Triskadecamus,
If I’m understanding you correctly, then you beleive “punctuated equillibrium”, causing mutations was evolution?
If so Has there ever been documentation of a beneficial mutation?
Also, what is the stance of “puctuated equillibrium” on issues like ozone gases, the speed of light and radiometric equillibrium? Do they belive that these rates have also been punctuated?
Jedi-667
Please, please, please pick up a basic science textbook.
I don’t claim to speak for Triskadecamus, but if I remember correctly, I can think of two beneficial mutations:
Sickle-cell anemia, deadly in its homozygotic form, is protection against malaria for its carriers. So of their children will turn out anemic, and probably die; others will turn out non-anemic, and vulnerable to malaria; must will turn out to be sickle-cell carriers, healthy and highly resistant to the malaria parasite.
Blue eyes have been suggested as a mutation giving people better low-light vision. This explains their predominance in the far North, where nights are long. I don’t know if it’s been proven that blue eyes are a mutation, though.
Nothing I write about any person or group should be applied to a larger group.
- Boris Badenov
David said: (for the third time)
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Please, please, please pick up a basic science textbook.[/
[QUOTE]
Do they have one in comic book form? It seems to me that a text book might be a bit too advanced for our new friend.
This space for rent.
Jedi says:
No, that is related to what I said only in that it uses similar words. What I said was that mutation is an ordinary occurrence in the replicate processes of living things, and most of those replications are of no importance at all. The punctuated equilibrium part involves how a large number of individuals with an accumulation of non-identical genome variations which comprise a species might undergo a relatively sudden change in environment which dramatically favor only a small number of its total population. In such a case, the cumulative changes, which have occurred, might have resulted in a new species, in some parts of the range of the prior population.
Many thousands of pages of documentation have been published, in fact. Hundreds of thousands of pages, some in very technical terms, some in popularized vocabulary. Among the many people who have studied the genomes of living species there have been many recent discoveries that have altered the taxonomy of most of the living things on earth. In many cases, it is the beneficial and “neutral” mutations, which are the best evidence of relatedness among differing species.
For a recent overview, I recommend Science Magazine, published by the National Association for the Advancement of Science, in last week’s issue. There is a very long article on the emerging data in the field of molecular DNA taxonomy, and the changes it is bringing about in the “Tree of Life.”
Punctuated equilibrium is a descriptive designation of a possible mechanism by which speciation may have taken place. It is not a club, or a sect, with a dogma, or political agenda. The speed of light is a physical constant of the universe, as far as I know, and I have no clue what you mean by “radiometric equillibrium.” The “they” you refer are a fiction of your desire to confront some nebulous force for the overthrow of your philosophy. Theories are part of a method, called science. They are not holy writ, nor articles of faith, merely tools to investigate things.
If it turns out, as well it might, that there is some fundamental flaw in the concept of punctuated equilibrium as an explanation of the mechanism of speciation, then it will be altered, or perhaps discarded, and another hypothesis will be examined.
<p align=“center”>Tris</p>
Okay, you guys have done beautiful jobs explaining this, but I am going to do it in baby talk and see if that helps.
Okay.
Mutations happen all the time. Usually, they are neither good nor bad, and they neither die out nor spread to everybody.
For example, one out of every hundred (1%) of the human population lack a certain protein receptor on their cells. This dosen’t hurt them, because all humans have
an almost perfectly redundant receptor that can do the same job. (Your DNA is full of back-up genes.) Now, this trait, this missing receptor, has been present for about 100,000 years, neither dieing out nor becoming widespread, because it dosen’t hurt and it dosen’t help.
Now, the plot thickens. Sometime this century a virus mutated. It used to affect apes, but now, it affects humans. It is called HIV. (This is where it gets neat) People without this protien receptor cannot get HIV. The redundant receptor is not exactly the same, and ignores the virus.
Luckily, HIV’s somewhat tedious method of transmission has made it less of a threat, so let’s move this conversation into what-if land. HIV could have been air-bourne, and faster acting. If so, all of humanity may well have died out except for the 1% with this mutation. This mutation, which had previously been neither good nor bad is suddenly very, very good. That trait would have gone from being present in 1% of the population to 100% of the population much too quickly for the fossil record to record the transition, and without any supernatural intervention.
This is admitidlly an extreme example, but I think sometimes people need things painted in bold strokes first, before they explore the subtleties of an issue.
The AIDS gene I refer to is discussed in Discover Magazine, June 1997. “Immune to a Plauge” Go to www.discover.com and plug all that in to their archive engine and you will find it.
friend manda jo,
thanks for the link
“don’t get strung out by the way that i look, don’t judge a book by it’s cover” (tim curry as dr. franknfurter in rhps)
Wally asked about my request that Jedi get a science book:
Actually, I do think I have one somewhere on my bookshelves. It’s like a cartoon guide to Darwin (not one of the “Cartoon Guide” series – this was written earlier than that). Found it at the used bookstore and couldn’t resist.
Oh, goodie! I want a copy of the panel where Huxley trounces the Bishop! 
Poly, was it Wilberforce’s wife that said this about evolution?
“Let us pray that it is not true. And if it is, that it not become widely known.”
I think it was Mrs. Bish but I’m not sure.
This space for rent.
Wally, since you asked me directly, I’ll violate board protocol and respond that while I’ve heard it quoted (and chuckled), I’m not sure who it’s attributed to. Anybody?
Polycarp wrote:
That was the issue drawn by Jack Kirby, right? Man, you could almost hear the Bishop’s jaw crack when Huxley punched him!
(Although I personally feel that drawing the common chimp/human ancestor firing energy blasts from his fingertips at a saber-toothed tiger was going a BIT overboard in the artistic license department.)
Found it. It’s called Darwin for Beginners, and it’s by Jonathan Miller & Borin Van Loon.
It’s not quite a comic book, but it has lots of pictures.
What’s the name of the guy who occasionally draws a two-page comic strip for Discover magazine? Larry Goniff? Didn’t he also create a comic-book-style science book and on the strength of that, was hired by Discover?
BTW, David B, don’t be so dismissive of comic books. The best ones are just as much a work of literature as A TALE OF TWO CITIES, MOBY DICK or any other work you’d care to name. It ain’t the style, it’s the content that matters.
Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to relive it. Georges Santayana
Whoops! It was WallyM7 who was so dismissive.
I’ll go to my room now.
Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to relive it. Georges Santayana