In the conclusion to “Endless Forms Most Beautiful”, Sean “not the astrophysicist” Carroll writes “The evolution of form is the main drama of life’s story”, suggesting we move away from teaching evolution defined as change in gene frequencies. In the previous chapter he notes “most proteins in the body do not affect form – they carry out other roles in physiology. There may be some interesting differences in proteins involved in physiology, such as the sense of smell, immunity, or reproduction, but these do not affect the way mice or humans appear”. Why is the “main drama” about appearance? I understand that there’s little else available in the case of fossils, but it seems to me those other aspects of physiology are quite important. They could well take up most of the evolution (which I’ll define here as non-neutral changes in DNA, whether coding or regulatory) throughout history. Let’s focus on just immunity. The “Red Queen Theory” suggests that we have to keep “running as fast as we can” just so as to not lose ground against simultaneously evolving parasites. For humanity, the neolothic revolution of agriculture, high population densities and travel has meant very intense selection for disease resistance. We can see the dramatic result of different immunological profile in the fate of north american indians (the different fate of Africa & South America is due to the local advantage against tropical diseases). Yes, there has also been strong selection for lighter skin among Europeans & Orientals, but does that make for a more central drama than the aforementioned immune system adaptations or lactose digestion? Carroll puts a lot of attention on the mimicry of butterflies, but the only reason it is advantageous for one butterfly to resemble another is the poison that makes them unpalatable to birds. On second thought, that might also involve a change in “form”, I’m not sure. In case Carroll or someone else knowledgeable reads this, please clarify.
On a sidenote, it’s funny that he writes “Biology without evolution is like physics without gravity”, because theoretical physicists have had such a hard time integrating gravity into a unified theory that already explains the the other forces on the quantum level.
June 25, 2010 at 12:35 pm
> On second thought, that might also involve a change in “form”, I’m not sure.
You mean, do organisms that become toxic (or otherwise unprofitable to attack) evolve a form that signals this? Yes they do, see aposematism and Mullerian mimicry.
June 25, 2010 at 2:00 pm
I mentioned mimicry above. I meant that maybe toxicity requires a new organ which I believe would be considered a change in form.
June 25, 2010 at 7:03 pm
I prefer a definition of evolution that centers on algorithmic persistence (perhaps red queen would be a subset of that). Also I think it captures how different hierarchies of organization (or information) can have different selection pressures.
(Pardon me for being rusty discussing biological evolution, I know it’s a controversial battlefield and an anti-knowledge playspace discussing evolution outside the narrow context of genetic mutation and selection in individual organisms).
June 25, 2010 at 10:48 pm
“anti-knowledge playspace”
Elaborate.
June 26, 2010 at 5:57 am
That’s a good prompt. Maybe it will help if I list some things that tend to be anti-knowledge playspaces.
-Racial differences in behavior
-Global Warming
-What makes a good leader
And areas of science that seem to me to be more productive epistemological spaces even though they could have turned into anti-knowledge playspaces:
-population genetics
-(I would name more but out of time/energy/inclination)
In general I think anti-knowledge playspaces tend to be topics where two factions emerge whose constituencies add up to be a hegemonic force in the discussion, both of whom have their positions made up more by politically correct policing than by solid empiricism, and both sides probably suborn subpopulation identities who feel they can win in status games if their side either wins out by luck of being right or by show of force in dominating their opponents in the discussion space. I think it’s a bit of a 2 side competition that’s also a coordination against third parties that aren’t explicitly identified (the pageant element is a soft nontransparency, that the pageant element is to take social attention away from third parties is a hard nontransparency).
June 26, 2010 at 9:39 am
I am going to elevate that comment into a front-page post. I would still like you to elaborate on how that applies to the above context though.
June 26, 2010 at 5:52 pm
“I would still like you to elaborate on how that applies to the above context though.”
hrmmm.
I’ll try to come back to this. There’s a pretty obvious 2-sided battle evolutionists vs. creationists that I think lack high level meta-awareness and curiosity by the scientist-participants about the mechanics of the pageantry in which they are participants -but, that’s not really what I was getting at when I called discssion of evolution beyond genetic mutation and selection an anti-knowledge playspace.
More that the popular discussion about whether and how evolution occurs outside of the genetic variety seems to me to have low deference to rigor or deference to scientific authority. It seems to be more of play space, of the late bullshit session variety.
I’m aware that could describe a lot of my own speculation, but I try to label it appropriately as mental excretions.
June 26, 2010 at 9:32 pm
Are you referring to something like Eliezer Yudkowsky’s No evolutions for corporations or nanodevices? The topic doesn’t seem to be discussed all that much.
“Mental excretions” is a nice dysphemism.
June 26, 2010 at 9:41 am
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