scholarly journals In Darwinian evolution, feedback from natural selection leads to biased mutations

2013 ◽  
Vol 1305 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Helena Caporale ◽  
John Doyle
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Darwinian Evolution

scholarly journals Onset of natural selection in auto-catalytic heteropolymers

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexei V. Tkachenko ◽  
Sergei Maslov
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Information Entropy ◽  
Physical System ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Living Matter ◽  
Spontaneous Reduction ◽  
Nano Structures ◽  
Opening Up

Reduction of information entropy along with ever-increasing complexity are among the key signatures of living matter. Understanding the onset of such behavior in early prebiotic world is essential for solving the problem of origins of life. To elucidate this transition, we study a theoretical model of information-storing heteropolymers capable of template-assisted ligation and subjected to cyclic non-equilibrium driving forces. We discover that this simple physical system undergoes a spontaneous reduction of the information entropy due to the competition of chains for constituent monomers. This natural-selection-like process ultimately results in the survival of a limited subset of polymer sequences. Importantly, the number of surviving sequences remains exponentially large, thus opening up the possibility of further increase in complexity due to Darwinian evolution. We also propose potential experimental implementations of our model using either biopolymers or artificial nano-structures.

Evidence and Metaphor in Evolutionary Archaeology

2002 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas B. Bamforth
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Optimal Foraging ◽  
Optimal Foraging Theory ◽  
Foraging Theory ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Archaeology ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Archaeological Work

Evolutionary theory and terminology are widely used in recent archaeological work, and many evolutionary archaeologists have argued that the integration of such theory and terminology is essential to the future of our field. This paper considers evolutionary archaeology from two perspectives. First, it examines substantive claims that archaeology can study the operation of Darwinian evolution, either through a reliance on optimal-foraging theory or by linking the process of natural selection to archaeological data. It concludes that there are serious problems with both of these claims on Darwin: the relation between evolution and foraging theory has never been documented, and midrange arguments linking selection and archaeological data are unsustainable. Second, it argues that archaeologists rely metaphorically on evolutionary terminology to help make sense out of archaeological data. Although the use of evolutionary metaphor can be, and has been, problematic, it also offers a powerful conceptual framework for our research. However, this framework is only of one of a number of comparable frameworks that have been offered to our field, as a comparison of systems archaeology and evolutionary archaeology shows.

scholarly journals Cancer and intercellular cooperation

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (10) ◽  
pp. 170470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Bertolaso ◽  
Anna Maria Dieli
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Individual Organism ◽  
Major Transitions ◽  
Somatic Evolution ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
Intercellular Cooperation ◽  
Multicellular Organisms ◽  
Different Levels

The major transitions approach in evolutionary biology has shown that the intercellular cooperation that characterizes multicellular organisms would never have emerged without some kind of multilevel selection. Relying on this view, the Evolutionary Somatic view of cancer considers cancer as a breakdown of intercellular cooperation and as a loss of the balance between selection processes that take place at different levels of organization (particularly single cell and individual organism). This seems an elegant unifying framework for healthy organism, carcinogenesis, tumour proliferation, metastasis and other phenomena such as ageing. However, the gene-centric version of Darwinian evolution, which is often adopted in cancer research, runs into empirical problems: proto-tumoural and tumoural features in precancerous cells that would undergo ‘natural selection’ have proved hard to demonstrate; cells are radically context-dependent, and some stages of cancer are poorly related to genetic change. Recent perspectives propose that breakdown of intercellular cooperation could depend on ‘fields’ and other higher-level phenomena, and could be even mutations independent. Indeed, the field would be the context, allowing (or preventing) genetic mutations to undergo an intra-organism process analogous to natural selection. The complexities surrounding somatic evolution call for integration between multiple incomplete frameworks for interpreting intercellular cooperation and its pathologies.

scholarly journals Did natural selection select for true religious beliefs?

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
HANS VAN EYGHEN ◽  
CHRISTOPHER T. BENNETT
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking Arguments ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking

Abstract Although it is commonly accepted that Darwinian evolution could select for true common-sense beliefs, it is altogether less certain that the same can be said for other classes of beliefs, such as moral or religious beliefs. This issue takes centre stage in debates concerning evolutionary debunking arguments against religious beliefs, where the rationality of beliefs is often dependent upon their production by an evolved faculty that is sensitive to truth. In this article, we consider whether evolution selected for true religious beliefs. We begin by highlighting the relevance of this question for broader philosophy of religion, then present a dialogue of arguments and counter-arguments for and against the proposition that true religious beliefs generate pragmatic success and hence can be selected for by evolution.

scholarly journals Mendel and Darwin: untangling a persistent enigma

Heredity ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 124 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-273
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Fairbanks
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Heritable Variation ◽  
Outright Rejection ◽  
Scientific Environment ◽  
Final Letter

AbstractMendel and Darwin were contemporaries, with much overlap in their scientifically productive years. Available evidence shows that Mendel knew much about Darwin, whereas Darwin knew nothing of Mendel. Because of the fragmentary nature of this evidence, published inferences regarding Mendel’s views on Darwinian evolution are contradictory and enigmatic, with claims ranging from enthusiastic acceptance to outright rejection. The objective of this review is to examine evidence from Mendel’s published and private writings on evolution and Darwin, and the influence of the scientific environment in which he was immersed. Much of this evidence lies in Mendel’s handwritten annotations in his copies of Darwin’s books, which this review scrutinises in detail. Darwin’s writings directly influenced Mendel’s classic 1866 paper, and his letters to Nägeli. He commended and criticised Darwin on specific issues pertinent to his research, including the provisional hypothesis of pangenesis, the role of pollen in fertilisation, and the influence of “conditions of life” on heritable variation. In his final letter to Nägeli, Mendel proposed a Darwinian scenario for natural selection using the same German term for “struggle for existence” as in his copies of Darwin’s books. His published and private scientific writings are entirely objective, devoid of polemics or religious allusions, and address evolutionary questions in a manner consistent with that of his scientific contemporaries. The image that emerges of Mendel is of a meticulous scientist who accepted the tenets of Darwinian evolution, while privately pinpointing aspects of Darwin’s views of inheritance that were not supported by Mendel’s own experiments.

Human Evolution

On Purpose ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 153-165
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Close Relatives

This chapter analyzes Darwinian evolution through selection. It explores what the Kantian/Darwinian perspective implies for humans. Charles Darwin was absolutely convinced of the fact of human evolution and as soon as he had discovered natural selection was applying it to species, to minds and powers of thought no less. However, in the Origin he was cautious, wanting first to get the main details of his theory laid out for all to see and only at the end pointing to the implications for humankind. This did not stop others from getting on the bandwagon, and although in the Descent Darwin had much to say that was both new and interesting—notably about sexual selection—by then he was entering an already well-plowed field. Naturally, the early parts of Darwin's book were concerned with making the straightforward case for human evolution, showing how it is reasonable to think—especially on the evidence of homologies—that people and the higher apes are close relatives and that humans came jointly from organisms more primitive.

God in Creation: A Consideration of Natural Selection as the Sacrificial Means of a Free Creation

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-236
Author(s):  
Simon R. Watson
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Biological Warfare ◽  
Divine Agency ◽  
Feminist Writing ◽  
In Christ ◽  
God's Image ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection ◽  
Made In

If the Christian God is creator of all things and revealed in Christ to be costly love, then how can divine agency in creation be understood in light of scientific discoveries revealing that biological warfare undergirds Darwinian evolution by natural selection? To explore this challenge, I look to Philip Hefner’s teleonomic axiom as a measure for divine agency in the fulfillment and survival of natural structures and processes. Drawing on this criterion and the feminist writing of Judith Plaskow, I conclude that Hefner’s attempt to understand divine immanence using the metaphor of sacrifice with John Hick’s Irenaean Theodicy can support a risky model for the human as made in God’s image by justifying the instrumental subjugation and exploitation of creaturely life and specifically women. Considering the God crucified in Christ, I recommend the metaphor of a fallen creation to acknowledge the inexplicable and unacceptable magnitude of harm suffered by individual creatures.

The First Darwinian: Alfred Russel Wallace and the Meaning of Darwinism

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-184
Author(s):  
Ian Hesketh
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Initial Study ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Periodical Press ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace ◽  
Evolutionary Naturalism ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection

Abstract This essay is an initial study of a larger project that seeks to produce a history of the term ‘Darwinism’. While it is generally well-known that Darwinism could refer to a variety of different things in the Victorian period, from a general evolutionary naturalism to the particular theory of natural selection, very little has been written about the history of the term or how it was contested at given times and places. Building on James Moore’s 1991 sketch of the history of Darwinism in the 1860s, this paper specifically seeks to situate Alfred Russel Wallace’s 1889 book Darwinism in the context of a larger struggle over Darwin’s legacy in the 1880s. It is argued that Wallace used his authority as one of the founders of evolution by natural selection to reimagine what he called ‘pure Darwinism’ as a teleological evolutionism, one that integrated the theory of natural selection with an interpretation of spirit phenomena thereby producing a more agreeable and holistic account of life than was previously associated with Darwinian evolution. By considering the reception of Wallace’s Darwinism in the periodical press it will be argued further that Wallace’s interpretation of Darwinism was generally well received, which suggests that our understanding of what Darwinism meant in the late Victorian period needs to be revisited.

scholarly journals Role of environmentally induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance in evolutionary biology: Unified Evolution Theory

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K Skinner ◽  
Eric E Nilsson
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Phenotypic Variation ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Genetic Alterations ◽  
Modern Synthesis ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Evolution Theory ◽  
Transgenerational Inheritance ◽  
Extended Evolutionary Synthesis

Abstract The current evolutionary biology theory primarily involves genetic alterations and random DNA sequence mutations to generate the phenotypic variation required for Darwinian natural selection to act. This neo-Darwinian evolution is termed the Modern Evolution Synthesis and has been the primary paradigm for nearly 100 years. Although environmental factors have a role in neo-Darwinian natural selection, Modern Evolution Synthesis does not consider environment to impact the basic molecular processes involved in evolution. An Extended Evolutionary Synthesis has recently developed that extends the modern synthesis to consider non-genetic processes. Over the past few decades, environmental epigenetics research has been demonstrated to regulate genetic processes and directly generate phenotypic variation independent of genetic sequence alterations. Therefore, the environment can on a molecular level through non-genetic (i.e. epigenetic) mechanisms directly influence phenotypic variation, genetic variation, inheritance and adaptation. This direct action of the environment to alter phenotype that is heritable is a neo-Lamarckian concept that can facilitate neo-Darwinian (i.e. Modern Synthesis) evolution. The integration of genetics, epigenetics, Darwinian theory, Lamarckian concepts, environment, and epigenetic inheritance provides a paradigm shift in evolution theory. The role of environmental-induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance in evolution is presented to describe a more unified theory of evolutionary biology.

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