Week 2

How does Darwinism matter to me?

For me, this is a funny question.  Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't.   I could say that Darwinism helps me to know my purpose here as a so-called "human being"--to survive, or to continue the human race.  That might help me legitimize my choice to mother, or organize the community, or learn Chinese Medicine.  Yet in the same way a nationalist might be described ethnocentric, you might say that living only in accordance to what propagates the human race is human-centrist.  What about the inter-dependence of living things on each other, or the Gan Ying principle that there is no boundary between myself and that around me?

Or maybe Darwinism matters to me because it helps me understand the nature of things, helping to satisfy my addiction to knowledge, give me knowledge of self.   Like any other philosophy or theory on what is the nature of things.  But then, the thing I see in some of these Darwin debaters is a belief that a description with human language could ever accurately describe the mystery of existence...and that their description is the correct one?  I don't see either one being the case.

My thoughts on Evo-Devo

I think I was pretty confused about what Evo-Devo is.  Here's the definition from wike-you know what:  a field of biology that compares the developmental processes of different organisms to determine the ancestral relationship between them, and to discover how developmental processes evolved. 


So it's actually pretty interesting to me how darwinism has expanded and integrated with molecular genetics and developmental biology:  "Evolutionary developmental biology studies how the dynamics of development determine the phenotypic variation arising from genetic variation and how that affects phenotypic evolution (especially its direction)."  It's basically saying that Evo-devo studies how development determines genetic changes that cause differences in characteristics.  


But there's also a concept of "developmental plasticity," in which phenotypes (characterstics) are not uniquely determined by their genotypes.  So genetic change can follow formation of phenotypic novelties.  Whoa.  That makes no sense to me, because how did the characteristic get there without the gene making it so, but hey there you go.


So my summary is that, yes it would be pretty cool to know my ancestry by giving a skin sample, but sadly for whoever tried to find that out, I have like a bazillion types of people in my background and I just feel like a big piece of mush anyways.  I am so liberated now that I understand that race is a construct, so, thanks whoever popularized that-you rock--not because we didn't already know that-- but for those of us who forgot and started to believe it, at least we need the reminder--and let me say that the idea of race was just created to make money off of the exploitation of labor and resources anyways, so good riddance!


Oh, one other important thing about darwinism is it's direct challenge to the power structure of various religions, which I think actually made 'em less powerful-people had some real basis to challenge these laws written in stone--I mean the power comes from being able to brainwash and claim oneself the ultimate authority on something--let's just hope evolutionary theorists don't fall into the same trap!


My impressions on "Answers in Genesis", Chapter 5:  The Origin of Life


This article is funny.  I just had to read it.  It sounds pretty scientific to the naked eye, but I feel like in this class alone I've read lots of theories about how "life arose from inanimate matter" that were pretty convincing.  Of course those who don't necessarily believe Western Science has the answer to the origin of life can easily agree on some of the author's points in this article--a theory can never really be proven--however I see Genesis as just another theory, so, um, not necessarily a step ahead with that one.