of a plague that mankind has never encounter before, and in fact has no defense against, he still survived. The global population has never been impacted by more then 1% even in the midst of the worst of recorded plagues. Darwinism at work.

 

One of the problems with the “Reasonable Mutation” aspect of evolution is that it requires an environment that removes the “chaff” and allows the “Wheat” through.

Mankind is no longer bound by that, and must use the technology that freed him from his environment to “recreate” this aspect of it. It is that or watch the genetic dissolution of his race.

 

Some of the things we do (War, technology,medical interventions) are difficult to explain in those terms.

Viruses that select for the fittest childbearing age humans (HIV/AIDS, bird flu) are also difficult to explain in darwinnian terms. Perhaps they are just bad luck?.

How are the survival genes are to be passed on?

Not by decrepit old buggers like me.

 

Nature uses luck to counter bad luck(sort of). By ensuring diversity in a population, even the worst events are usually survivable by some lucky few with the right combination of traits.

[CraigD]

I can't see Darwin's theory working that well in the 20C.

I believe the “Theory of Evolution” remains sound. Organisms with traits that allow them to reproduce will continue, while those that do not will not. The details are … complicated.

Has anyone ever though virus's may have their own agenda?

Many people have thought it – some have even written good (IMHO) fiction about it, such as Greg Bear in his Darwin’s Radio novels (soon to be a cable miniseries! :) )

 

As intriguing as these ideas are, scientific rigor requires we ask if any virus – the genetically largest of which has a 10^8 dalton genome that can code perhaps 200 proteins - has adequate biological machinery to have an agenda.

 

It’s also significant to consider evidence that indicates that viral evolution may occur as much or more in reproductively dormant viral DNA segments within host cell DNA as it does “in the field” in free-roaming, cell-invading, reproducing viruses. (this by-no-means accepted theory is the basis of “Darwin’s Radio”)

… or that modern medicine may have skewed the Whole Harmonious System?

Practitioners of modern medicine (a community of which I consider myself a non-clinician member) are very aware of this possibility.

 

A major problem with which modern medicine must contend is the acquisition of resistance by disease-causing organisms to drugs. For a couple of decades, the medical community of clinicians and research pharmacologists have had a strong suspicion that the “arms race” of developing increasingly effective antibiotics to kill pathogens with increasingly broad resistance is a dangerous game that ultimately can only be lost, and refrained from pursuing it. IMHO, the greatest resistance-increasing problem in medicine now are a failure to educate clinicians to refrain from unnecessary prescription of antibiotics, and a failure to educate patients in the importance of completing a prescribed course of antibiotics, rather than stopping when their symptoms clear up.

I think random appropriation of interesting genes via bacteria and viruses and blind luck,is a better explanation of evolution than Darwin's Natural Selection. (you can include a bit of it in the 20c mix) It is far too simple and neat a theory.

I don’t think this randomness you describe is incompatible with the theory of natural selection.

 

It’s important, I think, to keep in mind how little was actually known about the number, structure, and mechanics of genes, and their relationship to observable traits, when Darwin’s theories came to be widely accepted in the mid-to-late 19th century. In light of what we know now, some of the writing of Darwin and his contemporaries seems naive, simplistic, and in some cases, just plain wrong, because they were, just as, in light of future increases in knowledge of molecular biology, much current writing will appear to future readers. This is how science works.

What about vaccination for say smallpox, how is this "natural selection"?

How does IVF gel with Darwin?...

I think a naturalist of Darwin’s day and mindset would consider these to be environmental factors, similar to those experienced by species that become geographically isolated on very hospitable islands. They may well produce a strange population, which may be less able to adapt to sudden change, such as those brought on by the sudden loss of modern medicine due to war or economic depression.

How is this preparing us for the rise of the eventual super bug?

”The eventual super bug” is an interesting meme, which, IMHO, had its ultimate cultural expressions in Frank Herbert’s less-well-known-than-“Dune” 1982 novel ”The White Plague”, and Stephen King’s 1978 ”The Stand” (though the scientific seriousness of “The Stand” was reduced by its strong supernatural themes).

 

The 1970s and 80s were heady times for molecular biologists. The idea that the molecular manipulation they were doing was so unprecedented that a small accident or act of malice might wipe out a whole species, or even all life, didn’t seem as outlandish as it does now. One of my most vivid memories of that period is a phone call I received from my PhD-holding research microbiologist cousin, warning me of open-air testing being done near me, and suggestion I take a vacation until it was clear the local ecology hadn’t spiraled into deadly chaos.

 

By the late 1980s, fear of accidental artificial biological was mostly passed from popular thought, but in its place was fear of biological weapons designed by the US, USSR, or other technologically sophisticated militaries. This worry was more persistent, because real and imagined secrecy about such research made it difficult to convincingly argue that an artificial “super bug” capable of wiping out all human life didn’t actually exist, locked away in a top-secret military facility.

 

With the ending of the cold war in the early 1990s, and continuing to today, the fear of extinction-capable biological weapons seems to have given way to a fear of naturally-occurring “super bugs”, of which H5N1 “bird flu” is the latest well known candidate.

 

In short, in light of increasing knowledge of molecular biology revealing how difficult it is for a natural or artificial pathogen to actually extinguish a species, I question if a “super bug” is eventual, or even possible.

Of course if you question Darwin you are immediately branded a religious fundamentalist...

If you question any scientific theory in a scientifically defensible manner (as Michaelangelica is doing), scientifically-literate people will brand you … a skeptical, scientific person.

 

Keep up the good work. :thumbs_up

[pgrmdave]

NATURAL selection is now no longer "natural."

It is man made.

 

Are beavers' dams unnatural? How about hermit crabs' shells? Man is as much a part of nature as everything else. We are not above nature simply becaues we say so. It is in our nature to alter our surroundings to better suit our needs, we wouldn't survive otherwise. Thus, everything we do is inherently natural.

 

 

My faulty thinking is that I think natural selection should improve the species ability to survive.

Some of the things we do (War, technology,medical interventions) are difficult to explain in those terms.

Viruses that select for the fittest childbearing age humans (HIV/AIDS, bird flu) are also difficult to explain in darwinnian terms. Perhaps they are just bad luck?.

How are the survival genes are to be passed on?

Not by decrepit old buggers like me.

 

Natural selection has improved our ability to survive. That's why there are now so many of us. I doubt that we are still evolving at the pace we once were, but that is because the rate at which a species evolves is dependant upon the evolutionary pressures applied. Less pressure means slower evolution. We are surviving well enough so we are not evolving. Look at sharks, millions of years without evolving because they don't need to. The viruses are good examples of Darwinism - those viruses which don't kill their host are much more successful, those which do don't tend to last as long.

[Michaelangelica]

 

??? Could you expand on this statement please?

 

That would be Al Pacino that said that... mind you, he was playing the devil at the time. :hihi:

 

The global population has never been impacted by more then 1% even in the midst of the worst of recorded plagues. Darwinism at work.

Ok but I feel we are a bit off-topic. Should the moderaters start a new Form "Darwin re-visited"?

Thanks for Al Pacino I wondered where it came from. I love that quote.

Thanks for all the information from both of you. I will have a BIG THINK and get back to you.

Just a few quick points on the plague/disease etc

In winter the disease seemed to disappear, but only because fleas--which were now helping to carry it from person to person--are dormant then. Each spring, the plague attacked again, killing new victims. After five years 25 million people were dead--one-third of Europe's people.

The plague left a cell-mutation that gives people in Northern Europe some protection from it and also now to HIV/AIDs. The further north you go the better the protection Norway is c20% S.France/England maybe 6%

Africa 0%. you could check the exact %s

The 1918 bird flu did not leave any good mutations to my knowledge. (If the next one starts we may find out?). Maybe 40 million people died. People weren't around to count.see

http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/

OK.

there has never been more than a 1% decimation (10%?)of TOTAL word population I won't argue. I don't know. I think this has happened because of luck and geographical isolation. We are no longer geographically isolated. The plague figures give cause to pause 33% of the total population is high. That was due to trading in little wooden ships and camels from China across the Mediterranean pond. Now we have 747s and big metal ships going everywhere.(People still die in the USA due to plague.(1in 7 who get it die that's now)

I do know that many races have been completely wiped of the planet. The Tasmanian Aborigine Nation and many other Aboriginal Nations in Aust.

In S.America perhaps 10million+ people died in the Amazon alone due to Spanish bugs. In the space of one lifetime. 99.9% of the population died.

A similar thing happened in European Invasions in other parts of the Americas. Mostly due to new diseases being introduced.

OK so we MAY end up with a bit of resistance but what has been lost?. It is a very wasteful system. Is nature that wasteful? We seem to be REDUCING genetic diversity not increasing it. How does this help a species survive? It is not a natural selection of the best on offer.The Galapagos islands increased diversity.

I guess "Super-Bug" is a bit melodramatic (but in my defense no more so than Bush's WMDs) but with modern communication,hopeless anti-virals and anew Bird flu that targets the young and healthy -well lets just hope it stays in chickens (And lets hope the Primates keep the other 9 Aids viruses they have they they haven't given us yet.)

--

[IDMclean]

Dude, I am not sure you quite understand how the whole Darwin thing works.

 

if 70% of a populus is wiped out by a virus then they were maladapted to survive that virus. The left over 30% will most likely have a property that allowed them to surivive. They will breed and that property will become majority in the new populus, so future invasions of that type of virus will be less and less likely to be as successful across each generation now that the population is adapted to survive that virus. If another virus comes in and wipes out another 70%, then they were once again maladapted to survive that virus.

 

Survival is absolute: the subject lives and is capable of breeding. Adaptation is relative.

[Michaelangelica]

Dude, I am not sure you quite understand how the whole Darwin thing works.

 

if 70% of a populus is wiped

Survival is absolute, the subject lives and is capable of breeding. Adaptation is relative.

I know exactly what it says.

I say it is an inadequte explanation. It is too pat, too easy. It does not account for what happens in 20C, or what we are learning about DNA.

How does extiction of genetic lines help diversity? Diversity which in turn should help survival of a species?

I will argue more when I have my BIG THINK. I feel a bit under siege at the moment.

[Kayra]

It is too pat, too easy. It does not account for what happens in 20C, or what we are learning about DNA.

 

20C is a pretty special time for humanity, that is for certain.

 

How does extinction of genetic lines help diversity? Diversity which in turn should help survival of a species?

 

Extinction does not help diversity. Diversity helps prevent extinction. (Not a guarantee by any means, just the best method evolution has)

 

Remember that the simple (and astounding) act of procreation adds to the diversity of the species. Before, during, and after any environmental event that stresses the species and reduced diversity, procreation continues it's inexorable increase in that same diversity. Evolution demands that these two forces work in concert.

 

I will argue more when I have my BIG THINK. I feel a bit under siege at the moment.

 

You ask questions and force readers to think and justify their position. PLEASE do not think of us as attacking you, as that is not the intent.

 

By all means, have your BIG THINK, but please continue to ask the questions.

[hallenrm]

Go Ahesd, No objection Whatsoever!!

[Michaelangelica]

My problems with Darwin

1 The language used.

The value laden nature of it and the circular nature of the argument.

Lets try to define natural

nat·u·ral Listen: [ nchr-l, nchrl ]

adj.

http://www.yourdictionary.com

 

1. Present in or produced by nature: a natural pearl.

 

2. Of, relating to, or concerning nature: a natural environment.

 

3. Conforming to the usual or ordinary course of nature: a natural death.

 

4. a. Not acquired; inherent: Love of power is natural to some people. b. Having a particular character by nature: a natural leader. c. Biology Not produced or changed artificially; not conditioned: natural immunity; a natural reflex.

# Produced by nature; not artificial or manmade:

 

organic, unadulterated.

Idiom: pure as the driven snow.

# In a primitive state; not domesticated or cultivated; produced by nature:

 

native, rough, uncultivated, undomesticated, untamed, wild.

See wild.

 

Now how is Genetic engineering, IVF, immunisation, atomic bombs, bacterial warfare, new man-made tetrogenic & cancinogenic compounds/chemicals,machine-guns, surgery, pesticides, The Terminator Gene, hybridisation,heart transplants "natural".( I will leave "war" & terrorism off the list because sociobiologists will probably argue that it is natural.)

 

-- selection

noun

 

The act of choosing:

 

choice, election, option, preference.

See choice.

se·lec·tion Listen: [ s-lkshn ]

n.

 

 

1. a. The act or an instance of selecting or the fact of having been selected. b. One that is selected.

 

2. A carefully chosen or representative collection of people or things. See Synonyms at choice.

 

3. A literary or musical text chosen for reading or performance.

 

4. Biology A natural or artificial process that favors or induces survival and perpetuation of one kind of organism over others that die or fail to produce offspring.

(That last one is nasty but i will bravely include it and push on.)

Here the language is really "loaded'. "Selection" implies that a choice is made. when I buy apples from the supermarket I choose one over another. One apple I think is better than another. (marketers will tell me i choose the shiniest reddest plumpest apple. Organic farmers tell me I should be choosing the one with blemishes as this means I will be poisioning myself with less pesticide)

Now my argument is real choices are not being made. (Especially if you throw in the even more emotionally loaded word "fittest" as in survival of).

It is just a lottery. Lady Luck running wild. It is blind chance that favours one individual species or individual over another.

To use tems like natural selection "removes the chaff and allows the wheat though " is emotionally loaded.

NS does no such thing. What we have left of life is not the 'best" we can even use words like 'best'

 

(Genetic engineering

Genetic engineering i always thought a very precise careful accurate, 'engineering ed process after reading David Suzuki and Holy dressel's "Naked Ape to Super species" i realise it shoul be be called something like "Genetic Buckshot"there are many more problems with Genetic engineering than I thought possible. The near release of the bacterium Klebsiella planticula is a chilling story.)

They say

"we need to cast off the simplified models of living organisms proposed by reductionist science, and to realise that they are only caricatures of the real world'

/forums/images/smilies/banana_sign.gif

 

 

Is "survival of the fittest" a tautology?(Wikapedia)

 

The phrase "survival of the fittest" is sometimes claimed to be a tautology (i.e. it is a statement which is true by its own definition, and is therefore intrinsically uninformative). Unfortunately, although in evolutionary biology the word "fitness" has nothing to do with being "fit" since it quantifies potential or realized reproductive success (as in "realized fitness"), the noun's etymological connection with the adjective "fit" leads many to charge the phrase "survival of the fittest" is equivalent to saying "those who survive best are those who survive best" or "those who reproduce most are those who reproduce most", i.e., that it is a tautology. The reasoning is that if we take the word "fit" to mean "fitness" then "survival of the fittest" means "highest fitness of those with highest fitness".

However, Darwin and Spencer used "survival" as a proxy for "fitness" in the modern sense and "fittest" to refer to those individuals that are functionally most capable to tackle life challenges, i.e. to individuals endowed with phenotypic characteristics which improve most strongly one's probability of survival and reproduction. Therefore "survival of the fittest" intends to be a short version of the statement "those who are best at surviving and reproducing will have higher fitness" and this is not a circular statement since the sentence indicates that fitness is the consequence of one's ability to tackle life challenges.

Sure as long as you are also lucky

Cataclysms such as Volcanic eruption etc. obviously don't "select" unless you are immune to hot Lava of course, they simply wipe out.

 

The full cause-and-effect picture of how natural selection generates fitness differences is that those individuals which end up reproducing more do it because they differed from others in biologically relevant traits that affected their probability of surviving and/or reaching reproduction in better condition.

 

No they just happened to be in the right place at the right time in history

 

For instance, a gazelle that for some biomechanical reason runs faster than average will be more likely to escape predators and will therefore be more likely to produce more offspring than slower ones since the latter would get to reproduce during fewer breeding seasons. The faster gazelle would therefore be "selected", i.e., it would have higher relative fitness than slower ones, etc, but not "because it is selected" but rather because it can run faster and thus can escape better from predators so that ultimately it will go through more breeding seasons than average gazelles and thus will reproduce more (will have higher fitness).

Are you going to tell me that the 99.99% of life now extinct had a 'lower relative fitness'. Nonsense. they just happened to be in the way of a passing meteor.

 

2 the Question of diversity

The more diversity the more chance of survival. So why does natural selection reduce diversity?

99.99% of all life that has lived on earth is now extinct. (leaving us with a mere c1.5 million species)

How can this be an efficient sytem? It is a mind-numbingly profligately wasteful system. How can reducing diversity help survival?

To quote Suzuki and Dressel

"It is the differences that maximise the chance that there will be survivors under new conditions or different circumstances. Homogencity and monoculture run counter to this basic principle, making us vulnerable to sudden changes.. . .What if there is a mistake?"

and again they quote Tewolde Egziather

"If you were to go back to the time of the dinosaurs, and you were to see a little mammal running about, you would never think that this mammal would succeed the dinosaurs. who can tell which is the dinosaur and which is the mammal in our time, in this era of really frightening possibilities?. . .what is successful now and what will be successful in the future. . . is not something linear that proceeds from what we know at the moment (places) have destroyed many of the bridges they would of had into other possibilities.

 

 

As you say

Extinction does not help diversity. diversity helps prevent extinction

Sure the invention of sex gives us diversity but overall diversity is selected against. Why? What part of Darwin explains this phenomenon?

 

3 Socio-biology.

The inheritance of acquired behaviours.

I have many problems here. OK you can have altruism but if we have been selected for that behavior what selects for homosexuality? How does that removal of some of our brightest and best from the gene pool help diversity and any sort of individual or species survival?

 

I need to stop now but

What if natural selection has made a major mistake with man?

Edward Wilson professor of Biology at Harvard notes that If man were to become extinct this would benefit the ecology of the planet enormously.

If ants went extinct the results would be catastrophic. There would be major extinctions and ecosystem collapse.

 

Gaia anyone?

[IDMclean]

Who said that this was the most efficent system? Took god only knows how many eons to get to this point.

 

However, it's merely statistical odds. It's like playing the lottery in vegas. You win some, you lose some, but the house always wins.

[Eclogite]

What if natural selection has made a major mistake with man?

Edward Wilson professor of Biology at Harvard notes that If man were to become extinct this would benefit the ecology of the planet enormously.

If ants went extinct the results would be catastrophic. There would be major extinctions and ecosystem collapse.

Mankind is a single species. How many species of ants are there? What is the total number of ants? What is the total biomass of ants?

 

You are not comparing apples and oranges.

[Michaelangelica]

Mankind is a single species. How many species of ants are there? What is the total number of ants? What is the total biomass of ants?

 

You are not comparing apples and oranges.

Yes I am. Check out the meaning of species.

 

How does Darwin account for death?

 

Not all life decides to pass on genes.

Some virus and bacteria just spontaneously die out. Usually because the are too efficient (No 'survival of the fittest' here)

 

Homosexuals do not tend to pass on their genes.

(We need to assume here that homosexuality is a sociobiological trait like altrusism)

 

How does Darwin account for the fact that 80% of the life on this planet

(Bacteria) can swap genetic material with any other bacteria, no sex involved. They just do it. How do they select which bits to swap?