Biological complexity: more cell pore complexity (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, May 10, 2016, 18:26 (3119 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: Yes, the balance of nature is everywhere, and it keeps changing as conditions change, some species flourish and others disappear. Nature takes its own course. But according to you, God has had to “guide” all these coming-and-going natural wonders - since the organisms are incapable of organizing themselves - so that humans could appear and eat. THAT is the disconnection I keep pointing out. - Evolution had to continue, so all who survived had to eat. It is still happening. Note your chocolate! Without balance, no chocolate, imagine. - > 
> dhw: We should distinguish between improvement, innovation, variation and complexity. Every surviving innovation will be an improvement and will entail an increase in complexity, but increased complexity does not necessarily mean innovation; variations may increase complexity; I don't know where exactly one draws the line between innovative improvements and variations, but I would regard the human brain as a variation of increased complexity, and an improvement, but not an innovation. - I disagree. you have a good discussion going and then denigrate the huge advance of consciousness in human brains! - >dhw: When Billy Bacterium swallowed a what's-it and they became the first eukaryote, it didn't mean that every bacterium should then have changed into a eukaryote! - The emergence of a nuclear membrane was a major event not done by swallowing. That is the mitochondria theory. From Carl Woese: - "Next comes the evolution of the eucaryotic cell itself. While biologist have traditionally seen it as a step (saltation) beyond the stage of bacterial cells, I do not. The idea that eukaryotic cell structure is the product of a symbioses among bacteria, and so represents a higher stage than that of the bacterial cell, goes back a good century and a half, but there has been no effort to seriously rethink the matter in the light of modern biological knowledge. Nowhere in thinking about a symbiotic origin of the eukaryotic cell has consideration been given to the fact that the process as envisioned would involve radical change of the designs of the cells involved. You can?t just tear cell designs apart and willy-nilly construct a new type of design from the parts. The cells we know are not just loosely coupled arrangements of quasi-independent modules. They are highly, intricately, and precisely integrated networks of entities and interactions. Any dismantling of a cell design would not reverse the evolution that brought it into existence; that is not possible. To think that a new cell design can be created more or less haphazardly from chunks of other modern cell design is just another fallacy born of a mechanistic, reductionist view of the organism.” - A New Biology for a New Century (2004)" - http://www.uncommondescent.com/origin-of-life/comet-craters-were-melting-pots-for-life-... - > dhw: I really don't see how you can deny that evolution has proceeded through a drive for improvement. I would also suggest that from the beginnings of multicellularity, increased complexity has been the result of the drive for improvement rather than a drive for complexity resulting in improvement. - Complexity is not necessarily improvement: Whales!