scholarly journals NEW THEORY OF EVOLUTION FROM GENETIC COMPLEXITY OF DIVERSE PERSPECTIVES

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 291-303
Author(s):  
Y. V. Subba Rao
Keyword(s):  
Cell Biology ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Current Theory ◽  
Cambrian Explosion ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Critical Areas ◽  
Genetic Complexity ◽  
Evolution Of Life ◽  
Life On Earth

In this study, a new hypothesis of evolution is proposed. Genetic complexity provides a plausible hypothesis of the evolution of life on Earth and is supported by ample evidence from different perspectives. The current theory of evolution and natural selection proposed by Darwin is accepted in biology, plausibly, for want of a more viable alternative in based on the recent advances made in cell biology, molecular biology, and genetics. The proposed hypothesis of evolution based on the different perspectives of genetic complexity addresses the two critical areas of advanced complex life of Cambrian explosion and the development of even more complex and intricate human brain in contradistinction to the Evolution Theory envisaged by Charles Darwin.

scholarly journals BIOLOGICAL AND ECOLOGICAL INSIGHTS FROM THE PRESERVATIONAL VARIABILITY OF FUNISIA DOROTHEA, EDIACARA MEMBER, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Palaios ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (9) ◽  
pp. 359-376
Author(s):  
RACHEL L. SURPRENANT ◽  
JAMES G. GEHLING ◽  
MARY L. DROSER
Keyword(s):  
South Australia ◽  
Ecosystem Dynamics ◽  
Cambrian Explosion ◽  
Ediacara Biota ◽  
National Heritage ◽  
Evolution Of Life ◽  
Fossil Site ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
Body Fossil

ABSTRACT The Ediacara Biota represents a turning point in the evolution of life on Earth, signifying the transition from single celled organisms to complex, community-forming macrobiota. The exceptional fossil record of the soft-bodied Ediacara Biota provides critical insight into the nature of this transition and into ecosystem dynamics leading up to the so-called “Cambrian Explosion”. However, the preservation of non-biomineralizing organisms in a diversity of lithologies goes hand-in-hand with considerable taphonomic complexity that often shrouds true paleoecological and paleobiological signatures. We address the nature of this taphonomic complexity within the fossiliferous sandstones of the Ediacara Member in South Australia. Utilizing the most fossiliferous outcropping of the Ediacara Member, located at the Nilpena Station National Heritage Ediacara Fossil Site, we conduct a focused, taxon-level biostratinomic characterization of the tubular organism Funisia dorothea. Funisia is the most abundant body fossil in the Ediacara Member, making the characterization of its preservational variability essential to the accurate interpretation of regional paleobiology and paleoecology. We describe remarkable biostratinomic complexity in all Funisia populations at Nilpena, identifying four distinct preservational variants of internal and external molds and four additional successive biostratinomic grades corresponding to loss of external characters. Synthesis of these observations identify the most robust preservational forms of Funisia for use in paleobiological interpretation and highlight the important impact that Funisia's high abundance had on regional paleoecology and on population-scale preservation in the Ediacara Member.

scholarly journals On the origin of death: Paul and Augustine meet Charles Darwin

2013 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Izak J.J. Spangenberg
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Eternal Life ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Church

Ever since the 4th century, Christian theologians have linked Romans 5:12–21 with Genesis 2–3. Augustine (354–430), one of the Latin fathers of the Church, propagated the idea of ‘original sin’ according to his reading of these chapters. This idea eventually became a fixed doctrine in Western Christianity and a large number of Christians still believe and proclaim that humans would have lived for ever but for the misconduct of Adam and Eve. They also proclaim that Jesus, through his obedience, death and resurrection, re-established God’s original creation plan. Death was conquered and eternal life can be inherited by all who believe in Jesus as saviour and second Adam. However, since both the introduction of the theory of evolution into biology and the paradigm shift in biblical studies (at the end of the 19th century), the view that death was to be linked to ‘original sin’ came under severe criticism. This article argues that Romans 5:12–21 and Genesis 2–3 do not support the idea of ‘original sin’ and that death is a normal part of life on earth, as argued by evolutionary biologists and proclaimed by many Old Testament texts.

Adaptation

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Reznick ◽  
Joseph Travis
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Cause And Effect ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
Diversity Of Life ◽  
First Time ◽  
Over Time

When Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace proposed their theory of evolution by natural selection, the concepts of evolution and speciation were not new. Darwin introduced The Origin with “An Historical Sketch,” in which he summarized the work of 34 previous authors who had speculated on evolution and the origin of species. What was new about Darwin and Wallace’s proposition was natural selection as the mechanism of evolutionary change. Darwin further proposed that natural selection was a unifying process that accounts for adaptation, for speciation, and hence for the diversity of life on earth. Darwin and Wallace proposed natural selection as a process that caused evolution. Adaptations are features of organisms that were shaped by this process. The modern version of Darwin and Wallace’s theory allows for other agents of evolution, such as genetic drift, migration, and mutation, but adaptation remains a product of natural selection alone. The virtue of their proposal is that it allows us to develop testable hypotheses about cause-and-effect relationships between features of the environment and presumed adaptations. Natural selection immediately became a source of controversy, although the nature of the controversy has shifted over time. First, there has been considerable debate about the definition of adaptation (e.g., Reeve and Sherman 1993). We do not wish to add to or summarize this debate because we feel that Darwin got it right the first time. Besides defining a cause-and-effect relationship between selection and adaptation, Darwin emphasized that we should not expect organisms to be perfectly adapted to their environment. In fact, this emphasis was a large component of his argument against divine creation. For example, Darwin recognized, through his experience with artificial selection, that different aspects of morphology were in some way “tied” to one another so that selection on one trait would cause correlated changes in others that were not necessarily adaptive. He also recognized that organisms were subject to constraints that might limit their ability to adapt. Finally, he argued that how organisms evolved was a function of their history, so that the response to selection on the same trait would vary among lineages. A more telling criticism considers the application of cause-and-effect reasoning to the interpretation of features of organisms as adaptations, and hence to the empirical study of adaptation.

An Examination of Life History and Behavioral Evolution Across the Ediacaran–Cambrian Transition

2014 ◽  
Vol 88 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-206
Author(s):  
James D. Schiffbauer ◽  
Shuhai Xiao
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Cambrian Explosion ◽  
Gradual Transition ◽  
Sixth Edition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Satisfactory Answer ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
Cambrian System

With the 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin posed contention against his synthesis on the history of life. His dilemma specifically regarded that the geologically sudden appearance of complex shelly invertebrates at the Cambrian Explosion followed an incomprehensible absence of a long-standing gradual transition to such forms. Indeed, as quoted from Chapter 10 of the sixth edition, “To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer… the difficulty of assigning any good reason for the absence of vast piles of strata rich in fossils beneath the Cambrian system is very great… The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained” (p. 286–288). In the 155 years since this assertion, paleontologists focusing on the strata of the Ediacaran–Cambrian transition have uncovered a rich evolutionary history prior to the radiation of animals, but our resulting discoveries have neither been without debate nor unraveled the intricacies suggested by Darwin's dilemma. While we are continuing to learn from both geological and paleontological records, the organisms, their expanding ecosystem intricacy, and the increasing complexity of their behaviors during the Ediacaran and Cambrian periods are yet not well understood. With rapidly growing data and ideas, this transition in evolutionary history has become one of the intellectually richest periods in our record of life on Earth.

Mineral photoelectrons and their implications for the origin and early evolution of life on Earth

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 897-902 ◽  
Author(s):  
AnHuai Lu ◽  
Xin Wang ◽  
Yan Li ◽  
HongRui Ding ◽  
ChangQiu Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Early Evolution ◽  
Evolution Of Life ◽  
Life On Earth

scholarly journals New Evo-SETI results about civilizations and molecular clock

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio Maccone
Keyword(s):  
Probability Density ◽  
Molecular Clock ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Peak Time ◽  
List Type ◽  
Type Number ◽  
Death Time ◽  
Evolution Of Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
Life On Earth

AbstractIn two recent papers (Maccone 2013, 2014) as well as in the book (Maccone 2012), this author described the Evolution of life on Earth over the last 3.5 billion years as a lognormal stochastic process in the increasing number of living Species. In (Maccone 2012, 2013), the process used was ‘Geometric Brownian Motion’ (GBM), largely used in Financial Mathematics (Black-Sholes models). The GBM mean value, also called ‘the trend’, always is an exponential in time and this fact corresponds to the so-called ‘Malthusian growth’ typical of population genetics. In (Maccone 2014), the author made an important generalization of his theory by extending it to lognormal stochastic processes having an arbitrary trend mL(t), rather than just a simple exponential trend as the GBM have.The author named ‘Evo-SETI’ (Evolution and SETI) his theory inasmuch as it may be used not only to describe the full evolution of life on Earth from RNA to modern human societies, but also the possible evolution of life on exoplanets, thus leading to SETI, the current Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence. In the Evo-SETI Theory, the life of a living being (let it be a cell or an animal or a human or a Civilization of humans or even an ET Civilization) is represented by a b-lognormal, i.e. a lognormal probability density function starting at a precise instant b (‘birth’) then increasing up to a peak-time p, then decreasing to a senility-time s (the descending inflexion point) and then continuing as a straight line down to the death-time d (‘finite b-lognormal’).(1)Having so said, the present paper describes the further mathematical advances made by this author in 2014–2015, and is divided in two halves: Part One, devoted to new mathematical results about the History of Civilizations as b-lognormals, and(2)Part Two, about the applications of the Evo-SETI Theory to the Molecular Clock, well known to evolutionary geneticists since 50 years: the idea is that our EvoEntropy grows linearly in time just as the molecular clock. (a)Summarizing the new results contained in this paper: In Part One, we start from the History Formulae already given in (Maccone 2012, 2013) and improve them by showing that it is possible to determine the b-lognormal not only by assigning its birth, senility and death, but rather by assigning birth, peak and death (BPD Theorem: no assigned senility). This is precisely what usually happens in History, when the life of a VIP is summarized by giving birth time, death time, and the date of the peak of activity in between them, from which the senility may then be calculated (approximately only, not exactly). One might even conceive a b-scalene (triangle) probability density just centred on these three points (b, p, d) and we derive the relevant equations. As for the uniform distribution between birth and death only, that is clearly the minimal description of someone's life, we compare it with both the b-lognormal and the b-scalene by comparing the Shannon Entropy of each, which is the measure of how much information each of them conveys. Finally we prove that the Central Limit Theorem (CLT) of Statistics becomes a new ‘E-Pluribus-Unum’ Theorem of the Evo-SETI Theory, giving formulae by which it is possible to find the b-lognormal of the History of a Civilization C if the lives of its Citizens Ci are known, even if only in the form of birth and death for the vast majority of the Citizens.(b)In Part Two, we firstly prove the crucial Peak-Locus Theorem for any given trend mL(t) and not just for the GBM exponential. Then we show that the resulting Evo-Entropy grows exactly linearly in time if the trend is the exponential GMB trend.(c)In addition, three Appendixes (online) with all the relevant mathematical proofs are attached to this paper. They are written in the Maxima language, and Maxima is a symbolic manipulator that may be downloaded for free from the web.In conclusion, this paper further increases the huge mathematical spectrum of applications of the Evo-SETI Theory to prepare Humans for the first Contact with an Extra-Terrestrial Civilization.

scholarly journals Teaching biological evolution - internal and external evaluation of learning outcomes

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-184
Author(s):  
Clas Olander
Keyword(s):  
Biological Evolution ◽  
National Sample ◽  
External Evaluation ◽  
Process Data ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Teaching Learning ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
Evaluation Of Learning ◽  
Experimental Group

This paper reports from a study where teachers and researchers collaborate on designing and validatingtopic-oriented teaching-learning sequences. In an iterative process, data about learning andteaching biological evolution are generated through continuous cycles of design, teaching, evaluation,and redesign. The study involved 180 Swedish students aged 11 – 16, and the overall learning aim was that the students should be able to use the theory of evolution as a tool when explaining the development of life on earth. The aim of this paper is to validate the students’ learning outcome, estimated as appropriation of scientific ways of reasoning in written answers. The students’ answers of questions are analysed before and after interventions (internal evaluation), and compared with the answers from a national sample (external evaluation). The students in the experimental group did develop their reasoning, and they attained the aim, to a greater extent than a national sample.

Mind the step: did Hooker's judgement clinch Darwin's disenchantment?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Partridge
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Marine Invertebrates ◽  
Theory Development ◽  
Step Change ◽  
Primary Research ◽  
Research Activity ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Causal Force ◽  
Joseph Hooker

The decade from 1844 to 1854 in which Charles Darwin first published two books and then studied barnacles for the final eight years has long been a puzzling digression from the development of his theory of evolution. This essay proposes that it was a conjunction of two quite different activities: a three-year pause initiated to assess and hopefully finalize the editorial completion of his 1844 Essay for publication, followed by a step-change decision to redirect his primary research activity in late 1847. A disenchantment hypothesis is proposed; it presents the step-change decision as a consequence of weighing up the accumulated unencouraging prospects for species-theory development in competition with the emergence of promising projections associated with a broad study of marine invertebrates. Recognition of the triumph, as Darwin initially saw it, of his Essay, followed by years of hostile inputs, opens this new route to understanding this decade. Within it Joseph Hooker emerges as a significant causal force. Many of the customary ‘postponement’ explanations of this digression can be integrated with this pause-and-step-change explanation, whereas explanation of the interval as a gap due to a pre-planned activity cannot, and is revealed to be seriously faulty.

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