Monday, November 16, 2020

Mutation, Not Natural Selection, Drives Evolution — Gemma Tarlach

Molecular evolutionary biologist Masatoshi Nei says Darwin never proved natural selection is the driving force of evolution — because it isn't.
Masatoshi Nei argues that natural selection and variation play a role in evolution but are not the driving force, based on molecular genetics. The driving force is mutation. His theory is controversial. 

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Mutation, Not Natural Selection, Drives Evolution
Gemma Tarlach

12 comments:

Andrew Anderson said...

Link don't work; I guess it mutated.

Ralph Musgrave said...

Andrew: you're right. And the result will be that fewer people will look at Mike Norman Economics, thus proving that Darwin's natural selection idea was right.

Matt Franko said...

This is the literal:

“say evolution occurs by natural selection, it looks scientific compared with saying God created everything. Now they say natural selection created everything,“

This is the figurative:

“there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; 4Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.” 2 Thess

“Temple” here in English from the Greek ‘naos’ which is an abstract term meaning ‘locus of information’ ie the academe ie it’s not a building/structure...

Already Happened approx 1860 when the academe went full Darwin... causing the scientists to leave the academe and start their own...

Now Christendumb has ofc reified the abstraction and fantasizes about rebuilding a structure in Jerusalem and starting WW3...



Matt Franko said...

“His theory is controversial. “. yeah... to idiots...

Matt Franko said...

This shows you how fucked up platonistic “biology” is...

So you have this guy Darwin , comes up with this unscientific Platonistic theory... pre dates periodic table, predates biochemistry... predates the chemical measurements predates creation of the abstract accounting of the human genome.. predates the creation of the IT that enables said accounting... pre dates the whole thing..

Then here the guy 150 years later STILL SAYS “evolution!” in his thing here... UFB...

Andrew Anderson said...

Give it up, Franko; even God implies He Himself had a beginning.

You'd know that if you read the Old Testament (Isaiah) yourself and believed it rather than some man-made, spurious logic such as the necessity for a First Cause.

Not that God having evolved rules out His subsequent Creation of the Universe, and things in it, including Life...

Tom Hickey said...

“His theory is controversial. “. yeah... to idiots...

The article suggests that the mutation theory as the best explanation in evolutonary theory is "controversial" for similar reasons that MMT is "controversial" among economists — professional investment and group think, along with "not discovered here" syndrome.

Tom Hickey said...

@ Andrew

Thanks for the heads up. Link fixed now. Sorry about that.

Here is a clickable link also.

Peter Pan said...

Mutation centered view of evolution is merely a perspective. It's on the same level as 'selfish genes'.

Andrew Anderson said...

Einstein said "Either everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle" but he was wrong since chaos apparently preceded God and therefore still exists outside His Domain.

And it's not blasphemy to point this out since it's clearly implied by Scripture that God Himself evolved and while order can evolve, given enough time, from chaos, nothing can evolve from nothing.

Not that God is on trial but we are. Still, let's know the real God, eh?

Marian Ruccius said...

Peter Pan: yeah, this seems just in line with Dawkins's view, as you point out. Same generation. I like this quotation from Rupert Sheldrake:

"Is DNA a Genetic Program?

However, a mechanistic world view denies animism in all its forms; it denies the existence of the soul and of any non-material organizing principles. Therefore, mechanists have to have some kind of preformationism. At the end of the 19th century, German biologist August Weismann's theory of the germ-plasm revived the idea of preformationism; Weissman's theory placed "determinants," which supposedly gave rise to the organism, inside the embryo. This is the ancestor of the present idea of genetic programming, which constitutes another resurgence of preformationism in a modern guise.

As we will see, this model does not work very well. The genetic program is assumed to be identical with DNA, the genetic chemical. The genetic information is coded in DNA and this code forms the genetic program. But such a leap requires projecting onto DNA properties that it does not actually possess. We know what, DNA does: it codes for proteins; it codes for the sequence of amino acids which form proteins. However, there is a big difference between coding for the structure of a protein-a chemical constituent of the organism-and programming the development of an entire organism. It is the difference between making bricks and building a house out of the bricks. You need the bricks to build the house. If you have defective bricks, the house will be defective. But the plan of the house is not contained in the bricks, or the wires, or the beams, or cement.

Analogously, DNA only codes for the materials from which the body is constructed: the enzymes, the structural proteins, and so forth. There is no evidence that it also codes for the plan, the form, the morphology of the body. To see this more clearly, think of your arms and legs. The form of the arms and legs is different; it's obvious that they have a different shape from each other. Yet the chemicals in the arms and legs are identical. The muscles are the same, the nerve cells are the same, the skin cells are the same, and the DNA is the same in all the cells of the arms and legs. In fact, the DNA is the same in all the cells of the body. DNA alone cannot explain the difference inform; something else is necessary to explain form."

Peter Pan said...

What we know of the development of embryos, or of the sex determination system, is that many events occur that are co-dependent. The action of one enzyme is influenced by the presence of another at a given point in time. We think of sex as binary, yet its determination is a cascade of events along a spectrum of possible outcomes. Our physical form is a blend.