Non-genetic evolution

[tantric]

I'm new here, but I see some debates about human evolution that are making a basic and incorrect assumption - that evolution occurs only by genetics. Dual inheritance theory is pretty much accepted in evolutionary biology, but it doesn't get a lot of attention because it's damnably hard to quantify. Yes, humans continue to evolve genetically, but it's only a tiny part of how we are changing.

You can look at this in different ways, but one view is that cultural evolution has created a new extended human organism that includes all of our domesticated species, much as mitochondria began as independent organisms - and this superorganism is expanding rapidly to encompass the planet. Yeah, that's the hippie mystic version, but it's pretty cool.

 

[Underseer]

Most of the time when we talk about evolution, it is in the context of the evolution/creationism debate, and dual inheritance isn't really relevant to that discussion.

 

[tantric]

GRRRRRR!!! Evolution and creation are not exclusive - if God did create all life 4000years ago, it's been evolving since then. Creationism should oppose abiogenesis, but what goes on in Genesis genesis may be a version of abiogenesis, depending on whether God is alive. I've never seen anything about evolution in the Bible - if man is in God's image, well God clearly changes as time goes one, so might man? The opposite of evolution is biological immutability. I can count the number of creationists who know that on one paw. - I *hate* politically charged terms. It's pro-abortion and anti-abortion for me. But the above? The two sides aren't arguing about the same things, semantically, it's like they don't speak the same language. But I get your point.

I'm saying that cultural evolution is HUGELY important, and most people still argue about whether people are not evolving because of healthcare....

 

[Keith&Co.]

GRRRRRR!!! Evolution and creation are not exclusive - .

Well, the creationists take evolution to be anything from the Big Bang to primordial soup to dinosaurs to fossils to socialism to atheism to voting democrat when there's a good christain running for office. So, yeah, they are exclusive in most contexts.

 

[bigfield]

GRRRRRR!!! Evolution and creation are not exclusive - if God did create all life 4000years ago, it's been evolving since then. Creationism should oppose abiogenesis, but what goes on in Genesis genesis may be a version of abiogenesis, depending on whether God is alive. I've never seen anything about evolution in the Bible - if man is in God's image, well God clearly changes as time goes one, so might man? The opposite of evolution is biological immutability. I can count the number of creationists who know that on one paw. - I *hate* politically charged terms. It's pro-abortion and anti-abortion for me. But the above? The two sides aren't arguing about the same things, semantically, it's like they don't speak the same language. But I get your point.

When young-Earth creationists claim that the Earth is a few thousand years old, their worldview precludes the fact that evolution has been under way for billions of years. Therefore their worldview and the Thoery of Evolution are indeed mutually exclusive.

I'm saying that cultural evolution is HUGELY important, and most people still argue about whether people are not evolving because of healthcare....

It depends on the context of the discussion.

 

[Perspicuo]

I'm new here, but I see some debates about human evolution that are making a basic and incorrect assumption - that evolution occurs only by genetics. Dual inheritance theory is pretty much accepted in evolutionary biology, but it doesn't get a lot of attention because it's damnably hard to quantify. Yes, humans continue to evolve genetically, but it's only a tiny part of how we are changing.

You can look at this in different ways, but one view is that cultural evolution has created a new extended human organism that includes all of our domesticated species, much as mitochondria began as independent organisms - and this superorganism is expanding rapidly to encompass the planet. Yeah, that's the hippie mystic version, but it's pretty cool.

Other species adapt with/to us. Like our microbiota. And the rest of the darn lanet that's trying to survive what we're doing to it.

So, yes, in a way.

 

[Perspicuo]

Typo:

{planet} not "lanet"

 

[bilby]

Typo:

{planet} not "lanet"

The planet is fine; there is very little we can do to harm six billion trillion tonnes of rock and iron. (Even forgetting its initial 'p' won't hurt its feelings much).

The thing that is trying to survive our actions is the biosphere. Even that is not really at risk; The problem is not what we do to the biosphere, but rather what effects the things we do to the biosphere have on us. If we succeed in wiping ourselves out, or if we are wiped out by something else - a meteorite impact, a gamma ray burst, whatever - the end result in a few scant million years won't be hugely different.

The evidence that non-avian dinosaurs ever existed is scant and hard to find even when we actively look for it. The evidence that we ever existed will be equally minuscule 50 million years after the last of us walks the Earth.

 

[tantric]

my answer to the above is "domesticate it". human cultural evolution adds new species to our species complex. plant domestication was a vast evolutionary leap, perhaps as significant as plants adding chloroplasts. the number of domesticates to growing rapidly (tropical fish, for one). there's no part of the plant that is isolated from human influence

 

[Speakpigeon]

I'm new here, but I see some debates about human evolution that are making a basic and incorrect assumption - that evolution occurs only by genetics. Dual inheritance theory is pretty much accepted in evolutionary biology, but it doesn't get a lot of attention because it's damnably hard to quantify. Yes, humans continue to evolve genetically, but it's only a tiny part of how we are changing.

You can look at this in different ways, but one view is that cultural evolution has created a new extended human organism that includes all of our domesticated species, much as mitochondria began as independent organisms - and this superorganism is expanding rapidly to encompass the planet. Yeah, that's the hippie mystic version, but it's pretty cool.

If we understand the theory of evolution as being specifically about inherited changes, and inherited at the level of the human body, then DIT arguably doesn't change anything to it. The scale of human culture effects is definitely a relatively new phenomenon compared to Darwinian evolution and it does massively affect human behaviour. However, the theory of evolution's central tenet of the inherited changes isn't affected in its principle, with important exception now that culture includes our newly found capability of directly recoding the DNA of individual human beings, changes which will obviously be inherited (see for example the recent controversy in Britain about the so-called "three-parent" procreation). But cultural changes are not inherited at the level of the human body like genetic changes are. Cultural changes are inherited through social organisation and require the individual to be bred within society if it is to be affected by these changes. It's a very different mechanism. Take one human newborn today and put him back in a Cro-magnon culture and you'll see he will have inherited nothing of the culture of his parents and siblings. So DIT is definitely about parallel evolutions, again with the exception of the direct genetic modification of our DNA (and some other side effects). This doesn't carry cultural changes but it should come to have a profound, lasting, bodily inherited effect on our genetic make-up in a way the DIT does not. DIT can be understood as a theory about the importance of the cultural environment on human beings as social animals. All social animals are subject to it to some extent. Our case is a case of the magnitude of the effect. Direct genetic modification of our DNA is potentially much more potent. DIT plays a role here essentially because it is culture that will decide whether and to what extent recoding our DNA will be deemed socially acceptable.

More generally, all theories that are not fundamental in the way Quatum theory and Relativity may be are potentially subject to fringe effects where the tenets of the theory only really hold under specific conditions. But this should be trivia for most scientists.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

I'm saying that cultural evolution is HUGELY important, and most people still argue about whether people are not evolving because of healthcare....

So your point is that it is cultural evolution which is affecting people to the HUGE extent that they've come to deny that we are no longer evolving because of healthcare.

Or is it that healthcase is indeed one of those side effects mentioned in my previous post?

Even so, this doesn't change the tenet about inherited changes, adaptation to the environment etc.
EB