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Cargando... Blueprints: Solving the Mystery of Evolution (1989)por Maitland Armstrong Edey, Donald C. Johanson
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. This book is enjoyably readable. It was extremely helpful to me with addressing questions about the processes of evolution and genetics. Its discussion of RNA and DNA clarified much about the process that I did not understand. The narrative introduces the people, the ideas, the work, the problems as they build development of evolutionary science. I very much recommend the book. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Chapters on Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, Hugo de Vries, Friedrich Miescher, George Beadle, Edward L. Tatum, Oswald Avery, James Watson, Francis Crick, Stanley L. Miller, Manfred Eigen, Carl L. Woese, and others.
"It is a fascinating account of the evolution of the idea of evolution, told as a scientific detective story. Edey and Johanson unravel all that we have learned about the shaping of life on earth in the decades since Darwin, recounting in detail the personal battles, sacrifices, and triumphs that have stoked this learning process ... Maitland A. Edey, a gifted science writer, and Donald C. Johanson, the world-renowned paleoanthropologist who discovered 'Lucy', the 3.5-million-year-old woman, bring uniquely matched talents to this book. They took this project on because, as we gain the ability to direct our own evolution through genetic engineering, they believe it is crucial that we understand evolution. Blueprints not only promotes this understanding, but is also a gripping tale of the unruly ways and workings of scientific genius and the roles of both brilliance and chance"--Jacket. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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The chapters on Darwin are fascinating. Darwin made important inferences from five major observations: (1) species have great potential fertility; 12) populations tend to be stable; (3) food resources are limited and remain constant; (4) no two individuals are identical; and, (5) variation is heritable, i.e. offspring tend to resemble their parents. These observations led to his major brilliant inferences: (1) there is a struggle among individuals for resources; (2) those with ''good" or "best" characteristics tend to survive (natural selection); and (3) natural selection results in marked changes to a population. The two biggest challenges to Darwin's theories at the time were "blending" (any change introduced into a population would be blended into extinction very soon,) a theory effectively refuted by Mendel; and Lord Kelvin's assertion that the earth would have been too hot for too long for evolution to have occurred. Nuclear physics has, of course, proven him to be wrong.
The final chapter speculates on the future successful adaptability of humans. Generally, the most successful species are those that adapt easily, inhabit a fairly wide niche, and those that are the most generalized. Man's brain provides an ability to adapt to almost any environment; indeed, to some species, "obligate parasites," are organisms which can survive only in concert with their hosts; e.g., the louse that lived on the heath hen died when the last heath hen died in the 1930s. Are humans the parasites of the earth? If the earth dies so shall we, so it would seem logical that we not "abuse the host." If our intelligence enables us to so change the environment for our short-term comfort, or through nuclear holocaust destroy our surroundings, have we perhaps overspecialized on the brain and over-manipulated ourselves right out of existence? ( )