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From: pete on 9 Jun 2010 00:52 Androcles wrote: > Oh jeez... a conundrum for a 6-year old: Which came first, the chicken The rooster. -- pete
From: Androcles on 9 Jun 2010 02:07 "pete" <pfiland(a)mindspring.com> wrote in message news:gc2dnU8BPZ6Bg5LRnZ2dnUVZ_vWdnZ2d(a)earthlink.com... | Androcles wrote: | | > Oh jeez... a conundrum for a 6-year old: Which came first, the chicken | | The What?
From: Shelly on 9 Jun 2010 06:42 "George Hammond" <Nowhere1(a)notspam.com> wrote in message news:5onq065s5s55gueeprjisttpjin1mha74h(a)4ax.com... > On Mon, 7 Jun 2010 14:01:05 -0400, "Shelly" > <shelly(a)cat-sidh.net> wrote: > >> >>"George Hammond" <Nowhere1(a)notspam.com> wrote in message >>news:70bq065ueo2c8085reagjjnbddqa0i3r0g(a)4ax.com... >>> On Sun, 06 Jun 2010 23:26:19 -0400, George Hammond >>> <Nowhere1(a)notspam.com> wrote: >>> >>> BIOLOGY IN A NUT SHELL >>> >>> 1. The Body starts as a single cell (the egg). >> >>Parthenogenesis, ahoy! > > Don't be stupid. Sorry. You inspired me! > A human egg cell doesn't divide until > it mates with a sperm cell... And while it's still a single cell, it's not a body. See how that works? -- Shelly http://www.cat-sidh.net/blog
From: pete on 9 Jun 2010 07:07 Shelly wrote: > > "George Hammond" <Nowhere1(a)notspam.com> wrote in message > news:5onq065s5s55gueeprjisttpjin1mha74h(a)4ax.com... > >> On Mon, 7 Jun 2010 14:01:05 -0400, "Shelly" >> <shelly(a)cat-sidh.net> wrote: >> >>> >>> "George Hammond" <Nowhere1(a)notspam.com> wrote in message >>> news:70bq065ueo2c8085reagjjnbddqa0i3r0g(a)4ax.com... >>> >>>> On Sun, 06 Jun 2010 23:26:19 -0400, George Hammond >>>> <Nowhere1(a)notspam.com> wrote: >>>> >>>> BIOLOGY IN A NUT SHELL >>>> >>>> 1. The Body starts as a single cell (the egg). >>> >>> >>> Parthenogenesis, ahoy! >> >> >> Don't be stupid. > > > Sorry. You inspired me! > >> A human egg cell doesn't divide until >> it mates with a sperm cell... > > > And while it's still a single cell, it's not a body. See how that works? > ("It's not a pizza until it comes out of the oven!" /"It's a pizza the minute you put your fists in the dough!") http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3295518&pagenumber=4 -- pete
From: Dr. HotSalt on 9 Jun 2010 09:56
On Jun 7, 10:40 am, George Hammond <Nowhe...(a)notspam.com> wrote: > On Sun, 06 Jun 2010 23:26:19 -0400, George Hammond > > <Nowhe...(a)notspam.com> wrote: > > BIOLOGY IN A NUT SHELL > > 1. The Body starts as a single cell (the egg). (brevity snips here and there) > 4. As cells proliferate differentiation of cells is > effected by turning on and off various gene > sequences in the DNA molecule thus producing > different organ tissue types. But not adding or deleting any DNA. Just using what's already there. > 5. Meanwhile the L-R symmetry of the body derives > from the first cell division. The R cell forms the R > half of the body and the L cell forms the L half > mirror symmetrically. AIUI each cell of the preimplantation embryo (before gastrulation) is totipotent; i.e. is not limited to what tissue type it can be. Head- tail, dorso-ventral and left-right differentiation doesn't manifest until the gastrointestinal and neural grooves appear: http://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/Notes/git.htm http://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/notes/week3_5.htm I'd emphasize that the embryo is by stages spherically symmetrical (amoeboid) through gastrulation, cylindrically (segmented-worm-like), then "Euclidean" (all three bilateral, front-back, and head-tail symmetries present), but I don't take "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" literally. Seeing elegantly blatant Euclidean geometry in the soap-bubble arrangement of four cells is, I think, entirely coincidental and not crucial to the SPOG. It *is* an elegantly blatant emergent property of the structural symmetries of our personalities. > 6. Subsequent tissue elaboration is mainly controlled > by local conditions and mechanisms eliciting > elaborate parallel cascades of complex chemical > reactions producing nerves, veins, bones etc. Yes. AFAICT at no point is any DNA added to or removed from any cell (with exceptions like red blood cells) in this sequence. However, different intermediary proteins are expressed by the DNA, which actually do the building of the "new" types of cells and arranges them into "new" tissues. > 7. Presumably all of this originated historically in > totally random and haphazard mutations in the > DNA molecule wch. were then culled via > natural selection to leave by default the > surviving version of DNA wch. produces > Man today. Basically, yep. > DEDUCTION: > > Presuming the above synopsis of human ontogeny > is basically correct, we see that there IS NO resident > "blueprint" anywhere in the body which has a total > "map" or "design" of a fully grown human body. Right, DNA has the *meta-pattern* of a fully grown human body. It has the "instructions" to write the "instructions" so to speak. The words in quotes have the philosophical implication of intent, but that's just semantics. In the macroscale world those "instructions" don't get executed perfectly, hence BGD. Basic SPOG. > Rather, the human organism is simply the result > of MASSIVE SEQUENTIAL CASCADES of billions > of chemical reactions WITHOUT any "master plan" > or "blueprint" of the final result resident anywhere > in the body. Correct. The "master plan" is never present anywhere in toto; it's an *emergent property* of DNA expressed only piecemeal. Many proteins have the "ability" to manipulate other molecules. In a monkeys-typing-Shakespeare sort of way, to me it seems inevitable that some (DNA) wound up replicating itself. It doesn't replicate itself directly by building copies of itself from bits of organic gunk floating by though, but rather makes other intermediary proteins that dismantle *it* and build a copy of it from bits of organic gunk floating by. A mechanical analogy might involve a computer instructing some industrial robots to disassemble it and copy it (and its software) using electronic parts lying nearby *while the computer is running*. That loop seems inevitably unclosable without intervention to those with a religious bent. Speaking evolution-wise, nobody's running the show; nobody's running the computer in the analogy; it's running on software that evolved as the sum pattern of its structure. We're certainly not running our bodies (fortunately), we're just emergent properties of our brains. > On the other hand IT IS TRUE that given the > existing DNA molecule and the existing cell machinery > in the egg that the production of what we call the > "human body" is predictably inevitable every time given > normal environmental conditions. To draw an analogy, > given identical conditions, kicking over the kerosene > lantern in Mrs. Leary's barn will produce the same identical > Chicago fire every single time...even though there is no > "blueprint" for the result contained in the lantern. It's > simply predictable... and same is true with > the production of the human body from the egg. Analogy mismatch; fire isn't specific about what it does to different materials. Fire always increases matter's entropy. DNA can *edit* other matter selectively in specific, predictable ways, often decreasing its entropy. Again, I'm not just being pedantic here. Proteins are weird; one might say "unnatural". Or maybe "supernatural". I wouldn't, mind you, but some might. Pedestrian example; the "gray goo" nanotechnology horror scenario. That's what we are, the descendants of the "blue-green goo" that ate the world and started making oxygen 2.5 to 3 GY ago. ObSF ref: Niven's story "The Green Marauder". > THE PROBLEM then, seems to be HOW the microtubule > system, which only has access to the ACTUAL BODY we > were born with could be ABLE to produce a FULLY GROWN > body in this Afterlife Dreamstate resurrection? Nobody gets a "perfect body", they get the *experience* (the perfect image) of a perfect body. > Since we have just deduced that there IS NO internal > blueprint for a perfect body anywhere to be found in the > body.... where could it get the information to concoct one? I still think it's holographically encoded in the quantum-correlated connectivity of the cytoskeleton. I can't provide any cites to back me up on this, but consider; DNA manages to get *itself* reproduced accurately many times during a person's life. Apparently that's fairly easy, largely owing to the protected environment and the relative repetitive simplicity of DNA, but diversified multicellular structures are subject to the vagaries of intervention by external forces during their construction and existence. The cytoskeleton of a cell (even a bunch of them and their interconnections) is, I suspect, much easier to get "exactly right" and keep it that way than, say, a pancreas, never mind a brain. Again though, I think this is largely moot until a way is found to detect and decode (or at least demonstrate there's something *to* decode) the patterns in whatever propagates in the microtubules. Mark L. Fergerson |