Natures wonders: bacteria can spear amoebas (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, August 28, 2017, 19:13 (2426 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: My point is that complexity for the sake of complexity seems pointless unless each complexity serves some kind of purpose, e.g. improving the chances of evading prey, access to food, degree of comfort.

The purpose may be to eventually evolve our brain. Improvement led to 99% of all species disappearing! All other recent primates survived without having human 'improvements'.

DAVID: Your approval of the concept improvement runs into a problem. How do you define improvement and prove the point? The bacteria didn't need improvement yet here we are.

dhw:I would say that, for instance, the subsequent ability to see, hear, walk, swim, fly, talk, build, think complex thoughts, invent machines etc. represented improved means of coping with the environment, communicating, enriching experience of life, but you may not agree.

Again, for survivability, not needed, but yes our life is nicer.

DAVID: As for the brain, it is the most complex object in the universe.

dhw: And in terms of communicating, inventing, creating, destroying, killing, healing, recording, exploring etc. etc., I’d say our methods are an improvement over those of any other species, But again you may disagree.

No, I agree, but not necessary if evolution is driven by survivability. per Darwin. tahat is what I question.

DAVID: As for the whales, the biologic complexities and challenges clearly deny your 'lala land' approach that they simply wandered into the water and changed.

I never said it was simple. But I find it more logical than the belief that a god changed them and then sent them into the water for no particular purpose, except to make them more complex, and then changed them again, and again, and again x 8, although his primary purpose was to create the human brain.

More and more complexity led to the brain, the most complex object of all.

dhw: Neither you nor I know where the borderline exists between adaptation and innovation.
DAVID: Innovation brings new species. Adaptation is finches beaks. Genetic studies show they are all one species.

dhw: Agreed. But when fins change to legs to allow a marine organism to walk on land, or legs change to fins to allow a land animal to live more easily in the water, the end product may be a different species, and then it’s difficult to draw the line between adaptation and innovation.

Major phenotypic changes, as you describe, produces new species. that is the dividing line.