Posted on 01/26/2006 11:47:13 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Jeffrey H. Schwartz's Sudden Origins closed Darwin's gaps; cell biology explains how.
An article by University of Pittsburgh Professor of Anthropology Jeffrey H. Schwartz and University of Salerno Professor of Biochemistry Bruno Maresca, to be published Jan. 30 in the New Anatomist journal, shows that the emerging understanding of cell structure lends strong support to Schwartz's theory of evolution, originally explained in his seminal work, Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species (John Wiley & Sons, 2000).
In that book, Schwartz hearkens back to earlier theories that suggest that the Darwinian model of evolution as continual and gradual adaptation to the environment glosses over gaps in the fossil record by assuming the intervening fossils simply have not been found yet. Rather, Schwartz argues, they have not been found because they don't exist, since evolution is not necessarily gradual but often sudden, dramatic expressions of change that began on the cellular level because of radical environmental stressors-like extreme heat, cold, or crowding-years earlier.
Determining the mechanism that causes those delayed expressions of change is Schwartz's major contribution to the evolution of the theory of evolution. The mechanism, the authors explain, is this: Environmental upheaval causes genes to mutate, and those altered genes remain in a recessive state, spreading silently through the population until offspring appear with two copies of the new mutation and change suddenly, seemingly appearing out of thin air. Those changes may be significant and beneficial (like teeth or limbs) or, more likely, kill the organism.
Why does it take an environmental drama to cause mutations? Why don't cells subtly and constantly change in small ways over time, as Darwin suggests?
Cell biologists know the answer: Cells don't like to change and don't do so easily. As Schwartz and Maresca explain: Cells in their ordinary states have suites of molecules- various kinds of proteins-whose jobs are to eliminate error that might get introduced and derail the functioning of their cell. For instance, some proteins work to keep the cell membrane intact. Other proteins act as chaperones, bringing molecules to their proper locations in the cell, and so on. In short, with that kind of protection from change, it is very difficult for mutations, of whatever kind, to gain a foothold. But extreme stress pushes cells beyond their capacity to produce protective proteins, and then mutation can occur.
This revelation has enormous implications for the notion that organisms routinely change to adapt to the environment. Actually, Schwartz argues, it is the environment that knocks them off their equilibrium and as likely ultimately kills them as changes them. And so they are being rocked by the environment, not adapting to it.
The article's conclusions also have important implications for the notion of “fixing” the environment to protect endangered species. While it is indeed the environment causing the mutation, the resulting organism is in an altogether different environment by the time the novelty finally escapes its recessive state and expresses itself.
“You just can't do a quick fix on the environment to prevent extinction because the cause of the mutation occurred some time in the past, and you don't know what the cause of the stress was at that time,” Schwartz said.
“This new understanding of how organisms change provides us with an opportunity to forestall the damage we might cause by unthinking disruption of the environment,” added Schwartz. “The Sudden Origins theory, buttressed by modern cell biology, underscores the need to preserve the environment-not only to enhance life today, but to protect life generations from now.”
Schwartz, with his colleague Ian Tattersall, curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, also authored the four-volume The Human Fossil Record (Wiley-Liss, 2002-05). Together, the volumes represent the first study of the entire human fossil record. Volume 1 was recognized by the Association of American Publishers with its Professional Scholarly Publishing Award. In 1987, Schwartz's The Red Ape: Orang-utans and Human Origin (Houghton Mifflin Company) was met with critical acclaim.
Schwartz, who also is a Pitt professor of the history and philosophy of science, was named a fellow in Pitt's Center for the Philosophy of Science and a fellow of the prestigious World Academy of Arts and Science.
The journal, The New Anatomist, is an invitation-only supplement to the Anatomical Record.
You might find this discussion of Archeopteryx interesting.
I have no idea...interesting concept, though.
You know, I could live with creation/ID being ultimately wrong about how it accounts for the evidence. Being right about that is the ultimate prize, and no one knows for sure when the ultimate is reached.
I can't abide how it's wrong about what the evidence even is. That is either pig-ignorance or simple dishonesty.
The poisoners are playing God; they rebel against God and everything that is God and Truth. They hate God and they hate the Truth. They are of that line that we’ve been warned against time and time again…they are of the line that was disinherited 2000 years ago. They do not worship the One and Only True God, our Father in Heaven; they worship that which is evil; they are anti-Christ – they are many….”But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you, and he is filled with fury because he knows his time is short”…..”the great dragon who was hurled down out of heaven who leads the whole world astray….” .—they are known as Illuminati, Elite, proponents of their “New World Order”, and other secret sects and societies.
Emphasis added
Now who does that sound like? I remember about some group poisoning wells in Europe...
What, you have a bunch of skulls of...gasp!...people who are DIFFERENT from each other? What a discovery? /sarcasm
But wasn't the evidence valid when it was supposedly missing?
- Tap-Dancing Science-Denier declares that the fossil record lacks instances of things changing in an orderly series from some Thing A to Thing Z. As this kind of evidence is to be expected, the lack of it must weigh against evolution having happened. By the very statement of this objection we are invited to believe the Tap-Dancing Science-Denier would accept such evidence IF ONLY IT EXISTED but the thing is it doesn't exist.
- Someone who disagrees demonstrates many instances well known in the literature of fossil series intermediate in form and time between some Thing A and some Thing Z.
- The Tap-Dancer then declares fossil series evidence to be irrelevant. How do we know ... various things? The dates of the fossils? Whether fossil A lies exactly on the ancestral line of fossil B?
The gradual sequence of fossil change as shown in the "bunch of skulls" demonstrates intermediate fossil species. If you disagree then what would intermediate fossil species look like instead? If you don't know what intermediate fossil species should look like then how can you be sure none have been found?
Forgot to say, "Congratulations on being an extremely fast if not at all accurate reader!"
Sorry to interupt your religious observances. Carry on...
You're so far over his head...
See also: Genomes 2nd Ed 2002, T. A. BROWN, Department of Biomolecular Sciences, Manchester UK 14.1. Programmed mutations? Excerpt
In 1988 startling results were published suggesting that under some circumstances Escherichia coli bacteria are able to mutate in a directed way that enables cells to adapt to an environmental stress. The randomness of mutations is an important concept in biology because it is a requirement of the Darwinian view of evolution, which holds that changes in the characteristics of an organism occur by chance and are not influenced by the environment in which the organism is placed. In contrast, the Lamarckian theory of evolution, which biologists rejected well over a century ago, states that organisms acquire changes that enable them to adapt to their environment. The Darwinian view requires that mutations occur at random, whereas Lamarckian evolution demands that programmed mutations occur in response to the environment.BTW, I think Dr. James Shapiro may have suffered the ideational flu of hubris regarding the over-generaity of his findings on rates of mutants in single cell organizisms -- more complex organisms have even more magnitudes of layers to fight off mutations. AND while the bacteria are singleton cell organisms, in many ways the very environment in which they grow acts as a sort of super-organism, and with that super-organism more layers of mutation-resitance. Shapiro's studies perhaps may have provided the very type of unrealistic forced lab environment most condusive to permitting mutations and encouraging the vitality of mutants....< snip > ...
The results of Cairns et al. 1988 showed that when the lactose auxotrophs were plated onto a minimal medium containing lactose as the only sugar - circumstances that require that the bacteria must mutate into lactose prototrophs in order to survive - then the number of lactose prototrophs that arose was significantly higher than that expected if mutations occurred randomly. In other words, some cells underwent programmed mutation and acquired the specific change in DNA sequence needed to withstand the selective pressure.
Since 1988, a number of examples of what appear to be programmed mutations have been published, but the notion that bacteria, and possibly other organisms, can program mutations in response to environmental stress is by no means accepted by the scientific community. It is quite possible that these mutations will eventually be disproved or be shown to have an orthodox basis. However, until this happens we are left with the tantalizing possibility that even at this fundamental level our knowledge about genomes might be far from complete.
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