Joined: Aug 19, 2009
Posts: 534
Location: Aussie Prawn Facility; District 10
Posted:
Mon Jul 26, 2010 1:35 am
PZ Myers busts some preconceptions and gets us to look deeper at the awsomeness... you have a choice. Either die in the vacuum of space , or read the article ...or skip to the end of my post and memorize the phrase beginning with 'PZ told me...'
PZ wrote:
If you've ever encountered the cryptic phrase "RM+NS" ("random mutation + natural selection") used as a pejorative on a creationist site, you've found someone with this affliction. They've got it completely wrong.
Well kids, get the scoop here;
It's more than genes, it's networks and systems
First, it's not exactly wrong — it's more like taking one good explanation of certain kinds of evolution and making it a sweeping claim that that is how all evolution works. By reducing it to this one scheme, though, it makes evolution far too plodding and linear, and reduces it all to a sort of personal narrative. It isn't any of those things. What's left out in the 101 story, and in creationist tales, is that:
evolution is about populations, so many changes go on in parallel; selectable traits are usually the product of networks of genes, so there are rarely single alleles that can be categorized as the effector of change; and genes and gene networks are plastic or responsive to the environment.
All of these complications make the actual story more complicated and interesting, and also, perhaps to your surprise, make evolutionary change faster and more powerful.
Now. Those of us who are NOT evolutionary biologists BUT who digg all things evo and use that as one of the underpinnings of our agnosticism-atheism spectrum of (rational!) beliefs might give two rat's sphincters about this information... which is why I could be bothered posting it. Dear Infidels and keyboard pals, cheers from cold and rainy (but largely televangelist-free) Sydney, Oz.
Crikey!
SO,
next time someone tells you that 'such and such RM+NS yada yada [can't generate new info, can't give rise to new species... insert meme here] therefore evolution is wrong/microevo only or whatEVER... smile and tell them that
'PZ told me that it's not just about genes, it's also about networks and systems - (bitches!!)'
BTW - What a debacle that SB website is turning out to be... shame, really.[i]
_________________ I take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance, any day... - Douglas Adams
iPondR Graduate Thinker
Joined: Aug 19, 2009
Posts: 534
Location: Aussie Prawn Facility; District 10
Posted:
Tue Sep 21, 2010 9:42 pm
A followup to the 'DNA is a blueprint' meme that creation 'science' proponents often trot out.
No, not only is it not a pre-designed 'blueprint' and not only are lifeforms moulded and shaped through the squeezepipe of some kind of mutation generator and selection mechanism acting on gene complexes and across populations that are in some way gradated or isolated (deep breath here) and subjected to some kind of environmental or artificial selection pressure... BUT! It get curiouser and curiouser!
There is also the further understanding gained by introducing the concept of
'pleiotropy'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiotropy
which describes the phenomenon of the 'basket' or 'package deal' nature of outcomes that can result from selection of a trait (and what can come along for the ride!) which leads to the situation that something which we
interpret
as being desirable (e.g. feathers for flying, abstract reasoning etc) could have ridden on the back of something ELSE that was being selected for under a past and possibly long gone selection pressure (speculative e.g. the rise of the mammals due to their ability to regulate body temp. [post meteor impact &/or supervolcano] which eventually allowed the hairless ape and that apparently was a factor in the development of a large melon for a head with lots of squishy grey stuff inside...)
In Dickie D's
'The Greatest Show on Earth'
the concept is discussed in relation to the domestication of wolves and wild dogs... makes for fascinating reading and I won't divulge more to avoid spoiler-ing...
_________________ I take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance, any day... - Douglas Adams
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, or read the article ...or skip to the end of my post and memorize the phrase beginning with 'PZ told me...'
