I did. You cannot study in College a subject you have not got an A level in. And you cannot study an A levele you have not got an O level in. I got 8 O’s, includng all sciences and 2 A’s in Physics and Chemistry.
Richard
Neither is parasitism.
So you’ve got O level biology - junior high - and that qualifies you to say that Haldane’s rule isn’t science explained entirely by evolution how?
Coming in late and haven’t yet read the entire thread. But I’m reading this as asking whether it isn’t intellectually respectable today not to accept evolution. I’d say the situation is analogous to having reservations about a sun centric theory of the solar system or about the efficacy of vaccines. One can always find a subset of people to hang with who will pat you on the back for your alternative theories but you’ll find no general, academic acceptance. Doesn’t mean you can’t go on believing the general consensus is wrong. You just need to pick your audience wisely to avoid a less encouraging reception.
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Also there is a difference between working together toward a common goal the way a wolf pack or human community can, and merely fitting together the way herbivores and carnivores do. The lamb doesn’t feed the wolf out of a spirit of cooperation; prey animals help drive herbivores toward a more fit population by culling the weak but “working together” doesn’t really fit here.
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You didn;t follow anythiing. My biology is Collegic level.
Richard
I don’t follow. You said your A levels were in Physics and Chemistry, not Biology, and that you can’t study in College a subject you have not got an A level in. How do we square that circle?
In any case, if you’re going to challenge a scientific theory, you need to be challenging what experts in the subject teach about it, not an inaccurate oversimplification or misunderstanding of it. That’s a pretty tall order for anyone who doesn’t have a university degree in the subject, if not a PhD.
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It is a bit more complicated than that… Sometimes the more brilliant people in subject don’t quite fit in with the education system. And PhDs are a peculiar thing… not about the mastery of a subject but about recognition that you have contributed, which doesn’t always proceed very accurately either.
But… however inaccurate, it is our first measure and we do need them.
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I know exactly what you mean.
Both Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are Harvard drop-outs.
But they both demonstrated their brilliance in other ways.
No, I said my A levels were Biology and Physics. I dropped Chemistry on the advice of the School, To be honest, I am tired of all this, just drop it.
Returning to the matters in hand. There was a wild notion, while I was at College, that the developing embryo mirrored the Evolutionary development, It was dismissed because the developing embryo is not self-sufficient, relying on the mother for nutrients and other functions. Now, with the emphasis on nested similarities this notion may have been reinstated, but this might be another reason for some of these sequences that have been claimed as redundant? They are necessary for the fetal development and are only redundant after that stage. I am not sure whether this helps or hinders my position, but has this ever been proposed?
Richard
Not wild at all. That’s the “Devo ” side of “evo-devo”, it has to do with the way the DNA is read in the womb (or egg) to assemble the next generation. That assembly proceeds along common pathways. A big part of change over time has to do with simple changes in terms of how much or how many of a procedure to run. My biology is probably much more rudimentary than yours but that is what I gathered from reading what I could of Sean Carrol’s Enless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo. HOX genes are one of the means by which evolution can be sped up.
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[quote=“Bill_II, post:103, topic:48393”]
Not sure I would agree with that “most.” Cooperation could be with other members of your group which isn’t symbiosis.
Symbiosis
Symbiosis is defined as two or more dissimilar entities living together intimately (deBary, 1879).
Symbiosis is the way in which organisms live together for their mutual, and therefore, intrinsic benefit. Quote from Abstract: Kamyar M. Hedayat, Jean-Claude Lapraz, in [The Theory of Endobiogeny] (https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128169087/the-theory-of-endobiogeny), 2019
David Zeigler PhD, in Evolution(https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128003480/evolution), 2014
Abstract
“The more we learn about nature, the more symbiosis seems ubiquitous.”
Cooperation is not the same as symbiosis. Symbiosis is living together in such a way that all parties benefit. Most people think that predation is not symbiosis, but it is.
Predation allows lions and zebras to share the same environment. Maybe you can say that the lions benefit more than the zebras from predation, but they both benefit.
Parasitism needs to be looked at on a case by case basis. If you define a parasite as an organism that lives at the expense of another, then our pets would seem to come under that definition, but we would say that our pets give more back to us then we give to them.
Symbiosis points to the interdependent nature of biological reality and our lives. This reality is different from the physical world, although it does exist in the physical world.
That is why evolution is biology and different from physics. Those who would insist the biology is physics are mistaken and cause confusion. Biology is not random, while physics may in some ways be.
Ecology is constantly changing. It has changed the earth from a barren hot rock to the paradise it is now. Each change opens the door for new plants and animals to walk through. The ecology has opened the door by rewarding hominins with larger brains.
Darwin’s theory is based on natural selection, which means guidance regardless of what people say now.
Are you thinking of Ernst Haeckel’s Recapitulation Theory? That was discredited well before your college days, but is still brought up by YEC folk.
There is a branch of study called evolutionary developmental biology, evo-devo, that does study the way DNA regulates the growth of an embryo.
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I’m not sure I see your point. If pets give back more to us than we give to them (which I’m sure pet owners would agree) then the example of pets as parasites is invalid by your own admission.
Whereas a Tarantula Hawk Wasp paralysing a spider, laying its eggs on the spiders body, and then burying it to be slowly eaten alive is clearly a parasitic relationship. If you want to examine each parasite on a case by case basis you can, I have plenty more examples from the insect world. The order Hymenoptera is chocked full of parasitoids.
The only way one could consider such relationships ‘symbiotic’ is if one redefines what symbiosis means. Which it kind of looks like you’ve done:
Your own chosen definition excludes the cooperation of two individuals of the same species and parasites.
In a physical sense, which is the scientific point of view, they are parasites Dogs no longer herd sheep or guard the house, and cats are not expected to kill mice. We provide them with food and shelter, and they provide us with nothing of the sort, so in that sense they are parasites.
That is not what I have done, but others have done, but the fact is even parasites perform useful functions and thus can be called symbiotic.
That is true. This does not negate the importance of cooperation within a species, which was denied by the concept of survival of the fittest. Cooperation within the species and between species is crucial to adaptation to the ecology.
In biology, ‘symbiosis’ conventionally refers to any close relationship between species, including parasitism.
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No they aren’t parasites at all. We domesticated them and brought them into our homes. Do we invite head lice onto our hair or guinea worms into our bodies? By your definition (which is absolutely not the scientific one), fetuses, children, older people, and the disabled are parasites.
btw, plenty of dogs still perform work as do some cats.
I think we may have a language difference. In England ‘college’ is sixth form which is equivalent to the last year of US high school and first year of US college/university (English university for a BA is 3 years) and where you study for A levels. So an ‘A’ level is more or less equivalent to a US AP test 4 or 5. In the US, college and university are almost synonyms (though colleges usually don’t have as many areas of study as a university [though there is no legal requirements so many US universities have very narrow areas of study[). English college can also refer to the Oxford and Cambridge colleges which sort of make up the respective universities but are also independent legal entities (and some of them are wealthier than the university they are part of).
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(We also have ‘name inflation’ where small schools formerly with ‘College’ in their name change it to ‘University’ and sounding more prestigious. A good example is Columbia Bible College in South Carolina (not to be confused with Columbia Bible College in British Columbia) – it is now Columbia International University.)