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Genome
One thing Ridley discusses is how closely related humans are to many other species that seem quite unrelated. We share 99% of our genetic code with chimpanzees, which is more or less common knowledge. But we are also very similar to many other organisms, such as fruit flies. By comparing the genomes of different life forms, we can tell not only what creatures (and plants) we are related to, but historically when the genome split. Ridley explores possible explanations and ramifications of this knowledge (it's pretty hard to refute evolution with the facts he presents).
One of my favourite chapters in the book deals with self-assembly. How in God's green Earth do we develop into full-grown adults with a trillion cells, having started out as a tiny blob of a handful of cells? There are some really surprising discoveries here, such as the fact that the genes that lay out the general physical form of the body are laid out in order -- the gene for the head first, then the upper body, etc., ending with the rear. Another interesting fact is that the genes that define the front and back of a fruit fly also exist in humans, but are switched around. So the gene that defines the back of a fruit fly defines the front of a human, and vice versa. This means that at some point in our evolutionary history, one creature decided to walk on its front, and another decided to walk on its back.
Another chapter deals with why we age. Less than 50 cell divisions are required for us to grow into adults, but throughout life cell divisions are necessary for maintenance and repair. Each cell contains a complete copy of the genome; when a cell divides, it must make another copy for the new cell. However, the very beginning and end of each chromosome are not copied. In order to not lose important data, each chromosome has a long string of junk at the beginning and end. But with each cell division, a little more of the junk is lost and you get closer to cutting off the real data in the middle. In this way we've got a kind of built-in obsolescence; we are designed to live just long enough to bear and rear children.
One chapter is devoted to memory: how we create new memories and how we store them. Also discussed is the difference between instinct and learned knowledge, and why we need both. It turns out that language is a genetic thing; we have an instinctive capacity for language and we pick it up very easily as we develop. But then why is the vocabulary of a language not in our genes? Vocabulary is learned knowledge because if it weren't, it would be difficult for us to incorporate new words since they wouldn't be instinctive. Basically, as I understand it, static knowledge is often recorded in our genes (therefore becoming instinct), while dynamic knowledge must be learned.
Ridley dedicates one chapter to gene therapy and modification: how it works and the ethical concerns. I was curious as to how injecting a new or repaired gene into the cell of an organism could affect anything but that one cell. It turns out there are enzymes that will replicate the new DNA strand and go around distributing it to other cells -- a virus! Geneticists use the code from a virus that causes replication (leaving the bad stuff of course) and combine it with the DNA they want to repair or replace in an animal. They then "infect" the animal with the new code.
In short, I found Matt Ridley's "Genome" a fascinating book. The mapping of the human genome was a huge milestone in human history, and Ridley does an excellent job of using it to explain in layman's terms who and what we are. What we don't know about the genome dwarfs what we do know of course, and Ridley makes no bones about that point. But the bit that we do know just makes you sit back in awe. Ridley has a talent for translating his own enthusiasm for the subject to the written word.
You can purchase Genome from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
GOD is into open source.
Provided you can figure out what it means.
"Another interesting fact is that the genes that define the front and back of a fruit fly also exist in humans, but are switched around. So the gene that defines the back of a fruit fly defines the front of a human, and vice versa. This means that at some point in our evolutionary history, one creature decided to walk on its front, and another decided to walk on its back."
So would that mean that the fly's equivalent of a head is a human's equivalent of a butt? No wonder flies are so ugly.
On the same note... one wonders if this same backwards thing applies to the pointy hair boss species of the human race.
Ridley explores possible explanations and ramifications of this knowledge (it's pretty hard to refute evolution with the facts he presents).
I assume you mean "supporting creationism" as the equivalent of refuting evolution. Those who support creationism do so with nothing but faith and holy books as their evidence. Thus debate on such a provincial logical point (rather than faith as a whole) with such folks is pretty much a dead end. Stop baiting people.
50 cell divisions - assuming that each cell lives for the duration of all divisions would yield 1,125,899,906,842,624 cells. Don't know if I would have put it in the terms of "only" 50 divisions. My only experience with this book being the review, I'm not sure that this applies, but I'm always a bit disappointed with books like this. Explaining the genome is all well and good, but I always want to see more "what-if" scenarios. Like would it be possible to make a fruit fly 50% bigger or something.
1. I like to program
2. I like to spend lots of time with linux
3. I like to spend lots of time on Slashdot
4. I chase karma
5. I am witty
6. I like to drink
7. I like to smoke
8. I like to program
9. See 1.
10. I don't understand girls
11. I don't like the sun
12. I like the Matrix
13. I thrive on violent games and movies
14. I don't like fighting for real
15. I shower when I have to
16. I optimise my housework
17. I like girls, but they don't understand me
18. I do bad things to myself but not to others
19. No-one gets that
20. I want to meet aliens
21. I want them to be nice
22. I want to be alive when BattleMechs are invented.
23.???
Oh, crap, I'm a code from Mars and you have to guess the 23rd chromosome.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
If you never thought you'd read a book about genetics, (or even if you have) then this is the book for you. Ridley shows how the genetic map that is being developed for us will lead us to many of the answers that we have sought about ourselves. He explains in basic terms how genetics and evolution works. The most amazing part of this book is that it is extremely enjoyable to read. While still in the second chapter I was contemplating reading it again. If you have any interest in how we got to be what we are and what the future may hold for us, (or if you want some great party trivia) then reading 'Genome' will be both entertaining and enriching.
-dk
Let me start this by saying that I enjoyed the book. But should books be held to a different standard than movies regarding reviews? I remember a recent review of U571 getting a bunch of shit because it was years late. Since the time that this book was written the entire genome has been mapped. In such a volatile field there are many things that go out of date fast. Maybe it's one thing to see a review of The Selfish Gene which although is 25 years old established an entirely new field of study, but this isn't groundbreaking material despite being well written and I'm pretty certain some of this material is out of date. I hope to not see a review of Misery or Hyperion any time soon on /.
gee whiz nothing more exciting than a book report from you grotus nerds.
"total leap of faith that random chance could produce beings with even the complexity of a bacterium"
There is no faith involved and very little randomness. Statistics is a harsh mistress. Given enough time anything that can happen, will happen. People will cross steel walls. Monkeys will write Hamlet. Pigs will fly.
When you consider the magnitude of the time involved, it is absolutely not surprising that evolution took place. It is also not surprinsing that the brain of the short-lived creatures developed under this evolutionary process is utterly unprepared to deal with the quantities involved. Hence some of us will always find it "impossible".
Fear not, the closed system in question is going relentlessly into chaos. It will take billions upon billions of years, but the Universe will eventually manage to fullfil the theory...
Entropy can not apply to small subsets of the closed system. In the case of evolution, the System is the whole Universe, as cosmological events can and do affect us everyday (and this discussion assumes we can call this mess we are "order").
The final origin does not need to enter this discussion right now, because while local evolution was in some way "caused" by the Big Bang, the facts are so far apart in time and space that it would be the same as trying to analyse the human digestion in terms of the atoms composing the granparents of the human in question (in other words, I am discussing evolution, not the ultimate possibility of the existence of an extra-physical cause somewhere in the far past).
Nope.. but have you ever been Gomorrahized?
Trust me, it's a lot worse.
No. A vast quantity of time is a necessary conditon for an evolutionary process to produce meaningful results. It does not cause evolution, it only allows it to exist given the right factors (the same way, for instance, that the existence of a fertile female body does not "cause" a baby to be born - it is just a necessary condition).
What I mean is that given an evolutionary quantity of time, all factors will eventually have the opportunity to combine themselves in the ways necessary for evolution to occur, no matter how "improbable" the requested configuration is.
If we agree this is a side-issue in respect to planetary evolution, having all existing mass concentrated in a singular abstract point seems pretty ordered to me.
We don't know why it would explode into what we see. No scientist ever claimed to know, either. It may have been a god, it may have been some factor we can't know, it may be that things are just thus. But from a second after the explosion onwards to now we have a jolly good working picture.
"Chaos" here means just that the temperature in every point of the system is the same. It is the physical equivalent of Fukyoama's "End of History".
But you point to the right direction. Entropy cannot be analised locally. The presence or absence of Earth and its warring primates means nothing in the cosmological scale.
...but a draft version has been published.
Look, parameters of a theory, any theory, are not a matter dogma. There is no sitting evolution pope who now and then will speak ex-cathedra about the new evolutionary truths.
The "right" age of the Universe is as subjected to change as everything else in science. And when I say everything I mean everything. No principle, no equation, no inference is free from facing the hard evidence.
That is why scientists do not use expressions like "never make" and "never will".
As for your specific claim, there are so many other factors involved in making a monkey into a man that I believe you should study the "evil" scientific texts involved before we can discuss this matters in a meaninful way.
The fact that the visible evolution is there to be seem, no matter the amount of time you and I think necessary for it to occur. Unless you are willing to give room for extra-scientific data (gods, alliens). These may well have happened, but while we have no proff of those I prefer to keep trying with the data in hand.
Please notice I never stated the amount of time necessary for a monkey to produce Hamlet. I never even stated how many monkeys I would employ in the task. Nor do I care. I said "given enough time", whatever it may be.
But also notice that typing monkeys and evolving molecules organisms are completely different phenomenon. Your final jump from "proving" you would need 72 times the age of the Universe for a monkey to type a string to concluding that evolution could not have happened is amusing but false and logically wrong. Unless of course you can come with exact figures on the possibilities involved in eveolving from nothing to human (and, naturally, have this figures peer-reviewed and accepted by the scientific community).
Would there someday be a female human capable of finding geeks attractive? Wow, imagine the possibilities!
recompile.org
Even if Gould is far from uncontroversial, I am certainly prepared to concede to his (and your) ideas seriousness and importance. From all I (we) know, it all may well have happened the way he describes, all of a sudden (beware, kids, when reading this - "all of sudden" here is not what you may think).
But even punctuated equilibrium will usually require time to occur (in the same way winning in the lotery may require one, many or an infinite number of trials). So my insistence that time should be important.
Anyway, you probably know I was not exactly arguing against Gould. As I said elsewhere, a scientific theory is as good as the amount of undertanding it gives us about the past, present and future state of world. If a present theory is wrong no serious scientist should never hesitate to adapt, rework or throw it away, as the case may be.
I tried Genome once, but now I'm back to KDE.