Dhw: Life certainly couldn't go on without balance in Nature. That's where natural selection plays a major role. And living creatures need fuel. But instead of saying "There is a purpose" (= God), one can say "That's just how it is" (= Nature). It's a similar dichotomy to that in your maths article: two say maths is an integral part of the universe, and two say it's a human imposition on the universe.-DAVID: Natural selection's role is less major than Darwin wished. And 'wished' is the correct view of his theory. Natural selection only sorts out among organisms that have the ability to change their own destiny with epigenetics.-We have always agreed on the non-creative role of natural selection, which is to ensure that whatever organs and organisms are most suited to the environment will survive. Obviously that means that there has to be a balance between the forms and numbers of organisms and whatever the environment can sustain. The rest will perish. That is why I say natural selection plays a major role in the balance of Nature.-DAVID: As for the maths of the universe, how do you explain a human consciousness that is able to describe the laws of the universe and nature through math? And propose potential discoveries through the imaginative abilities of math? Built in or imposed is just two views of the same phenomenon.-Neither you nor I can explain human consciousness, or divine consciousness if it exists. No-one can. We go back to first cause and faith. 'Built in' or 'imposed' are opposite views of the same phenomenon (see my comment on patterns under "Ruth & Rindler"). In this post, you have argued that Darwin's theory of natural selection is less major than he would have wished. You are therefore saying that his pattern is not built into reality in the way he thought it was, but that he is imposing his own (false) pattern on it.

Think about it: if life started at sea, how did plants get up onto land. They don't have fin/legs like some fish did and do. Obviously algae could wash up on the shoreline and take hold. A new study considers how algae may have accomplished the feat:- http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151216134406.htm-"Plant biologists agree that it all began with green algae. At some point in our planet's history, the common ancestor of trees, ferns, and flowers developed an alternating life cycle--presumably allowing their offspring to float inland and conquer Earth. But on December 16 in Trends in Plant Science, Danish scientists argue that some green algae had been hanging out on land hundreds of millions of years before this adaptation and that land plants actually evolved from terrestrial, not aquatic, algae.-***-"Notably, traits that land plants use to survive on land today are well conserved in some species of green algae.-***-"'We realized that algae have a cell wall that's similarly complex to terrestrial plant cell walls, which seemed peculiar because ancient algae were supposedly growing in water," says Harholt, Science Manager at the Carlsberg Laboratory. "We then started looking for other traits that would support the idea that algae were actually on land before they turned into land plants."-"Working with Moestrup, an expert in algae, they also explored structures (or rather, the loss of structures) that are hard to explain if algae only lived in water. For example, some green algae have lost their flagella, whip-like organelles that help single-celled organisms move around in water. All of the algae that are close relatives to land plants no longer have an eyespot, which they would use to swim toward light.-"Cell wall traits combined with the recently sequenced genome of terrestrial green algae Klebsormidium, (published in 2014, doi:10.1038/ncomms4978), revealed that this green alga shares a number of genes with land plants related to light tolerance and drought tolerance. With the genetic evidence in hand, we know that the traits have arisen linearly, rather than by convergent evolution.-"If their theory withstands scrutiny, it would begin to upend what's been cited in textbooks for over a century. The idea that plants jumped from water to land is credited to botanist Frederick Orpen Bower, although it is unclear whether that was his intended argument. In his 1908 tome "The Origin of a Land Flora," he simply proposed that the "invention" of alternating life cycles provided early land plants with a platform--the sporophyte--for evolutionary experimentation and thus adaptability.-***-"The researchers' biggest challenge will be to prove that a period of pre-adaptation led to the complex cell walls of land plants (although about 250 new genes were required for the formation of this terrestrial-friendly cell covering, which helps their case). They believe that these terrestrial green algae were advanced enough to survive on sandy surfaces, living on rain as a source of humidity. But with a small fossil record to go on--only spores exist from this period of evolutionary history--they will need to rely heavily on genetics to make their argument."-Comment: It seems they show evidence that land algae have been around a long time, but the issue still is, if life began in the sea, how did the algae get up onto land?

432 million years ago a land plant fossil:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2167645-a-fossil-may-rewrite-the-story-of-how-plan...

"A plant fossil that gathered dust in a museum drawer for a century is the oldest fossil of large plants ever found.

"The find suggests we need to rethink the plant family tree. It has been estimated that land plants first emerged 515 million years ago but actual fossils are rare and not quite so old. Many botanists assume that the first land plants grew like mosses, and more complex plants like shrubs and trees evolved later.

"However, the new find adds to growing evidence that this picture may be back-to-front. Mosses and their relatives might be more “evolved” than we thought.

***

"Many botanists suspect that the moss condition evolved first, partly because mosses and their ilk seem to be the simplest living land plants. But a team led by Jiří Kvaček at the National Museum Prague, Czech Republic and Viktor Žárský at the Charles University, Prague says that this idea might be wrong – and they have fossil evidence.

"They have reanalysed a 432-million-year-old plant fossil that was discovered more than a century ago near Prague. The fossil belongs to a new species called Cooksonia barrandei. It is 4-5 centimetres high and up to 3 millimetres across.
“[The] Cooksonia barrandei we describe is the oldest unambiguous plant macrofossil known to date,“ says Žárský. The older fossils are all tiny fragments, mostly spores.

***

"Beyond its age, the fossil is significant because it is a sporophyte. Since it is big, it’s likely that C. barrandei’s sporophytes could sustain themselves using photosynthesis. That makes this ancient plant more like a modern tree or shrub than a moss.

"What’s more, since C. barrandei is one of the earliest well-preserved land plants we’ve found, the researchers say it’s possible that the common ancestor of land plants also had these self-sustaining sporophytes.

“'Until now it was assumed that the ‘higher plants’ evolved from [mosses and their relatives],” says Žárský. But mosses, with their reduced sporophytes, might actually have evolved later.

"It all comes down to reproduction.

“'I was genuinely surprised to see this fossil – it’s very cool,” says Kevin Boyce at Stanford University in California. He agrees C. barrandei may well have made sporophytes that could nourish themselves.

"However, Boyce says it’s unclear what the first land plants were like. “It’s now basically up in the air,” he says, partly because the fossil record of plants is so patchy. He is reluctant to draw conclusions from C. barrandei because some of its more recent relatives are believed to have had a moss-like life cycle.

"However, Paul Kenrick at the Natural History Museum in London, UK is open to the idea that the first land plants were not moss-like.

"Kenrich co-authored a study published in March that used molecular data to infer the lifestyle of the first land plants. The research suggested mosses and their relatives belong to a distinct group descended from a more complex ancestor.

“'This implies that [moss-like plants] and their life cycle may not be ancestral, but rather derived,” he says. “Life cycle evolution in the earliest emergent plants needs a rethink.'”

Comment: This is not long after the Cambrian Explosion of animals. It lead to the plant bloom that confused Darwin. Evolution always results in complexity.