Oolon Colluphid

What exactly is a “mutation on the macro level”? And what’s with “also cause changes to phenotypes”? What else do they change?

The route from genotype to phenotype is a matter of DNA code --> RNA --> protein --> body (very roughly). Genotypes are recipes for bodies. Now, there’s all sorts of mutations -- point changes (single base substitutions), inversions, duplications, deletions, etc etc. These are all changes in the genome, in the DNA, and can happen anywhere along it. If one occurs in a coding region (exon), it may change the genotype, leading to a different amino acid (and/or ultimately a different protein) being synthesised, and so to a change in the body, the phenotype. Phenotypes do not mutate, they get changed by changes in the genotype. Even if they did, there is no backwards coding that would allow this to be passed to future generations.

Without further clarification, it sounds like your barking up the wrong tree, a Lamarckian one.

Cheers, Oolon

E_muse

I tried the link but unfortunately it didn't work.

E_muse

Criticism taken. 'Macro evolution' simply refers to large scale changes - changes to phenotype. I'm actually saying the same thing twice here. Changes on the macro level are the same as changes to phenotype.

But the body is seen to change from generation to generation, which is what I mean by macro mutation or phenotype mutation.

This doesn't mean that I'm unaware that gene mutation causes this. I'm not arguing that phenotype change can trigger genotype change!

I am saying that phenotypes in relation to environment determine which genes are passed on and which are not.

You say that phenotypes do not mutate but change. However, you then say that genotypes change which I presume refers to genetic mutation!

Dictionary.com defines mutation in the following way:

All I'm saying here is that the term mutate can be correctly applied to any form of change whether to the genotype or phenotype. That is, changes in a species, not an individual.

All we're saying is that changes in genes cause changes in phenotypes and not the other way around.

Bodies mutate but only as a result of genetic mutation - not the other way around.

In other words, phenotypes do not shape genes. However, genes get passed on, and this depends upon the nature of the phenotype within a certain environment.

Environmental factors determine which phenotypes and therefore which genotypes survive.

However, the phenotypes of other species will determine which genotypes get passed on in other species.

I'm aware that this arguement could be a tautology.

Dawkins states (well, at least until I've seen his revision) that physical changes remain as a result of certain genes getting passed down to offspring.

The survival of the genotype depends upon the nature of the phenotypes it produces in relation to their environment. In other words, genes won't survive unless the phenotypes they produce enable the host to survive at the macro level. However, the ability of a host to survive at the macro level depends upon its genotype.

The example above with the fox and the rabbit demonstrate that genetic selection is governed by the phenotypes produced by differing genotypes.

Both sets of phenotypes are the result of gradual chance culumative change as a direct result of changes taking place in the genotype.

Therefore one product of chance mutations is determining which genes survive in another product of chance mutations.

My initial critisicms of Dawkins was that he claimed that randomness and chance were a small piece of the recipe. I'm saying that chance plays a major role.

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

Just discussed entorpy in physics yesterday:

Entropy is strictly defined as the number of posible micorstates availible to a system. The more availible, the greater the entropy, and also, the greater disorder.

Life INCREASES entropy because (in the case of non-plants and non-fungi) IT IS MOBILE-therby increasing the number of states possible (states includes momentum and posistion!) rather dramatically.

Also, if one area has a decrease in entropy, as a result, there must be MORE entropy created. Plants (now) help to create entropy be allowing further ranging of animals.

If somene elsementioned this aspect, please forgive me.

E_muse

I just thought that, because of the relative low levels of entropy on planet earth, entropy must be increasing somewhere else in the universe.

Our gain, their pain sort of idea. Perhaps I just missed the boat.

Peter Soderqvist

TO E MUSE
I accept your elaboration of January 15, 2002 12:11 PM, except one contradiction!

Soderqvist1: As you can see here from your own words, that genotypes don't get passed on, since bodies are not identical from generation, to generation. An offspring inherit 50% genes from his father, and 50% from his mother! A genotype's half-life is thus one generation. A gene is an arbitrary Piece of a chromosome, not too big, and not too small, but something between these, and because of that, is able to pass on a copy, of genetic materials. A gene replicator is thus the basic unit in natural selection , and a gene is an immortal replicator, not in itself, but through his copies!

Ps: Both my link, and your copy of my link, works for me!

[ January 15, 2002: Message edited by: Peter Soderqvist ]</p>

Peter Soderqvist

TO JESUS CHRIST

Soderqvist1: It is entropy, but in new words here!
A car full of gasoline has the potential of High entropy, because it has potential to occupy many different points in "space". This car increases entropy, when it moves through "space", for example from New York, to Chicago, because its full tank, is one concentrated macro state, and it disperses indefinitely many microstates through its exhaustion pipe. Thus a parked car have lower entropy, than a moving car, because potential energy is more concentrated (ordered), than kinetic energy (disordered)!

HRGruemm

Sorry, I cannot tell whether you are joking. If yes, then please disregard the rest.

A moving car is not less ordered than a parking car of the same temperature. The macroscopic motion of the car is simply added to the thermal motion/vibration of each of its molecule; but only this microscopic motion counts for entropy.

Besides, a moving car can be transformed into a parking car by a Lorentz transformation

Regards,
HRG.

Peter Soderqvist

TO HRG

Soderqvist1: I am not joking, but it is quite possible that I have misunderstood something, however, it is not the first time someone posts something here with misunderstandings, if that is the case with me?

Soderqvist1: I have defined my car as potential energy, and it means that the engine is shut off, and a shut off engine has lower temperature than a running engine. Because a working engine generating heat, and for the same reason, a moving car has higher entropy, and its entropy can also be measured in a car accident (propagation of heat, and its scattered car Pieces when the chemical bond is broken). The Higher speed the car has, the higher is its entropy too, especially when we take into consideration its combusted fuel in the environment, again the higher speed consume more gasoline!

Soderqvist1: My answer was to Jesus Christ regarding his definition of entropy, as the amount, and/or number of microstates in a system, this is logical entropy, but your entropy is thermal! Strange enough, I have a reference here to entropy and poker; a royal straight flush has 1 macrostate, and 4 microstates. And these wining cards has lower entropy than bad cards, Because of, there is so many ways "microstates" you can lose with!
<a href="http://www.svsu.edu/~slaven/Entropy.html" target="_blank">http://www.svsu.edu/~slaven/Entropy.html</a>

Soderqvist1: A parked car on earth, rotating around our sun anyway!
I know that Newton's law of motion will not survive a Lorentz-Einstein transformation.

[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: Peter Soderqvist ]</p>

Oolon Colluphid

Hi E_muse

I can find little to disagree with in what you wrote (but I’ll try ).

Changes to the phenotype are not necessarily large scale. To use another Dawkins analogy, it could be simply that a beaver holds its head a little higher in the water when swimming with a log, so more mud stays stuck to the log, and the dam is thus a bit stronger. The whole point of Darwinian evolution is the cumulative selection of slight changes -- hence, I’d have thought, not large scale ones!

And I’ve never before seen macroevolution used to refer to phenotypic changes. It is usually defined (in Futuyma I’m pretty sure, I’ll check) as change above the species level. So broad-brush patterns through time – the stuff that creationists deny – rather than the so-called microevolution that even they cannot deny . Phenotypic changes are by definition linked to the genetics behind them. (Ultimately they’re the same thing of course, hence no valid distinction between ‘micro’ and macro’ evolution.) But whilst it would be nice to know the genetics behind the changes from Archaeopteryx to Sinorniis, it’s not necessary in order to see a larger scale -- macroevolutionary -- pattern.

Ref ‘mutation’, yeah fine; I’d just clarify that since we were talking about genetics, I was using the Genetics definition you gave (1 and/or 2), and deliberately so. To use the more general, ‘change’, one in the context is confusing -- thus my emphasis on phenotypes not mutating!

I remember that Dawkins covers this alleged tautology in Extended Phenotype, I’ll check tonight (I’m at work atm ) and let you know.

And I’m sure, from that perspective, Dawkins wouldn’t deny it. The reason for his continued emphasis on the natural selection element is to counter the constant barrage of complaints, from those who don’t understand it, that biological complexity is too improbable, eg Hoyle’s ‘tornado in a junkyard’. There is no surer sign that a person doesn’t understand cumulative selection. As he says in Mount Improbable:

That’s the sort of chance that Dawkins is arguing against -- big random changes. The point being that though the probability that an eye, say, would spontaneously form from nothing is beyond calculation, the amount of chance needed to derive an eye from a very slightly less efficient eye is not necessarily very much. It could be in clarity of lens, strength of focussing muscles, number of rod cells in the retina. When each change is but a small change, it is not particularly improbable.

Since random changes are random, a creature’s position in his ‘space of all possible animals’ will wander randomly. Cumulative random mutations, without selection, would just lead to messes. But it is natural selection that picks paths through all the possible arrangements, letting only the best at the time get through to the next round. Natural selection is the key element responsible for the apparent design in nature, not mutation. Thus, from that point of view – ie the one Dawkins, in response to incredulity arguments, is stressing -- mutation is the minor element, selection the major one. Neither works without the other, but selection is by far the more important in explaining complexity.

Cheers, Oolon