Richard Dawkins Revisited

[Bahaichap]

A TRILLION LIFETIMES

It is raining DNA outside in my garden here at the end of this Tasmanian river, the Tamar. The trees, shrubs and flowers pump seeds, pollen and oxygen into the air day after day, year after year in aid of one thing and one thing only, the spreading of DNA around the countryside. At least this is how Richard Dawkins puts it in his book, The Blind Watchmaker.(1) Of course from my point of view and the point of view of family and friends who enjoy this garden, these growing things produce beauty and pleasure, but seen from the perspective of the plants their DNA and its coded characters spell out specific instructions for building a new generation of verdure. And this is their sole purpose according to Dawkins. Those varied, fluffy, shiney, green and coloured things are, literally, spreading instructions for making themselves. They are there because their ancestors succeeded in doing the same. It is raining instructions out there; it's raining programs; it's raining tree-and-flower-growing, fluff-spreading, algorithms.

This is not a metaphor, it is the plain truth. It couldn't be any plainer if it were raining floppy discs. Where are these facts leading us? They are leading us in the direction of a central truth about life on Earth. This truth is that living organisms exist for the benefit of DNA rather than the other way around. This is not that obvious to the casual an d generally unscientific observer, but the writer Richard Dawkins tries to persuade us of this truth. The messages that DNA molecules contain are all but eternal when seen against the time scale of individual lifetimes. The lifetimes of DNA messages, give or take a few mutations, are measured in units ranging from millions of years to hundreds of millions of years. To put it another way the messages range from 10,000 individual lifetimes to a trillion individual lifetimes. Each individual organism should be seen as a temporary vehicle in which DNA messages spend a tiny fraction of their geological lifetimes. -Ron Price with thanks to (1)Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, W.W. Norton, 1986.

Surrounded we are, are we,
by literal symbols of eternity
that go on for thousands,
nay millions, of lifetimes--
and that's about as close
to eternity as you can get
before you head off
to the land of lights
and undiscovered mystery.

You could say--and I'm saying:
it's raining eternity,
programs of eternity,
algorithms of eternity,
the temporary, here-now,
all for this eternity, this DNA
and its trillion lifetimes
wound around, twisting--
and discovered--can you believe?
The year of the inception of that
wondrous and thrilling motion
that constitutes my life.(1)

(1) Or--your life, or, fill in the blanks to suit your taste.

Ron Price
16 November 2002

[Boerseun]

That's about right, I'd say. Except that DNA doesn't do the 'geologic age' thing. Every individual has a new set of DNA that's been subtly altered from that of the parents - resulting in evolution. Now why, and to what end DNA keeps on evolving, is simply that more efficient combinations has a better chance of resulting in offspring.
But I agree fully with you that human, animal or plant bodies serve only as a vehicle for DNA.

Almost as sly as yeast. Consider:

We consume thousands of hectoliters of beer every year, carefully looking after the yeast we use in the process. Now - it could be said that the yeast is using us, and having a free ride and all its costing the yeast is to induce a happy feeling in us as we drink the beer as payment for us looking after it. I think creating alcohol in the fermentation process is actually a very efficient survival strategy for an organism in a semi-alcoholic society!

[Qfwfq]

Symbiosis!!!!!!!

[bumab]

What a lovely partnership we've got going. Makes me a little proud, really.

[Turtle]

___Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, W.W. Norton, 1986. I may have read this; the title sounds familiar; easy to dance to; I give it about a 73.
___In my view the whole discussion/debate of design is moot. It is what it is & one's time is best spent appreciating as much of the pattern as one has time for. My DNA doesn't tell me how a rose smells because it remembers my grandpa sniffing one.

[Boerseun]

Originally Posted by Turtle

___Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, W.W. Norton, 1986. I may have read this; the title sounds familiar; easy to dance to; I give it about a 73.
___In my view the whole discussion/debate of design is moot. It is what it is & one's time is best spent appreciating as much of the pattern as one has time for. My DNA doesn't tell me how a rose smells because it remembers my grandpa sniffing one.

You do, however, appreciate the smell of a rose.

And rose breeders select those individual roses with the best smell and appearance, and weeds out the rest. And so on. In other words, for a rose to be a pleasant experience for a human olfactory bulb is an environmental advantage for the rose. Call it evolution in small, and even though it was artificially selected for, it's still an excellent example of how plants and animals develop together. Another good exaple is flowers with elaborate mechanisms to either simulate wasps, down to minute details like antennae, eyes and even smell, so much so that male wasps attempt to copulate with the flower's stamen and gets covered with pollen.

And so they develop together ad infinitum. There's danger involved here as well, for some species have already specialized so much in this direction that they are dependent on one single insect species for its fertilization, and vice versa - the insect is 100% dependent on this one plant's flowers for food, and will only eat that. If the one species dies out for some reason, the other can't be fertilized or will die of hunger. This kind of exclusivity seems a bit dangerous, but the inherent danger will only become an evolutionary factor once either of the species' numbers are actually severely reduced. Kinda like buying a gas-guzzler 'cause fuel is cheap. Never mind next year when the prices will rocket.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Boerseun

You do, however, appreciate the smell of a rose.

And rose breeders select those individual roses with the best smell and appearance, and weeds out the rest. And so on. In other words, for a rose to be a pleasant experience for a human olfactory bulb is an environmental advantage for the rose. Call it evolution in small, and even though it was artificially selected for, it's still an excellent example of how plants and animals develop together. Another good exaple is flowers with elaborate mechanisms to either simulate wasps, down to minute details like antennae, eyes and even smell, so much so that male wasps attempt to copulate with the flower's stamen and gets covered with pollen.

And so they develop together ad infinitum. There's danger involved here as well, for some species have already specialized so much in this direction that they are dependent on one single insect species for its fertilization, and vice versa - the insect is 100% dependent on this one plant's flowers for food, and will only eat that. If the one species dies out for some reason, the other can't be fertilized or will die of hunger. This kind of exclusivity seems a bit dangerous, but the inherent danger will only become an evolutionary factor once either of the species' numbers are actually severely reduced. Kinda like buying a gas-guzzler 'cause fuel is cheap. Never mind next year when the prices will rocket.

A rose by any name would smell as sweet to me. I particularly like the insect reference I bolded above; I watched a NOVA show on a guy who first filmed a giant moth with a 12" proboscis which feeds exclusively on an orchid. Apparently Darwin on seeing the orchid, deduced a moth must exist with a proboscis long enough to reach its bottom. He received ridicule & yet the proof is only extant in the last 3 or so years.
___Anyway, I do not debate that everything is connected; to the contrary, I assert nothing is not connected. It doesn't mean the rose is aware of it as seems the implication here.