(Darwin Isn’t Dead. He Just Smells Funny.*)
*Apologies to FZ
Something funny is afoot in the biological sciences. Labs peering into DNA are
seeing things that nobody expected. And because the received view of evolution
failed to predict these findings, and because it has little room to
incorporate
them, a crisis is brewing for the theory. Something more than selecting random
variants is going on in evolution.
The data coming
out of DNA sequencing and analysis suggest that the something more has to do
with a preferred direction in evolution. Phylogenetic descent seems now to be
a developmental unfolding. Several discoveries point to this conclusion:
1. Junk DNA. This
is not a particularly new discovery. It’s been known for some time that
all species carry around a lot of junk, DNA that appears to lie dormant. What
aspect of evolution theory predicts that long stretches of inactive DNA would
coast along inside organisms, seemingly contributing nothing to their
survivability?
Nobody saw it coming. It was an empirical surprise.
But in the
context
of ontogeny, the development of organisms, it is exactly what is to be
expected.
Each cell in the body of a complex organism inherits the same genes from the
ancestral zygote, the original fertilized ovum. Despite all possessing the
same
genes, brain, liver, kidney, and skin cells, for example, distinguish
themselves
phenotypically. Each cell type looks and acts differently from the others.
But,
because they all inherit the same genes, there must be a lot of junk DNA in
each type of cell. Brain cells don’t need genes that function uniquely
in liver cells, nor do kidney cells need genes that function uniquely in skin
cells. But all the cells inherit all those genes from their common ancestor,
the zygote, whether they need them or not.
When it comes to
cell types in a body, an invariant genetic inheritance necessarily is the
case,
with lots of junk in each cell as a result. Ontogeny demonstrates that diverse
morphologies, or phenotypes, need not correspond to any proportionate
diversity
of genotype. “Adaptive radiation” of cell types in a body proceeds
just fine without genetic variation.
Evolution appears
to operate similarly.
