Two Plus Two Newer Archives  

Go Back   Two Plus Two Newer Archives > Other Topics > Science, Math, and Philosophy
FAQ Community Calendar Today's Posts Search

 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Prev Previous Post   Next Post Next
  #9  
Old 11-07-2007, 10:43 AM
Drag Drag is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: France
Posts: 117
Default Re: Biological evolution is irrelevant to humans.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
natural selection leaves only the most fit.


[/ QUOTE ]
That phrase is quite wrong, and it's a fundamental mistake I would not expect from anyone who has studied evolution scientifically.

[ QUOTE ]
The relevant scale for a 'biological evolution' is about 100 000 years.

[/ QUOTE ]
No, it isn't.

First, human subpopulations are believed to have evolved much more rapidly, by at least an order of magnitude.

Second, bacteria which are quite relevant to us evolve much more rapidly, by several orders of magnitude.

Maybe you are confusing evolution with creating species.

[/ QUOTE ]


I haven't said that natural selection leaves only the most fit.

I don't know if there is a rigorous way to establish a relevant time scale for an evolution. The charachterisic time of new species formation seems to be a good choice. You can propose other measures, they all would be fine as long as you apply them in the same way to the changes brought by 'technological and natural evolution'.

How do you measure the degree of evolution of human subpopulation?

As for the relevant time scale of bacteria evolution, sure it is smaller than for multicellar organisms. You need to compare the relevant time scales for 'technological and natural evolution' for the same species. If we want to develop a new kind of bacteria for some purpose the relevant time scale will be years if not months. (I think it is hard to define speciation event for bacteria, so we'd need another measure. Percentage of genome change, for example.)

P.S. You are right in that I should have said the relevant time scale of human evolution (or mammals evolution).
Reply With Quote
 


Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 04:00 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.