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Author | Topic: How do you define the word Evolution? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Evolution is the process of evolving. To evolve is to gradually change.
Biological evolution is a change in an allele frequency of a population. Why would you need 90 words?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Obviously we don't. I was and am hoping that some that hold the concept of evolution to be false would post their definition. understood, but it seems like it'd be like raising your hand in the classroom when you're unsure of the answer....people just don't do that.
When a descendant’s inheritable characteristics differ from those of its parent(s). That’s just a mutation and not evolution
To me, any gene that changes from parent to offspring represents evolution to some degree regardless of what or where that gene is. And why must there be a change in frequency? I have seen that phrase several times and have yet to understand it. It has to be a change in frequency because an individual cannot evolve. It is something that happens to a population. Say 50% of a population has one allele and the other 50% has another. After some time if the ratio of that allele changes to 51% and 49%, then the frequency of that allele has changed and the population is said to have evolved. ABE: If the population size is 100 individuals, in the case above, only one individual had a change in its allele. That individual did not evolve, it had a mutation and that mutation was the reason that the one allele became more frequent and the population evolved. This message has been edited by Catholic Scientist, 11-16-2005 12:49 PM
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
double post
This message has been edited by Catholic Scientist, 11-16-2005 12:45 PM
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
For no apparent reason a person with green eyes is born from mother and father with blue eyes. You would call that a mutation. I say there has been some amount of evolution. Well, the apparent reason would be that the green eyes are a mutation, an allele of the blue eyes. Evolution is mutation but on the size scale of an entire popualtion, on the individual scale it is mutation.
Lets say the blue eyes spread to that persons 3 children, then to the 9 granchildren, then the 27 of the next generation then the 100 of the next, etc, etc. As what point does this change from a mutation to evolution? Each step would be considered evolution because the frequency of the green eye allele has changed with each generation. In the real world the numbers aren't so well defined so everything is based on statistics, i.e. allele frequencies.
Why do you select that point? Because that is what I was taught in a 100 level college biology course on evolution.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
The point to make, however, is that mutation is not the be-all and end-all of evolution. Yes, that definition was not complete, i mean, it was not the whole definition.
The occurrence of a new allele in a population (thro' mutation in one individual) would, technically, change the allele frequencies of that gene in the population; albeit to the tiniest extent. Yes, I guess technically, mutation is evolution; its just on an idividual level (but individuals don't evolve). The problem is that it totally leaves out the other half of evolution, natural selection. But, if one considers genetic drift to be evolution, couldn't one consider a mutation to be genetic drift on the individual level? I'm not sure.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
In sexually reproducing entities (animal, plant, and anything else) the point of evolution is conception. Conception is the point of mutation, not evolution. Multiple mutations results in variation of the population, not every individual is the same but some of them are. You can use statistics to calculate the probability that an individual will be of a certain variation. When selection causes a variation to be more or less favorable, the probability that an individual will be of that variation changes. It is this change in that probability that is defined as evolution. You can quantize the evolutionary change down to the individual level, but then that change will fall into a different definition . mutation.
...after conception, there can be no further evolution of that individual. You gotta stop thinking of evolution on the individual level.
Question, how is asexual evolution manifested? I don’t really know, but my guess would be that mutation occurs during the anaphase of mitosis. I don’t think there’s any recombination in mitosis so I’d have to research that and don’t have the time.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
The individulal entity does not exist until the union of sperm and egg is complete. CS referred to the anaphase of mitosis and that is real close. I think you're confused or misusing some words. Mitosis is for asexualy reproduction. With a sperm and egg its meiosis.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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Please consider this scenario: Some aliens want to invade earth and colonise it, but first they need to eradicate all the humans, so they spray a toxin around that's designed to kill humans. All the humans die except for people with red hair - it so happens that redheads have some lucky variation in their genetic make-up that allows them to withstand the toxin, and they survive. Over time, the redheads multiply in number to the point where the aliens feel the need to re-apply the toxin. But to the aliens dismay, the second application of the toxin has no effect - because the redheads are immune to the toxin. The aliens conclude that the humans have become "resistant" to the toxin, which is a bit of a misnomer because the redheads didn't "become" resistant to the toxin - they were always resistant to the toxin. Is this an example of (human) evolution? Individuals don't evolve, populations do. The frequency of the red-headed alleles in that population changed, so that population evolved - but none of the individuals evolved.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Creationism and intelligence wins again. Wins what? Evolution is winning the science of Biology...
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
The old fashioned methods of domestic breeding are sufficient to make the point It is sufficient to make the point, yes, but the point is insufficient to explain all the observations. The way breeding works is just one way, it doesn't explain how all of evolution occurs.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
the point that ultimately evolution in the wild must eventually run out of genetic diversity just as traditional domestic breeding also does That point is not true though.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
The Pedantry Mob has been having at the idea of the Second Law and since I'm interested in the facts and could not care less about such nitpicking distinctions I have substituted "entropy" as an attempt to say what I mean: LOSS rather than GAIN in all kinds of physical and biological systems. That would prevent growth. I've witnessed growing; the above cannot be correct. ABE: In Message 339, you wrote:
the point is that it does amount to a coherent model that could be applied. That's fine, but even Last Thursdayism amounts to a coherent model that could be applied. So you're not really saying much, or anything really. Edited by New Cat's Eye, : No reason given.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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Have a refrigerator in your house? Where do all of those low entropy ice cubes come from? Ice is a result of The Fall... Before The Fall, there was no ice. Everything was all warm and happy.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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That depends on your definition of evolution. The bottom line is, nothing in applied biology depends on the theory that all life evolved from a common ancestor. You have no doubt been conditioned to believe that is does. Take away Darwin and said theory and applied biology won't notice the difference. I think what you're getting at stems from the fact that applied biology is basically really complex chemistry and the evolution of populations is on a more macro-scale than that. The Theory of Evolution can be used in applied biology, but not all of applied biology depends on it.
And be aware that a major part of said conditioning involves the gratuitous, ubiquitous and misleading use of the the word, "evolution" and it's variations. No, no, no... you don't get to do that. The way biologists are using the word evolution is the way it should be defined. You don't get to say that it really means something else.
Modern biology has been saturated with this loaded word and it's effect is to create the illusion that evolution and biology are inseparable. The unsuspecting biology student sees and hears the "evo" word so often that pretty soon he starts to believe Dobzhansky's lie that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. But it's a big con. The truth of the matter is, if you get rid of the word "evolution", you're left with biology - 100% intact and ready to go. That's not true. The science of Biology does depend on the Theory of Evolution. It explains so much and it is very useful. Biology cannot still be 100% without it.
Theorising about the origins of life is not applied science - it's not even science! Okay, you're talking about "all life evolved from a common ancestor". That is not the Theory of Evolution. A Last Universal Common Ancestor of all of modern life is a particular ramification of an application of the Theory of Evolution that is based on factual data, but it isn't something that has a conclusive consensus.
It's nothing more than a useless historical curiosity (unless you're an atheist - then it becomes all-important theology). Wait, then why are you talking about it? What other useless things do you talk about a lot?
How's this as an example of supreme irony: Evolutions often use the mantra that creation/intelligent design isn't science, but they seem blissfully unaware that the theory that all life evolved from a common ancestor isn't science either, as it cannot be verified by observation and experiment. That was cute.
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