Re: That British Amateur Naturalist had it all Wrong
still no, WW2, WW1 it still applies. Unless you go back to pre industry it works. Which would make sense if you are talking about Norwegian fighting prowessI'm talking historically, as the prestige of the soldier has collapsed over the last decades, to say the least....
And the soldier now has to be smarter and in some ways physically superior. A truly superb soldier these days is much harder to achieve than in say 1235.
Re: That British Amateur Naturalist had it all Wrong
Homo Sapiens is about 200.000 years old. To talk about the last 100 years when discussing its evolution is ridicilous.Originally Posted by Centurion1
still no, WW2, WW1 it still applies. Unless you go back to pre industry it works. Which would make sense if you are talking about Norwegian fighting prowess
And the soldier now has to be smarter and in some ways physically superior. A truly superb soldier these days is much harder to achieve than in say 1235.
Still maintain that crying on the pitch should warrant a 3 match ban
Re: That British Amateur Naturalist had it all Wrong
Unless #1 is true.
Re: That British Amateur Naturalist had it all Wrong
those are the most destructive wars of our time right next to each other. The last hundred years of the human race will probably do more to alter humanity through science than any other time period.Homo Sapiens is about 200.000 years old. To talk about the last 100 years when discussing its evolution is ridicilous.
and actually its only about 5000 years old.
Re: That British Amateur Naturalist had it all Wrong
Science, sure, but we're talking about our genes here, not our tech.
lolz.and actually its only about 5000 years old.
Still maintain that crying on the pitch should warrant a 3 match ban
Re: That British Amateur Naturalist had it all Wrong
Evolution has moved far beyond the works of Darwin.
Also, lifestyle does affect evolution, as in, the environment affects the survival of certain aspects compared to others.
As for the chickens, the young chicks probably pick up behaviours from their parents, and since their parents behaviour was already shot due to the experiment, this shot behaviour was taught to the children.
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Re: That British Amateur Naturalist had it all Wrong
I'd like to see a more solid group of studies backing the effects they describe. But they did say that the tested the genes of the chicks, didn't they?
Re: That British Amateur Naturalist had it all Wrong
ah but therein lies the difference. our tech is such a difference maker for survivability that it will affect the population.Science, sure, but we're talking about our genes here, not our tech.
Re: That British Amateur Naturalist had it all Wrong
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
By necessity of thinking in language, we need to think in metaphor, in category, in a scheme.
I think the 'Tree of Life' metaphor that governs understanding of evolution, that is equated with evolution in common knowledge, is a product of 19th century science. The postmodernist in me would call it a Victorian historical-hierachical progress model. Yet because this metaphor is the language that describes evolution, science works within this scheme, is its product, reinforces it.
'If Darwin were alive today' (much as that contradicts my postmodernism which just reduced him to a product of his age) he would describe 'evolution' as a network process. Not just descibe it as such, but conceive of it as such. 'Wikipedia' might indeed be a better methaphor for nature than a closed structure hierachical tree.
Then again, maybe contemporary science thinks of evolution more and more as a network process precisely because modern science is a product of our time.
Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life"We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality," Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, told New Scientist magazine.
Genetic tests on bacteria, plants and animals increasingly reveal that different species crossbreed more than originally thought, meaning that instead of genes simply being passed down individual branches of the tree of life, they are also transferred between species on different evolutionary paths. The result is a messier and more tangled "web of life".
Microbes swap genetic material so promiscuously it can be hard to tell one type from another, but animals regularly crossbreed too - as do plants - and the offspring can be fertile. According to some estimates, 10 per cent of animals regularly form hybrids by breeding with other species.
Last year, scientists at the University of Texas at Arlington found a strange chunk of DNA in the genetic make-up of eight animals, including the mouse, rat and the African clawed frog. The same chunk is missing from chickens, elephants and humans, suggesting it must have become wedged into the genomes of some animals by crossbreeding.
The findings mean that to link species by Darwin's evolutionary branches is an oversimplification. "The tree of life is being politely buried," said Michael Rose, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Irvine. "What's less accepted is that our whole fundamental view of biology needs to change."
Re: That British Amateur Naturalist had it all Wrong
I don't particularly respect newscientist unfortunately. They tend to exaggerate for effect. After reading that, for all I know these are things that biologists have thought for decades.
Re: That British Amateur Naturalist had it all Wrong
And what if I genetically alter a pig to have a lion's tail and elephant ears? It seems not outside the grasp of science.
Wouldn't this undermine the phylogenetic tree? Show how evolution within one species decides the evolution of other species.
Of course, considering that a pig is what humans have left of its wild boar ancestor, this process has been going on forever. Ever since predators in the Cambrian life explosion, evolution has been driven by inter-species interaction. It is a network process.
If I can be allowed a metaphor, biology keeps adding a new dimension to our understanding of the order of the natural world. From the one-dimensional Cabinets of curiosities in Renaissance thought. A collection of losse species, ordered on a single plane. To the two-dimensional Darwinian understanding that ordered life in a historical-hierarchical scheme. To current three dimensions, adding a better understanding of network processes.
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