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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (9795)	11/12/2010 10:27:26 PM
From: JF Quinnelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

'PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 117(2):213-239. 2004 The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories Stephen C. Meyer Introduction In a recent volume of the Vienna Series in a Theoretical Biology (2003), Gerd B. Muller and Stuart Newman argue that what they call the “origination of organismal form” remains an unsolved problem. In making this claim, Muller and Newman (2003:3-10) distinguish two distinct issues, namely, (1) the causes of form generation in the individual organism during embryological development and (2) the causes responsible for the production of novel organismal forms in the first place during the history of life. To distinguish the latter case (phylogeny) from the former (ontogeny), Muller and Newman use the term “origination” to designate the causal processes by which biological form first arose during the evolution of life. They insist that “the molecular mechanisms that bring about biological form in modern day embryos should not be confused” with the causes responsible for the origin (or “origination”) of novel biological forms during the history of life (p.3). They further argue that we know more about the causes of ontogenesis, due to advances in molecular biology, molecular genetics and developmental biology, than we do about the causes of phylogenesis--the ultimate origination of new biological forms during the remote past. In making this claim, Muller and Newman are careful to affirm that evolutionary biology has succeeded in explaining how preexisting forms diversify under the twin influences of natural selection and variation of genetic traits. Sophisticated mathematically-based models of population genetics have proven adequate for mapping and understanding quantitative variability and populational changes in organisms. Yet Muller and Newman insist that population genetics, and thus evolutionary biology, has not identified a specifically causal explanation for the origin of true morphological novelty during the history of life. Central to their concern is what they see as the inadequacy of the variation of genetic traits as a source of new form and structure. They note, following Darwin himself, that the sources of new form and structure must precede the action of natural selection (2003:3)--that selection must act on what already exists. Yet, in their view, the “genocentricity” and “incrementalism” of the neo-Darwinian mechanism has meant that an adequate source of new form and structure has yet to be identified by theoretical biologists. Instead, Muller and Newman see the need to identify epigenetic sources of morphological innovation during the evolution of life. In the meantime, however, they insist neo-Darwinism lacks any “theory of the generative” (p. 7). As it happens, Muller and Newman are not alone in this judgment. ...' discovery.org

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (9795)	11/13/2010 12:42:24 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

Out of respect, I will compromise! If you have had any connection with "futurists" you will know where I come from. Synergy and momentum and nanotechnology, digitizing, blah blah blah. What happened with the time-line for genome sequencing!! Incredible what is happening with research in every country, eh!?? Science puts everything under question. Isn't that amazing?! We won't find the exact first cell that raised a tail. But we already know a lot--and synergy, nanotechnology, and population--and a flood of driven research (do you know how important all of this genetic revolution is in a military sense?)--will trace it out for us. Hell, Adobe can do tracing with Dream weaver, eh?? You've worked in a forest for years--eh? You are amongst the trees. I am there with you. But talk to the kids...