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.
If you couldn't tell, I agree with Shapiro and, by the argument, with Schwartz. I brought up Shapiro as an "I told you so". Although Schwartz characterizes the external agent, it is the cell that responds to the external stimuli. We know the cell is alive. Is the external stimulus alive?
I agree that individual cells strongly resist change from the status quo ante. Such an effect at the cell level works against mutation driven evolution. I added that organisms made of cells ADD levels and orders of magnitude of resistance to change, to mutations. So there is a even much stronger resistance to change driven by mutation the more complex the organism. I then added even further -- that cells and organisms both act to redefine the statsis and dynamic of their enviroment so as to cause that surrounding enviroment to actively promote the comfort and benefit and defend the status quo of the organism, or cell. Ecosystem fights and eradicates strange (mutational) change to the utmost degree. I suspect that is true, perhaps even truer, when the dynamics of competition are factored in, just from studies in closed feedback dynamic systems. Feedback in systems theory is like competition in biology. Or rather, to get the order right, biological competition appears to me to be akin to a feedback in a hypothetic closed dynamic model. It would agressively police the steady state, as such feedbacks in stable systems do.
In such dynamic systems, Darwin's theorized stepwise refinemnet by micro-mutation has no place. It is always forcibly rejected.
Yet Shapiro's theory has some merit to my intution. It also seems to my mind to mesh with a talmudic wisdom that G-d always provides for the cure before the disease is introduced, the creation of an antidote preceeds the mixing of poison.
Well, it seems we are in complete agreement. Shapiro argues ...
The last half century has taught us an astonishing amount about how living organisms function at the molecular level, in particular about how they execute cellular computations through molecular interactions and about the systemic, modular, computation-ready organization of the genome. We have come to realize some of the basic design features that govern genome structure. Combining this knowledge with our understanding of how natural genetic engineering operates, it is possible to formulate the outlines of a new 21st Century vision of evolutionary engineering that postulates a more regular principle-based process of change than the gradual random walk of 19th and 20th Century theories. Such a new vision is not all-encompassing because it cannot provide detailed accounts for major events currently beyond the reach of science, such as the origin of cellular life or the mechanisms of endosymbiotic events underlying the emergence of distinct superkingdoms and kingdoms of life (51, 52). Nonetheless, a 21st Century view of evolution can help us understand how new taxonomic groups have emerged bearing novel complex adaptations.
Do you know the current explanation for histone coding genes being so highly conserved?
No.
Cleaning up a mutation in my priot posting.
I think you have lots of company.
What sort of explanation are you looking for? I mean, the gross explanation is that the histones are conserved because of how critical they are to the function of the genome - mutations there are exceedingly likely to be deleterious, more so that in most other places. When one misstep means you're dead, it's not so surprising that there isn't a lot of variation.
Well, according to many here, I can't comment on any harebrained theory purporting to explain it since I don't have a better counter theory to replace it.
Your "presto" tells a tale, eh? Such a "minor" change. Where is the scientific proof for it? Sure seems you hold it more like a magical belief ... "presto and there it is!"
"The Darwinian theory is wrong and the continued adherence to it is an impediment to discovering the correct evolutionary theory" -- Fred HoyleDarwin's Natural Selection theory is a total clusterf* of science. To nub of it, as History now clearly shows, is its root in denial of G-d. In order to acheive that atheistic objective, Darwin ruined science for over a hundred years now.
Hoyle didn't help, I think, no matter how late in October his lament was cobbled together, for Hoyle threw up his own distracting munitions -- panspermia! His own flying spagetti monster in the form of a sentient gas cloud.
I'm sure someone has explained to you already that science does not deal in absolute proof.
I can make naught sense of that last post, perhaps you can be the someone who more carefully explains it to me.
Sure. Science is not mathematics, in that it does not deal in "proof", but rather in the preponderance of the evidence. To ask for "proof" is to ask for something that science does not provide - it betrays a certain naivete about science and the scientific method.
By what read you "abosulte" proof into what I wrote? I ask for a proof -- a reasonable one. Wherefrom arose the supposition that I would be unreasonable?
There is no such thing as a "little bit of proof" - either you have it, or you don't. Perhaps we should pick this up when you're clearer about what exactly it is you're asking for.
YOU, Bedfellow-better-get-up-already, responded to my "Where is the scientific proof for it?". Perhaps not-fully-awake, YOU ascribed words to me I never wrote nor implied. YOUR confusions of "absolute proof" or "little bit of proof" are not found in the source material, not in MY words.
You asked for "proof" - I'm trying to explain, as requested, why there is no such thing in science.
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