Physiology rocks the foundations of evolutionary biology

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Benevolent
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Physiology rocks the foundations of evolutionary biology

Unread post by Benevolent » Thu May 02, 2013 2:17 pm

In the May review article published by the Experimental Physiology, Prof. Noble presents his theory on the major revolution occurring in evolutionary biology, which is set to change the nature of biology and of the importance of physiology.

The “Modern Synthesis” (Neo-Darwinism) is a mid-twentieth century gene-centric view of evolution, based on random mutations accumulating to produce gradual change through natural selection. Any role of physiological function in influencing genetic inheritance was excluded. The organism became a mere carrier of the real objects of selection: its genes.

Recent studies demonstrated that genetic change is far from random and often not gradual. Molecular genetics and genome sequencing have deconstructed this unnecessarily restrictive view of evolution in a way that reintroduces physiological function and interactions with the environment as factors influencing the speed and nature of inherited change. Acquired characteristics can be inherited, and in a few but growing number of cases that inheritance has now been shown to be robust for many generations. The twenty-first century can look forward to a new synthesis that will reintegrate physiology with evolutionary biology.

This controversial, but very interesting hypothesis, was immediately highlighted in the Faculty of 1000 Prime, and it generated a wave of positive feedback.

“This article is a fascinating look at the changes currently underway in evolutionary biology. The author challenges the text book theories of evolution and points the way to a reintegration of physiology with evolutionary biology. This view is presented for a wide readership and will generate considerable discussion.” said Prof James Duffin - Integrative Physiology University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.

“Prof Noble's work has always provided the theoretical motivation of the Virtual Physiological Human initiative; if his theory is correct, as I believe, the complexity involved with the investigation of life would impose computer simulations as the only practical way out” said Prof Viceconti – VPH Institute Executive Director.

If you are interested to discover more details about this fascinting theory, Prof Denis Noble has been invited to give the opening lecture of the IUPS2013 Congress, which will take place in Birmingham on Sunday 21st of July, 2013.

The full article is accessible from here
http://ep.physoc.org/content/early/2013 ... l.pdf+html

For more information, you can watch this video
http://www.voicesfromoxford.org/video/p ... iology/184

http://vph-institute.org/news/201cpsych ... iology201d

Benevolent
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Re: Physiology rocks the foundations of evolutionary biology

Unread post by Benevolent » Thu May 02, 2013 8:49 pm

Great lecture by James A. Shapiro.

Revisiting evolution in the 21st Century
http://vimeo.com/17592530

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GaryN
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Re: Physiology rocks the foundations of evolutionary biology

Unread post by GaryN » Fri May 03, 2013 10:02 pm

Great lecture by James A. Shapiro.
Awesome lecture Benevolent, thanks for the link. I'll be watching it again for sure.
In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. -Buckminster Fuller

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303vegas
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Re: Physiology rocks the foundations of evolutionary biology

Unread post by 303vegas » Sat May 04, 2013 12:54 am

It just proves the silliness of putting all your eggs in one basket or 'reductionism' as it's more commonly known these days. How could things like environment and inheritance not be a factor? It shows how little common sense and joined-up thinking there is in 'science' these days. The single idea must be pursued at all costs even beyond the point of absurdity.
love from lancashire!

tholden
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Re: Physiology rocks the foundations of evolutionary biology

Unread post by tholden » Sun May 05, 2013 4:29 pm

What most people are unaware of is that the whole theory of evolution has been overwhelmingly refuted a number of times and via a number of totally unrelated arguments to such an extent that any normal science theory under the same circumstances would have been rejected and thrown out literally decades ago.

The first such disproof and the one which rightfully should have ended the debate involved fruit flies. Fruit flies breed new generations every other day so that running any sort of a decades-long experiment with fruit flies will involve more generations of them than there have ever been of anything even remotely resembling humans on our planet. Those flies were subjected to everything in the world known to cause mutations and the mutants were recombined every possible way; all they ever got were sterile freaks, and fruit flies. Several prominent scientists publicly denounced evolution at that point in time including the famous case of Richard Goldschmidt.

The failure was due to the fact that our entire living world is driven by information and the only information there ever was in the picture was that for a fruit fly. When the DNA/RNA information scheme was discovered, even if the fruit fly thing had never happened, evolution should have been discarded on the spot. But GIVEN the fact of the fruit fly experiments, somebody HAD to have thought to himself
"Hey, THAT'S THE REASON THE FRUIT FLY EXPERIMENTS FAILED!!!!!!"
The DNA/RNA system is an information code just like C#, Java, or C++. Information codes do not just sort of happen or appear amongst inanimate matter for no particular reason. In other words, there is no way in the world anybody should be believing in evolution 40 years after the discovery of DNA and, again, that's just one overwhelming disproof amongst a number of such. Again no legitimate science theory would ever survive such a history.

There is the question of the probabilistic odds against any sort of life forming from inanimate matter via any random sequence of events; the junk science reports we now read about "string" theory and "multiple universes" is basically motivated by a recognition of what the odds are against evolution in the one universe we actually have any evidence for.

CuriousCat
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Re: Physiology rocks the foundations of evolutionary biology

Unread post by CuriousCat » Mon May 27, 2013 5:52 am

In anatomy and physiology, we were taught that form follows function. That part makes sense to me. When someone moves on to saying that much of human DNA is "junk DNA," that doesn't make sense to me. I haven't been able to watch the presentations yet. My phone won't let me, and I'm still learning my new computer. Thank you, Frosty for killing the old one. I'm too nice to turn you into a catskin rug. But I do think that the bits and pieces of evolutionary theory I learneed in school are sadly lacking. And experimentally on fruit flies? Didn't we go over that in "The Fly?" That didn't turn out well as I recall.

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tholden
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Re: Physiology rocks the foundations of evolutionary biology

Unread post by tholden » Mon May 27, 2013 8:20 am

...rocks the foundations of evolutionary biology...
At this point, nobody's talking about "rocking the foundations" any more. What you're talking about is one or two final nails in the coffin.

The book I've mentioned ( www.cosmosincollision.com) is not an anti-evolution treatise per-Se, but it does in fact contain the most gigantic argument against evolution which has ever come down the road so far.

This occurs on the last couple of pages of the book and it involves a peculiar problem which an evolutionist could have watching or reading science fiction. In other words, someone who believed that our living world had arisen via combinations of random events, mutation, and selection would have to believe that any other living world which he might stumble across out in space would have to look completely alien to us. Thus you see the café in Star Wars with creatures whose morphologies are limited only by the writer's imagination, and you read sci-fy novels in which space farers encounter living forms based on silicon rather than carbon or the RNA/DNA information system which governs our own living world.

If, on the other hand, one were actually to find another living world in another star system and all he were to find there were the same kinds of dogs, cats, bears, fish, birds, spiders, flies etc. which we are used to seeing, possibly with slightly different variations for different conditions, and the entire alien living world were based on the same RNA/DNA system which ours is, then the evolutionist has a gigantic problem; he has to explain how the same living world and that same RNA/DNA information system arose TWICE by random chance... At that point you have to consider the possibility that the living forms which we see here represent cosmic archetypes, that whatever governs them operates everywhere in the universe much as it does here, and that the life forms which have existed on our own planet are the only ones you would ever be likely to find no matter how far into space you went. For that matter, dinosaurs and hominids look strange enough to us, but they all were bilaterally symmetric, had a mouth, a nose, two eyes, two ears, four limbs, and fur and were DNA/RNA based

We believe that this book adequately demonstrates that this exact situation actually prevailed in our own ancient solar system i.e. that our system was originally in two separate parts and that both parts had living worlds. Granted the two parts of our original system were separated only by the kind of distances we observe with the components of alpha Centauri, for the purpose of this argument they may as well have been separated by hundreds of light years. You had two totally separated living worlds and each was easily recognizable by the other, each DNA/RNA-based, and no way to explain that via evolution.

That's right. The space age is not going to belong to atheists and/or evolutionites.

Paperback versions available within a week or two.

Ted

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303vegas
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Re: Physiology rocks the foundations of evolutionary biology

Unread post by 303vegas » Sun Jun 02, 2013 4:11 am

Re 'junk DNA':

Compare the genome the the piano: You don't use every note in every song (unless you're Rachmaninoff!) Different combinations produce different tunes.

Sorry if this clouds things, I just wanted to provide an analogy.
love from lancashire!

ElecGeekMom
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Re: Physiology rocks the foundations of evolutionary biology

Unread post by ElecGeekMom » Tue Jun 04, 2013 8:26 am

I like your piano analogy.

By the way, there is a song in the stage play I'm currently playing for, where the last chord of the song is played by placing both forearms on the lower half of the piano keyboard.

The resulting sound is, of course, pure chaos!

magicjava
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Re: Physiology rocks the foundations of evolutionary biology

Unread post by magicjava » Sat Jun 08, 2013 7:45 am

Benevolent wrote:If you are interested to discover more details about this fascinting theory, Prof Denis Noble has been invited to give the opening lecture of the IUPS2013 Congress, which will take place in Birmingham on Sunday 21st of July, 2013.

The full article is accessible from here
http://ep.physoc.org/content/early/2013 ... l.pdf+html

For more information, you can watch this video
http://www.voicesfromoxford.org/video/p ... iology/184

http://vph-institute.org/news/201cpsych ... iology201d
Thanks for providing these links, Benevolent. They were very good. I've never seen anyone dismantle Richard Dawkins like that before :)

The Shapiro video was also very good. I'll try to return the favor with a few links of my own.

60 minutes overview of evo-devo.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5658057n

The famous dinosaur hunter Jack Horner tries to re-create a dinosaur from a chicken using evo-devo. Includes a video.
http://reytheo2013.blogspot.com/2013/02 ... -with.html

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