Alan doesn’t believe that there are any other proposed explanations to rival ‘evolutionary theory’. At least none that so effectively account for the facts.
It is often said that there is no single theory of evolution, there are a group of mutually consistent theories. Be that as it may, I think we all understand the point Alan is making.
Evolution is a process whereby life has somehow emerged from a lifeless physical world and there is no overall teleology involved in its diversification. The reproductive processes produce a natural variety of forms which can take advantage of previously unoccupied niches. The basic sequence of events from primal to present are: lifeless minerals, water systems and gaseous atmosphere, followed by the arrival of simple prokaryote life forms, followed by multicellular organisms. Life is solely the product of physical and chemical processes acting on lifeless matter.
In this view life is nothing special, it just occurred because physical matter chanced to arrange itself in a particular way. And consciousness is just a by product of life.
But I suggest that there is an alternative way in which life as we perceive it could have come about.
Arthur Zajonc in the book Catching the Light: The Entwined History of Light and Mind
Goethe was right. Try though we may to split light into fundamental atomic pieces, it remains whole to the end. Our very notion of what it means to be elementary is challenged. Until now we have equated smallest with most fundamental. Perhaps for light, at least, the most fundamental feature is not to be found in smallness, but rather in wholeness, its incorrigible capacity to be one and many, particle and wave, a single thing with the universe inside.
In the same way that in the above quote light is understood in its wholeness, so can life be understood as a whole. The variety of earthly life forms that have existed through time and space are individual expressions of an ever present archetypical whole. Life is one and many.
Holistic science attempts to get closer to the mystery of the dynamical emergence of the diversity of living forms within the unity of the continuously manifesting whole.
An arithmetical analogy between orthodox accounts of evolution and evolution as the unfolding expression of archetypal forms could be that the former is akin to addition while the latter is akin to division. Novel forms are an extra addition to what came before or novel forms are divided off from what already existed in potential. From the parts to the whole or from the whole to the parts. Which is it? Sense perception points to the former while the mind’s eye, perceiving with the mind, points to the latter. And Goethe was an expert at perceiving with the mind.
Instead of life emerging out of matter in an extended version of the spontaneous generation of mice from mud, it could at least be regarded as a possibility that physical organic life is a condensation or hardening of form out of a more subtle general condition which contained all physical forms in potential. This is analogous to crystals emerging out of solution. The perception of salt in sea water is dependent on the senses of the perceiver. Some forms of life have not descended as completely as others and thus retained more plasticity and because of this they are more adaptable to changes in their surroundings.
Life is and always was everywhere but it is only when it coalesces into gross material forms that it is perceptible to our everyday senses.
Convergent evolution is explicable not just by occupation of similar niches but by similar forms coalescing.
I mean examples of cause and effect as per standard Newtonian physics. Where, for example when a moving billiard ball collides with a stationary one and the movement of the second ball can be determined from the movement of the first. There is no circularity, no feedback loops etc.
There are three interesting videos on the development of drosophila eggs, here, here, and here. After the egg is fertilised, to begin with all the gene products, all the proteins and RNAs are supplied by the mother. The egg goes through multiple rounds of nuclear replication until it ends up as a single cell with six thousand nuclei. Then by a remarkable process a cellular membrane forms round each nucleus. Only after this does it begin to differentiate. If you watch the first video from around the eight and a half minute mark you will see the cells within the embryo. After the nine and a half minute mark we can see the movement of cells within the embryo. I would like to know what causes this movement? And a second very interesting question is how is the bicoid gradient achieved?
In my opinion all these movements are explicable by the material taking up the orientation in alignment with an overarching dynamic field. material ‘forces’ and field ‘forces’ combine to form the organism that we perceive.
All very interesting stuff. What appears to be duplication from one point of view could be seen as loss of completeness from another point of view. Take a potato and slice it into chips. Is the potato just duplicated chips or are the chips just sections of the whole potato?
Another interesting point is how invertebrates such as insects and vertebrates have used similar processes but in an inverse way. Such as exoskeletons v endoskeletons, ventral nerve cord v dorsal nerve cord. One thing that struck me while watching the first video I linked to above was how similar in appearance the early drosophila embryo is to the compound eyes of flies. The whole reflected in the parts.
I wasn’t giving an exhaustive list which would obviously include a vertebral column. The essential feature that I was pointing out was the eggs ability to retain water or lack thereof. The amnion of higher vertebrates is just one example of how terrestrial organisms overcome this shortfall. Many organisms produce their own internal solution to this, amphibians are reliant on the environment.
Metamorphosis is a feature of all life forms. For amphibians in general this process takes place within the external environment. Mammals have internalised it so that the most dramatic changes take place within the body of the mother. In other words amphibians generally entrust to Mother Nature that which mammalian mothers themselves take responsibility for. Amphibians have remained at this earlier stage which mammals have moved on from, and that is where the stasis lies.
Yes I agree that nature makes no distinction. But the fact is that nature has produced foresight just as it has produced phagocytosis. In producing these attributes it can be said to have these attributes.
Yes the range of amphibia from the most primitive to the most advanced reflects the range of life as a whole. The whole reflected in the parts.
Another fact I found that demonstrates the parallelism between amphibians and vertebrate life as a whole can be found here
And some birds produce ‘crop milk’ with which to their young.
You appear, in your merry enthusiasm, to once again have adopted an idiosyncratic use of a word. Most people take metamorphosis to be a marked morphological change that happens postembryonically. Humans do not have it.
I think this is the core of your argument, so let me try to paraphrase it.
Most amphibians have an aquatic larval phase, and most adults are dependent on water as well. Amniotes have in their evolutionary past acquired adaptations that enabled them to become fully terrestrial. In your view, amphibians remained “stuck” in an aquatic habitat, whereas amniotes freed themselves from it. You believe this to be a general thrust of evolution towards … well … us.
Is that more or less accurate?
If so, there are several problems here you need to address:
1) There are many previously terrestrial species (including amniotes) that reverted to an aquatic life style. That doesn’t make sense in your scenario.
2) Larval amphibians (tadpoles) do not represent the ancestral (earlier) state. Ontogeny does not recapture phylogeny.
3) There is no reason to suppose that self consciousness, rational thought, yodeling, planet-wide communication and travel, extensive communicable knowledge and inventiveness could not have emerged in an aquatic species. This betrays that you are reasoning from an anthropocentric point of view.
I could go on, but that’ll do for now.
In the same sense, nature can be said to have a moustache. What of it?
Our physical form does not just begin from birth. The zygote is the embryo in potential, the embryo is the infant in potential and the infant is the adult in potential. To disregard the prenatal human is to ignore the whole in favour of the part. Metamorphosis begins from fertilization. We cannot just ignore this just because we do not see it directly.
A general trend towards emancipation from the environment. We are the only species that as individuals regard ourselves as being separate from nature. We have, as Barfield put it, an onlooker consciousness.
It makes perfect sense. Certain kinds become relatively static within a limited range of future development. Their descendants can either progress or retrogress within that limited range. The belief that cetaceans are the descendants of fully terrestrial organisms is just speculation from a point of view which sees evolution as coming purely from lower forms.
Amphibians are supposedly descended from fully aquatic organisms. Tadpoles are fully aquatic organisms. In that regard they compare to the ancestors.
You are speculating on what might have been. The fact is that humans have an extensive range of abilities and attributes which allow for this. It’s only the those who believe in the present orthodox story of evolution that have a problem with human exceptionalism. No one extant species is allowed to be more advanced than any other because there can be no direction in evolution.
I am not tied to this belief.
The difference being that we have knowledge of moustaches, moustaches don’t have knowledge of us.
CharlieM,
If you perceive a basic trajectory of life, which hitherto you have been immovable on, then it’s a duplication. Or rather, several.
Take a bad analogy and shove it in a blender. The Hox genes are duplications of sequence, not spud. I don’t know what your analogy is supposed to show: try again with the actual material in question.
It is statements like these that undermine your case. That cetaceans have descended from terrestrial ancestors is a well established fact with consilient support from the fossil record, embryology, skeletal morphology, and phylogenetics. Calling that mere “speculation” is yet another attempt to create symmetry where the mainstream evolutionary account is clearly superior.
That would have sounded very profound, had the topic been something other than moustaches 😁. It doesn’t really address my criticism though, since “foresight doesn’t have knowledge of us” either.
Putting that aside. On to the defense of your holistic alternative.
That doesn’t follow at all. Why are there so many exceptions to your purported trend to emancipation? Is there even a trend or do both transitions happen equally frequently? What decides whether a “kind” becomes static? You need to spell out all these details in order to elevate your alternative above the level of post hoc story telling.
So it’s “they both live in water”? Surely you can see this is a very flimsy argument
You are evading my question. Once again: In what way is a terrestrial life style essential to the development of self consciousness and rational thought? I genuinely do not see any connection here.
Or variations on a theme.
Hox genes are variations on a theme. All it takes is one unexplained example to cast doubt on the supposition that because similar sequences show up in different organisms they must therefore have arrived there by means of past duplications. The example of cone snail toxin that I have given previously is one such case.
There are many examples human inventions and discoveries which have appeared independently. Calculus was developed independently by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Hans von Ohain and Frank Whittle simultaneously developed the jet engine. It was the overall concept which they had in common, not duplication from any single pre-existing forerunner.
The mammalian archetype includes all that is evident in every type of mammal. Any particular mammal will be a limited variation on the theme of this archetype. The general tetrapod limb which is a universal feature of mammals will be adapted to suit the lifestyle of any particular mammal. Thus we see whales with fins, Elephants with column like supports, bats with wings. I am proposing that the commonality is due to the archetype.
Onwards and upwards 😉
No, duplications. Sequence duplications. Unless you wish to see the extra chromosome 21 in Down’s syndrome as a ‘variation on a theme’. It seems a pointless semantic quibble, to replace mechanism by vague consequence. Duplications – and deletions – occur at whole- and sub-chromosome scale, the first by unequal segregation, the second by ectopic recombination in meiosis, or with Robertsonian translocation in some circumstances. “It’s not a duplication, it’s a variation on a theme”. “It’s not a deletion, it’s a variation on a theme”. What’s the point? Is variation on a theme a mechanism? If not, what is?
a) Why is the presence of a protein in two distantly related organisms evidence that it did not arise by duplication? Have you compared underlying DNA sequence? There is a sequence in some cats and some primates that is also present in some retroviruses. Clearly, on investigation of the case, it got there by duplication.
b) Even if not duplicated in a given instance, the presence of an exception does not disprove the rule.
If the texts of Newton and Leibnitz bore substantial sequence identity, right down to the ordering of arguments and spelling quirks, you could bring it in as a reasonable analogy with Hox duplications. It doesn’t, so it isn’t. That’s the duplication we’re talking of – physical duplication of DNA sequence, not repetition of an idea, or a chipped potato.
Like all the ID types here, you are massively hampered (or, perhaps, unjustifiably encouraged) by your lack of grasp of the basics of the subject.
No, it’s not. You have never demonstrated that the toxin is actually encoded in the genome of Hebomoia glaucippe.
I wasn’t referring to “commonalities” with other mammals. The independent lines of evidence for a terrestrial ancestor include among others, vestigial pelvic bones, embryonic hind limb buds, a fossil series tracing back to semi-aquatic Pakicetus, and phylogenetic analysis puting cetaceans in the group of fully terrestrial even-toed ungulates.
Evolution from a terrestrial ancestor accounts for all of those facts. Your archetype alternative explains none.
They are not exceptions. They are a vital part of the whole. It is the same as in individual development. We as individuals could not exist as the free thinking individuals that we are without the support of our skeletal framework. The skeleton is moulded through the activity of osteoblasts and osteoclasts. Some cells survive while others deteriorate and die, but they are all important in the overall formation.
And with respect to life as a whole we could not have evolved without the support of all the organisms that make up life. They are the real giants on whose shoulders we stand.
The difference between a terrestrial existence and an aquatic existence is definitely not trivial. To be confined to the water is far more restrictive than a life on land.
There are many reasons I could give but I’ll stick to one for now. Think about how much oxygen we need for brain function. There is only about five percent available oxygen in water than there is in air. Can you see how it is of benefit to live on the land?
Here is an article on brain energy consumption.
Bacteria are a far better example of Darwinian survival ‘machines’. that can out compete humans in terms of fitness. How did we make it this far?
I had a quick dig, and there doesn’t seem to be any follow-up work for that evolution-upending 2012 discovery (I did turn up a couple of blog posts saying it’s a massive problem for evolution … 😁). I tried a BLAST on one of the peptide sequences they report, but only Conus species popped up. Hebomoia glaucippe is in the database, so I’d have expected to find something. Of course, this is casual and amateurish investigation on my part, but still a step beyond any falsification effort I’ve seen from elsewhere!
So our ancestors could not have transitioned to land were it not for other species making the transition back to water? That doesn’t make an ounce of sense, Charlie.
I guess the only really emancipated animals are those that are restricted to neither. Now how do we call animals that can live both on land and in water? Mmmm, tip of the tongue.
Talking of whales. Do you know how they breathe?
Now, I get the distinct impression we have reached the end of how far you thought stuff through and are now just fabulating. Perhaps you should reflect a bit more critically on how far your alternative theory will take you. Also, if I were you, I would try to steer clear of metaphors.
No it isn’t.
Wow! You actually believe you have to live on land to breathe air….that is an astoundingly ridiculous statement. Think about that for a second Charlie and see if you can spot where you went wrong. Then think about the advantages of living in an aquatic environment when compared to a terrestrial existence.
You are wrong here as well. think about it: air at 21 parts per hundred versus water around 10 parts per million. do you think that difference equates to 5%?
Indeed!
In the early Devonian, atmospheric oxygen was about 65% present levels, CO2 about 10x higher, and temperature substantially higher. There was no significant ice, sea levels were c190m above present, and 85% of the world was ocean as opposed to the present 70% or so.
In order to facilitate the move of the Chosen Fish to land, where big brains can only (let’s suppose) flourish in a 21% oxygen atmosphere, the Cosmic Intelligence had a lot of work to do. It needed to further the establishment of plants on land, get the oxygen up. In the early Devonian, there was little soil, and hence less sequestering of carbon. When carbon is sequestered, there is a consequent increase in molecular oxygen and reduction in CO2.
It’s this kind of contingency that is missing from a teleological account. But for global-scale events, it is reasonable to suppose that evolution would have taken different courses.
By the late Devonian, huge forests had appeared, sequestering substantial carbon both directly and on burial. Temperatures went down, oxygen went up. A substantial amount of the early-Devonian coastline had moved northwards, permitting the formation of vast reef systems, sequestering more CO2, reducing temperatures further, permitting glaciation, increasing land area.
But then, there was a mass extinction event. It preferentially culled marine life, eliminating all but one trilobite order for example. By that time, however, tetrapods were established on land. We’d scarpered just in time. It was challenging, though, and again environmental contingencies pushed us towards our present supposed pinnacle – lifelong lungs, the urea system, the amniotic sac, all reducing dependency on fresh water. Each of these were developed in response to current challenges, often very different to those of today. There’s no sound reason to suppose they were aiming at us – that intermediates were maladapted to their current conditions, for a long term goal.
There can be various reasons why we see patterns repeating. Some will be chance duplications, some will be intentional copying, some will be due to separate systems using the same pattern because it is appropriate in that particular instance. Because we witness one of these to be the cause in some instances we should not then jump to the conclusion that this is the case in all instances.
As an example I typed in the phrase, “I was walking down the street on my way home” into Google.and I received ‘About 12,200 results (0.45 seconds)’. Now some of these will be direct copies from the same body of text, but many of these examples will have been written independently because this was the appropriate phrasing to use on that occasion.
I think the term ‘endogenous retrovirus’ is a misnomer. These are DNA segments. In my opinion viruses originally came from these segments. It is part of the natural genomic process to have these transposable elements within it. But the process is prone to disruption and this can lead to a sequence ‘escaping’ and this can lead to the appearance of viruses.
It is assumed that our endogenous retroviruses are products of ancient infections. So where did these ancient viruses come from? Could these endogenous retroviruses not have originated from once functional transposable elements within the genome? Life is not simple and black and white solutions are few and far between.
See my example of the Googled text above for a demonstration of the exact same string being used multiple times without direct copying. When teleological intentions are involved there are all sorts of possibilities. The nests of the house martins round here all look like duplicates of each other but they aren’t.
I’m not talking about DNA sequences, I am talking about amino acid sequences. Although with the current knowledge of alternative splicing and protein formation it would be interesting to see a comparison between this toxin’s production in the two organisms.
Do you think that the butterfly gets its toxin through some other means than its genome? Something it eats perhaps?
The archetypal mammal includes all of the features you have mentioned and additionally, living as a single cell, aquatic life, terrestrial life, instinctive behaviour, learned behaviour, self-consciousness and everything in between.
All you can say about Pakicetus and modern cetaceans is that they are closely related. You cannot claim direct descent.
At the beginning of animal evolution all lines were ‘pluripotent’ so to speak. They all had the potential of condensing to individual self-consciousness. But as they took on more solid forms their destinies became more fixed. Cetaceans have reached a high level of consciousness but they have been trapped by their past into remaining dependent on an existence in the water.
I don’t know how to use BLAST. Can you determine any DNA data from the known amino acid sequence?
The whole of earthly life is the living body on which we were built and on which we depend for our continued existence. Life on earth can survive without us but we cannot survive without earthly life.
Well most terrestrial mammals can swim in water, but the ability of aquatic animals to walk on land is severely limited and impossible for many .
Yes this is yet another restriction. of a one-sided development. They breathe air which gives them the means to acquire the highest intelligence of any aquatic animal but their limb development does not give them the manipulative abilities to make manifest any products of this intelligence. There aren’t many artefacts lying around that have been invented by whales.
What other species can fabulate like us humans?
Thinking things through is an ongoing process which always leads to more thoughts. So I am happy to continue bouncing my thoughts round here to see where they will lead, if you will excuse the metaphor.
Thank you for your well reasoned argument 😉
see my previous post about cetaceans.
Can you give me some of these advantages?
I was just going by data from here:
Whatever the difference it is obvious that, measure for measure, it is much easier to extract oxygen from air than oxygen dissolved in water. Do you disagree?
If we consider the creatures that live in the deep ocean trenches and how this environment brings many restrictions. High pressure, low oxygen levels, lack of sunlight all contribute to keep these animals from evolving the higher faculties possessed by mammals. This is an extreme demonstration of the effects of being in a narrow niche.
Your welcome!
sure I could but by doing so I would ruin the excercise for you right out of the gate.
So you’ve been the ‘victim’ of a misinfomred site that you didn’t bother to double check the veracity of what you were reading.
Oh, I absolutely disagree. Think about this for a few moments and see if you can figure out where you’ve gone wrong or been mislead: Air at sea level and on the top of Mt. Everest has 21% oxygen. Do you think you could spend a week lounging on the beach and suvive without succumbing to hypoxia? Now how about the same scenario (assuming adequate thermal protection) on top of Mt. Everest? Is there a difference in your answers? If so why?
Why do do you feel the need to speculate either global intelligence, contingency or on what might have been when we can actually look at life as it appears to us at this time. Life consists of a multiplicity of beings and behaviours from prokaryotes to the most recently developed forms of the higher eukaryotes. We see a similar pattern in the development of a single human life.
It has taken us a very long time to work out the processes involved in this individual development and we are still a very long way from understanding it all. And here we are talking about processes that we can directly witness organisms at every stage from start to finish. The process of evolution has been going on for millions of years so we cannot witness it directly. But from this vantage point you presume to know that the pattern we see is purely the result of contingency from past events.
Every extant intermediate between prokayotes and higher vertebrates are perfectly adapted to their local environments. And if you believe that birds are dinosaurs then as a group they are very successful. The atmosphere, coal, crude oil, natural gas and limestone are all evidence of the contribution long extinct forms have made to the present condition of the planet.
You do realise that a greater difference between the oxygen content of the seas and the atmosphere just make it even more difficult to acquire enough oxygen to supply large brains?
I have to wonder why you think it so important that I should have given a precise figure. I knew that even if this figure turned out to be wrong my point still stood.
If I had nothing to rely on but my natural respiratory system I would rather spend an hour on top of Mount Everest than an hour a couple of metres under the surface of the ocean. I am talking about the extraction of oxygen by animals in their natural habitats. Life is quite sparse at the top of Everest for obvious reasons.
Gills are very efficient gas exchange systems and they need to be.
Well, you appear to back off from your “there isn’t enough oxygen in water to fuel big brains” claim. I guess that’s a good thing.
While thinking things through, you should try to adopt the good scientific practice of trying to shoot holes in your own pet theories (and the writings of your heroes). Here is your first project: go down a mental list of aquatic animals and convince yourself that none have manipulative abilities that would enable tool use. It took me three seconds to come up with a counterexample.
No I don’t realise that whatsoever.
On top of Mt. Everest the oxygen content of the air is 21%. Is that adequate to supply oxygen to support large brains? if not why not?
It matters because you obviously don’t understand what the key parameter is for ‘oxygen extraction’ in any medium.
Let’s see how you answer the sea level versus Mt. everest question I posed to you.
Follow the link I provided. I explained my reasoning in that thread.
CharlieM, a thousand pound bluefin tuna can sustain swimming speeds of >40 mph. That requires lots and lots of oxygen. Is that oxygen demand/requirement more, less, or the same as required to support large brains?
It isn’t a difficult calculation!
You’re a fine one to tell others off for jumping to conclusions. It’s not just mere ‘pattern’, or similar-looking chips from a digital potato. Given the known mechanism of copying DNA, it makes certain predictions about what we expect to see if that were indeed the mechanism, and sophisticated statistical techniques to permit analysis. What’s the cause of digital similarity? You can’t just dismiss this known, concrete mechanism ‘cos you don’t fancy it. Especially if your alternative is pure handwaving.
As I, and now Corneel and PeterP have suggested, dropping the metaphors would assist your comprehension (although I realise comprehension is not your goal). Try typing that sentence into Google and seeing what you get. Are the Hox genes more like your phrase or mine?
Sure. By duplication. Not lateral duplication, as in the Hox case, but essentially the same template-driven nucleic acid copying mechanism.
Gee, thanks for the heads-up. None of this changes the fact that the commonality between retroviral sequence, cat and ape is explained entirely by template-mediated sequence duplication.
You move from a crap metaphor to an even crapper one! For the textual version, see my refutation of ‘Google’ above. House martin nests? Ye Gods.
I’m learning a lot about about animal respiration here because of the direction this is taking and there is quite a bit to learn.
The metabolic demand for oxygen in fish, particularly salmonids, and a comparison with other vertebrates”> is one of several interesting articles I’ve found. They say:
I’ll continue responding to comments when I get the time to think about everything that has been said.
The Mt. Everest question, Charlie, is an important aspect of what there is to learn about the topic. Care to opine on what the difference, or more pertinent what is the key parameter that is present or absent that is driving the difference between large brain oxygen support at sea level and on top of Mt. Everest? Both environments contain 21% oxygen so considering your previous stance there should be no problem with surviving w/o succumbing to hypoxia on top of Mt. Everest. That doesn’t reflect reality does it, Charlie?
Charlie, Noticing the author of the abstract you cited you’ll find reams of research conducted with Brett-type respirometers and fish. Barbara Block conducted quite extensive work with Brett respirometers and various tuna species. There are many references on respirometry using Blazka-type respirometers as well. They are the workhorses in respirometry research with many models and sizes available. From the very very small to the very very large!
The density of air at altitude is less. Rarified air contains less oxygen because the percentage is the same but the quantity is less per unit volume. This is obvious. water is much more dense than air so there is a lot more of it per unit volume. But because there is much less dissolved oxygen within the water, even taking the greater density into account, there is less available oxygen than in air.
I found this article, ‘Evolution of Air Breathing: Oxygen Homeostasis and the Transitions from Water to Land and Sky’, which covers it nicely. They tell the story from a standard evolutionary perspective but they do agree that it is more difficult to extract oxygen from water than it is from air:
The viscosity of the water becomes important when you consider that it has to be induced to flow over the gills.
Three precent is not that far from the five percent that I quoted.
See my last comment for what I actually think and not what you think I think.
I am well aware that there are many marine animals with pretty good manipulative skills.. Did you see the video I linked to a few years ago? It can be found here. Strictly I suppose it should be called somipulation rather than manipulation because no hands were involved, but it is still a very impressive piece of work.
So I have beaten you to the counterexample of something I didn’t say or argue for.
Okay so until this toxin is found within the food source of the creature it is just speculation. It gets us no further in explaining how it came to be in the wings.