No kidding :-)
Posted on 11/11/2008 5:32:55 PM PST by SunkenCiv
"I don't want to be a Steve Gould," New York Medical College cell biologist Stuart Newman told me recently when I visited him at his lab in the village of Valhalla, a short train ride north along the Hudson River from Manhattan. Newman, an elegant, engaging and somewhat enigmatic man actually went to the same New York City high school as Gould but says he doesn't like being compared. While he considers himself a public intellectual, he also enjoys having a private life and getting lost in art. But some of those precious moments gazing at the composition of a Rubens may be up for grabs because Stuart Newman's now got a seductive theory about the origin of form of all 35 or so animal phyla--"it happened abruptly" not gradually, roughly 600 million years ago via a "pattern language"--which serves as the centerpiece of the "Extended Synthesis." That's the reformulation of the Modern Synthesis or neo-Darwinian theory of evolution kicked off this summer at Konrad Lorenz Institute in Altenberg, Austria by 16 scientists I dubbed "the Altenberg 16."
The impetus for the Extended Synthesis, a graft onto, or a major departure from, the Modern Synthesis (depending on who is describing it), was the overwhelming data generated in recent years that just didn't fit the old formula. Phenomena like self-organization, epigenetics and plasticity intruded in ways that were complementary to, and sometimes contradictory to, natural selection. Then there was niche construction to consider--where organisms invent their habitats (burrows, bird nests, bee hives, etc.) rather than being selected by their fitness to pre-existing ones. And also punctuated evolution, abrupt transitions in the fossil record, and the even more puzzling episodes of stasis.
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
Church makes ‘ludicrous’ apology to Charles Darwin - 126 years after his death
Daily Mail | September 13, 2008 | Jonathan Petre
Posted on 09/13/2008 3:24:36 PM PDT by gondramB
19 posted on 09/13/2008 3:57:56 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2081812/posts?page=19#19
Names of Academics who signed petition supporting terrorist Bill Ayers
Support Bill Ayers | 9-24-08
Posted on 10/22/2008 8:32:54 PM PDT by STARWISE
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2112816/posts
How Evolution Learns From Past Environments To Adapt To New Environments
Science Daily | 11/10/2008
Posted on 11/10/2008 5:50:16 AM PST by Soliton
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2129332/posts
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0808/S00298.htm
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No kidding :-)
Very interesting. Thanks for posting.
If plants were like animals, a vegetarian would be considered a cold blooded killer!
This whole concept is interesting because I’ve been thinking alot about form and function.
For instance there might be certain structural and syntactical similarities between ALL LANGUAGES, because the function of language is reflected in it’s form.
Likewise, life around the universe might exhibit more common features than we think at first, because life has to eat, it’s gotta eat something, so there are certain forms which will be present.
Interesting thing to think about, anyways...
The reason conservatives are going extinct is because they think this utterly wrong and meaningless HS provides "evidence" of the "falsification" of evolutionary theories. This guy could almost word for word write the same thing about the power of crystals or some such and he we be decried as a new age leftist moonbat. Write gibberish about paleontology, and presto, he is a genius.
Does not explain the origin of bio-information! That requires a mind.
...multicellular forms during the explosive radiation of animal body plans in the middle Cambrian, approximately 530 million years ago, could have explored an extensive morphospace without concomitant genotypic change or selection for adaptation. The morphologically plastic body plans and organ forms ... would subsequently have been stabilized and consolidated by natural selection and genetic drift.
His point is that multicelluar organisms could have formed through cells "just sticking together" in a multitude of ways allowed by certain predisposition. But some of these arrangements were more fit for their environment and genetic drift that "locked in" these preferred forms occurred.
This is not anti-evolutionary, but merely expands a model by which multi-cellular organisms might have evolved.
Hmmmmmm......first I’ve read of this guy. Nothing really intelligent to add except to say, I’m way behind the curve on this guy’s field of research. Truth be known, always will be. However, not being one to ever let lack of knowledge get in the way charging ahead, it sounds to me like Newman is suggesting that “evolution” can happen fairly quickly. As in a few generations as opposed to, say, thousands of years? Is that about the size of it? If so, I think I like this guy....for some reason. I’ll have to look into Newman’s work a little more.
I keep hearing that there are 35 body plans.
I’ve haven’t been able to find a list or description of what they are though.
Anybody???
Wonderful! Thanks!
In any case, the direction this research is headed seems to be more intuitively plausible than the "change over eons" of uniformitarians. But whadda I know...
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