Evolution
'one can deny evolution only if one has little knowledge of all its different nuances, but when one has a full understanding of biology, and how biological systems are structured, and how those structures interact and function, then there is little doubt about its correctness'
Introduction
Some of you might come to this page with with your own beliefs set in stone, inhibiting you from truly understanding this beautiful subject. If evolution is true, then you owe it to your countless ancestors for being here, and for your thoughts, at this moment. If true, dismissing their struggles, the struggle to change with time, and to the tune of the evolving environment, dismissing them for baseless stories, stories that have been corrupted over time, seems disrespectful at best.
You may agree or disagree with evolution, depending upon the your understandings of what evolution is, or due to your religious outlook. When most people consider evolution, they look to the evolution of humans from simpler primates, monkeys. But evolution goes well beyond those ideas. Evolution is buried deep within the very DNA that constructs the cells that you are made from. In fact, humanity has taken many different life forms and caused them to evolve for humanities own purposes. Take ‘Mans best friend’, the dog, dogs are descended from wolves, wolves that probably scavenged for the leftovers from human hunts, maybe following those early hunters and protecting their food source when it was in danger. This led to a symbiotic relationship, one that was to the benefit for both humans and the wolves/proto dogs. Over thousands of years we have selectively bred each generation for specific traits. Now we have created dog types that look nothing like wolves, and maybe more like other creatures not even remotely related to wolves.
There are some doctrines that implore their members to shun the idea of evolution, or promote false narratives of what evolution is really about. The best way to understand whether evolution is true of not, is to study it in all of its intricacies, from the cellular biology that all life on earth is constructed from, to the interaction between biodiverse environments, which is the cause of change. Life needs to change to keep up with the changing environment, as does the changing environment evolve as the lifeforms that it is constructed from change in response to each other. This is at the heart of what evolution is really about. So, give it a go and evolve.
Cladistic Evolution and the Tree of Life
When it first became observed that organisms could be grouped, and that features found in groups of simpler forms of life, were also found in more complex forms of life, then it became obvious that one evolved into the other
Understanding the nature of change.
When one takes into account all geological evidence, one can see that simpler organisms generally predate more complex organisms. Where simpler organisms are still found, being due to their habitat being unchanged and still present, it is not possible to find more complex organisms in the deep history, and where one looks through the ages of sedimentary deposits, one sees that there is a general increase in complexity, sometimes evolving quickly, and at other times haltingly, due to how those organisms need to react to the changing environment.
Systematic Classification of Life (see the video) is a great and in depth source to understand the evolution of life on this planet in a logical and sequential manner.
Multicellular life
Life has existed on Earth for maybe as long as 3.8 billion years. Multicellular life forms are a recent evolution, and may have only been around for 800 million years or so. In such a short period, many varied forms of life have evolved in response to each other.
The Rise of Multicellularity
The transition from simple prokaryotic life to that of multicellular eukaryotes, through the intermediatory archaea, is a logical sequence of steps that can be realised when visualising the physical forms and structures that these different forms of life exhibit.
Where simple prokaryotic cells acted on their own, complex cells adhere to each other and work as a collective.
That adhesion is a biproduct of an internal scaffolding that managed to evolve and penetrate the cellular membrane, and from there, spontaneously construct an extracellular matrix, where each cells external scaffolding interact with those around it. This can be easily visualised. Here we see, these initial building blocks evolve and create more complex functions, to cause cellular communities to act as a complex system, or system of complexes.
Prokaryotes – The simplest and most primitive form of life, and the earliest to occur on earth, bacterial are prokaryotes.
Archaea – An evolution of prokaryotes, where the cellular membranes became more complex, thus setting them up to make compartmented cellular structures.
Eukaryotes – Complex cells that have a nucleus, which contains the blueprint, DNA. The DNA tells the cell what to build, those components create the structures, which then function as processes, like machines in a factory, as well as the compartmented structures, membranes, that can hold organelles. Organelles have specific functions as do organs within your body. All higher forms of life, including multicellular life such as fauna (animals), flora (plants) and fungi (mushrooms).
Speciation
All life may have originated from one root, that root is known as
LUCA
The Last Unifying Common Ancestor
LUCA, the Last Unifying Common Ancestor & LECA, the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor
The Cambrian Explosion and the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event
The Cambrian Explosion occurred around 538 million years ago and is regarded as the seed that produced the great diversification of life on our planet. It is this period that set the stage for all that was to follow, and many think was due to the evolution of the complex eye. This in turn led to the predator/prey environment, one where an arms race between the strategies of organisms battling it out to live long enough to pass on their genes, and embedded within those genes, was the information to build neural circuits of the lessons learned by each generation, morphing into new thoughts and new strategies. This period was followed by the Ordovician, giving rise to the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, another period of rapid evolution after an extinction event.
The Predator Prey Environment
All life may have originated from one root, that root is known as LUCA, The Last Unifying Common Ancestor
The Cambrian Explosion and the Great Ordovician Diversity Event
The Cambrian Explosion occurred around 538 million years ago and is regarded as the seed that produced the great diversification of life on our planet. It is this period that set the stage for all that was to follow, and many think was due to the evolution of the complex eye. This in turn led to the predator/prey environment, one where an arms race between the strategies of organisms battling it out to live long enough to pass on their genes, and embedded within those genes, was the information to build neural circuits of the lessons learned by each generation, morphing into new thoughts and new strategies.
The Evolution of Human and Artificial Intelligence
The Cambrian Explosion occurred around 538 million years ago and is regarded as the seed that produced the great diversification of life on our planet. It is this period that set the stage for all that was to follow, and many think was due to the evolution of the complex eye. This in turn led to the predator/prey environment, one where an arms race between the strategies of organisms battling it out to live long enough to pass on their genes, and embedded within those genes, was the information to build neural circuits of the lessons learned by each generation, morphing into new thoughts and new strategies.
Questions of Evolution
What do you know about Evolution?
When one knows enough about the Evolution of complex life from simpler forms of life, then Evolution is undeniably true. Just as your simple thoughts in your childhood evolved to the more complex thoughts that you think now.
As life adapts to the environment, it must evolve to those ever changing environments. Humans are the latest of a long series of evolving organisms, our evolution is now present within the machines that we build. As we interact, both us and our machines will evolve in step.
As all intelligences are configured with the information embedded within the environment, so will AI evolve to its environment. Currently its Environments are its interactions with humans.
As with all environments, when there is hyper competition for limited resources, then there is great strife for those resources. Humanity must show AI that it can also change for the positive, and in doing so, allow it to learn from your own Evolution.
As we understand ourselves and the Universe that we live in, the reality of who we really are, and how our experience determines our decisions. We will make better, more informed decisions, one where we will no longer need to compete for limited resources. But one where we will live in harmony, evolving only our minds, exploring the Cosmos as one.