Topic: When did Darwinian evolution begin?

This is a very fascinating read.

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Woese's main theme is the obsolescence of reductionist biology as it has been practiced for the last hundred years, with its assumption that biological processes can be understood by studying genes and molecules. What is needed instead is a new synthetic biology based on emergent patterns of organization.

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But then, one evil day, a cell resembling a primitive bacterium happened to find itself one jump ahead of its neighbors in efficiency. That cell, anticipating Bill Gates by three billion years, separated itself from the community and refused to share.

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If the natural evolution of plants had been driven by the need for high efficiency of utilization of sunlight, then the leaves of all plants would have been black.

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http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20370

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"Capitalism hears all prayers...." Lore Sjöberg

Oh the joys of having a job and not being able to read fascinating reads right away. But the topic is of interest.

Some biological fenomenons can be reproduced using computers and programming. Many actually.
Among them, evolution through genetic programming.

This is a complex topic and a difficult one to explain, extremely difficult, but some amazing observations can be made from it,
and in facts, heuristics and advance algorithmy of today is driving mathematicians crazy.

Because there is no way the universe, or creation, or whatever you call it, can be reduced to a set of scientific laws, there always are x factors.
And creationism is completely incorrect when tested against reality.

>> If the natural evolution of plants had been driven by the need

Righto, evolution is not driven by final needs.
Evolution is driven by balance between ecosystems.

..If there was one plant species on earth, ok, the ideal could be black. But it may lead to too much heat conservation
and changes in the global ecosystem, creating a NEW kind of ideal plant able to stand or repell heat.


Another canonical case :
A half word covered in white flowers, the other covered with white flowers. Put a bit too much black flowers, and the heat rises.
White flowers, repelling light, will stand a raise in global temperature better... and the balance is restored.

It works the other way round.

So, this is very correct :

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What is needed instead is a new synthetic biology based on emergent patterns of organization.

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Basically yeah. Out of the scope of genetic engineering, what about other sciences?

Many things cannot be quantified yet in many areas,
what if reality as we perceive it...

Was only a small share of what really is?