Hi,
Genetics is not my field, but if you want to read futher here’s another link to a post by Coyne who describes why the evidence that epigenetic changes in animals are passed down for multiple generations is weak. He refers to a popular science article by Khan (also accessible from is blog post) which gets into more of the nitty gritty science about it.
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If you are referring to transgenerational inheritance of methylation patterns, then those aren’t mutations. The DNA sequence stays the same.
With DNA methylation, a methyl group is added to the cytosines of CpGs upstream of a gene. This lowers the expression of the downstream gene. The reverse is true when removing methyl groups within CpG islands.
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It is seen in plants, yeast, and nematodes. However, it doesn’t appear to be present in more complex animals.
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The Weismann barrier?
For the most part, yes. In most animals there is very little cross-talk between somatic and germline cells. There are exceptions, such as seen in nematodes. This only highlights one truism in biology, that there are no universally true statements in biology. You can usually find an exception to every rule in some small pocket of biology.
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I recently highlighted these quotes from Noble’s book. I like how they speak about the emergence of purpose from the apparent lack of. Earlier in the book there was a reference to meteorology in relation to attractors.
As we have seen, attractors, including oscillators, form naturally within networks of interacting components, even if these networks start off relatively uniform and unstructured.
It seems likely that the earliest forms of life did have very slow networks, and also likely that the earliest catalysts would have been in the rocks of the Earth. Some of the elements of those rocks are now to be found as metal atoms (trace elements) forming important parts of modern enzymes.
Randomness and programing are problematic from an epistolomogical point of view and thus probably this analogy has inherent problems.
One first has to explain how reality came into being. Next, using computer programing to generate so called “random numbers” is introducing intelligent design of the computing system and its software. Both of these are designed to perform such that a desired outcome is achieved according to the designers wishes. Evolution does not claim the same for this planet or the universe.
Now if we thew a primordial soup of chemicals into a pot called space, gave it a little time, and out came a computer that generated random numbers with no user input, then that might be a fair analogy. I suppose one could argue that in effect is what has happened?
In any case, without having read through 180 comments above, if Lamarks theory were true, Jean Claud Van ■■■■’s offspring would be born both muscle bound and ripped with world champion karate/lickboxing/taekwondo skills and in no need of any actual training…clearly Lamark was completely wrong.
Just give it enough time
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[content removed by moderator]…have a look at what the whole thing is sitting on…two round cans. The energy from the movement of the mechanisms above is being transferred into the base…of course its going to synchronise its not an independent system of random events, each of the above in being influenced by the movement of the others transferred through the base…its just trickery for the foolish who don’t understand the principles of engineering mechanics. oh, this is also a designed system.
I was trying to explain why @heymike3 had not supplied enough information to determine probabilities related to random number generators. It was a purely methodological analogy. The analogy:
I have a huge garbage bag full of tiles. I pull out a tile with the number 953354 on it. With just that info, what is the probability of pulling out a tile with that number on it?
The point here is that we don’t know how many tiles there are, nor the numbers printed on them. For all we know, every tile has the same number printed on it. I was trying (poorly, perhaps) to show how you need a list of parameters before you can calculate a probability.
Specifically, we are talking about mutations. We can construct random models using computer algorithms and simulations, and then compare that model to how mutations occur. If the data matches the random model, then we conclude (tentatively) that the process is random.
As I mentioned earlier, just about every statement in biology has an exception. Lamarck being completely wrong is one of them. There are a few processes that could be considered Lamarckian in a certain light, but the vast majority of what we see in the data is random variation and natural selection. Two good examples of this data is the lack of sequence conservation in introns compared to exons and fewer nonsynonymous mutations in coding regions than we would expect from a random distribution. Both of these examples support a model where mutations happen throughout the genome, but deleterious mutations in functional sequence are selected against.
I think this is what causes people to talk past each other at times. Some people are concerned about the philosophical/theological implications, while others are trying to explain the data in nature. Or another way to put it, some take a subjective approach while others take an empirical approach.
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I believe that’s rather the point of that demonstration. (I don’t know what Mike’s motivation for showing it was.) But it’s a beautiful demonstration of energy transfer and resonant frequencies and synchronization! No trickery, no magic, … just physics fun done in a simple way!
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agreed. I tend to simply take a rather logical approach without over complicating it by reading things into ones world that are not there.
One cannot ignore the philosophical in order to develop scientific methods. Without the philosophical, there is no intelligent designer to study…so the claim that science comes first is rubbish. One of the big problems i have with all of this is the claim that randomness can be tested using intelligent methods. The second one says an individual throws his hand into a bag to draw out a random tile, we have some problems:
- where did the tiles come from and who numbered them?
- what made the bag containing the tiles?
- what if conspiring between the placement of the tile and the hand reaching in to retrieve a tile was such that the chances of picking the right numbered tile were improved? (the point being, random mutation that is beneficial is a matter of intelligent opinion in our reality is it not?)
the idea that a “no God” evolution can ignore intelligent influences and that is one of the reasons why i believe there is a God. I struggle to accept the idea that intelligence derives from no intelligence and would be interested in seeing real world working examples of that?
To be frank, I’m not seeing much logic in the rest of your post. You seem to go by what you struggle with or what you won’t accept. That’s not logic. If I refuse to accept gravity I don’t start floating in the air.
Then you have a problem with nearly all of science because that is the statistical foundation of how hypotheses are tested in science. This means you would have to reject all drug studies, as one example. I am willing to bet that nearly all of the science you do accept is built on testing for randomness. Anything with a p value is tested against randomness.
As stated earlier, there is no evidence of intelligence involved in the evolution of humans. That doesn’t mean no intelligence was involved, only that there is no scientific evidence for it. From what we can see, random variation and natural selection along with common ancestry are sufficient for producing the genomes we see today.
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The video appears to infer random synchronisation of independent systems thus supporting evolution. If he wanted to use it to suggest otherwise, then a little text underneath saying so would be helpful in avoiding someone, who knows a thing or two about engineering mechanics given i studied it at university, shouting it down as trickery. See a poorly informed individual wouldn’t recognise that the system is closed and that this is clearly not an example of synchronisation of independent random events.
Having said the above, when used for the right purpose, this video is a great engineering mechanics demonstration and i do like it.
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The ability to choose cancels out probability calculations
A similar process can happen with orbital mechanics. For example, Jupiter’s larger moons are synchronized due to gravitational interactions.
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I’m surprised you saw it that way. The board can be seen to be moving in the video. That’s what accelerates the synchronisation. I imagine given enough time, a semi-rigid surface would also work.
The point Noble was illustrating with the link for the video is that synchronisation is a natural consequence of interactions in networks.
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agreed, however, what has any of this got to do with Lamarks theory of evolution and randomness. The video demonstrates neither because its an intelligently design closed system. (i will recongnise that i have not read through 180 comments to try to determine where the discussion has gone…however, if i am missing the point, then the discussion is no longer on topic and i am simply referring back to the beginning of it)
But it need not be intelligently designed for synchronisation to occur, that’s the point Noble is raising.
There’s a dillema when it comes to seeing God’s purpose in an apparently random process. Like winning 5 different lotteries on the same day. In the case of mechanistic processes, one could assume God intervened in some hidden way that science is unable to repeat in a controlled environment. That’s not inconceivable.
The thing though is when God acts this way through the free actions and decisions of other people, this is when it gets deeply perplexing.
Here’s another I just found while looking up brain waves
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