“Where are “we” going in evolution? Nowhere fast, as we are a very homologous species with worldwide distribution and reproductive isolation is unlikely.”
What will be the next trans-human species? What will be the next bacterial species? Cannot be predicted. That’s why the comparison of gravity/evolution being both predictive is a little hollow, IMO.
“My prediction is that the petri dish subjected to heat stress will develop as a heat resistant strain of the bacteria, that the one subjected to cold will develop as a cold resistant bacteria, etc, etc.”
Understood. Do you have a prediction of what environmental stress you would have to impose to produce a multi-cellular organism evolved from the bacteria? Do we even know what mutations would have to occur to evolve from single to multi cellular.
Thanks for the reply.
We know what genes are common to both one cellular life and those that are common only to multi-cellular life; and those common to both. Thus we gain an understanding for what genes are necessary, sufficient, or beneficial in a multi-cellular context.
All the machinery for cellular self destruction is absent in one celled organisms - yet every multicellular creature has them. They are the genes that are most commonly mutated in cancer.
So how would one explain why bacteria would have error prone DNA polymerase and why would it be expressed during stress without reference to natural selection of variation to derive adaptive responses?
As impossible as explaining how the Earth orbits the Sun without reference to Gravity.