Is Evolution Universally Driven by Self-Perpetuating Processes?

[russ_watters]

I guess you're an experimental scientist instead of a theorist.

You get to the hypotheses you're going to test through abstract thinking that often violates your current understanding of the subject.

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Wow, no. There is no such dichotomy. There is only one scientific method.

A scientist uses experimentation to prove or disprove a theory. If the data shows a theory is wrong, a new theory is formulated that fits the data. A new theory violates current theory because the data says the current theory is flawed. The logic required for that is not abstract, it is concrete and linear. The way humans sometimes do pattern recognition can be abstract, but when applied to science, it generally isn't. Newton didn't dream-up the inverse square law, he derived it mathematically. Finding a new path can require creative/outside-the-box thinking, but that should not be confused with being abstract. The scientific method is highly structured and logical.

 

[russ_watters]

I think you are being too didactic.

Perhaps. I must admit to only skimming the thread and the way you worded your thesis caught my eye. If you realize the distinction and are beyond it, fair enough.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

Newton wasn't thinking abstractly? Are you kidding?

The guy who extended his everyday experiences into a formalism that described parts of the universe and phenomena he'd never seen and technologies from hundreds of years in the future? Like rocketry - the closest analogy he could come up with when talking about taking derivatives for something that lost mass as it moved was a farmer's hay cart with the farmer pitching piles of hay off it as a horse pulled it along.

I don't want to derail this thread. If you want to insist that science doesn't involve abstract thinking, despite the fact that it spends all of its time building rules and models for the real world that humans can easily hold in their heads (like the mathematical models physics deals in), then fine, you're welcome to. Feel free to take the final word on this topic, or start a new thread and give a link and I'll follow you.

P.S. One last thing... the words you're using here seem odd to me. Abstract doesn't mean “creative” and it is not the opposite of structured and logical. In fact an abstraction is often imposing structure and logic on an apparently unstructured and illogical subject matter. The scientific method itself is an abstraction - an empirical approach to epistemology.

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[baywax]

And by the way, it does make sense to speak of crystals as essentially single large molecules with atoms as their components, it's more descriptive than regarding them as aggregations of molecules.

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What's interesting is that viruses are encased in a crystalline shell. I've been contemplating Virogenesis as the beginning of life on earth. Virogenesis isn't a word yet... but, my model involved viruses that have either developed here on Earth or have populated the Earth since they can withstand the rigors of space in a dormant state.

The idea that crystals develop the same way vdna or vrna developed might be bolstered by the idea that viruses are partially of a crystalline nature themselves.

As I've touched on here... biological matter and all other matter are comprised of the same elements. This ensures that we'll see perceptively similar mechanisms taking place in both types of matter. However, only one of them, so far, has been found to develop and evolve a genetic system which stores and propagates information about the structure, preferences and survival techniques (instincts) of the host.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

What's interesting is that viruses are encased in a crystalline shell. I've been contemplating Virogenesis as the beginning of life on earth. Virogenesis isn't a word yet... but, my model involved viruses that have either developed here on Earth or have populated the Earth since they can withstand the rigors of space in a dormant state.

That's certainly an interesting idea. You've probably seen the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimivirus" , the gigantic virus they discovered in 1992 that's larger than many forms of bacteria.

But isn't part of the definition of a virus that it needs another organism's cellular mechanisms to reproduce itself?

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[baywax]

That's certainly an interesting idea. You've probably seen the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimivirus" , the gigantic virus they discovered in 1992 that's larger than many forms of bacteria.

But isn't part of the definition of a virus that it needs another organism's cellular mechanisms to reproduce itself?

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Yes... we could go into this. Its not really philosophy. But... I have the stats on the mimivirus or megavirus. Its completely nutso. There's a chance viruses used other viruses to replicate themselves once out of dormancy.