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In what sense is Charles Darwin not that person for biology? (I looked up the author of the short essay post submitted here, and it appears that his career has

In what sense is Charles Darwin not that person for biology? (I looked up the author of the short essay post submitted here, and it appears that his career has been devoted to nonbiological technology. I wonder what analogies from mathematics and electronics he is using to think about biology, perhaps without having looked at what the theoreticians of biology have had to explain in biological data?)

danieltillett 12y ago
Darwin is that person since he discovered the only universal principle in biology. There is no more universal biological concepts to discover since evolution by natural selection makes universal properties impossible.
- disputin 12y ago
  Don't forget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace
  - danieltillett 12y ago
    There were quite a few people who discovered evolution by natural selection before Darwin published the origin of the species, but the reason Darwin is given credit is because his explanation was so complete. It is in someways similar to Einstein and special relativity.
- ajcarpy2005 12y ago
  It doesn't make universal properties 'impossible' and it certainly doesn't make shared properties impossible. Here's an example of a theory which would extend the basics set forth by Darwin: https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory... And anyway, Darwin's theory has already been expanded on with some discoveries relating to inter-species genetic transfer such as through viral infection and also some interesting insights about mitochondrial ancestry. There is still a lot of mysteries about evolution and there are certain to be unexpected surprises.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- pvaldes 12y ago
  Of course not, the fact that all known living things have DNA or RNA (and that this translates to proteins) is another universal biological concept for example. Another is that the live is carbon based Concepts like ecosystem or the nature of predation are also universal.
  - danieltillett 12y ago
    These things are not universals. Let's take the fact that all living things have DNA or RNA. We know that the first living thing did not have DNA and RNA. The only reason that it is believed that all living things have DNA/RNA is that this is how we look for new life - we say that something is alive if it has RNA/DNA. For example, if some of the early life that did not use RNA/DNA was still around we would not know since we would not recognise it as life.
    - pvaldes 12y ago
      A chemical reaction is not a life form, by definition. You can found sodium or gold atoms in a lot of life forms playing essential roles to keep this things alive for some more time; but if you dissolve salt in water you are not killing some salt people. There is not a single exception known until today by the human race so, do not lie to yourself, those concepts are absolutely universal (right now). Moreover if any slime or rock was really a early life form we should be able to recognised as that, since many years ago, for sure. A gold necklace that will create more gold or gain mass with time would not have gone unnoticed, neither a limestone rock growing and taking the form of the drawer that contains it. Finally, an early form of life that did not use RNA/DNA in earth will be contaminated with RNA/DNA of its parasites or symbionts after a few thousands of years. The ecology predict this.
- akulesa 12y ago
  That's an interesting conjecture. Maybe the point isn't to find properties that are completely universal to all life, but more, do we even have a good definition of what life is? Could we always recognize life if we saw it? I think these are the sort of theoretical questions that are getting left out of the conversation.
akulesa 12y ago
Thanks for the comment! Haha, I am definitely aware of Charles Darwin. I agree with you that much theoretical work has been done, and early on biology was largely a theoretical subject (we had an accurate quantitative theory of genetics before we knew what genes were!). (see my comment in the root thread) I was hoping in this blog post to point to a more disturbing trend in our modern culture, where the need to solve problems in health have moved attention away from generalization and more towards individual instances of human diseases.

danieltillett 12y ago

Darwin is that person since he discovered the only universal principle in biology. There is no more universal biological concepts to discover since evolution by natural selection makes universal properties impossible.

disputin 12y ago
Don't forget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace
- danieltillett 12y ago
  There were quite a few people who discovered evolution by natural selection before Darwin published the origin of the species, but the reason Darwin is given credit is because his explanation was so complete. It is in someways similar to Einstein and special relativity.
ajcarpy2005 12y ago
It doesn't make universal properties 'impossible' and it certainly doesn't make shared properties impossible. Here's an example of a theory which would extend the basics set forth by Darwin: https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory... And anyway, Darwin's theory has already been expanded on with some discoveries relating to inter-species genetic transfer such as through viral infection and also some interesting insights about mitochondrial ancestry. There is still a lot of mysteries about evolution and there are certain to be unexpected surprises.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
pvaldes 12y ago
Of course not, the fact that all known living things have DNA or RNA (and that this translates to proteins) is another universal biological concept for example. Another is that the live is carbon based Concepts like ecosystem or the nature of predation are also universal.
- danieltillett 12y ago
  These things are not universals. Let's take the fact that all living things have DNA or RNA. We know that the first living thing did not have DNA and RNA. The only reason that it is believed that all living things have DNA/RNA is that this is how we look for new life - we say that something is alive if it has RNA/DNA. For example, if some of the early life that did not use RNA/DNA was still around we would not know since we would not recognise it as life.
  - pvaldes 12y ago
    A chemical reaction is not a life form, by definition. You can found sodium or gold atoms in a lot of life forms playing essential roles to keep this things alive for some more time; but if you dissolve salt in water you are not killing some salt people. There is not a single exception known until today by the human race so, do not lie to yourself, those concepts are absolutely universal (right now). Moreover if any slime or rock was really a early life form we should be able to recognised as that, since many years ago, for sure. A gold necklace that will create more gold or gain mass with time would not have gone unnoticed, neither a limestone rock growing and taking the form of the drawer that contains it. Finally, an early form of life that did not use RNA/DNA in earth will be contaminated with RNA/DNA of its parasites or symbionts after a few thousands of years. The ecology predict this.
akulesa 12y ago
That's an interesting conjecture. Maybe the point isn't to find properties that are completely universal to all life, but more, do we even have a good definition of what life is? Could we always recognize life if we saw it? I think these are the sort of theoretical questions that are getting left out of the conversation.

akulesa 12y ago

Thanks for the comment! Haha, I am definitely aware of Charles Darwin. I agree with you that much theoretical work has been done, and early on biology was largely a theoretical subject (we had an accurate quantitative theory of genetics before we knew what genes were!). (see my comment in the root thread) I was hoping in this blog post to point to a more disturbing trend in our modern culture, where the need to solve problems in health have moved attention away from generalization and more towards individual instances of human diseases.