Biological complexity: more cell pore complexity (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, May 11, 2016, 15:33 (3118 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: Yes, organisms have to eat to survive, but that doesn't mean they only survive in order to produce or feed humans. I do not believe for one minute that your God taught the weaverbird to build its nest so that I could have my chocolate. And I'm happy to say I firmly believe that if there were no more weaverbirds around, I would still have my chocolate.-An analogy: did you pick the cocoa beans yourself? Of course not. The interlocking interdependent relationships of human society produced your chocolate. The balance of nature is exactly the same. Evolution could not have continued without it, although the weaver's nest is not critical to the scheme, just an example of the widespread net of interdependence. Balance kept everyone who survived eating and n now we are here.
 
>> DAVID: I disagree. you have a good discussion going and then denigrate the huge advance of consciousness in human brains!
> 
> No denigration. All our fellow animals have brains. The human brain is not an innovation, and there are many similarities between it and other brains.-We are back to 'degree or kind'. Sure the toad brain has early aspects of ours.-> dhw: That does not mean human consciousness is not a huge advance on chimp consciousness. Of course it is. -Thank you for that admission. -> dhw: I only gave this as an example of variations on existing physical organs. ... how do you measure whether the crocodile's eyes are an “improvement” over a sparrow's eyes? They are simply different, and suit the organism concerned. That is how evolution seems to me to work: each organism finding (or not finding) its own means of survival and/or improvement.-Each species has its own set of improvements, I agree, but if we agree that chance variation is not the mechanism, what must be present is an underlying 'drive to complexity and possible improvement sorted out in time but not necessarily competition between animals as much as competition with changing environment; Raup's book on extinctions and bad luck.
> 
> dhw: So Woese disagrees with Margulis. I'll leave that discussion to the experts.-Woese doesn't disagree. Mitochondria were ingested. You are missing the point that bacteria have free floating DNA. To get to true multicellularity a nuclear membrane and other organelles had to be added to the complexity of the cell. Woese wonders how. It is neat how you stick to 'your' small group of experts! -> dhw: Ours concerned the fact that bacteria are still bacteria, ....You can't use unchanging bacteria as evidence that humans didn't have to happen and therefore God geared evolution to the production of humans. As I keep saying, NO other life form had to happen.-Exactly my point. WHY did life advance beyond bacteria? Humans did not have to happen, but they did. You cannot avoid the significance of that juxtaposition of events. Not HOW we appeared, but WHY?->> DAVID: Complexity is not necessarily improvement: Whales!
> 
> dhw: I didn't say it was. I said innovation meant increased complexity. See above. You have said that it is the divinely guided “drive to complexity” that propels evolution. My point is that evolution is propelled by the (possibly God-given) drive for improvement, which gives rise to complexity. And I still don't understand why you object, since it fits into your scenario (always improving till God finally produces humans) just as snugly as it fits into mine (all innovations stem from individual organisms looking to improve), whereas you quite rightly point out that the ‘drive to complexity' in itself would NOT necessarily mean improvement.-Just how do individual 'organisms look to improve'? Sound very anthropomorphic to me. I still think the underlying built-in drive is for complexity which then may bring improvement.