Chapter category: Evolution
Development of Biological Potential
The Genomic Potential Hypothesis: A Chemist's View of the Origins, Evolution and Unfolding of Life
Edited by: Christian SchwabeISBN: 1-58706-044-2
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Chapter authors:
Christian Schwabe
Should development come after speciation? Yes, of course, in the new model it is natural, one produces the Anlage and develops it to its potential. The word evolution is derived from the latin term evolvere which means to roll out and that describes precisely the process postulated in the Genomic Potential Hypothesis for the post-Cambrian time. With speciation behind us there remain two distinct phases of evolution in the widest sense of the word, the streamlining of the chemistry in the nucleus, which leaves no traces other than species-specific stem cells, and the post-Cambrian ‘unrolling’ of species and variants that produces a spectacular display of phenotypes. Looks like we are on the right track.
About two hundred years ago it was clear that life’s history began in the Cambrian and whatever was before, long or short, was a blank called Precambrian. Even in the 1994 a non-religious book appeared the author of which, de facto placed the origin of life into the Cambrian.1 Darwin sensed the need for more time than 500 million years for his evolution model and that conflict led to an argument with Kelvin who was unaware of radioactive decay and its heating effect upon the earth and had, as a consequence, miscalculated the age of the universe to be no more than 500 million years. The naturalists at that time would have missed the 3 billion-year period of evolution anyway because the methods to find fossils of micro-organisms and to determine the age of the rock matrix had not been developed.2 What difference would it make to know about a period during which nothing overtly happened? It provides a credible basis for a scientific hypothesis of evolution!
Although the first cells and the first macro-organisms are separated by an unimaginable stretch of time, without these early events the planet would have been arid today. Archean rocks, however, reveal an astounding assembly of micro-organisms,3 many of them sufficiently familiar to find a place in today's systematic taxonomy. Life flooded the underground scene to begin the longest bio-period known to us. The old model retrofits this stage by calling it a stasis of 3 billion years. True, the fossil record shows 3.5 billion-year-old cyanobacteria, looking like those 800 million years of age as well as contemporary ones, but that does not really mean that nothing happened, it only shows that cyanobacteria did not change.4 This pattern continues throughout all of the evolutionary history; as soon as a species is recognized in the fossil record it will no longer change significantly. Most macro-organisms were not finished until the Cambrian but then they shattered the tranquility with an avalanche of animals strewn over the shallow Cambrian seas around America, Australia, and all the way to what is now the eastern part of China (all in the Pangea5 configuration). Prokaryotes remained prokaryotes and today they constitute perhaps the most abundant and most adaptable form of life. They are reproductively so successful that any development away from prokaryotic life must be considered a significant step backwards in terms of survival capacity. Potential eukaryotes were invisible for us during the first billion years of the Hadean. The potential to produce, either protozoan, plants, or animals is recognized only when it is expressed.
Additional chapters from this book:
The Genomic Potential Hypothesis: Introduction
Christian Schwabe
The Genomic Potential Hypothesis is a biochemists' view of the origin, evolution, and development of life. Large numbers are second nature to a biochemist an...
Quintessence
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Steven Weinberg once said that the complexity of physics today reaches very close to the edge of the human intellect.1 Where would that leave us, the bioch...
Experiments in Evolution
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Conceptual science interfaces with the experimental world as predictions emanate from the internal logic of a paradigm. Hypotheses concerning the origin and unfolding...
Molecular Geneology
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Is it rational to expect proteins such as insulin, relaxin, hemoglobin, or cytochrome to have followed the evolutionary route of the organisms from which they were taken? Of course it is , but...
On the Evolution of Humans
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Ancient bones are somewhat like wind vanes that show from which direction a particular hypothesis breezes across the fossil field. If a paradigm is useful one should ...
The Invariance Concept
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Tucked away, if it were possible, within the hollow of the tip of a dart gun needle aimed at man or beast one could make a memorable discovery. Just a moment after sk...
Natura non facit saltum (Nature does nothing in jumps)
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Latin is intimidating, and people tend to defer to anything expressed in that venerable language. Of all the errors chiseled into our cultural foundation in Latin, th...
Thoughts on Multi-Cellularity: How Nature got Around Darwin
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Reproductive success is the ultimate criterion for survival in the Darwinian paradigm, and since micro-organisms are undisputed champions of reproduction the countles...
Development of Biological Potential
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Should development come after speciation? Yes, of course, in the new model it is natural, one produces the Anlage and develops it to its potential. The word evolution...
The Origins of Species
Christian Schwabe
There was never a time on earth when only one kind, one species, existed. At least there is no evidence to that effect and a plausible extension of that simple though...
The Condensation of Life
Christian Schwabe
The course of biogenesis was carved into molecular structures by the events of the primeval initiation of our universe. The speed at which pure energy segregated into...
Our Young Planet: One is not a Choice
Christian Schwabe
The old model begins with one origin and the biochemist knows that to be impossible. The scientific basis for the genomist’s position has been discussed and will...
The Origin of Complexity
Christian Schwabe
Clearly, molecular complexity was a precondition for biogenesis. Contiguous molecular structures are monkey bars for electrons that provide the stream of energy requi...
Genomism and the Nature Trail
Christian Schwabe
As genes move into the center of a hypothesis one needs an "ism" to refer to the background of ideas that make up the new model. Thus, as the term Darwinism...
The Frame for New Hypotheses of Evolution
Christian Schwabe
How does one present any new idea, which is in principle impossible to proof? Hypotheses are self-limiting and an old paradigm of evolution will fall victim to its er...
Life in a Tenuous Universe
Christian Schwabe
The question is, do we live independent of the shape of our universe, or are we an intimate partner as well as a beneficiary of its peculiar structure and its awesome...
