Yes. It's a special category within natural selection.
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Darwin's Pain
- Thread starter atanu
- Start date
The amount of misconception about science in general is huge, unfortunately. But you referred to existing evolutionary Biologists, like Maynard Smith. Don't think they are misconceived about Darwin's ideas.
You mean indirectly, via changing the environment? Sure, that makes sense.
Darwin considered them distinct processes. But he also didn't know the underlying geneteic mechanisms, which are the same.
Dawkins, Dennett, Maynard (late), and some others have directly or indirectly helped to popularise this idea. Some who dared to question them have been ridiculed. Many young people who have no idea about science embrace the idea “Origins of Life”, unquestioningly.
Anyway. Enough of rant.
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Abiogenesis is a legitimate scientific field and I have seen nothing in the books of the people you mentioned that portray a misleading picture of the science.
To claim abiogenesis as fact is misleading. And to club it with TOE is not okay, in my opinion.
Neither has been done in any of the books by Dawkins, Ernst Mayr and others you alluded to.
I have shown example of Maynard including 'abiogenesis' as default for origin of life. Dawkins has spoken publicly and written that life is a chemical accident. He has said that not one but there could be several instances of abiogenesis. At one place he also says that how life originated is not relevant at all. Dawkins reduces everything to genes, which according to him are the target of natural selection. How the genetic code is understood or executed by the organism remains unexplained. And how his 'reductionism' explains his own intelligence?
OTOH, Mayr, is in a different category. As far as I know he has not used abiogenesis to explain origin of life. He held that life was not amenable to pure physics and its laws and he held that we do not know the origin of life and consciousness. He opposed Dawkins reductionism ('Gene' as target of Natural Selection) proposing that the greater somatic being was the target. He also wished to include the goal directed behaviours of organisms in the synthesis. In this regards, he quotes Aristotle, who suggested that the whole universe might have goal.
He states:
The Growth of Biological Thought and Toward a New Philosophy of Biology.
Although a staunch critic of creationism, he however in his final book left an apparently jarring statement:
“Yes, God was the creator of this world and either directly or through his laws he was responsible for everything that existed and occurred” (Mayr 2004a, p. 15 "What Makes Biology Unique? Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline, New York, Cambridge University Press).
It is my opinion that it is sign of discordant times, when instead of synthesis, our opinions are polarised between fundamentalist theist and fundamentalist atheist and both these stands are not strictly scientific. In this cacophony, the sane voices of scientists like Ernst Mayr and Stephen J. Gould are not easy to hear.
So there.
OTOH, Mayr, is in a different category. As far as I know he has not used abiogenesis to explain origin of life. He held that life was not amenable to pure physics and its laws and he held that we do not know the origin of life and consciousness. He opposed Dawkins reductionism ('Gene' as target of Natural Selection) proposing that the greater somatic being was the target. He also wished to include the goal directed behaviours of organisms in the synthesis. In this regards, he quotes Aristotle, who suggested that the whole universe might have goal.
He states:
The Growth of Biological Thought and Toward a New Philosophy of Biology.
......Neither Aristotle nor most of the other ancient philosophers made a sharp distinction between the living world and the inanimate. They saw something like life or soul even in the inorganic world. If one can discern purposiveness and goal direction in the world of organisms, why not regard the order of the Kosmos as a whole as also due to final causes, that is, as due to a built-in teleology?.....
Although a staunch critic of creationism, he however in his final book left an apparently jarring statement:
“Yes, God was the creator of this world and either directly or through his laws he was responsible for everything that existed and occurred” (Mayr 2004a, p. 15 "What Makes Biology Unique? Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline, New York, Cambridge University Press).
It is my opinion that it is sign of discordant times, when instead of synthesis, our opinions are polarised between fundamentalist theist and fundamentalist atheist and both these stands are not strictly scientific. In this cacophony, the sane voices of scientists like Ernst Mayr and Stephen J. Gould are not easy to hear.
So there.
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
I honestly think he would be skeptical of the entire theory today by his own standards, he certainly had no qualms about offending the vagaries of academic fashion!
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
He did not hit a home run but did hit basically a triple as most, but not all, of his ideas have been established as being correct. And it is absolutely amazing to me that he did as such with so little evidence to work from.
There is no explanation for the origin of life other than abiogenesis.
Maybe abiogenesis was a chemical reaction here on earth. Maybe it was alien life that got to earth somehow. Maybe God did a magic trick. Every one of those theories is a form of abiogenesis.
The difference between the theories is that one has strong evidence backing it up and the others don't.
Tom
Maybe no theory is required at all. Consciousness exists and all theories are built on that. Space-time is built on that.
Yerda
Veteran Member
Seriously. I do not need to first imagine that existence-consciousness arose mechanically. Only the sensual apparatus takes birth in newer avatar-s and evolves to partake in ever expanding experiences.
The above of course is not TOE. But it is in response attempt to introduce abiogenesis in TOE.
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I liked the video very much. I and some others may differ on one point only. As per the presenter in the video, maximising the survival aspect is the objective of the matrix evolution.
I understand that evolution’s objective is to partake in ever expanding variety of sensual experiences.