Evolution: A new theory (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, October 13, 2012, 14:20 (4426 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: This is a strange new theory saying that single celled organisms when they clumped together, patterned themselves on inorganic material patterns:-"As Newman describes in his article, this new perspective provides natural interpretations for puzzling aspects of the early evolution of the animals, including the "explosive" rise of complex body forms between 540 and 640 million years ago and the failure to add new motifs since that time."-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121011141443.htm-Here is another quote: "These developmental motifs are strikingly similar to the forms assumed by nonliving condensed, chemically active, viscoelastic materials when they are organized by relevant physical forces and effects, although the mechanisms that generate the motifs in living embryos are typically much more complex. Newman proposes that the ancestors of the present-day animals acquired these forms when ancient single-celled organisms came to reside in multicellular clusters and physical processes relevant to matter at this new (for cellular life) spatial scale were immediately mobilized."-I've read this review a couple of times, and still don't know what it's getting at ... possibly the reviewer's fault, though probably mine. Twice in the above passage he refers to relevance without saying in what way these forces/processes are relevant. He concedes that living embryos are much more complex than nonliving materials, and so even if the "motifs" are strikingly similar, it's presumably the differences (or extra complexities) that make the difference, so to speak. Why, then, are similarities to nonliving forms important to our understanding of evolution and speciation? And would evolution have been possible if physical processes hadn't been mobilized? And how does all this explain the Cambrian Explosion? David, do you understand what it's all about? Or is not worth the effort to understand?