The Development of Organs of Awareness

     The ability to actively react to external conditions, (rather than remain totally dependent on circumstance for survival), creates a tremendous survival advantage. Driven by this advantage life’s increasing complexity has produced an array of advanced sensors and complex neurological systems that are common to most living forms and are a naturally selected priority.  These observe/ react capabilities are physically grounded in cellular genetics but when the process reaches a level of complexity where random reactivity is possible, the ability to step beyond simple physical processes is created, and a new arena for natural selection is opened. A more careful examination of the activity of the simple protein flagella of prokaryotic bacteria and the more complex activity of the flagella of eukaryotic cells may indicate a sensory purpose for them as well as motility. Flagella activity can be stimulated by an external prompt to swim upstream toward a source of sugar, and the motor activity may be a precursor to other more complex chemically reactive organs. 

     When a simple living form reacts to an external stimulus directly, by using a genetically ingrained biomechanical mechanism, the sensory response connection is direct. In slightly more advanced life forms, with the ability to recognize nuances in stimuli, and respond with several options, the response is not direct and a choice must be made. Having the capability to be more discerning through increased sensory capabilities and the ability to react selectively, adds an additional survival advantage. This new arena for natural selection I call; active awareness, (as opposed to passive awareness).

     Like all of life’s forms and processes, active awareness has developed slowly through the trial and error process of natural selection. Drawing a definitive line between simple reactivity and the complex reactivity of aware choice is difficult. The development of life, like nearly all natural processes is a continuum, and is incompatible with our naturally selected method of conceptualization by grouping. In order to overcome this limitation, and fully understand our surroundings, and ourselves, we continually expand our conceptual groups to be ever more inclusive. For us to gain a more complete perspective, including awareness as a naturally selected essential component of all life is essential.

     Life developed slowly from natural chemical processes into reproductive chemical units, into simple single cells, into more complex cells, into cell congregations, into complex cell congregations, and into multi cellular forms. Life developed in a continuum, and driven by survival advantages, added increased cellular complexity and increased awareness. Awareness and physical complexity are co-joined and completely interdependent, but active awareness, the ability to choose, has become a separate player in natural selection and an equal partner with genetic selection. Life’s physical aspects are connected to awareness by sensory and neurological organs. From the simplest to the most complex arrangements, this connection between life’s physical and aware states, continually offers up new possibilities for natural selection, and gives favored status to advanced sensory organs and advanced states of awareness.

     The ability to sense a variety of environmental conditions and respond appropriately improves a living form’s chances of avoiding elimination. Surface receptors in a single cell that are responsive to chemicals at high levels of concentration add survival value. The ability to sense the same chemicals at much lower levels of concentration, or the ability to discern changing levels of concentration, add an even greater survival value. Natural selection has filtered out the less discerning and favored those capable of measuring and monitoring in greater detail. Multi cellular life, from the early layering of single celled families to the telescopic eyes of birds of pray, have had their organs of awareness naturally selected because of their advantages, and with time and effort we should be able to trace the development of most advanced organs of awareness back to their origins.

    Without sensory organs, awareness is an empty state. With sensory organs awareness improves in intensity and sensitivity and allows life to examine its surroundings in more detail and from many perspectives. Each species collects and creates a different image of its surroundings using its own unique sensory and neurological capacities. Each of these living images is but a small glimpse into the totality of reality, and is limited by the capacity of sensory receptors and neurological processing centers. The totality of all internal living images creates an ever expanding all inclusive view as the universe awakens, but the view remains fractured by life’s individuality. Life senses its surroundings one individual at a time because individuality has been naturally selected as nature’s best method of experimentation using genetic drift, and natural selection, but advanced states of awareness are trending toward group awareness as language begins to unite life’s individual perceptions.

     Sight began as a simple cellular sensitivity to light, hearing as a simple cellular sensitivity to vibration, smell and taste as simple reactivity to nearby chemicals, touch  as a simple reactivity to pressure and temperature. Natural selection has brought us to our present advanced ability to sense our surroundings using complex organs of awareness because of their great survival advantages. The survival value of advanced awareness is so influential in natural selection that one could speculate, that the evolution of body parts for subsistence and mobility are subordinate to the evolution of awareness, and serve only to provide transportation and nourishment for sensory organs and advanced neurological capacities.

     Several single celled species of phyla dinoflagellata have eye spots with a light sensitive layer of carotenoid pigments covered by a clear zone. One species, Erythropsidinium pavillardii, has a more complex oculus that it apparently uses to detect pray. The oculus of this species has a pigment cup covered by a fluid filled chamber and a lens that can change shape, and the entire ocellus can be protruded from the cell and point in different directions. These are very primitive single celled creatures that existed in the late Proterozoic without a well defined modern cell nucleus, and yet they developed rudimentary organs of sight from their chloroplasts. Even at this primitive stage in the development of living physical forms, natural selection was filtering into existence cell appendages, undulipodium, for mobility and ocellii, for vision. The early introduction of organs of awareness as an essential supplement to genetic selections of form is also evidence by the early evolutionary partnership between the gene, (the unit of transfer for physical traits), and the meme, (pronounced meem), the unit of transfer for acquired responses. More about memes, later. 

   

Primitive Awareness

     Without any sense of surroundings, or internal conditions, life is only a complex set of co-joined molecules capable of using a chemically coded structure to select, attract and order molecules as a way of duplicating themselves. The bio-mechanical reproductive process of cell division is not simple and developed very slowly over millions of years.  Life isn’t simple. Life’s basic processes aren’t simple, and we are a long way from explaining how organic molecules first joined to start performing this amazing trick.  

     The creative processes we observe in both the micro and macro physical world around us exhibit patterns of hierarchical steps of increasing complexity. Electrons, protons and neutrons join to become atoms. Atoms join to become molecules and molecules join to become chemical substances which in turn join to become the stuff of nature and life. If living forms follow these same hierarchical patterns of developing complexity, we may be able to deduce a sequence of events for the advent of life and awareness that we can test scientifically. Nature appears to test combinational possibilities ad hoc and without end. Throw basic materials and basic forms of energy into an empty space with unlimited time available and let the experiment begin. With a nearly infinite amount of experimental material, unlimited time, and a few joining forces, all possibilities will eventually be tested. From our limited perspective this seems to be a very inefficient process, but we are observers created by the very process we are observing. Criticizing the efficiency of the process that formed our ability to criticize the process is certain to be futile.  The book of natural creation is open. We have been given the tools to read nature’s book, and it is an amazing story. Science is closing in on the details of life’s beginnings, but while this tedious process takes place, we can skip ahead and peek at a few possibilities using the unscientific method of deductive investigation.

     We observe organic molecules in abundance on and off the earth, and could easily assume that nature flooded the Universe with these molecules in order to insure the advent of life. To support this assumption we have discovered that two of the essential elements needed for life, water and amino acids, have been delivered to our planet directly from space by comets and meteorites and have been produced naturally on earth by lightning cursing through volcanic clouds. Any claim that the production and delivery of life’s essential compounds as purposeful however, becomes suspect when the great abundance of molecules created by natural processes is appreciated. Without empirical evidence, any imposition of hidden intent can lead us to false conclusions. Amino acids are called organic molecules not because all amino acids are attached to life but because all life on earth uses various forms of amino acids. The fallacious syllogism; (All white horses have four hooves; I just saw an animal with four hooves; therefore it must be a white horse), illustrates this logical error. If life is a natural result of ascending complexities, it seems reasonable that living forms would be made from available materials. With enough basic molecules necessary for life populating the environment, and with a propensity to join naturally when prompted by an occasional stimulus, it seems reasonable that all joining possibilities would eventually be tested. We can reasonably assume that the hierarchical complexity we observe in other aspects of nature also exists in the joining of the basic ingredients of living forms, including the development of a state of awareness.

     When we observe reactive behavior in very simple living forms we observe single celled life reacting to contact, responding to light and adjusting to changes in their chemical surroundings. In each case a specific part of the cell is responding to an external stimulus. Living cells at this stage are already complex, have had their complexity naturally selected and contain many internal components. If a general vector for the development of life through natural selection could be drawn, it would point in the direction of increasing complexity. From naturally formed amino acid chains to the human brain, complexity adds survival advantages.

     The next step in complexity, beyond single celled life began as early cell congregates exploited the advantages of loose cell groupings, Congregates of cells with slightly different reactive characteristics created a symbiotic survival improvement over a separated existence. In Earth’s early atmosphere of methane, carbon dioxide, sulfur and sulfuric acid, some cyanic bacteria formed themselves into layers to survive and exploit these early conditions and flourished in such abundance they poisoned the entire atmosphere with the by-product of their respiration, (oxygen). As life adjusted to a new atmosphere, grouping tendencies gained additional favor and cell congregates became more complex. As additional congregational diversity continued to be a useful survival technique cells, in close proximity within these congregates, began to communicate with each other through simple chemical exchanges. Responsiveness to external conditions improved as light sensitive cells began to alert their neighbor cells to an opportunity or a threat. Survival advantage developed further in early cell congregates as responses were added to identify vibration, pressure, temperature, and chemical conditions. The complexity vector of natural selection begin pointing at increasing awareness very early in life’s development, and the seeds for both rudimentary sensory organs, cellular communications and neural control centers were all on nature’s early selection list.

              

Awareness, An Essential Element in Evolution

AWARENESS DEFINED

     Awareness is the essence of our being and is evidenced in all life but like the air around us, it remains invisible and unnoticed. Without physical attributes awareness has, until recently, eluded serious scientific inquiry. Recent investigations into sensory organs, the neurological centers that process sensory information and the evolution of these organs are beginning to expose another aspect of life that is broadening our perspectives. Beyond more limited concepts, like intelligence and cognizance, we are beginning to realize that awareness, as a larger concept, is indispensible to life’s continuance, is at the center of our existence, and defines all of life’s activities. Awareness is the reason the flower opens to greet the sun and the power behind human inventiveness. It is the essential attribute of life that helps to insure its survival, it is the capacity of a living form to monitor and react to internal and external stimuli, and is the essential attribute that gives life meaning. It is produced by and is dependent on life’s physical organs, and although it has no physical attributes, it can be measured, studied, modified, augmented, created and destroyed. It has evolved in concert with life’s physical forms, has an evolutionary history of its own and has been an equal partner to genetic evolution from the beginning. In Man, awareness has gained a dominant position over genetics in natural selection, and if we are to understand evolution in full measure, and maintain control of our destiny, we need to account for awareness as equal in importance to physical forms.

Awareness as an essential element in evolution

     Elements of awareness have been noted and examined for centuries. Human behavior, animal behavior and the emotions of both man and animals fill the earliest of written records. Darwin began to categorize animal behavior as he referred to instinct, reflexes, and emotions as ways in which animals respond to events and situations. Other attempts to give animal and human awareness a base for scientific inquiry include the study of mimicry. Darwin devoted considerable time to giving examples of mimicry and to presenting the views of various naturalists and their interpretations and definitions. A concept for an ephemeral entity called a “mime” was introduced in the twentieth century as the behavioral counterpart of the physical “gene” claiming it was a major contributor to the evolution of behavior. As a deductive starting point this concept held promise but lost momentum when popular writers applied the mime solely to human behavior patterns to promote utopian social orders. In spite of this early set back, the potential for the concept of mimicry to help explain natural selection in advanced life forms remains viable and is worthy of reexamination. To appreciate awareness as separate from biological processes requires a conceptual disconnect from the chemical/ mechanical view of science. Awareness is intrinsically linked to the biological and genetic aspects of life but has its own attributes and contributes to survivability in ways that cannot be explained mechanically. The simple reactivity of single celled life has evolved to become the complex choices of animals and the contemplative moments of man. These advanced states of awareness cannot be explained by genetics or simple reactive responses. Choices made and contemplative conclusions reached within these states impact survival equally or more strongly than genetically imparted autonomic responses. The advanced complexity of cellular form, advanced sensory organs, and the growth of neurological centers for the processing of sensory inputs, has produced a level of existence that exceeds its mechanical biological state.

     Just as multi cellular life exists at a level above, but not separate from, single celled life, awareness exists at a level above, but not separate from, biological forms. Without awareness, even in its most primitive state, life is not viable. The state of being alive requires more than just the abilities to collect and produce energy, separate itself from its surroundings with a membrane, and reproduce. Life requires the ability to interface effectively with its surroundings in order to collect the nutrients and energy needed for sustenance and this interface, in its simplest form, is the progenitor of awareness. Awareness at its most primitive level is only chemical mechanical reactivity. Add sunlight to a chloroplast and living energy is produced. Drift into an area of chemical nutrients and thrive, drift out and die. Develop the ability to survive periods without sunlight or nutrients by becoming encysted, or by suspending certain internal processes, and survivability is improved. These reactions require the ability to sense changing conditions, either by an internal or external monitor, and the ability to react. These simple reactive changes of state are primarily chemical/ mechanical responses, but they are also the first evidence of an ascending level of awareness. Each small improvement in a living form’s ability to sense and react to changes in its environment improves its chances of survival, and promotes the natural selection of advancements in aware states.  The ability to sense and interpret, chemical surroundings, the intensity of light, vibrations, temperature, electrical fields, magnetic fields, motion, and one’s internal conditions, all have the potential to improve survivability. Evolved organs for advanced awareness are the result of successive small improvements in awareness, accumulating as survival advantages. Awareness cannot be separated completely from the complex biology that produces it, but awareness exists as a new state of existence, created by the advancement of bio-mechanical complexity, to a level of randomness that allows reactions beyond direct bio-mechanical responses, or simple chemical reactions.                      

Natural Selection - The Process

Natural selection

The process

     After a few billion years of natural selection some generalizations regarding the process can be made. When exposed, these generalizations seem obvious because they are observable extensions of other familiar natural processes which also guide nature’s many experiments.

• Natural selection requires continual deviations from pure strains
• Natural selection filters toward complexity   
• Natural selection filters toward accelerated selections
• Natural selection can be focused or expanded by environmental changes.
• Natural selection filters toward advances in awareness

     The selection of a new characteristic requires at least two different attributes from which to choose and a standard of measure against which they can be tested. Neither of these conditions are purposeful arrangements. Physical environments are random arrangements endlessly diverse and ever changing. Add to this physical complexity, the living half of an environment, including predators, parasites, essential foods etc. and the complexity of the total environment against which our two choices are to be tested becomes extreme. Tested against such complexity the odds are that if only two options are offered, both options will fail. Increase the number of attributes to be tested, from two to a very large number with extreme diversity, and the odds of a successful selection are greatly improved. Natural Selection functions effectively only when the diversity of the natural environment is challenged by an equally diverse array of living attributes from which to choose. A single strain in a static environment will never change, and a pure unchanging strain challenged by a changing environment will not survive.

     The simplest pieces of reproductive matter gave birth to the simplest of living cells. Anaerobic bacteria thrived for several billion years in earth’s early hostile acidic, hot, methane environment as life’s first and only kingdom. As the earth cooled, cyanobacteria, blue-green bacteria, emerged and transformed the earth’s atmosphere from 1% oxygen to 20% oxygen through a process known as, oxygen eliminating (excreting), photosynthesis. The chemical transformation of a planet’s entire atmosphere by a microscopic life form is not only amazing in its scope but also in its results. Without this atmospheric transformation there would be no ozone layer, no life on land, and the other four living kingdoms could not have evolved. This first kingdom of early single celled life is recorded in sedimentary rocks and as fossilized stromatolites. Blue-green bacteria are alive today and, along with a few surviving anaerobic bacteria, are life’s longest persisting living form.

     Kingdom 1, Prokaryotes, (bacteria), still live around us, on us and in us, in extreme numbers. There are over 10,000,000,000 in every spoonful of garden soil and they comprise a significant portion of the dry weight of all animals. Over 10,000 species of bacteria have been identified and there are many more. Bacteria continue to play a significant role in Earth’s biosphere, including the chemical composition of the atmosphere. They also provide essential symbiotic survival relationships for most plants and animals, including man, and are both the cause of, and the basis for cures for, many diseases and are themselves subject to viral infections. All bacteria belong to the kingdom prokaryotae, (monera). Early bacteria lacked a well formed cell nucleus and reproduce asexually by simple cell division, (mitosis). Bacteria were the only life form for more than half of the history of the Earth and begin to leave a fossil record 3.4 billion years ago. With extreme numbers of bacteria being tested in an ever changing physical environment over such a long period of time, one might expect a proliferation of other types of living forms, but natural selection continued to test only bacteria for two million years, produced hundreds of identifiable species but did not jump to more advanced forms of life until cyanobacteria began transforming the atmosphere 2 billion years ago. With the advent of a new oxygen rich atmosphere, natural selection took advantage of the new environment and cells with a nucleus quickly evolved. From these eukaryotic cells, multi cellular life emerged and the process of natural selection accelerated.

     (Kingdom 2), Protoctistae; the first multi cellular forms, (protozoa, aquatic kelp, slime molds and molds), began their line of natural selection about 1.2 billion years ago and persists today with 27 phyla and thousands of species.         

From kingdom 2 the other kingdoms developed; (Kingdom3); Fungi   ( Kingdom 4); Animals,  and (Kingdom 5); Plants. Each began their separate lines with the earliest evidence for aquatic animals appearing about 700 million years ago and the earliest land plants and fungi appearing about 470 million years ago.

     Today nearly all animals are aquatic and worm like with only two of the 33 primary phyla truly adapted to living on the land, (chordates and arthropods). Thousands of species of animals exist today in these two phyla and tens of thousands of species have arisen in all of the animal phyla with most now extinct. Plants have fewer phyla with only 10 but have tens of thousands of species. Fungi have been divided into only 5 phyla but also have thousands of different species. The large numbers of species in the five kingdoms attests to a natural divergence from pure genetic strains and the augmentation of diversity by the natural selection of variant forms. The increased complexity of later species attests to a natural trend toward complex forms including increases in awareness.    

     The selection of the ever increasing complexities associated with cilia, flagella, fins, legs and wings attests to natural selection’s tendency to select the more complex. Likewise, selections of complex manipulative apparatus, such as mandibles, beaks, tentacles and hands help to insure a life form’s future through the use of natural tools. The interactions of predator and pray have led to the natural selection of complex weapons like fangs, claws, and poisons and complex defenses like body armor, improved sensory warning systems, and natural antidotes. Complex sensory and neurological systems have also been naturally selected as small incremental increases in awareness provided a slight edge for survival in changing environments and in competitions with other evolving forms. Natural Selection appears to have rejected the path of “keep it simple and stupid” in favor of a path to, “the complex and smart”.

     For the first two thirds of life’s four billion year history, life evolved at a very slow pace. The natural selection process was in low gear because the environment was somewhat static. Only the oceans supported life and proto genetic forms had produced only single celled creatures. Natural selection also remained slow because there were few new attributes to be tested and environmental tests varied only slightly. There are several theories as to what shifted natural selection into second gear. One; that the prodigious success of anaerobic single cells multiplying at an arithmetic rate breathed up most of the methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and exhaled so much oxygen that they poisoned themselves, created a new atmosphere and opened the door to a new type of cell that used oxygen and exhaled carbon dioxide. Another theory is; that the entire Earth became frozen, that the ice absorbed most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and when it thawed, millions of years later, because of volcanic activity, the carbon dioxide was retained by being absorbed in the melt water. With the ice and most of the carbon dioxide gone the earth presented a new and more complex environment that spawned new and faster developing life forms.

     Whatever the actuality we can verify the acceleration of natural selection by examining fossil records. Natural selection was slow when mitosis (simple cell division) was the only reproductive method and the biosphere was relatively stable. The advent of gene sharing introduced sex and death simultaneously and increased the number of variant genetic combinations exponentially. Instead of waiting for an anomaly to occur in the static genetic arrangements of single cells, gene sharing produced new genetic arrangements with every swap. Natural selection requires large numbers of potential selectees to find adaptations that improve survivability and pass on modified codes. Codes carried forward by variant forms carry within them the tendency for even more variant forms and thus accelerate their production. In this convoluted way, gene sharing, (sex), caused an explosion of variant forms to run through the natural selection process. New forms soon found suitable niches in nature’s environmental offerings and continued their own genetic combinational experiments to create an even greater pool of variants. The proliferation of new forms also added to the complexity of the biophysical testing ground and opened many new corners into which new variants could benefit from even small advantages. New forms generating new forms are selected more frequently because the environment becomes more diversified as they are added. The result of all of these new combinational possibilities was, and continues to be, a constant push on natural selection’s accelerator.

     Natural selection favors genomes with tens of thousands of genes and millions of alleles because they are prodigious variant producers. The preference by natural selection for large numbers of alleles in genetic structures, (the unit of transfer for physical characteristics), also applies to the selection of advanced aware states through an increase in meme choices, (the unit of transfer for acquired responses). The pace of natural selection accelerates with success, and this tendency has contributed to both the accelerated development of awareness and physical forms.

Natural Selection, The Concept

Natural Selection

The concept

     The concept of “Natural Selection” is extraordinarily simple, almost an oxymoron, “what works continues and what doesn’t work disappears”.  The concept of natural selection can also be applied to the study of inert physical formations and elements but the method only becomes significant when it is applied to the development of living matter.

     Darwin’s introduction to “The Origin of Species” makes it clear that his observations taught him, not how things evolve, (he disliked the term  evolution  and preferred  transmutation ), but that variations in living forms were naturally selected by being tested for their compatibility with their environment.

      “…..I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the most important, but not the exclusive, means of modification,”

     Darwin understood the process that nature uses to weed out and promote living forms according to their compatibility with their environment and he was aware that living forms were constantly changing by modifying and abandoning various characteristics. What Darwin could not explain was how these new attributes came about. For natural selection to work the reproductive process has to occasionally produce a new or altered characteristic. This continual process of modification was observable and accepted but was difficult to explain. The controversies that surrounded the term “Evolution” were primarily the result of a lack of information regarding the modification process, not nature’s actual selection process, and the controversies continued for many years until the gene was identified. Until it was realized that living characteristics were transferred in discrete units, arguments for various causes continued. Some argued that these variations were the direct result of a purposeful push by the environment. Others argued that the variations were caused by increased or decreased use of an appendage or organ, and others argued that they were unexplainable random occurrences?       

    Darwin’s choice of words to explain nature’s process of sorting through life’s emerging attributes also created controversy because he chose the word “Selection”, which carries within it the hint of a purposeful decision. This was not Darwin’s intent. He fully understood that the process is mechanical not purposeful. Darwin’s insight into nature’s selection method might have generated less controversy had he chosen, “Natural Elimination”, (the attributes favorable to a life forms continuance are incorporated in future generations because they are “left over” after attributes that are detrimental or insignificant are eliminated). However, if Darwin had chosen to describe the process by which nature measures new life against the environment as; “Transmutation through Natural Elimination”, his name would probably not have earned a place in history.

     With the discovery of the gene, and its inner workings, we now understand how living forms are randomly modified without purpose or intent, and how these random modifications are then sifted by natural selection to add their survival value to future generations. Both steps in the process, random modifications and selection by elimination, are required for life’s continued adaptations. Natural selection is a very simple process, a very efficient adaptive method, and a powerful force. The principles of Natural Selection can be used to explain more than just life’s physical attributes. Natural Selection has played a role in the advent and development of sensory organs, neurological centers for interpretation and response, long and short term memory, like kind recognition, language and more. Natural selection has been at work selecting more than just physical forms. Natural selection has also been the impetus for the advent and advancement of awareness.

     Applying the concept of natural selection to the evolution of awareness makes awareness understandable. New attributes of awareness are tested to see if they will work in a current environment just as physical attributes are tested. If they work they are transferred to future generations by genes, by example, or through language. If they don’t work they are naturally “deselected”. Natural selection explains the physical diversity and history of life. It also explains the development and diversity of awareness. Natural selection is not only Nature’s guiding hand it is also Nature’s alarm clock, and has been busy awakening the stardust forming all living forms..

 

The Search For and Descovery of The Gene

The Search For and Discovery of the Gene

     The recognition that inherited characteristics flow through generations of both plants and animals existed even in ancient times. A six thousand year old Babylonian tablet lists pedigrees of horses and possible inherited characteristics. Hippocrates, (460-375 BCE), postulated that each organ of the body grew from seeds that were passed from the father to the mother where they were reassembled. Aristotle (384-322 BCE), speculated that inherited characteristics were the result of purified blood shared during coitus, (we still talk of being related by blood). Man has been aware that some mechanism was behind the transfer of inherited characteristics long before he became civilized but had to wait for the advent of the scientific method of inquiry to uncover the chemistry involved. 

     The mechanisms of heredity began to be deciphered in the middle of the 19^th century when Gregor Mendel proposed that inherited characteristics were carried forward to the next generation in discrete units. Mendel used a strict methodology. He observed and recorded results. He then hypothesized and followed up with further experimentation and observation. His methods remain as the basis of genetic studies to this day.

     The evolution of living forms from disassociated groupings of single celled entities to multi-cellular forms is documented in nature’s hard cover books, (sedimentary rocks), and explained further in its soft cover books, (DNA). The examination of these records has given us an understanding of the developmental paths life has taken, and the ability to read the twisted threads that make up nature’s language of life. Nature describes life one individual at a time and in a series of sequential steps using only a four letter alphabet and simple grammatical rules. By allowing an occasional grammatical error and by demanding that variants comply with changing conditions, life persists. We call this thread language genetic information and each single fully formed description a Genome, each set of threaded sentences a Chromosome, and the discrete units described by Mendel, (sentences within chromosomes), we have named; Genes.

     The gene is the piece of the puzzle that Darwin lacked to fully explain the evolution of life by natural selection. Now we can see the gene, manipulate it, read its information, compare descriptions for various life forms and trace the history of living forms recorded in its descriptive codes. The gene is now out of the box along with a host of new questions that its appearance has prompted.

     As the concept of evolution coalesced, physical evidence for the idea was being accumulated. In 1869 a Swiss chemist, Johann Miescher, extracted a substance containing nitrogen and phosphorus from individual cell nuclei. We now know that what he extracted was the phosphate molecules that, along with sugar molecules, form the backbone of genetic strands and the nitrogen containing molecules that form part of the nucleotides of DNA. These nucleotides were later determined, in both plants and animals, to consist of four basic types; adenine (A), guanine (G), thymine (T), and cytosine (C). Further examination determined that each species has different proportions of these nucleic acids and in the early 1950s, Austrian born biochemist Erwin Chargraff found that although proportions varied, the amount of (A) was always equal to the amount of (T) and the amount of (G) is always equal to the amount of (C).

      At about the same time, using X-ray diffraction methods, British physicists Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins showed that DNA casts a shadow resembling a string of overlapping (Xs). This shape and the relationship of (A) to (T) and (G) to (C) suggested to American geneticist James Watson and British biophysicist Francis Crick that DNA had the shape of a twisted ladder (double helix) and in 1953 they constructed a large wire model of the suggested molecule and it became clear that couplings of (A-T) (T-A) and (G-C) (C-G) were rungs on the ladder. Crick and Watson also noted that their model fulfilled the features of a hereditary molecule in that the rungs, A-T, G-C etc. could be cut, leaving a single genetic letter attached to each side of the dissected ladder and new sides could be replicated to replace the missing sides by growing the appropriate paired letter to create two identical ladders. To confirm these findings and conclusions American geneticists Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl grew bacterial cells in the presence of heavy atoms of nitrogen so that both sides of their experimental hereditary ladders used only heavy nitrogen in the formation of the bacteria’s nucleotides. They then placed the bacteria in a medium of normal nitrogen and as the bacteria reproduced they used the normal nitrogen to form the missing sides of each ladder. As expected, the new bacteria contained equal amounts of heavy and normal hydrogen supporting the hypothesized replication process.

     Attempts to answer questions related to heredity have been ongoing since ancient times. Aristotle foreshadowed evolutionary thought when he wrote;

    “…and in like manner as to other body parts in which there appears to exist an adaptation to an end and all the parts of one whole happened as if they were made for the sake of something and have been preserved by having been appropriately constituted by an internal spontaneity and further that things not thus constituted have perished and will continue to perish.”

      Philosophy, science and religion have all contributed to the development of genetic theory and continuing investigations have expanded into numerous sub areas of practical application and further research. Classical genetics now includes; microbial genetics, population genetics, cytogenetics, molecular genetics, genomics, human genetics, behavior genetics, epigenetics, and applied genetics in medicine, agriculture and industry.

     Genetics is now out of the box and cannot be put back without dismantling civilization itself.

We now know that every living form contains its own unique coded description, that the language is the same for bacteria, plants and animals, and that all life has a common heritage and that life’s code is passed from generation to generation ready to be translated by RNA into proteins that make up all multi-cellular structures.

     From atoms comes the chemistry of life, from the chemistry of life comes the coded word, from the coded word comes living form, and from the living form, Awareness.  

Evolutionary Theory, The Concept

Evolution, the Concept

     Natural selection is the filter used by nature to guide living organisms to a successful fit with their environment. Darwin called evolution ‘natural’ because it appears to be undirected and takes place without intervention. A river flowing downhill is called a natural occurrence, and life adapting to its environment is just as natural. We are more comfortable with the natural process of water flowing downhill, than with the natural selection of living forms, because water flowing downhill is an easy observation and fits neatly into our pace of awareness.. The downhill water concept takes only a second to observe, involves only a simple subject and requires very little conceptualization. The evolution of living forms, on the other hand, takes place at a pace well below our observational rate, involves an extremely complex set of observational subjects, and requires considerable conceptualization.

     Religious explanations for the creation of various species often conflict with scientific findings. Paradoxically, genetics, as a scientific discipline, began in an Augustinian monastery where a monk; Gregor Mendel, used careful observation and a statistical analysis of pea plants to provided evidence that hereditary characteristics are passed from generation to generation as particulate factors. His paper, published in 1866, (seven years after Darwin published his “Origin of Species”), was a masterly use of scientific method. Both Mendel’s work and Darwin’s ideas, however, remained unappreciated for years. Mendel’s work remained an unread paper for 31 years. During the same time period, Darwin’s conclusions were embroiled in a lengthy confrontation with alternate explanations based upon the idea that organs and other living characteristics evolved, or were discarded, based upon their use or disuse. These ideas remained a viable alternative until Mendel’s papers were rediscovered in 1900. The rediscovery of Mendel’s work revitalized the idea that heredity could be passed by discrete units and that it could be the basis for evolutionary changes. Mendel’s observations and conclusions gave new support to Darwin’s point of view.  The controversy between mutationists, (Mendalians), and biometricians, (Lemarkians), approached resolution in the 1920s when mathematical arguments showed that variations in living characteristics could be explained by Mendel’s laws, and that small variations could become cumulative effects and result in major evolutionary changes as suggested by Darwin.

     The fact that Darwinian ideas became dominant because of scientific observations made by a religious monk, should help those who see science as the enemy of religion understand that science is simply a careful examination of our surroundings followed by experimentation to check the validity of any conclusions reached. When nature tells us something different than our religious teachings we either have to choose between opposing views or seek a compromise. The theory of evolution is the result of many compromises, some by science as new evidence required old theories to be modified, and some by religious thinkers as simple explanations became inadequate. St. Augustine allowed that some life forms must have developed after the great biblical flood since Noah’s ark could not have been large enough to hold all observable contemporary forms. Theologians of the middle ages, like St. Thomas Aquinas, also accepted the possibility that living things could be generated from inanimate matter and that such a possibility was not incompatible with religious teaching.