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New Findings Confirm Darwin's Theory — Evolution Not Random

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the water-also-wet dept.

ScienceDaily is reporting a team of biologists has demonstrated that evolution is a deterministic process, rather than a random selection as some competing theories suggested. "When the researchers measured changes in 40 defined characteristics of the nematodes' sexual organs (including cell division patterns and the formation of specific cells), they found that most were uniform in direction, with the main mechanism for the development favoring a natural selection of successful traits, the researchers said."

10 of 386 comments (clear)

  1. Ah, but... by susano_otter · · Score: 5, Funny

    the main mechanism for the development favoring a natural selection of successful traits

    Ah, but did this deterministic development mechanism evolve deterministically or randomly?
    --

    Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.

    1. Re:Ah, but... by KublaiKhan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This says nothing about the way in which a trait arise--merely that the selection process that determines which traits are likely to be passed on is not random.

      Also, there's no reason to have faith in this. Leave faith to the religious folks--these are facts, which are true whether or not you 'believe' them.

      --
      In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
      A stately pleasure dome decree
    2. Re:Ah, but... by kemushi88 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Facts have a known liberal bias.

    3. Re:Ah, but... by Adambomb · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is why I would like to have clarified why people seem to think that the concept of Creationism is even at odds with Evolution.

      Personally, I would find it much less insulting as a deity if people realized I was an absolutely incredible systems programmer able to start a ball rolling with some precursor components and have all of earths current life unfold from them as planned. It would kind of belittle the effort to say He just snapped his fingers.

      I hear the rebuttal constantly that the words of mankind are unable to contain the meanings God would be trying to impart on the writers, and this type of complexity would be EXACTLY the kind of thing mankind would be unable to even conceptualize millennia ago.

      Creationism and Evolution are not mutually exclusive. The roots of creationism are simply unable to be tested or verified by humanity currently so it remains a leap of faith to believe that God designed the layout of dominos. We can't even say if there was a START to the universe, or whether it is some bizarre infinite system, or a finite-yet-recursive system or what.

      For the die hard ultra-fundamentalist AS WELL AS the hardcore ultra-atheistic, keep in mind that NOTHING can be known to be 100% accurate, maybe a bunch of nines of significance based on what we know but never 100%. Even the probability we determine based on what we know would be in the same boat (IE: see Newtonian mechanics, almost correct, 'works' depending on frame of reference).

      If we could, humanity would have no need for faith, as everything would simply be. Seeing as that would leave even less room in existence for free will, I'm definitely glad things are not that way (despite some things done in the name of faith or in the name of science).

      DISCLAIMER: I'm still one who prefers the random swerving to being a gear in a deterministic system, but that doesnt mean what i'd like the model of existence to look like is correct.

      --
      Ice Cream has no bones.
    4. Re:Ah, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Just to be clear, so we don't assume any misconceptions here about Einstein and religion:

      I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind. -- Einstein

      It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. -- Einstein

    5. Re:Ah, but... by dch24 · · Score: 5, Informative
      I don't know why you posted AC, but I couldn't accept your Albert Einstein assertion on faith... even if you had signed your post.

      But the sources for relevant Wikipedia articles are credible primary sources. (Brian, Dennis (1996), Einstein: A Life, New York: John Wiley & Sons, p. 127, ISBN 0-471-11459-6) To save you some time, I've added some line breaks but retained the context.

      In 1929, Boston's Cardinal O'Connell branded Einstein's theory of relativity as "befogged speculation producing universal doubt about God and His Creation," and as implying "the ghastly apparition of atheism." In alarm, New York's Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein asked Einstein by telegram: "Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words." In his response, for which Einstein needed but twenty-five (German) words, he stated his beliefs succinctly:

      "I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."

      The rabbi cited this as evidence that Einstein was not an atheist, and further declared that "Einstein's theory, if carried to its logical conclusion, would bring to mankind a scientific formula for monotheism." Einstein wisely remained silent on that point.
      Now for the second quote:

      "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

      (Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman (eds) (1981). Albert Einstein, The Human Side. Princeton University Press, 43.)
    6. Re:Ah, but... by background+image · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Hume says it smarterer than I can...

      Hume--and Kant--are also a lot 'smarterer' than me ;-)

      However, Kant did come up with quite a plausible theory for why Hume was not quite right about that (and in doing so, essentially invented epistemology as a separate area of study). Whether or not he successfully demonstrated that his theory was correct is (still) an open question.

      Very briefly what he supposed was that any experience whatsoever of the 'world' is only accessible through certain features of our perceptual and cognitive apparatus. Chief among these are time and space, but in addition, there are twelve a priori categories, including "causality and dependence" according to which experiences are ordered.

      To put it in plainer language, time and space have to do not with reality as such, but with how we perceive reality, while the categories (including causality) and reason allow us to systematize our experiences. It's possible to think of time and space as analogous to being stuck in a space suit with a yellow-tinted visor. You can look through the visor, but everything will look yellow. You can't really be sure that everything--or anything--is yellow, but the only way you can see anything at all is to see it as something yellow.

      The practical upshot of this is that according to Kant, while (contra Hume) genuine scientific inquiry is possible without recourse to faith in causation etc, and while our experience is of a real world, there are definite limits to human knowledge:

      1. because time and space are properties of our perceptual and cognitive apparatus, it is absolutely impossible to discover what the world might be 'like' without reference to them, and
      2. the answers to most of the traditional metaphysical questions--such as questions of the existence of god or the immortality of the soul--cannot be determined scientifically.

      For more information, you can go to the Stanford Encyclopedia, or to the source, but when reading Kant, always be sure to take the proper precautions: take adequate food and water, allow plenty of time to get back before dark, and always let somebody know where you're going...

  2. Most interesting by strange+dynamics · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think the most interesting thing to come to light in this study is that scientists have identified fourty characteristics of nematode sexual organs.

  3. interesting career choice by digitalderbs · · Score: 5, Funny

    measured changes in.. nematodes' sexual organs
    and I thought my job sucked.
  4. Re:Wait... what's different here? by kebes · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I was confused, too. Here's the reference to the actual paper:
    Karin Kiontke, Antoine Barrière, Irina Kolotuev, Benjamin Podbilewicz, Ralf Sommer, David H.A. Fitch, and Marie-Anne Félix Trends, Stasis, and Drift in the Evolution of Nematode Vulva Development Current Biology (November 2007), 17, p. 1925-1937.

    TFA seems to be misrepresenting the research somewhat. They claim that there is a divide in evolutionary theory between "random inheritance" and "deterministic inheritance." However, the actual article is describing the difference between unbiased (stochastic) and biased (selected or constrained) evolution of variation. In both cases the usual random genetic variation with fitness selection would occur.

    The scientists are not claiming that evolution is deterministic or guided, but rather that there are strong selections and constraints that bias some variations to be more likely to appear than others. In their words:

    We propose that developmental evolution is primarily governed by selection and/or selection-independent constraints, not stochastic processes such as drift in unconstrained phenotypic space.
    As an example of a constraint, they mention "generative constraints" (i.e. fitness is selecting for a certain feature, and there are multiple ways of achieving that feature, but one's genetic heritage will bias one implementation over another). Their evidence for the drift in variations being generally "biased" is based on the occurrence (over generations) of various traits: for instance they observe fewer "reversals" (reappearance of traits that were previously common) than would be expected if the variability were entirely stochastic/random.

    This is, in any case, my understanding of the paper... but I'm a chemist/physicist, not a biologist! (So hopefully a biologist in the crowd will further explain this paper.) Overall, however, I think the article doesn't summarize the work properly, since they are suggesting that evolution is highly directed and deterministic, whereas the paper is instead analyzing the "degree of bias" that is inherent to the selection effects of evolution. For instance, the scientific paper doesn't claim that evolution can't produce non-advantageous mutations.