Oh yes... science CAN talk about morality. Read the full study for free!
Posted on: July 31, 2008 - 3:17am
Offline
Oh yes... science CAN talk about morality. Read the full study for free!
Sameer sent us this letter in the "Letters Supporting Our Efforts" Section. It's worth checking out his link. Read the abstract for yourself! Learn something about evolution!
Quote:
dear rrs,
i am a second-year graduate student of computational biology and i find
your efforts immensely laudable.
i am sure you are inundated with suggestions and no, i am not presuming to
tell you how to do your job; rather, i would like to pass on some academic
work for the augmentation of your arguments and mostly for your own
erudition (if you were not already aware of this research).
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/23/8/1460
i feel that this is an instance of a 'transition' fossil (whatever that
is) and while this is at the microscopic scale, it should not be dismissed
as 'just microevolution.' in my opinion, in the hierarchy of properties of
organisms, this is more fundamental than the evolution of (or within)
species or genera; this is evidence of the evolution of multicellular life
itself.
i hope you find this interesting and useful.
thanks for your time.
sameer
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
- Login to post comments
Hopefully, once you've read this, you'll ask yourself this question: Why did I mention morality, when this is talking about the origin of multicellular life? One of the things that a lot of people miss is that multicellular life is altruistic. One of the theories explaining the differences in relative degree of altruistic behavior between kin, non-kin, and outsiders is the variable R, which stands for the degree of genetic relation. As R increases, altruism becomes more profitable for the selfish gene because of the nature of reproduction. In other words, a sexually reproducing organism will produce offspring with an R value of 0.5 with regard to each parent. This is as high as it gets without incest (which produces its own problems -- problems that are strong enough to cause negative selection pressure, but that's another matter).
The interesting thing about multicellular organisms is that the R value is 1. That is to say, every cell within a multicellular organism has the SAME DNA as every other cell. If this theory is correct (and it does match up to an awful lot of data!) then the level of altruism within a multicellular organism ought to be total. If you're familiar with biology, you know that there are some creatures that defy traditional definitions. Are they single organisms, or colonies of independent organisms? We can ask a more pointed question and ask if any multicellular organism is really a single organism, when each one of the cells within it can be viewed as a discreet lifeform, reproducing, metabolizing, reacting to the environment, etc. The sticking point is that the cells in our bodies don't live independent lives. They give all of their resources for the continuation of the organism as a whole. That's complete altruism.
So you see, from a very relevant and valid point of view, altruism is not just a recent development that needs explanation as an oddity among humans. The statement that demands justification is why the outward manifestation of altruism by discreet organisms would come as a shock when multicellular life itself demands altruistic strategies!
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Love the study, but couldn't the guy take a little more time to proof-read his emails better? Otherwise its awesome! *thumbs up* Thanks Hamby for posting this.
Atheist Books, purchases on Amazon support the Rational Response Squad server, which houses Celebrity Atheists. Books by Rook Hawkins (Thomas Verenna)
So... um... has anyone read the study? It's free, and it's talking directly about the origins of altruism. That's a pretty common topic around here...
Beuller?
Beuller?
I have word from one of my inside sources that there is a follow up study from 2007, but I haven't received it yet. In any case, am I wasting my time posting studies? More book royalties for me if everyone has to just take my word on stuff, but I'd just as soon have everyone get it from the source.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
I for one will read it as soon as I'm through with getting up to date on the new threads here.
Vote for McCain... www.therealmccain.com ...and he'll bring Jesus back
I found this interesting and informative, even though at best I'm a rather ignorant layperson. So basically sterile cells have an altruistic function that frees up reproductive cells to reproduce? That makes sense to me.
Vote for McCain... www.therealmccain.com ...and he'll bring Jesus back
Great study. Took me a while to get around to reading it, but it's really fascinating. I can see how this pattern of evolution of altruism could apply to many different situations, even in situations where memes are the evolver, rather than genes.
For those who might find it difficult to read the science jargon, I'll boil it down for you: Earlier forms of algae were single-celled and had to handle all the functions of photosynthesis, reproduction, and moving around to the optimal depth of water to get the best sunlight. When there was not enough sun, they had a gene that would respond to this environmental condition. The gene would essentially put it into a kind of power-saving mode, where it would suppress both photosynthesis and reproduction. The effect is that the individual cell would have to survive on the surrounding nutrients instead of sunlight, but because it wasn't spending energy on photosynthesis and reproduction, it would survive longer. When the sun came back, the gene would deactivate, and the cell would go back into full-power mode, restarting its photosynthesis and reproduction. So, the gene causes a sacrifice of reproduction with the benefit of surviving longer.
Well, over time, this gene was copied and modified such that instead of responding to an environmental condition, it would now respond to a developmental condition. The new gene turned on when the cell reproduced and created a smaller copy of itself. The smaller cell would have this gene turned on, so that it would not reproduce, but would instead specialize in moving around with flagella. Because the smaller cell was now part of a colony, and not just living on its own, it could afford to specialize while sacrificing its own reproduction, because there remained larger reproducing germ cells that were exact copies. The advantage for the entire colony is that the specialized smaller 'soma' cells helped the colony to keep in the optimal sunlight much better than a single cell by itself could have. So, the colony gets all the advantages of motion, reproduction, and photosynthesis, even though some cells (soma) are specialized for motion, and others (germ cells) for photosynthesis and reproduction.
Now, if we think of human development in terms of the aquisition of particular memes as part of your identity, depending on your upbringing, then we can see that memes can direct altruism in humans (beyond the built-in genetic altruism we already display). For example, some people during their mental development get the idea of being soldiers. While the person may die, causing the death of both his genes and his memes, his efforts to defend his culture causes the overall survival of the soldier meme. Ever wonder why we have memorials for soldiers and wars? Kind of makes sense now. It's to keep the meme alive, even if the expression of the meme can create an altruistic sacrifice.
Wonderist on Facebook — Support the idea of wonderism by 'liking' the Wonderism page — or join the open Wonderism group to take part in the discussion!
Gnu Atheism Facebook group — All gnu-friendly RRS members welcome (including Luminon!) — Try something gnu!