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The problem of randomness versus relative natural determinism in evolution

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Facepalm all you like.

I accept evolution as the best explination but I don't think its as cut and dry as some do.
Take the dino meteor, it wiped out most of the food and if you needed 500lbs of food a day to survive, you wouldn't survive. Smaller species that needed less food adapted/were already able to survive what happened. The ones that died or survived wasn't about mutations or niches in my opinion.
But the food-scarce, post-asteroid environment is a niche; a niche that advantaged those who needed less food. :shrug:
I also think more than one species of ape evolved toward human but only a few became dominant, started interbreeding and here we are.
So do all the scientists. There were lots of different hominin species. Alas, only one survives today.
I also don't think the big bang is cut and dry. It all either came from nowhere or it all always existed. Maybe a spill over from another universe, who knows.
The scientists agree with you here, as well.
By playing the observed expansion of the universe back in time, we can pretty well establish that an expansion occurred, but nobody claims the mechanisms, causes, &al are cut and dry.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
True, every time a cell reproduces there's a good chance for mutation, but my point is, the variation in sexual species that natural selection works with is mostly reproductive variation.

Sure. By necessity even, I would dare to say. To many mutations would cause to radical changes and turn out harmful.

The ancestors of birds didn't have feathers. Reproductive variation didn't make feathers appear in later generations. Lots of extra mutation input was required for that to occur.



True, but I was talking about the over-attribution of mutation in sexual organisms, as the source of the variation natural selection works with.

It's the source of change it works with. That's how you end up with DNA that wasn't there in parents.
It's how mammal species have grown hair while distant ancestors didn't have hair.

No species has gender. ;)
You mean sex. Gender is a linguistics term for a kind of noun class. English humorously took advantage of the fact that it has natural gender, corresponding to the biological sex of the referent, to conflate the two.
Natural gender is unusual. Conflating sex and gender would never occur in a language with animate-inanimate genders, or natural-artificial.

Thanks for the english lesson. Didn't know that.
But it doesn't exactly address the point being made.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
Facepalm all you like.
I accept evolution as the best explination but I don't think its as cut and dry as some do.

The reason I facepalmed is because you spoke about "adaption to a situation" in a specific moment in the life of an organism.

Evolutionary adaption is not about that.


Take the dino meteor, it wiped out most of the food and if you needed 500lbs of food a day to survive, you wouldn't survive. Smaller species that needed less food adapted/were already able to survive what happened. The ones that died or survived wasn't about mutations or niches in my opinion.

It was, as it always is, about how they fitted in the environment.
Since the environment underwent radical change in a very short period, life did not have any time to slowly change with it. So yes, at that point it's all about what can and can't survive. Such radical change in environment always brings about radical change in the biosphere.

This isn't the first time in history it happened, and it won't be the last either.
There's this quote in the natural sciences that says "Every couple 100 million years or so, everything that weighs more then 25 kg, dies."

It's not entirely accurate, but it paints an accurate enough picture. Such events bring about mass extinction. Evolution has no answer to such events. If your biological buildup can withstand the change, you might live. Otherwise, you die.

And then, when all is said and done and the dust settles, a "new world" begins, with plenty of new niches to fill in a radically different bio-landscape. In case of the dino extinction, the era of the mammal began and a new bio-balance evolved.

Such events are just as much part of evolutionary history and the evolutionary process as any other.

I also think more than one species of ape evolved toward human but only a few became dominant, started interbreeding and here we are.

No. A species does not evolve twice.
There were various homo branches though. All of them with a common homo root.
If we would meet a neanderthal today, I'm pretty sure we would recognize him/her as a human. A funny looking one perhaps, but human nonetheless.

I also don't think the big bang is cut and dry. It all either came from nowhere or it all always existed.

The big bang isn't a theory of origins. The origins of the big bang are unknown. What you present there is a false dichotomy.


Maybe a spill over from another universe, who knows.

Idd, who knows.
But the big bang refers to the development of the universe. Not it's origins. It deals with the inflation/expansion of the universe.
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
Not following. :shrug:
Yes, mutation happens all the time, but in sexed organisms it's not the primary source of the variation natural selection works with.
It does if it changes the genotype in the sex cell(s) that lead to a birth. Natural election and genetic drift take place later.

My point was that mutations are very natural and are regular occurrences.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
It does if it changes the genotype in the sex cell(s) that lead to a birth. Natural election and genetic drift take place later.
Can't argue with that, but to change the whole genotype would be one heck of a mutation.
My point was that mutations are very natural and are regular occurrences.
No argument here.
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
Can't argue with that, but to change the whole genotype would be one heck of a mutation.
Ya, and that's highly unlikely to happen.

Most mutations are first carried recessively, thus the phenotype reflecting them may take many generations to appear, which is also one reason why such changes tend to be quicker in smaller gene pools as far as the effect on a given society.
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
Mutation is just one element of a system.
It doesn't single handedly "drive" it.

Ever heard of a "fitness function"?
Mutation isn't the driver of evolution. It is a source (the primary source) of variation that is acted on by non-random selection. The reproductive response of living things with a specific variation relative to the selection is expressed quantitatively and called fitness.

So a random mutation in an organism can result in a phenotype that is optimized for a drier, warmer climate, for instance. Under the selection of a drier, warmer climate that random variation can then persist and fix in the population. Those individuals with the variation protected by selection have a greater chance of reproducing. Thus have a higher fitness.

Never-the-less, as you are indicating, it is a random element driven by non-random selection that is part of the entire process of evolution.
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
It appears that you are trying to get the science wrong again. Yes, some changes will be too strong or too rapid for many species. When a massive change like that occurs we get mass extinctions. The survivors will still fill the new niches in predictable ways. Disasters cannot be predicted, but what happens after them can be.
Yes. Some effects of the environment can be so intense or rapid that they overcome the mechanisms of evolution and go straight to extinction.

Using a catastrophic event like the Chicxulub Impact as an example to challenge the validity of evolution is like claiming a bullet proof vest failed, because it did not not stop the unexpected impact of a 155 mm artillery round.
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
/facepalm

Adapting behavior to try and cope with a certain situation has nothing to do with genetic adaption which happens across generations at the genetic level, and which ultimately happens in symbiosis with the environment.
Agreed.

Part of the problem is that there are different processes that are all commonly called adaptation. Only one of those is genetic adaptation/evolution.

Acclimatization, physiological versatility and developmental flexibility are all commonly placed under the umbrella of adaptation, but none of them are the genetic adaptation under selection by the environment. Phenotypic plasticity is another phenomenon that is a response to the environment, but not really under the typical inheritance/selection/evolution paradigm.

Anyway, all of these confound and confuse people that are unfamiliar with basic biology.
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
Since I am talking about God (aha, tricked you :cool: ) and God knows how things work and can even control for environmental factors and know what sort of refinements that would produce, it seems that God could know the end results because of the materials used and the beginning point and knowing what the environments would be all over the earth and all the changes that would take place. The randomness of the environment was not random when God was controlling it over time.
And come to think of it, this change in environment and time needed for random mutation to have their potential effects, would explain why God needed all that time to produce the end result, which was planned from the beginning.
Yes, I believe God would know these things, but He does not share that knowledge with us or leave any footprints behind for us to notice as patterns or to provide as evidence that He did anything.

We have His Work and the evidence of it that we do and these do not reveal in any way that He was there doing anything. It is as if He set the process up and let it carry out naturally. But we have not ever found evidence of even that.
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
Random mutation is not the primary source of the diversity that natural selection selects from. Most of the variation is a product of reproductive variation, in effect, a palette derived from previously selected parents, providing a much less random sample to select from than mutation could provide.
As I understand it, mutation is the primary source of variation. Though crossing over, random assortment and random fusions of gametes in sexual reproduction as well as the unrelated impact of gene flow and mobile elements also contribute to genetic variation.

Introgressed foreign DNA as from viruses also contributes to the variation and can provide a substrate for further mutation to act on. A symbiosis effect that is the hypothesized origin of Eukaryota. In that hypothesized instance, it was the introgression of an entire organism that slowly evolved into just the remaining genetic elements.
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
Can't argue with that, but to change the whole genotype would be one heck of a mutation.
No argument here.
I'm pretty sure that such radical mutation to a genome would be lethal in all instances. While mutations are random, there are parts of the genome that are more mutable than other parts. Mutations in highly conserved regions happen, but are almost always lethal or result in offspring so radically altered to have zero fitness. A fly with legs in place of antenna might survive to adulthood, but it isn't a trait that would increase fitness.
 

Brian2

Veteran Member
Yes, I believe God would know these things, but He does not share that knowledge with us or leave any footprints behind for us to notice as patterns or to provide as evidence that He did anything.

We have His Work and the evidence of it that we do and these do not reveal in any way that He was there doing anything. It is as if He set the process up and let it carry out naturally. But we have not ever found evidence of even that.

I would say there is evidence of God's handiwork but it is not scientific evidence and so science cannot use it to show anything and so leave it alone even though many scientists use it in their religious beliefs about the existence of a creator God.
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
I would say there is evidence of God's handiwork but it is not scientific evidence and so science cannot use it to show anything and so leave it alone even though many scientists use it in their religious beliefs about the existence of a creator God.
By scientific, I am assuming you mean objective evidence?

If so, I agree.
 
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