And I could never understand why.
Both theories leave room for a creator.
There is certainly a trend towards complexity throughout the hostory of life; however, complexity is a by-product of adaptation, not an end in itself.
Yeast and bacteria would be be non complex, where as the kitten and puppy would be higher organisms would have a higher complexity and are generally considered to be more highly evolved. And you’re looking at it from the wrong point of view. “In the beginning” to use it loosely you most likely started with either some amino acids or a very simple one cells organism. One of the first mutations on the path to evolving to higher organisms would be a nuclear envelope. This added several orders of complexity since now you need to evolve messaging pathways from the cytosol to the inside of the nuclear membrane. You become further complex once you start having organisms made up of single cells, suddenly you need to evolve pathways to communicate between cells, a system to supply food to all of the cells, waste/temperature regulation, mechanisms for repair and all that other good stuff that enables us to survive in an enviroment TOTALLY alien to most single celled organisms.
Compairing complexity between relatively similar organisms is more difficult. Take a cat or a giraffe, they will have largely the same organ structures slightly different metabolism pathways based off of diet but the giraffe would have a highly evolved blood pressure regulatory mechanism. (So it doesn’t pass out when it’s head is all the way up, and again so when it lowers it’s head it doesn’t explode) So I’d be willing to say the giraffe is more complex than the cat.
Humans are more compelx than plants. We have central nervous systems, organs and are ambulatory. Plants are more complex than protozoa. And way down at the bottom are viruses and bacteria.
As for living creatures and entropy: To live we have to expend energy to survive. We need continual input of energy to continue basic cellular functions. In a closed system with no input of energy we couldn’t survive. No living creature is selfsustaining, that was the point I think I was trying to make.
Absolutely.
It’s when we get into the Bible as God’s Literal Truth™ that we run into conflict. To people that believe in that, evo/BB is a direct affront to their religion, and even to their very selves. It’s little wonder that they fight it so ferociously.
I’m starting to remember why I HATE evolutionary genetics.
Isn’t the most evolved organism (if you count viruses as organisms) on the planet a bacteria phage? Or if you don’t some single celled organism with a really short replication time? Because they’d undergo the most rounds of selective pressure?
Yet at the same time bacteria isn’t considered all that highly evolved.
Arrg whatever. I’m going back to work.
CRorex, Perhaps I’m not doing justice to the explanation. Visit talkorigins.com, or maybe that inscrutable know-it-all, Darwin’s Finch, who is constantly showing up and explaining natural selection better than me, can help here.
Multi-cells and big brains are just one adaptive strategy. Viruses, hydrothermal organisms, etc. have been around longer, and by many measures are stunningly successful.
I guess you could say that bacteria, and viruses (virii?) for that matter, are the most evolved organisms because their gene pool is constantly changing.
It’s easy for me to forget that “well adapted” and “complex” are not necessarily synonymous. Turtles and crocodiles have hardly changed (that is, hardly evolved) for hundreds of thousands of years because there has been no selective pressure for them to adapt; they’re already well adapted. From what I understand, our remote ancestors survived when the dinosaurs did not, paradoxically because the dinosaurs where much better adapted to their environmental niche; when the environment changed, they couldn’t handle it, whereas the theraspids (that’s what the books said our ancestors were when I was a zoo major) were generalists. In a weird way, you could say that that’s one of our specialties.
By the way, I’m not up on the current theory of whether the dinosaurs became extinct or whether they evolved . . .
That doesn’t quite fit the facts, however. Everything over a certain size (~50kg?) did not survive. Remember that everything alive today has an ancestor that survived the K-T extinction, and they weren’t all generalists. Those ancestors just happened to be lucky enough to be small enough at that time - a time when being small actually gave one an advantage in the new environment.
**
Both: non-avian dinosaurs went extinct. However, one line of dinosaurs became the ancestor to birds (so current phylogenetic thinking goes, anyway).
And there really is no way to quantify “more evolved” - simply producing a large number of offspring per generation, or having a very short time between generations, is itself an adaptation.
Ok, I think I’ve figured what the hell we’re talking about.
I’m looking at evolution as relating to relative complexity of the organism. I’m seeing adapation as a function of complexity, rather than complexity a function of adaption.
So… I keep looking at how the mutations effect the organism. Shifting from expressing one trait to another requires a whole new set of genes and regulatory mechanisms.
Each new layer of regulation and gene expression increases the number of signals and the amount of information the cell must produce and process.
It was easier using differences between species than talking about gene regulation. Which is probably my fault. I’m looking at it from the point of view of going from X organism to X organism + Y trait that enhances it’s survival.
Anyhoo, I think I’ve hijacked this topic enough.
“Darwin’s Finch. . .”
Hmmm…
I’m guessing you know something about genetics, maybe?
About genetics? Not a lot. My “speciality”, such as it is, lies more in paleontology.
As somebody already said, complexity isn’t and end unto itself when it comes to evolution. Often evolution (well, natural selection, a somewhat distinguishable beast) reduces complexity, especially when some complex organ has lots its usefulness (ie: eyes in animals that move into dark caves) and is using up precious resources without providing much benefit so it will be slowly selected against.
Entropy is certainly more general than thermodynamics… or at least, those definitions from thermo are used throughout science.
And while i hate to get back to the original topic, both theories in a general sense deal with how the universe and all it’s inhabitants (both organic and non) could have come to their current status (and how they might arrive at any future state) through strictly naturalistic, physical means requiring no intervention. They are both direct offshoots of the same fundamental argument, and are both relatively new and still-propagating ideas so of course they will be at the forefront of any number of arguments.
Err… I now remember getting bitched out by a TA for the explanation i gave in that first paragraph above… Even if the loss of resources isn’t great enough to cause negative selection, if it provides no benefit, those with deformations or underdevelopments in that organ will be just as successful as those with perfectly good ones, and by random chance (eg: nondeformed family just happened to live on the side of the cave whos food supply was being destroyed by microbes, leaving only the eyeless family) the population with the deformed neutral organ becomes the only representatives of the species in future generations.
thank for you not reading this completely unnecessary clarification
Erm…what?
