Living cells communicate (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, October 17, 2012, 18:04 (4422 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: I know, David, that you see humans as the culmination of the evolutionary process, and maybe they are. This would suggest that the intelligent cell has now exhausted its innovative repertoire ... whether that is God's plan or not. Alternatively, there may come a time when there are further dramatic environmental upheavals which produce further dramatic innovations. How can we ever know the full potential of the cell or of the mechanisms that govern its behaviour?-DAVID: I don't know how the human body can be really improved further. We don't need more dexterous hands, or stronger muscles. Our brain IQ is improving as civilization develops further. Grow fur during the next ice age? 
Evolution is really very punctuated judging from the fossil record. What can we humans jump to? So I still conclude we are the end point.-The first part of my post was concerned with the process of innovation ... in particular, the possibility that innovations (as well as adaptations) arise through the intelligent cell's ability to exploit new environmental conditions. Obviously this requires permanent heritability, and in view of some scepticism concerning epigenetics, it raises the question of how precise scientists can be in separating genetic and epigenetic factors. May I take it that you have no scientific objections to these speculations? This is an important question for me.-As regards dramatic innovations in the future, science fiction writers are better able to imagine these! The fictional beings that inhabit other planets are usually depicted as very different from us, and this would make perfect sense as it's unlikely that conditions on Planet X would be the same as those on Planet Earth. But of course there is no reason to suppose that a blind evolution (as opposed to your planned version) would necessarily be progressive. A massive upheaval on Earth ... say a collision that totally changed Earth's atmosphere ... could wipe out the human race, and/or new forms of life could emerge that are derived from non-human species. My point is that we have no idea what potential lies in the intelligent cell, and what it produces will depend on the environment, which itself may be subject to a vast range of variations beyond those that have already occurred in Earth's history.