Which came first? (pertaining to Biology/Evolution)

[aliasaid]

lol @ primordial ooze

 

[Trotter]

lol @ primordial ooze

Well, I don't believe in evolution but was willing to entertain the discussion. I did try to be nice with my answer, though.

 

[KSoD]

I am neither for nor against Evolution. But when things like Ardi are found, makes it hard to say that the Evolution aspect is wrong.

I mean finding a 4.4 million old fossil that closely resembles man, kinda makes you wonder if this whole Evolution thing might have something to it.

 

[Apokalipse]

keyboard cowboy,

not all animals have skin some animals have a hard shell/armor around them made from a different source, and in my theory, these animals have no "touch" like we humans have "touch"

what is more complex: sight or sound, many people will say sight, and that may be true. but for our hears to render the sounds we hear, thats got to be pretty complex as well.

for my question is, what came last, sight, sound, touch, smell, taste.

sound is just vibrations. Really, the ability to hear sound would have evolved out of the ability to feel vibrations.

Anyway,
So how does evolution change things?

In evolution, it would be highly improbable that an organism would spontaneously sprout something new. And you just don't really see that. Things don't just change overnight.
What happens is that old things adapt to the internal and external circumstances (through natural selection), and sometimes change their purpose or ability.
For example, if you look at the wings of birds, the bones do often bear resemblance to the bones in the arms of other organisms.
Birds use these limbs for flight, and others would use these limbs for walking, or interacting in other ways with their environment.

Evolution is like a slow march. Changes occur in very small ways in each new generation. A big change is really just the sum of a lot of small changes put together.
Eg. how do you walk a mile? or 10 miles? You take one step at a time.
In each step, you haven't gone very far. But take 1000, 2000, 3000, or 4000 steps, and where will you be?
If you and another person start from the same place, and walk in different directions, you can end up in completely different places. It will just take time (and steps)

It isn't accurate to describe the changes as 'random' either. Mutations are random, but natural selection isn't.
Basically, natural selection depends on organisms doing two things:
A) surviving
B) reproducing

If something doesn't work with even one of those, it doesn't become part of the natural evolutionary process of organisms. That's why we aren't just living blobs - it probably wouldn't work well in terms of survival and reproduction.

It should be noted that the word 'evolution' can also be used in different contexts to natural organic evolution - such as the evolution of technology.
For example, computers, guns, aeroplanes don't evolve in the natural context, because they don't reproduce on their own - we make them. And they are therefore not subject to the process of natural selection in the way that natural organisms are.

 

[Oreo]

Single celled organisms didnt have to taste. They absorbed their food in through their membrane which contained them. Ameoba is such a organism. So Touch would have come before taste.

True, i guess.

But why would single cell organisms have tge necessity to touch, afterall they are likely to remain on the same surface for there entire life span.

 

[KSoD]

That is not true Oreo. They move. It is just that they are so small you dont see it. Take a look at a Ameoba under a microscope, are they sitting still? Heck no. They are in constant motion. They dont stay on the same surface their whole life. The whole point of Evolution is that we started off as single celled organisms and EVOLVED from there to the complex things we are today.

So to follow that line of thinking, we started off in the water as single celled organisms. Cause if you know anything about the history of Earth you will know that there was a time when it was fully covered by water. So we had to start off there. From there we evolved into complex fish, upon which wondered onto land and stared to evolve further.

It is at that point that things in the Evolutionary chain took all its turns. Where Dinos came from and eventually cave men. That is the whole point of Evolution. Evolved from a lower life form.

The scale i am talking about goes beyond what Apok said. Cause he is right. It isnt just a simple process. the process i am talking about is one that took MILLIONS of years. If Evolution is to believed, then the Earth itself is 4.5 Billion years old. So this evolutionary process could have easily taken place as it was not until the last 4 million years that man came to be known. It is only the last 2000 or so years that man gained consciousness of ourselves and our surrounding in order to question such things.

So i have taken what Apok and said and strecthed it back to the beginning. All this stuff sprouts up if you watch some Discovery Channel, science Channel and History Channel. Just about everything i have said, comes from watching those shows and listening to what they have said. In terms of evolution you cant use a year or even a life time as a scale. It would take generations. Basically from the time our known consciousness started to now, would be just a drop of water in the ocean for comparison.

 

[Apokalipse]

It is at that point that things in the Evolutionary chain took all its turns. Where Dinos came from and eventually cave men. That is the whole point of Evolution. Evolved from a lower life form.

Strictly speaking, when things evolve, they don't necessarily become more complex. Just different.
I mean, changes are guided only by what provides a survival or reproductive advantage. In a lot of cases, organisms can remain relatively simple.
We still get an extremely large number of single celled organisms, and viruses (which are basically a DNA or RNA strand wrapped in proteins)

 

[KSoD]

Yes while that is true, somethings also have evolved from single celled to multi celled as well. The strands of the evolutionary chain are as complex as a strand of DNA itself. There are so many that have come so far and those that have still got so far to go.

 

[Apokalipse]

Yes while that is true, somethings also have evolved from single celled to multi celled as well. The strands of the evolutionary chain are as complex as a strand of DNA itself.

Single celled organisms and viruses still make up the vast majority of organics on Earth.

There are so many that have come so far and those that have still got so far to go.

There isn't really an 'ultimate goal' that organisms evolve towards. The only guide to evolution is natural selection. So I don't think that it's accurate to say that some organisms 'have so far to go'.

I mean, all evolution describes is changes over time *.
And we really only tend to see the changes that provide a survival or reproductive advantage, because they tend to get passed on to new generations.
But there are plenty of changes that don't. And you tend not to see them, because they tend not to get passed on.

* Scientists define evolution to be the change in genetic frequency over time. That's all.
The theory of evolution is really the model detailing how it (evolution) works.

A scientific theory is a model (explanation), built on evidence, detailing how a known fact or phenomena occurs.

For example, we know that gravity works. Gravity is a known fact/phenomena.
The theory of gravity is the scientific model, built on evidence and experimentation, detailing how gravity works - including the mathematical models such as F = GMm/r²
We do not know everything about gravity; So our current theory of gravity is incomplete. But what we do know about it is built on a foundation of evidence and repeatable experimentation.

 

[KSoD]

Yes i understand what you are saying Apok. I didnt mean it in the aspect that they are limited in anyway by how or why they will evolve. It was more of a general statement saying that there are still organisms out there that are still evolving to cope with their environment. Some are surviving while others are still adapting. Just like humans.

We have come so far but yet we still have a ways to go if we wish to continue our existence. Natural Resources are a major part of our life. Yet we have not reached that balance of how to maintain our resources while we use what we need.

Our understanding of the universe is still in its infancy stage. We are still discovering things and still trying to prove others. Dark Matter, Dark Energy, how to move past Earth to other worlds and so on.

So yes evolution is always a work in progress and is never complete. Even some theories that were thought of so many years ago are now being brought back. Dark Matter is one such theory. It was first thought of by Einstein and he considered it he greatest blunder. Yet today scientists are working to prove that he was right so many years ago with this theory that he considered a blunder.

That is yet another example of how things are always a work in progress and nothing is ever complete. For as much as we do know, there is so much more by a exponential degree, that we dont know or understand.

I do understand what your saying and i tend to agree. I think we have almost the same thought process of evolution it is just that the way we are stating it is what is getting each other confused.