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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.
"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.
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 /.
At the risk of turning this in to an all-out flame war, I personally do not see any problem with combining creationism with evolution. The only thing that creation provides that evolution does not is a starting point and a way to explain the *IMHO* total leap of faith that random chance could produce beings with even the complexity of a bacterium.
There's nothing in my faith or bible that tells me to throw logic to the window.
Full disclosure: I consider myself a deeply religious person. I attend church twice a week, read the Bible, and send my children to a private religious school (at great expense).
However, I find Creationism utter nonsense. I do believe that God created man, but through the process of evolution. The evidence for evolution is so utterly overwhelming that Christians are left with two alternatives:
Whenever this subject comes up with the faithful, I try to change minds gently, and remember a quote (from whom I don't remember):
"A frantic orthodoxy is not rooted in faith, but in doubt."
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
"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".
EatHam pointed out that he saw no problem combining creationism & evolution. I think he may be confusing the idea that God created everything with the actual hard creationism that you're talking about. It's hard sometimes to be precise because the hard creationists have done a lot to make it seem like their view is the only one consistent with God's creation, even though you and others clearly demonstrate that is not the case.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Try mutant_flies for some freeky flies.
then there's this story(not that great but interesting).
Or a video
or what your looking for?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
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).
"A frantic orthodoxy is not rooted in faith, but in doubt." can be attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr. FYI, 'not' should read 'never', but then I'm nitpicking.
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.
Actually, it obvious that he used a high-level language - Look at the obvious code reuse between animals.
Making a human with Fruit Fly DNA? Now that's OO design!
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
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.
OK, short, short answer. Heh.
:)
People who believe in literal creationism (that is, literal "English" creationism - literally the process that is described in the English translation of the Bible) are taking explanations way out of context.
They should also go to Egypt and look for bread (made of grain) to fall from heaven on their heads (rather than manna, which is real), and far more amusingly, only forgive each other 490 times. After that, screw you, jackass.
The problem is that we are far, far removed from the people who read the original version of the Bible. We don't know the colloquialisms. Even scholars don't know. Even the original versions of the Bible (Hebrew) may be very far off from the true original, because we simply do not have the colloquial context. (For example: we use the word "heart" in multiple contexts, and it's difficult to discern which version we mean. There's no reason to believe that they didn't have similar concepts as well.)
I honestly wonder when people start supporting creationism. I really want one of them to explain to me what happened. What do they REALLY think happened? Genesis's account is vague - clear it up. Exactly how did God separate the Earth from the heavens? Basically, if you keep saying "How?" "How?" "How?" to someone espousing creationism, you'll get one of two answers. "He just did" or "I don't know." The response to the first is "that's not an answer", and the response to the second is "That's what I'm trying to figure out."
Here's the thing: if you can't reconcile Genesis with science in your head, you're not thinking enough. It's easy - it really is. All science does is stick a bunch of answers where Genesis is vague.
Religions answers "Who". Science answers "How". Don't people ever take journalism classes?
... actually, it assumes a flowing system, for carbon dating life with C14. Carbon-14 dating assumes that there's continual carbon exchange, and at some point the carbon exchange stopped. For a living creature, that's when it died, as it stopped breathing.
Problems in C14 dating don't make the method wrong, they make the implementation in certain aspects wrong. That's like declaring that Wien's model of the blackbody curve is wrong in the exponential tail simply because it gets the early part wrong. C14 is very accurate if you know when the carbon exchange stopped, and that'll put the age of certain things very very old.
Most of us do the research. The problem is with people who claim that a method is flawed because they found one example where it (supposedly) doesn't work. Overwhelming evidence that supports it is enough to convince logical people.
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.
Depends on your definition of "evolution" and "creationism". If you define "evolution" as the change over time of the Earth into what it is today, and "creationism" as the instantaneous creation of the Earth at some time in history, then yes, they are the direct opposites of each other, and to negate one proves the other.
You're talking about specifics of evolution (which is scientific theory) rather than the evolution mindset (which is a mindset). Debate the specifics of evolution (theory) and you'll get dogmatic response, unless you go after something which is still an open question, from the community's point of view. You can't really debate a mindset, though.
And astronomy/physics is extremely dogmatic! All science is. Try offering an alternative explanation other than the Big Bang, and we'll look at you like you're crazy (because you probably are - you can SEE the Big Bang if you look at the sky in microwave). You're talking about "offering an alternative explanation for something that was considered over and done with." In any science, you'll get a sharp response in that area. The other end, where you're talking about non-constancy of physical constants, that's ALWAYS been considered an open possibility. You can find papers on that back over a hundred years.
Doubt me on the dogmatic nature of astronomy and physics? Look for papers on alternative answers to the Higgs boson, and see if you find papers which reference them and support them. You won't. Even though the Higgs boson hasn't been found, and there're still possibilities if it can't be found, they aren't being looked at.
There's a hell of a lot of data on calibration of C-14 dating. For some they used historical references, others they used tree-ring calibration. It's not far off, in most cases. If the parent to your post was trying to say that C-14 data gives dates >1 million years off, he/she's on crack: C-14 is only accurate up to 60K years or so. It's also almost definitely order-of-magnitude correct. The problem mostly stems from two sources:
:) The first one however can produce dates which drift significantly as you go farther and farther back in time, as the "C-14 timeline" will "compress" and "expand" - that is, certain stretches of "real time" will correspond to unequal portions of "C-14 time" based on the levels of C-14 in the atmosphere at those points.
1: Varying C-14 levels in the atmosphere over time (sunspots)
2: Point at which carbon-exchange ended in the object.
The first one is not that severe, honestly, and the second only applies to nonliving things. For living things we can pretty accurately assume that carbon exchange ended when it died.
Radiometric dating is very accurate if you know the ambient level throughout the period that isotope exchange was occuring, and then when the isotope exchange stopped. If you're off significantly on either one of those, you could have problems. But that's what cross-calibration is for.
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).
Well, that's misleading math. First off, not every cell divides every time. Some organs, like eyes, stop or slow cell division once they reach a certain point. Others keep dividing rapidly throughout the life of the organism.
Another thing is controlled apoptosis, which is cell suicide. This is very very common in development, and is necessary to get the organism to look the way it does. That's why you've got fingers instead of webs. You know the little webs at the base of the area between your digits? Those are remnants of the cells that died during your development. Many of the cells that did divide continually go through apoptosis, so they're not around in the mature organsim.
And I don't know about making flies 50% bigger, although I'd be willing to bet a lot on it's having been done (I hate working with the little buggers myself, so I don't really keep up on them) but I know for a fact that it's been done in mice and plants. Maybe not 50% bigger, but definitely bigger.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Reread my post: in the limit of the two theories that I stated, one is the direct opposite of the other.
Aliens genetically constructed the earth as their terrarium: that falls under "creationism" - instantaneous creation of Earth at some point in time in the past (or relatively instantaneous...).
Universe laid by a giant bird: Falls out of the scope of the theories, as the theories describe Earth's creation. Rewriting "Earth laid by a giant bird." Falls under "creationism" - instantaneous creation of Earth.
If you define evolution and creationism as I did, they're opposites of each other. If Earth wasn't created instantaneously at some point, it must've been created over some period in time. Likewise, if the Earth wasn't created over a period in time, it must've been created instantaneously. I didn't give you a "how". I gave you a "when".
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.
Well, no, there isn't a way.
If you put an unlimited number of all the pieces of an airplane in an unlimited number of big piles, and let an unlimited number of airplanes sweep through them, and then sweep away the piles that don't look like you want them to look like - repeat ad nauseum, and in the limit of infinite repetitions, you'll get an identical airplane, and then no, you won't be able to tell them apart. The problem is that you're looking at an end product and saying "That must be designed." I could look at a pile of dirt, study it for years, and say "that must be designed" and still be wrong. See also Cydonia on Mars.
Human timescales differ from universal timescales. Evolution is a very messy process, and produces a lot of crap. People born with gills, for instance. But, hey, I'm not exactly one to criticize: I haven't built any universes lately.
I was under the impression that you don't even necessarily need to know the ambient level to begin with: you can simply analyze the ratios of daughter isotopes/elements to the parent, which tells you how much there was originally. The only problem I can see with this is that C-14's decay product is C-12, which is already abundant in a dead organism, so how do you tell which C-12 is the decayed C-14 and which C-12 was there to begin with? (Answer: cross-calibration, or other methods that are unnecessary with decaying elements that leave behind distinctive daughter elements, right?)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
(1): C14's decay product can't be C12, you'd lose atomic number there. C12 has 12 nucleons, C14 has 14 nucleons. C14's decay path is N14 (neutron -> proton + electron + antineutrino: Slashdot needs "physicscode").
(2): By ambient level, I meen "initial ratio" of C12 to C14. You need to know this. Without it, you have no idea about anything. So C14 dating assumes that the C14 level in the atmosphere was constant over time, and the crosscalibration indicates that assumption is mostly correct.
Right, I had long forgotten what C14's decay product actually was... N14, not C12.
Anyway, my point was that since C14's decay product (nitrogen) is also commonly found in things that have carbon in them, you can't simply look at the ratio of decay product to remaining parent element to determine the date. However, if C14's decay product was (let's say) the mysterious N13.5 (which is not normally found in organisms), you could simply measure the proportion of N13.5 to C14, and you wouldn't need any calibration value at all.
To extend the example... you find an organism that has 0.5g of C14 and 0.5g of N13.5 in it. Without any other info, you would be able to tell that the organism had died one C14 half-life ago (5730 years). Now, the problem in real life is that C14 decays into N14, so there's no way to tell whether the N14 in the organism was there to begin with, or whether it is the result of C14 decay, which is why you need cross-calibration for C14 dating. But for heavier elements that decay into things that aren't normally found in living organisms, you only need to know the ratio of daughter products to the parent product. Right?
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased