Imitation as Mechanism for Mimicry

The neo-Darwinian paradigm is unable to account for the resilient, complex forms that evolve in nature and persist across time. Random mutations do not explain the occurrence of organisms that mimic complex forms in often astonishing detail. In the absence of God as creator, or random mutations as the basis for adaptive traits, there is something else going on. The case that I present in this article is that the only possible mechanism for mimicry in nature is imitation.

A evolução como eixo integrador das ciências biológicas: uma unidade didática no contexto do ensino de biologia

Resumo: Estudos realizados nas últimas décadas indicam que a Biologia vem sendo ensinada de forma fragmentada e descontextualizada nas escolas brasileiras. Dentre os fatores apontados como causa desta tendência, destaca-se a negligência em relação ao ensino de Evolução, que raramente é tratado como o eixo integrador das Ciências Biológicas. Partindo disso, este estudo propõe uma Unidade de Ensino Potencialmente Significativa (UEPS) para a promoção da aprendizagem das ideias fundamentais à formação do pensamento evolutivo e compreensão dos fenômenos e mecanismos biológicos de maneira integrada e contextualizada. A UEPS construída aborda a Evolução por meio das cinco principais ideias evolucionistas do paradigma darwiniano e é sugerida para ser utilizada no primeiro ano do Ensino Médio.Palavras-chave: Ensino de Evolução; Didática da Biologia; Aprendizagem Significativa; UEPS. Evolution as a unifying axis of biological sciences: a teaching unit in the context of biology teachingAbstract: Studies carried out in the last decades indicate that Biology has been taught in a fragmented and decontextualized way in Brazilian schools. Among the factors pointed out as the cause of this trend, the negligence related to the teaching of Evolution stands out, which is rarely treated as the unifying axis of the Biological Sciences. Based on these understandings, this study proposes a Potentially Meaningful Teaching Unit (PMTU) to promote the learning of fundamental ideas for the formation of evolutionary thinking and understanding of biological phenomena and mechanisms in an integrated and contextualized way. The PMTU developed addresses Evolution through the five main evolutionary ideas of the Darwinian paradigm and is suggested to be used in the first year of High School.Keywords: Teaching of Evolution; Biology Teaching; Meaningful Learning; PMTU.

Prolonged exposure to constant environmental conditions prompts nonrandom genetic variation

ABSTRACTLong-term environmental exposure under selection-free conditions has no consequences for fitness under the neo-Darwinian paradigm but it may provoke adaptive developmental buffering if environmental pressures foster directional organismal changes. To test this hypothesis, we revisited a Mutation Accumulation (MA) experiment where isogenic lines of the ciliate Paramecium were propagated for >40 sexual cycles (∼4 years) in a nearly selection-free and nutrient-rich environment. We find that these MA lines’ somatic genome is enriched with intervening segments of DNA (IESs), which are normally eliminated during germline-soma differentiation. Across independent replicate MA lines, an excess of these somatic IESs fall into a class of epigenetically controlled sequences, map to the same genomic locations, and preferentially disrupt loci that regulate nutrient metabolism. Although further work is needed to assess the phenotypic consequences of somatic IESs, these findings support a model where environmentally induced developmental variants may restore an adaptive fit between phenotype and environment. In this model, positive selection is surprisingly dispensable for adaptation.

Richard Dawkins, Philip Kennedy and the Augustinian paradigm of Christianity

Both Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion and Philip Kennedy’s book A Modern Introduction to Theology: New Questions for Old Beliefs were published in 2006. This article aims to compare the two books and to argue that Kennedy does not oppose Dawkins’s views but, in fact, debates along similar lines. Kennedy is adamant that the Augustinian paradigm of Christianity no longer makes sense, because it is based on an outdated cosmology and anthropology. He firmly maintains that Christianity requires a new paradigm, which is informed by our current knowledge and worldview. Thomas Kuhn’s ideas of paradigm and paradigm changes in the history of natural sciences are utilised in comparing the books, seeing that Dawkins accepts and works within the Darwinian paradigm of evolutionary biology, and Kennedy argues that Christians and Christian theologians adhere to the Augustinian paradigm of Fall-Redemption-Judgement. It is argued that Dawkins should have referred to the paradigm change in the study of the Bible, which occurred towards the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, and the plea of theologians, like Kennedy, for a paradigm change in theology. The article concludes that only a paradigm change in Christianity, which is in line with the modern worldview, will enable Christians to keep the tradition alive.

Cultural evolutionary psychology is still evolutionary psychology

The cognitive gadgets theory proposes to reform evolutionary psychology by replacing the standard nativist and internalist approach to modularity with a cultural constructivist one. However, the resulting “cultural evolutionary psychology” still maintains some controversial aspects of the original neo-Darwinian paradigm. These assumptions are unnecessary to the cognitive gadgets theory and can be eliminated without significant conceptual loss.

Updating Darwin: Information and entropy drive the evolution of life

The evolution of species, according to Darwin, is driven by struggle – by competition between variant autonomous individuals for survival of the fittest and reproductive advantage; the outcome of this struggle for survival is natural selection. The Neo-Darwinians reframed natural selection in terms of DNA: inherited genotypes directly encode expressed phenotypes; a fit phenotype means a fit genotype – thus the evolution of species is the evolution of selfish, reproducing individual genotypes. Four general characteristics of advanced forms of life are not easily explained by this Neo-Darwinian paradigm: 1) Dependence on cooperation rather than on struggle, manifested by the microbiome, ecosystems and altruism; 2) The pursuit of diversity rather than optimal fitness, manifested by sexual reproduction; 3) Life’s investment in programmed death, rather then in open-ended survival; and 4) The acceleration of complexity, despite its intrinsic fragility. Here I discuss two mechanisms that can resolve these paradoxical features; both mechanisms arise from viewing life as the evolution of information. Information has two inevitable outcomes; it increases by autocatalyis and it is destroyed by entropy. On the one hand, the autocalalysis of information inexorably drives the evolution of complexity, irrespective of its fragility. On the other hand, only those strategic arrangements that accommodate the destructive forces of entropy survive – cooperation, diversification, and programmed death result from the entropic selection of evolving species. Physical principles of information and entropy thus fashion the evolution of life.