The Common Ancestor?

Right. This is an indispensable feature of scientific discourse. A lot of explanation in science has to deal with things and ideas that are being explained for the first time, and to discuss new things and ideas coherently, you must either invent new words, or use existing words in "specialized" ways. (A common strategy in biology is to use various kinds of abbreviations for phrasal expressions.)An equally indispensable feature of this kind of usage is that the person who is doing the explaining always provides the specific definition for the specialized terms that are needed in a given discussion; you'll always see statements near the beginning of an article, lecture or book chapter like: "In what follows, I use the term ... to mean..."; "For purposes of this discussion, we introduce the term ... to mean..."; and similar expressions.When it's done correctly, the specialized terms are always defined with reference to objective observables, or to unambiguous logical distinctions, so that the audience (readers or listeners) can reasonably confirm that they correctly understand the intended meaning of the writer/speaker, and these kinds of "ad hoc" meaning/usage are strictly adhered to throughout the discussion. (When it's not done correctly, peer review can be counted on to spot the errors, and will not fail to expose them.)

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autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

If you are given samples of DNA from 4 different critters without telling what those critters were, how would you determine what they are?

Partly this depends if you mean actual DNA or DNA sequences, either way the main methodology would be the same but you would need to sequence the actual DNA first.Then put those sequences into the BLAST program at NCBI that would find matching DNA sequences if they were in the genbank database. You could also run it against sequenced proteins in case the genes weren't present in the database.Even if an exact match for your sequence didn't come up the chances are it would identify homologues from several other species, and the similarity of those matches would start to give you some indication of what sort of animal you were looking for.*ABE*One caveat is that this approach depends rather on what type of DNA you have, if it is protein coding your chances are better for making an ID than if it is some homogenous string of dinucleotide repeats.*/ABE*TTFN,WKEdited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

You could sequence the samples and compare the genes (and non-gene portions) to published sequences of various critters. If you found genes coding for, say, hemoglobin, you would know that that sample wasn't from a elm tree or a Pseudomonas, but I think you would need an actual library of sequences to get down to the Family or Genus level of identification.

I agree.. what we need to get across is that the infromation in DNA is intrinsic to the chemistry of the molecule itself, rather than abstract. With computer code, we can map the symbols to functions of a processor in what fashion we want. As long as the programmer and the processor designer are using the same assumptions, the abstract relationship itself doesn't matter. With DNA, and chemsitry in general, the meaning is instrinsic to the molecule. If Gene A codes fro Proteins W and X, it cannot be redefined as coding for Protiens Y and Z. The chemsitry just doesn't work.Abstract information is the prduct of an intelligent agent. Intrinsic information might be, or might not.Edited by Strongbow, : No reason given.

Okay let me ask this another way. What do you need beside a DNA sample to identify 4 different critters in a blind study?Nij writes in another topic:Mind is an abstract entityStrongbow writes here:Abstract information is the product of an intelligent agentIf life does not equate to abstract then why does one think that humans are the exception?Either there is no intelligent factor involved or there is, you can't have it both ways.Edited by barbara, : No reason given.

If you fed rats methanol and exposed them to light they would go blind. Does this mean that methanol carries the information for blindness?

DNA is not an abstraction. If we replaced the DNA molecule with a very tiny piece of ticker tape with letters typed on it we would no longer have a viable cell. However, with abstract human language we can change the physical state of the letters in any medium and still convey the same abstract information.For DNA it is the chemistry that matters. This is not so with abstract information created by intelligent species like our species.

You may want to include the rest of my statement: So one can easily consider the mind to be an intrinsic entity as well, depending on how it is being considered. There is the mind as a real set of objects and events, and then there is the mind as an abstract idea.There really isn't an argument there. Nowhere is it stated by either of us that the general property of being alive gave rise to the abstractness; it is the property of having an intelligent mind which gives rise to that abstractness, because the "real" mind results in that intelligence and that intelligence creates the idea of the mind.So we are not "having it both ways". It is our own human intelligence that created the abstract mind, not some fancy space-fairy.Edited by Nij, : Correct quote.
Fix wording to something less gibberishy.

I certainly wouldn't claim that humans were an exception. I don't think there is any compelling evidence that we display any exceptional unique trait that isn't present in some degree in our primate relatives, including intelligence, tool use, communication, theory of mind etc ....I'm not sure what contradiction you saw in Nij and Strongbow's statements. There is compelling evidence for a role for intelligent agency in the design of human made constructs, we have extensive experience of human design approaches and people who can explain their design rationale. We have no such evidence for any such role for intelligent agency in the genomes of living organisms. The mechanisms we do know of which effect changes on such genomes are naturalistic and stochastic.Why can't it be one of both ways in different situations?TTFN,WK

Lions and tigers in nature live in different environments. Humans created an environment for these two to mate. You almost have leave out any species that we had a affect on to get an accurate picture of the past, but would there be any left to help solve it?Humans have altered global landscapes which alter ecosystems which affect changes to occur in species. Everything we touch or come in contact with we create cause and affect in other life forms.

yes,I believe it ,do you think human beings have something in common with apps.Edited by AdminModulous, : No reason given.

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I like whale snot

you cant prove a fossil had any kids, so you can not prove evolution

I once tried to get two fossils to breed, but it was like getting spunk from a stone.(Sorry everyone. It was the best I could think of.
Hopefully it will point CN towards his mistake.)Edited by Panda, : apology.