Well, smoking kills. Just look what it did to them.

Well, smoking kills. Just look what it did to them.

The extra O2 would certainly make the atmosphere more volatile though.

If I recall correctly, the Carboniferous period started around 1500 ppm, but during the late Carboniferous, levels had dropped to about 350 ppm. Today's level is around 380-400 ppm.

It's always fun to watch all those Jurassic Park and ask yourself "How the heck is something that huge breathing?" It would be like a sea-level dweller hopping up to Macchu Picchu and doing a few sprints.

So it seems that the Dino's died of suffocation strictly speaking scientifically.

Less o2 and less co2.

There is still genetic material and there are chromosomes in prokaryotes. Nucleus is not needed to have DNA.

I did post about endosymbiosis further up and about colonial organisms.

Doesn't this beg the question? Endosymbiosis is a theory regarding eukaryotic cells right? Eukaryotes are multicellular organisms. I'm talking about the first. At some point you have to go from a one celled organism to a multicelled organism. Where did the gene changes originate to make that leap if there were no genes to pass on?

Doesn't this beg the question? Endosymbiosis is a theory regarding eukaryotic cells right? Eukaryotes are multicellular organisms. I'm talking about the first. At some point you have to go from a one celled organism to a multicelled organism. Where did the gene changes originate to make that leap if there were no genes to pass on?

You better go and give back you phd. only plants contain chlorophyll.

Hey Yeti,

Not everything is under direct control of genes. Its rather like a symphony where individual instruments work together to create the sound. Multicellularity is a rudimentary social group. Obviously there benefits associated with group living -Either in large multicellular organisms like ourselves or even in single-celled organisms. Can you think of any of those benefits that may reinforce cell's disposition to living in a social complex?

As I understand it, the cyanobacteria gave rise to plants, but are not plants, themselves. If that is so, then your statement would be wrong. Can anybody provide further enlightenment on the subject?
Doug

I'm not sure I view that question as relevant. Just because a situation might be beneficial doesn't mean it's going to happen. My life would greatly benefit from winning the lottery (imo) but that doesn't mean I'm going to. The real question is.... how does something become more than the sum of its parts?

The question is very relevant, unlike you winning the lottery, in the natural world survival and reproduction is everything. So how would a colony of cells out-compete single cells in a similar environment? That is the question you should be asking. How colonies of cells for differentiation of cells is pretty well understood. But, the important question is why. Why would these rudimentary social groups, that lead to multicellularity be more beneficial then living alone?

OK - differences of opinion. You and I are going to disagree often- I would guess. I say this because you disagreed with my definition of species. I looked it up in my zoology textbook from college and found my definition was almost exactly the same in meaning. Maybe, you're on the cutting edge of scientific research and the rest of the scientific community hasn't caught up with you yet? I'll answer your question and ask you one also.

I think you'd like me to say that it would be beneficial for cells to exist in groups like it is beneficial for people to live in groups. No doubt people learned to live in groups because they found strength in numbers. Is this the same for cells? You may be guilty of an anthropomorphic logic error there. The difference between people and organic material is that of "mind." Will, intelligence, rational thought. Cells don't think. They can't make a decision to better themselves, we can.

Now, please answer my question. Is it possible for something to be more than the sum of it's parts?

We disagree because you lack knowledge relevant to the field of biology.
This has nothing to do with "cutting edge science" - I really wish you would stop trying to use that as an insult. This is basic biology 101 stuff here that any college student or AP biology student learns about. Just because you are unawares of something hardly makes it cutting edge.



Please clarify your question. In regards to what?

OK - differences of opinion. You and I are going to disagree often- I would guess. I say this because you disagreed with my definition of species. I looked it up in my zoology textbook from college and found my definition was almost exactly the same in meaning. Maybe, you're on the cutting edge of scientific research and the rest of the scientific community hasn't caught up with you yet? I'll answer your question and ask you one also.

I think you'd like me to say that it would be beneficial for cells to exist in groups like it is beneficial for people to live in groups. No doubt people learned to live in groups because they found strength in numbers. Is this the same for cells? You may be guilty of an anthropomorphic logic error there. The difference between people and organic material is that of "mind." Will, intelligence, rational thought. Cells don't think. They can't make a decision to better themselves, we can.

Now, please answer my question. Is it possible for something to be more than the sum of it's parts?

Does the author of a university level science class textbook also lack the knowledge relevant to communicate with you? My definition was the same as the textbook. Anyway, no those are not topics covered in biology 101, or maybe they are; IDK. But that's beside the point. My whole argument was that we could discuss this topic using general terms and definitions - like my definition of species. Yes, you could nit-pick it to death; or we could make plain and simple comments based on that general definition.

The species must be regarded as an interbreeding population made up of individuals of common descent and sharing intergrading characteristics.

A group of closely related organisms capable of reproducing

As for my question; relate it to anything you want. Is it possible for anything to be more than the sum of it's parts?

Raise them in different environments for generations and then bring them back together at the end. When she brought them back together the two populations no longer reproduced. By your definition "Closely related organisms who interbreed" -This is two new species.

Certainly it is possible. The brain (all brains not just humans) are a great example of this.

OK. If this it true then maybe by definition speciation has been observed and I was wrong. My contention all along is that we haven't seen evolution according to the old school definition. What your talking about is a new population of fruit flies, or resistant bacteria. I'm talking about something entirely new like the difference between a frog and a bat. They both eat insects but they couldn't be more different. Anyway, I know that you would respond that is not what evolution is. True, but 90% of the world thinks it is. (I'm guessing)

Anyway thanks for answering the question. Are you saying the brain because it's an organ, but we use it for thinking? Please explain.

OK. If this it true then maybe by definition speciation has been observed and I was wrong. My contention all along is that we haven't seen evolution according to the old school definition. What your talking about is a new population of fruit flies, or resistant bacteria. I'm talking about something entirely new like the difference between a frog and a bat. They both eat insects but they couldn't be more different. Anyway, I know that you would respond that is not what evolution is. True, but 90% of the world thinks it is. (I'm guessing)

Lets pretend for a moment, we have some make believe planet (name it whatever you like). And on this planet lives a species (an ancestor to all life on the planet) we will call Bobs. The happy little black dots.


Now there is one population of Bobs, but after some amount of time something happens that causes the population to be split in half and these two new populations are reproductively isolated from each other. After some amount of time, the changes to each population (through differing selection pressures) eventually becomes so great that we call them different species; Jims and Jons.


After sometime both of these new species produce more (from left to right; Sams, Sallys, Steves, Sarahs, and Stephs)


And more(Petes, Pauls, Zachs, Rons, Robs, Rays)


Now something I forgot to include is some kind of time scale, so the farther down the page a dot or node is the later in this planets geological time it occurs.

This branching we see is an emergent property of the relationships of 'dots' in the system. We can assign arbitrary taxonomic names to nonarbitrary groupings within the tree (nested sets if you will).

Take for instance the first split from the Bobs. We have the Jims and Jons. We can call them Kingdoms, Domains, Super Cool Color Groups, whatever you want, the name is not important. What is important is that each group and all of its descendent's share some common features.

From each of these groups (Jims and Jons) arise even more groups. Again we can assign whatever name we wish (phyla for instance), the name is not important, but again the important part is that all the ancestors of the Sams, Sallys, Steves, Sarahs, and Stephs have some features common to the groups, our nested sets again.

So you ask why don't we see phyla being created still? In our example what we call phyla arose at the time of the Sams, Sallys, Steves, Sarahs, and Stephs. For more groups to arise, we would need the Jims and Jons to have another divergence. The problem is if our Jims and Jons are extinct how can that happen? Anything that arises from the Sams, Sallys, Steves, Sarahs, and Stephs will belong to one of those phyla, not a new phyla, no matter the morphological extremity. This is because, while their descendants may gain new features, these features will not be shared amongst the higher group. In other words, there is no way to travel to the past and create new forms at the level of the Sams, Sallys, Steves, Sarahs, and Stephs.

Something else you appear to be hung up on is similarity in ancestry. It can get pretty confusing to think about. But your vertebrate/invertebrate example shows that your not quite grasping it yet. Your question is why do not new vertebrates arise from invertebrates?

To answer the question, you need to first relieve yourself of the very generalized terms. Lets change your question around a little bit so that it makes more sense. Lets look at the Superphylum Deuterostome. And we can rephrase your question why can't chordates or animals with notochords arise from hemichordates (animals with primitive notochords).

After looking over the example above, the answer should come to you, but just in case lets go over it. If today, we found a hemichordate that had evolved a fully functional notochord, would that be a new phyla? The answer is no. Because this newly evolved species, is an ancestor too the original hemichordate. In other words, because it is a descendant within the group hemichordata, it cannot ever 'leave' that grouping.

There is no rule that says, a hemichordate evolving a notochord is impossible though, but as someone pointed out, billions of years of evolution have evolved living lineages that are very specialized in niches. Its like asking why don't dogs evolve into something squirrel like? Because squirrels already fill a particular niche, the chance that dogs could displace them would require some pretty astronomical happenings. And if a new niche opened up similar to one that squirrels already fill, then squirrels would likely be the best candidate to fill the niche.

This is really interesting stuff that can really be seen in the evolution of island biota.

Anyway thanks for answering the question. Are you saying the brain because it's an organ, but we use it for thinking? Please explain.

The brain is a collection of neurons -Which work by playing with chemical equilibria. The changes to varying groups of equilibria at certain times allows for emergent properties to occur, like emotion or memory. Termite mounds would be another example.

Another good example would be birds flocking. Which each bird or part, has a simple set of rules. The outcome of all of these rules acting together is very complex behavior much more than just what it's parts are capable of.

Are you familiar with systems theory at all?

Just so we all understand what you're talking about: what is "the old school definition" you refer to?
Doug

As I understand it, the cyanobacteria gave rise to plants, but are not plants, themselves. If that is so, then your statement would be wrong. Can anybody provide further enlightenment on the subject?
Doug

I posted it earlier. Maybe another thread? It's the one that says evolution is the process by which all life that we know on this planet evolved from simpler organisms into more complex ones without the aid of a Supreme Creator. But more specifically, I was talking about the colloquial (if I may use that term) definition, or rather understanding; something along the lines of people evolving from monkeys or apes. I'm basically saying that most people (in this society anyway) don't really understand what evolution is. They think it's new animals being created. That's really not the case. At least it's not from our perspective anyway.

With this in mind, I think the debate should be on origins; not creation verses evolution.

As I recall, evolution doesn't mention a "Supreme Creator" one way or the other. Because evolution is possible with or without a "Supreme Creator," the "Supreme Creator" is irrelevant to the process.

Evolution does not disprove God: it doesn't say anything about God. Neither does God (if there is one) disprove evolution. The two simply don't need each other.

Back to my point about the possibility of something being greater than the sum of its parts. I used this term because I remember some debates in philosophy about the materialist philosophy. One of my science professors claimed to be a materialist. By definition a materialist (sometimes confused with an evolutionist) is someone who believes that they are nothing more than the sum of their parts; ie. there is no "spirit" in a person.

This led me to think about evolutionary theory in general. Is it possible for an organism to become more than the some of its parts? Copasetic said that the brain was an example of this. At first glance that seems sound. But, a brain is more than a collection of neurons using chemical means to synthesize thoughts, and so forth. There's matter, fluids, blood supply; and much of the brain we don't know. But even if we fully understood the brain - we could still say that the brain does what it was designed to do. Or the evolutionist would say it does what evolution has shaped it to do. Does it do more than what it does? Maybe, it can do more than we currently think it does.


I don't think it's possible for a single organism to be more than the sum of its parts. If we take this all the way back to the beginning of evolution then there's a problem. At some point single celled organisms had to evolve past their capablity to pass on traits to their offspring and become more than the sum of their parts to evolve into multicelled organisms. There is just no logical way of explaining how that could happen according to my knowledge.

It's like abiogenesis. Everyone, including skeptics and scientific evolutionists would have to agree that abiogenesis would be an extremely unlikely event if it's even possible at all. I heard someone once liken it to a chimp randomly pounding letters on a keyboard. Could the chimp produce any one of the works of Shakespeare? Even if you had millions of years to allow that chimp to pound on the keyboard, what's the likelyhood that any of the works of shakespeare could be produced? Almost none.

This is one of the main issues I have with scientific evolution. They take extremely unlikely events and treat them as if they could happen easily. If I've learned anything about life at all it is that nothing worthwhile is easy.

Your chimp analogy is flawed. Because we are talking about one group of chimps with only 1 million years (a blink of the eye in cosmic time). What if we had a billion billion billion chimps? On a billion billion worlds? In a billion galaxies? With 14 billion years?

I did some calculations and tried to scan and post them but had difficulty. I guess a .gif file is not ok? I was attempting to demonstrate how a complex event like abiogenesis quickly becomes a near zero event - even with favorable judgments for weighting factors of the equation. Of course critics of the formula will say that the weights assigned to events are subjective. That's why I did it with .9 probabilites.

No, even that analogy is flawed. It's like taking a billion chimps and having them type a few letters at a time. If any of the chimps get the first word right, or even the first letter, then that part gets kept, all the other parts get thrown out, and then the billion chimps get to type the next few letters and try to get the next word. That's the beauty of evolution--it's a process that builds upon itself. It doesn't have to happen all at once.

Click to view attachment

We can speak of abiogenesis and its probability on this planet. Using Bayes theorum for conditional probabilities you can set up your own probability rating for events leading to abiogenesis. I performed some simple calculations assigning huge probabilities in favor of abiogenesis with only four conditional variables and received a probability of 25%. Imagine if you took the time to add in 100 variables or even a thousand variable. You can quickly see just how improbable abiogenesis becomes.

My attachment is not working. I'll see if I can find a link on the internet.

[edit] Definition
Let be a probability space, and let be a random variable, defined as a measurable function from Ω to its state space Then a regular conditional probability is defined as a function called a "transition probability", where ν(x,A) is a valid probability measure (in its second argument) on for all and a measurable function in E (in its first argument) for all such that for all and all [1]


To express this in our more familiar notation:


where i.e. the topological support of the pushforward measure As can be seen from the integral above, the value of ν for points x outside the support of the random variable is meaningless; its significance as a conditional probability is strictly limited to the support of T.

The measurable space is said to have the regular conditional probability property if for all probability measures on all random variables on admit a regular conditional probability. A Radon space, in particular, has this property: the underlying measurable space of any standard probability space is Radon (if its topology is chosen appropriately).

Source: Wikipedia.

I did some calculations and tried to scan and post them but had difficulty. I guess a .gif file is not ok? I was attempting to demonstrate how a complex event like abiogenesis quickly becomes a near zero event - even with favorable judgments for weighting factors of the equation. Of course critics of the formula will say that the weights assigned to events are subjective. That's why I did it with .9 probabilites.

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/abiogenesis.html

You're still thinking about it as if we went straight from inanimate matter to human beings. You have to think of every single step along the path as a separate probability.

To respond to Cope's comments on the monkey. The odd are 1 in about 15 billion- just for the word Hamlet.
http://www.probabilitytheory.info/topics/bridge_monkeys.htm

Wrong! WrongO! Wrongomatic! Wrongish! I'm not making that leap in logic. Since you can't see my calculations, that screws things up abit. But no, I'm simply addressing the whole concept of life from non-life. I'm even allowing nucleic and amino acids as a given in my equations. And true, we can't know all the factors involved, but even when you plug in a few of the variables that we do know you see the numerical tendency. I'm assigning a probability to the primodial soup as .9 also as a given - pretty much. I'm assuming that the primordial soup exists as science claims - that conditions were just right to allow for the formation of life from non-life. Since this has never been replicated even under controlled situations, and since the whole environmental conditions are largely an unknown, we're not even sure if it's possible. To say that I think or approach this issue as going straight from inanimate matter to human beings is preposterous. You've got to give me more credit than that.

This question appears regularly in the question file, so let's take a shot at it.

In nature, living things evolve through changes in their DNA. In an animal like a chicken, DNA from a male sperm cell and a female ovum meet and combine to form a zygote -- the first cell of a new baby chicken. This first cell divides innumerable times to form all of the cells of the complete animal. In any animal, every cell contains exactly the same DNA, and that DNA comes from the zygote.

Chickens evolved from non-chickens through small changes caused by the mixing of male and female DNA or by mutations to the DNA that produced the zygote. These changes and mutations only have an effect at the point where a new zygote is created. That is, two non-chickens mated and the DNA in their new zygote contained the mutation(s) that produced the first true chicken. That one zygote cell divided to produce the first true chicken.

Prior to that first true chicken zygote, there were only non-chickens. The zygote cell is the only place where DNA mutations could produce a new animal, and the zygote cell is housed in the chicken's egg. So, the egg must have come first.

I left it all at work. I did it all by hand since I dont have any math software, and scanned it. So, it'll have to wait. But since Cope is here and has his ears on; and since he seems to be the evolution big-hitter now that Cimber's gone. I have a couple of things.

In my research I've come across a number of 256 genes as being the minimum number required by science to constitute the most basic form of life - more than once. Think for a minute about the odds of getting 256 genes in a multicelled organism when there were nothing but single celled organisms floating around the primordial soup at some point. How can you explain that leap? There's no gene frequency for evolution to work on! So that point from http://mikeschuler.web.aplus.net/id10.html doesn't seem so far fetched after all. His point is that the events may exist but they are definitely not evolution.

Lastly, Mr. Cope. Would you be so kind as to give us your viewpoint on a simple childhood riddle?

Which came first; the chicken or the egg?

Maybe I was being too vague. Try to think about this Yeti. Think about a unicellular organism and a multicellular colony of 20 cells. What is the differences between them (that is what is the difference between multicellular organism and unicellular organism)? What do they need to survive? What do they excel at in their environments? How could one out-compete the other?

Maybe it would be easier using real life examples compare something like Chlamydomonas which are flagellated unicellular algae to something like the Volvox.

Would any evolutionists out there care to elaborate on the question:

Which came first the chicken or the egg?

the answer from how stuff works:
In other words, eggs and chickens evolved over a period of time. We started with reproductive bacteria or viruses and moved up from there.

Cheers,
SQLserver
PS- guess who has an awesome new avatar?

Hocus pocus ala kazam. Before the first egg there were only non-chickens! Sorry, I couldn't resist. Thanks for responding Sql. Only one link this time!? I should be flattered - it's a tough question to answer from the evolutionary standpoint. Congrats on your new avatar - I wish I could find one I like!

SQL's answer is very appropriate. It is important to note however, that while before there chickens there were "non-chickens" this does not mean it was a jump from something like a lizard to a chicken. The non-chicken in this case would be better describe as something "almost, but not quite-chicken".

Please see my post above. By non-chickens it is not meant that it was something vastly different to chickens -Non-chickens in this case are almost chickens. In fact -the line that divides between "species" is often so fine, I doubt you would know the difference between the ancestor and the chicken (based on morphology alone that is).