Posted on 09/01/2012 5:42:46 AM PDT by Pharmboy
Autism/evolution ping
What I’m waiting for is a step by step description of the genetic mutations—that is, a scientific illustration of the process as our “cousins” evolved into us.
This should include a description of the changes in phenotype which correspond with each change in genotype.
Now you might say this is not evolution or speciation, but think about this: if drug-resistant malaria suddenly became a worldwide problem, those with the sickle cell trait might be the only survivors. The environment would have acted on this genotype and 'selected' it for survival. And, if enough time goes by, this remnant human population might become a distinct species.
The more subtle neuro-cognitive connections may not be teased out in our lifetimes.
Another one who doesn’t understand the 2nd Law of Thermodyanics, I see...
Nice one...perhaps his dart-throwing ability comes directly from his Denosivan ancestors’ ability to throw spears.
Changes to genotype may not necessarily be expressed phenotyplically. Likewise, there the a high degree of phenotypic plasticity in some species. And what of convergence between unrelated species?
What about basic morphological changes like skull size and skull shape?
Can anyone recommend a readable concise introduction to evolutionary genetics?
Very interesting, thank you.
Those types of changes are more likely to be seen in regulatory rather than structural genes. The secrets of regulatory genes remain largely unknown...and will likely continue to be for the immediate future. Patience is required, to be sure...but many things have indeed been discovered in the last 50 years.
It’s all about arrows.
Order to disorder is one arrow.
Self organizing and replicating organisms arising from dust is another, and it points in exactly the opposite direction of the first arrow.
All statements about the Second Law of Thermodynamics in post # 4 appear to be true.
Speciation is phenotypic change.
If we don’t have one species changing into another, we don’t have evolution.
If my responses seem to cover many different areas it’s because the theory of evolution contains uncertainties in many different ways.
For example, natural selection is logically flawed in that it conflates agency with environment and it contains a consistent ambiguity regarding the problem of survival. That is, for the mouse is the hawk the problem or is the mouse’s fur color the problem? If the fur color is the problem, the agent of solving the problem is the in the mouse’s genes, not in the environment.
God placed his creatures on a very dynamic planet. But he also built deep within the stuff of our being the ability to reprogram our stuff to be able to deal with the radical changes we endure on this planet.
Who else could have thought up such an elegant solution? What a creative and competent and loving God He is.
That understanding of that law seems to be violated after every meal. The the churning mess in your stomach gets transmogrified into bone and blood and mitochondria and DNA. Endlessly complex structures by the billions. Seems like defying the 2nd Law (as you understand it) is the hallmark of life.
As to your mouse example, to the individual mouse the hawk represents a direct existential threat, i.e. he may get killed and eaten. To the mouse population, the presence of hawks serves as a benefit; hawks remove the slower, non-cryptically colored, or otherwise less capable mice from the gene pool, improving the overall survivability for the mouse population in the presence of hawks. Now imagine two different substrates, one sand and another duff - in the sandy environment a lighter colored mouse will be favored for survival, but in the other situation, a darker mouse. The mice are the same species, but their phenotype varies by environment. If the environment were to change, the mouse population will adapt to the change by favoring the individuals most likely not to be eaten.
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