Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Week 2: Major transitions
There are two main theories that address the question of how life came to be. The first heterotrophic is the belief that chemical along with the sun, made a 'primeval soup’ which gave rise to more and more complex organisms. This theory was strongly supported by Dawkins. On the other hand the autotrophic theory is the belief that organisms that made their own food probably arose first and then more complex organisms arose out of the first simple organism through natural selection, mutation and adaptation. This theory is supported by Mayhew. I am incline to believe Mayhew version of the origin of life because it is hard to believe that we evolved out of a 'primeval soup,' it is much easier to believe that we evolved from simpler organisms, because that evolution is being proved all the time such as birds evolving from dinosaurs
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It's a little short but I like nicely written.
ReplyDeleteHow do you explain the results from the Miller-Urey experiment? The primeval soup gave way to the simpler organisms. Did you hear that some biologists are trying to genetically engineer birds back into dinosaurs?
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about the replicators copying themselves though? I think this is a major part of the Dawkins argument. Also, I find that Mayhew was a bit distance on how the actual forming of the first life happened. I do think that Dawkins does go on to say evolution happened from this point and we evolved from simpler molecules too.
ReplyDeleteYou don't have a blog 3?
ReplyDeleteGood explanation of the two main theories, but i agree with Marissa, after reading your post how would you explain the each results from the Miller-Urey experiment?
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