Quoting gwyckoff from a message in bionet.molbio.evolution
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[lis!gwyc koff From: gwyckoff at ellis.uchicago.edu (I've seen things you
[people wouldn't believe. ..) Subject: Re: Theories of Evolution
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[ Date: Thu, 8 Sep 1994 04:28:56 GMT
[ Lines: 55
[ If the alleged engineer who posted the response that evolution violates
[ thermodynamic laws would like, perhaps they could try to look at
[evolution as taking place at the level of an entire ecosystem, as
[opposed to at an organismal level. Though evolution does take place
[at the level of an organismi n one sense, the origin of life, which I
[believe what had the engineer in question in such a state, most likely
[took place in a chemical soup. In which c ase, an increase in
[relative "order" in one part of the system would likely occur with an
[increase in entropy in another portion of the system. Evolution, at
[the level which it is most commonly applied, does not address the very
[early part of the history of life. It really only applies since DNA
[(or at least, a self replicative molecule) has existed. In which
[case, we are really speaking of Molecular Evolution. (caps for
[emphasis.) Molecular evolution involves the random replacement of base
[pairs in DNA, and therefore a sort of reshuffling of genetic material
[due to mutation. This violates no physical laws. In fact, one could
[make an arguement that entropy in a system actually increases if the
[genome size increases, but that is not really relevant to the topic.
[ I believe that the initial poster wanted to know about the different
[ theories of evolution. In reality, most of the historical theories
[about how evolution occured have been discredited. LaMarck believed
[that organisms inherited those characteristics that their parents
[derived during their life. The classic experiment that disproved this
[was that if you take two rats, a male and a female, and cut off their
[tales and subsequently breed them, they do not have progeny with no
[tails (as LaMarck would have predicted.) (NOTE: I don't really recall
[wether it's Lamarck or LaMarck.) This proved to be true even after
[several HUNDRED generations. Darwin believed that Natural selection
[acted upon variation which was already present in a population in
[order to produce different characteristic s after many generation of
[selection for a given trait. The idea here is that the variation is
[inherint in the population. With the rediscovery of Mendel's work
[with pea plants, genes were seen as the units which defined a trait,
[and alleles are the variations within that trait. It's a little more
[complicated than this, but it would take much longer than I have.
[Anyway, the so-called Modern Synthesis is the use of the method of
K~ [heritable variation discovered by Mendel to make sense of the
[observations of Darwin. This is called selectionism . There are some
[other ideas, but I can't go through them all here. For references,
[please see the textbook Evolutionary Biology by Douglas J. Futuyma,
[2nd edition, Sinauer Associates Publ ishers, Massachusetts
[ or for a historical perspective, see any of the works by
[ Dr. William Provine, Cornell University
[ That's for a start. There's a wealth of information out there.
[ And please note that this channel is for serious discussion. Someone
[ actually asked a question here. Just posting that Evolution violates a
[ thermodynamic principle with a refernce to a work that explains the
[principle but not how evolution violates it just dosen't cut it. It's
[just flame bait. So keep your mind open and talk, or just lurk, but if
[you can't discuss or have nothing worthwhile to contribute, buy a
[Nintendo and leave the rest of us alone.
[ Thanks,
[ Jerry
[ DISCLAIMER-
[ These are my own views or opinions unless someone
j [ else has been cited.
[ .
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