nebula Posted January 23, 2009 Group: Royal Member Followers: 10 Topic Count: 5,823 Topics Per Day: 0.75 Content Count: 45,870 Content Per Day: 5.94 Reputation: 1,897 Days Won: 83 Joined: 03/22/2003 Status: Offline Birthday: 11/19/1970 Share Posted January 23, 2009 Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life * 21 January 2009 by Graham Lawton <snip> For much of the past 150 years, biology has largely concerned itself with filling in the details of the tree. "For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life," says Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France. A few years ago it looked as though the grail was within reach. But today the project lies in tatters, torn to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence. Many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded. "We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality," says Bapteste. That bombshell has even persuaded some that our fundamental view of biology needs to change. So what happened? In a nutshell, DNA. . . . <snip past the problem to the conclusion> We now know that this is exactly what happens. As more and more genes were sequenced, it became clear that the patterns of relatedness could only be explained if bacteria and archaea were routinely swapping genetic material with other species - often across huge taxonomic distances - in a process called horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Read it all here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebula Posted January 23, 2009 Group: Royal Member Followers: 10 Topic Count: 5,823 Topics Per Day: 0.75 Content Count: 45,870 Content Per Day: 5.94 Reputation: 1,897 Days Won: 83 Joined: 03/22/2003 Status: Offline Birthday: 11/19/1970 Author Share Posted January 23, 2009 Well, I hope you got more out of the report than that. Consider this from the article: Rose goes even further. "The tree of life is being politely buried, we all know that," he says. "What's less accepted is that our whole fundamental view of biology needs to change." Biology is vastly more complex than we thought, he says, and facing up to this complexity will be as scary as the conceptual upheavals physicists had to take on board in the early 20th century. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebula Posted January 23, 2009 Group: Royal Member Followers: 10 Topic Count: 5,823 Topics Per Day: 0.75 Content Count: 45,870 Content Per Day: 5.94 Reputation: 1,897 Days Won: 83 Joined: 03/22/2003 Status: Offline Birthday: 11/19/1970 Author Share Posted January 23, 2009 For one, they should say, "The tree of life has been blown out of the water." For another, "our whole fundamental view of biology needs to change," is no little hiccup. Biologist might have to completely re-write the entire Classification system (you know - Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species). I don't know how much biology you have studied, but that will have huge impacts. See here for explanations Also consider what impact this has on Evolutionary Biology. I'm not going to jump the gun on this, but the "common ancestor" and "most closely related to" and similar terms may not be in the picture anymore. Or at least may not hold the meaning we thought they had. Or something. I'm not sure. But this is going to have to rework everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebula Posted January 23, 2009 Group: Royal Member Followers: 10 Topic Count: 5,823 Topics Per Day: 0.75 Content Count: 45,870 Content Per Day: 5.94 Reputation: 1,897 Days Won: 83 Joined: 03/22/2003 Status: Offline Birthday: 11/19/1970 Author Share Posted January 23, 2009 I think you are reading too much into it if you think that this somehow refutes the theory of evolution. I didn't say that. The whole classification system doesn't need to be rewritten, things may need to be moved around and links will be made where we hadn't realized they existed before, but guess what, this has been happening as long as there has been a classification system. Organisms are regularly reclassified as we learn more about them. I don't think you understand the significance of the Classification System to biology. I didn't either until I interned under a biology teacher and studied this stuff. This isn't a simple shuffling around. Why do you suppose the scientist in the article stated: "...facing up to this complexity will be as scary as the conceptual upheavals physicists had to take on board in the early 20th century." That is the nature of science, it is updated and refined as our understanding grows. Look, if you were on a science discussion board, do you think you'd be looking at this as a defense of science (like you are doing here), or would you be marveling at what this means to our scientific understanding of things? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebula Posted January 23, 2009 Group: Royal Member Followers: 10 Topic Count: 5,823 Topics Per Day: 0.75 Content Count: 45,870 Content Per Day: 5.94 Reputation: 1,897 Days Won: 83 Joined: 03/22/2003 Status: Offline Birthday: 11/19/1970 Author Share Posted January 23, 2009 Of course, now that I think about it, if you really want to get into a bash-out about faith vs. science, I could throw back . . . Better to be grounded on the solid rock of Christ than to be standing on the shifting sands of science. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heresyhunter Posted January 24, 2009 Group: Advanced Member Followers: 0 Topic Count: 6 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 170 Content Per Day: 0.03 Reputation: 3 Days Won: 0 Joined: 02/24/2008 Status: Offline Share Posted January 24, 2009 Well done, negative cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebula Posted January 24, 2009 Group: Royal Member Followers: 10 Topic Count: 5,823 Topics Per Day: 0.75 Content Count: 45,870 Content Per Day: 5.94 Reputation: 1,897 Days Won: 83 Joined: 03/22/2003 Status: Offline Birthday: 11/19/1970 Author Share Posted January 24, 2009 I had a much more engaging and informative conversation with one of the biology teachers at school than you are giving me. I bet it's because you are more interested in talking science apologetic than you are in talking about science. I keep this in mind next time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heresyhunter Posted January 24, 2009 Group: Advanced Member Followers: 0 Topic Count: 6 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 170 Content Per Day: 0.03 Reputation: 3 Days Won: 0 Joined: 02/24/2008 Status: Offline Share Posted January 24, 2009 I had a much more engaging and informative conversation with one of the biology teachers at school than you are giving me. I bet it's because you are more interested in talking science apologetic than you are in talking about science. I keep this in mind next time. I am taken back by this comment of yours, Nebula. I thought negativecool addressed your points rather sufficiently. Perhaps there is a point you are trying to make but are having trouble expressing it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebula Posted January 24, 2009 Group: Royal Member Followers: 10 Topic Count: 5,823 Topics Per Day: 0.75 Content Count: 45,870 Content Per Day: 5.94 Reputation: 1,897 Days Won: 83 Joined: 03/22/2003 Status: Offline Birthday: 11/19/1970 Author Share Posted January 24, 2009 I wanted to talk about the research and the findings and what it could mean and all that. Instead I got, "Ain't this neat how adaptable science is?" followed by, "It's all a bunch of hype!" By the same person. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heresyhunter Posted January 24, 2009 Group: Advanced Member Followers: 0 Topic Count: 6 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 170 Content Per Day: 0.03 Reputation: 3 Days Won: 0 Joined: 02/24/2008 Status: Offline Share Posted January 24, 2009 I wanted to talk about the research and the findings and what it could mean and all that. Instead I got, "Ain't this neat how adaptable science is?" followed by, "It's all a bunch of hype!" By the same person. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter. Do share? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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