The evidence is overwhelming that evolution through natural selection is true: organisms change from generation to generation according to the smoking of genetic mutations.
These mutations are chosen to or against, in accordance with the ability of the resulting organisms to survive and reproduce in their appropriate ecosystems.
A film released by Harvard Medical School a few years ago – if didactically – illustrates this process:
However, an additional idea is often combined with the above: while natural selection is not a random process, its mutations underlying the process are consistently assumed. The problem is that evidence of natural selection is not proof of random mutations: nature will choose survival efficiency, regardless of whether the mutations themselves follow the trend or not.
To show that genetic mutations underlying evolution are random, you would need quite a complete record (a) of the mutations themselves, as they took place in the history of life on earth, including rejected by natural selection; and (b) appropriate phenotypical features. Only then can you conduct a random test to check if there are no phenotype trends before natural selection. Of course, the fossil record is too infrequent to enable such a test.
Therefore, the assumption that genetic mutations are random, there is no, strictly, there are no empirical grounds. His motivation is only subjective: many cannot understand any likely mechanism that could give a pattern to the mutations themselves. Although this may sound, lack of imagination and a subjective sense of credibility are not justified reasons for pronouncing scientific facts.
The spirit of scientific research is to look for still national natural patterns, thus assuming by default-if they exist. Confirmation, due to subjective instructions, genetic mutations are devoid of patterns, is probably opposite to the spirit of science.
In addition, scientific results and speculation so often violated our sense of credibility that we should learn to be careful so far. For example, compared to the hypothesis – seriously pushed by many physicists to explain the strange Tuning of universal solids– countless parallel universes, for which there is no bit of empirical evidence, the possibility of an inseparable natural attitude underlying genetic mutations does not seem so absurd for this commentator.
To be more objective, it can be argued that genetic mutations are quantum events that have been shown to be random by nature. But because the hypothetical trends in question are phenotypical – that is, prejudices against some body structures, functions or possibilities – they necessarily entail many quantum events. At this convoluted level, global patterns between events can be consistent with individual events that meet the criteria of randomness. Let me illustrate this with a elementary analogy.
Imagine that you throw three bones on the table many times. After each throw, you check each matrix separately and check if they randomly display a number from one to six. But when you look at all three bones together, you realize that either all display an equal number or all display an odd number. The resulting global pattern not only clearly violates randomness, but also consists of individual events, which, when carried out in isolation, meet the randomness criteria. Because individual quantum events are random, it does not exclude the possibilities of non -limiting global mutation patterns.
Indeed, the possibility of global behavioral patterns in nature that exceed location restrictions are open by quantum mechanics itself. According to the physicist of Erich Joos “Due to the non -local properties of quantum states, a consistent description of a certain phenomenon in quantum terms must finally include the entire universe.“
In addition, although physicists can test individual quantum events in the laboratory and check if they are random, it is impossible to recognize the global pattern within the whole physical world; There is simply too many “bones” to follow in controlled conditions. Therefore, everything we know and we can even know, genetic mutations may comply with unknown phenotype trends that have non -blocking between mutation events.
To tell you the truth, There are empirical suggestions Fundamental natural regularities – Alaws of Nature – unruffled for microscopic events. If so, such a precedent should force himself to avoid direct rejection, based on ordinary intuition, the possibilities of unknown macroscopic laws that deviate genetic mutations that drive evolution.
Finally, it can be argued that we do not need anything other than random mutations to explain the variety of life, so that postulating the pattern from natural selection would violate the proverbial shaving machine Occama. But we don't really know that randomness is enough, right? The only way to verify would be to simulate the evolution of life at quantum level to check whether with hopeless genetic mutations as a contribution we could recreate the biological diversity observed empirically observed. Such a simulation is obviously impossible. Only toy models are feasible, but they are not representative of the convoluted reality that we try to understand. If so, the amazing wealth of life seems to suggest natural prejudice in this direction.
Note that I am not saying that such a prejudice exists; I don't know anyway, it's exactly my point of view. I just indicate that the hypothesis cannot be rejected. What's more, I will not frighten any deliberate intervention in natural matters by some supernatural agency. I just raise the possibility that I do not yet include, but natural regularities that give trends for genetic mutations. Nothing we know today does not exclude this possibility.
I also admit that for many, the hypothesis of the irreducible phenotype prejudice seems so unbelievable that it is tiny. There is nothing wrong with maintaining such an opinion. But transferring the opinion of the established truth is a problem, because if we make an exception to the scientific practice of separating subjective views from objective facts, we open the proverbial Pandora box.
The very concept of “randomness” is already loaded and ambiguous at the beginning: although it is defined as a lack of noticeable patterns, theoretically, each pattern can be produced using a truly random process; The related probability may disappear, but it is not zero. Thus, the claim that the natural process is random is not only reduced not only than confirmation of causal ignorance, it can also be interpreted so that it can be underestimated.
In addition to such inseparable problems, today the idea of random mutations was so associated with evolution by natural selection that, which, surprisingly, overwhelming empirical evidence for the latter, are by default incorrectly interpreted as evidence of the first one. This is a solemn inaccuracy, because there is probably no other natural process as critical to us as the nature of life.
If anything deserves a full rigor of interpretation with the required scientific method, then evolutionary mechanisms have produced us people. It is humble to recognize what we do not know about them, it is necessary that we do not eliminate the captivating possibilities of the investigation.
Image Source: Pixabay.com
