Name: Julie Wise
Username: jwise@brynmawr.edu
Subject: supression/alteration of evolution?
Date: 2001-09-18 14:43:52
Message Id: 207
Comments:
A number of the above comments were discussing evolution and I began to think about how, in today's technological age, we have a great deal of power over evolution. With the onset of genetic enginering we have the ability to supress evolution and/or mold it into our notions of what should evolve. Who are we to make those decisions and will these alterations prove to have a detramental effect on the survival and progression of our species? It's frightening to me to think that a species that has so much power while, at the same time, being so ignorant of the larger scheme in life and the consequences that the actions taken now will affect the future.
Name: Rianna
Username: rouellet@brynmawr.edu
Subject: human evolution
Date: 2001-09-18 17:06:26
Message Id: 216
Comments:
One thing we must endevor not to forget is that we are still in the process of evolving. Only now, we are overriding natural selection, with our technology, our medical practices, and method of caring for our young, old, and injured. We are not the end, nor is our current state the end, either. I think it extremely important for us to recognize what we may become, and how the consequences of our actions may have an effect on that. An interesting fiction novel on these matters is "Galapagos" by Kurt Vonnegut.
Name: Rachel Moloshok
Username: rmolosho@brynmawr.edu
Subject: Shanah Tovah
Date: 2001-09-18 20:16:04
Message Id: 220
Comments:
Every blade of grass lives and dies, just as we do. We are overwhelmed by the violence and senselessness of humanity, and it IS overwhelming and scary, and complicated, and hard to deal with. But think what a small part of the universe humanity is, heck, think what a small part even of this Earth humanity is. In case anyone's forgotten, let me remind you of the huge world that we share with the all the animals and plants and trees and bugs and oceans and deserts. And of how old the earth is, and how much things change. Today was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. In Hebrew school they told us that this day was the world's birthday. In the big scheme of things, our lives seem to mean as much as those of goldfish, or of oak leaves. After all, dinosaurs once filled the earth, and who thinks of them now but five-year-old boys? I'm getting bogged down in all this philosophical thought, while the deer in the woods don't even have the slightest idea of what has happened, and their lives go on unaffected. Life goes on. What will this year be like? Eons from now, will anyone remember us? And what will they remember? Happy Birthday, world. Shanah Tovah.
Name: Monica Bhanote
Username: mbhanote@brynmawr.edu
Subject: life.....
Date: 2001-09-19 00:44:53
Message Id: 222
Comments:
After today's lab where we categorized plants based on appearance...I thought about how this happens in our society. As quickly as we grouped the plants by appearance...society works exactly the same way...for example this tragedy..the terrorist attack caused a huge loss of life...many Americans were able to unite...to cope with the tragedy..yet..as quick as I was able to group plants today in categories ..people were quick enough to place me under the category of being a threat to the US...since all they can see is my brown skin...
Name:
Username: Anonymous
Subject: Monica
Date: 2001-09-20 14:09:23
Message Id: 242
Comments:
That's not all I see.
Name: Jessica Blucher
Username: jblucher@brynmawr.edu
Subject: L'Shana Tova u'metukah
Date: 2001-09-21 00:30:48
Message Id: 246
Comments:
I'm going to take up part of Rachel's theme of the new year and go sorta spiritual for a moment. Please forgive me if this offends anyone, but I've got the new year on my mind, so I'm going to take the theme and run with it. In the high holiday litrugy there's a passage about how at this time of year it is decided who will die, and who will be born, shall live and who shall die, who shall live out the length of his days and who shall not, who dies by fire and who by water, who by sword, who by beast, who by famine, who by thirst, who by plague, who by strangulation, who by stoning, who will have rest and who will wander, who shall live in harmony and who shall be harried, who shall live in tranquility and who will suffer, who will be impoverished and who will be enriched, who will be degraded and who will be exalted. What was the point of that very long run-on sentence? We're not in control of everything. Therefore we should cherish "life" and live it to the fullest, for we may never know when our time comes to leave this world. I guess the fallout from the whole WTC thing has 2 aspects for me: 1) every sermon I've heard had to incorporate it somehow, and 2) it's made me appreciate "life" more, especially my friendships. I think "life" is more than just biology. Although that's probably the main part of "life" that we'll be studying in this class, I think it's important that we don't forget that there are other aspects, too.
Name: celina
Username: cvaladar@brynmawr.edu
Subject: evolution
Date: 2001-09-21 00:46:35
Message Id: 247
Comments:
As a forum virgin, I would first like to apologize for reading all your ideas these past weeks and only participating now... sorry.
I've always thought of evolution as life getting better.
Prof. Grobstein said this week that evolution is exploration. Life’s exploration…
In my anthropology course this week, Prof. Davis insisted that evolution is "not goal oriented but circumstantial" and that it is in no way "directed towards perfection."
This has made me reconsider many things...
Darwin's natural selection theory claims that species change to adapt to their environment.
I feel that humans are terribly amazing improbable assemblies. However I wonder if we are not altering our environment much faster than we can adapt to it?
Is traveling to a different place and expecting your body to adapt to a very different climate just plain crazy?
Will humans evolve to be able to deal with a variety of different climates because of our tendency to move around?
Someone spoke of genetic engineering… these modern technologies are frightening to me. Humans have been breeding humans, animals and plants for desired traits for some time now. My concern is that searching to perfect species has a tendency to eliminate diversity...
I believe the survival of humans in the game of life depends on the mixing of cultures and races. Oops, maybe I’m not supposed to go there?
In view of these past two weeks’ events I’d like to say that I am not proud to be American, but that I am proud to be a thinking and feeling being that grows within this world and shares this world with so many different people.
Name: Paul Grobstein
Username: pgrobste@brynmawr.edu
Subject: "Life's exploration"? ... see Celina above
Date: 2001-09-22 10:45:52
Message Id: 253
Comments:
I've archived earlier comments, but kept some recent ones that seemed already to be moving in an interesting and relevant direction. You're free, as always, to write about whatever seemed significant to you this week. Here, though, is a question to get you started if you need one:
The "clumpiness" of the diversity of life is an important set of observations which the notion of "evolution" was developed to to make sense of, a set of observations which is it is harder to understand using earlier stories of where life comes from (and where its going). What other sets of observations might be better understood using the notion of "evolution"? What other differences in how one perceives life are there when one uses the notion of evolution, rather than earlier stories, to try and make sense of it?
Name: charlotte ford
Username: cford@brynmawr.edu
Subject: evolution
Date: 2001-09-22 16:55:41
Message Id: 258
Comments:
Which human traits will survive and which will evolve? Which inherited characteristics are most suitable to our environment? Are humans a "dead-end" species? Our textbook paraphrases Darwin's second inference: "Survival in the struggle for existence is not random, but depends in part on the hereditary constitution of the surviving individuals. Those individuals whose inherited characteristics best fit them to their environment are likely to leave more offspring than less-fit individuals." (p 420) How does this apply to the human species? Does it apply to individuals, or cultures, or only to the human race in its entirety? It isn't logical to call a mother of 10 better adapted than an infertile woman, is it?
Name: Rebecca Roth
Username: rroth@brynmawr.edu
Subject: Thoughts on Evolution
Date: 2001-09-23 17:09:26
Message Id: 262
Comments:
Evolution is a very useful tool in making sense of human behavior that is otherwise not explainable. Evolution can get you to the highest possible level of truth outside of the physical sciences. Every phenomenon of human behavior has multifaceted causes and using any simple cause and effect formula is oversimplistic. But, evolution can be a substantial, if not overwhelming factor in the causation of many human behaviors. The problems of multiple causation are somewhat diminished in many animal species which lack the cognition and ability to change their environment or behavior through free will that humans possess. Insect behavior is probably almost entirely predetermined by evolution and evolution is a useful tool to explain many life systems. While it is easy to find counterexamples of evolutionary theory in everyday human behavior the overwhelming role evolution plays in explaining non-human animal behavior coupled with the number of examples of human behavior that are consistent with evolutionary theory make evolution a viable tool in explaining the diversity of life.
Name: Sarah Sterling
Username: ssterlin@brynmawr.edu
Subject: Understanding time......
Date: 2001-09-23 19:27:23
Message Id: 263
Comments:
We finished class in Friday with a comment on how in order to understand life, we must first understand time. Our conversation was based around how growth and evolution is all relative to time. Thinking back to our discussions on distance,(astronomically) it occured to me that perhaps part of the reason why we still do not have the ability to conceive how far away stars, planets, fellow galaxies, and perhaps other forms of life are, is due to the fact that we continually are confused with time. Our measurements of distance in light-YEARS is one example of this. It just goes to show that we assume without understanding and then cannot understand other assumptions.
Name: Emi Arima
Username: earima@brynmawr.edu
Subject: time
Date: 2001-09-23 19:29:27
Message Id: 264
Comments:
We were told to think about life in the context of time over the weekend...and I was thinking that it never seems like such a big shock to people that geologists can go and study rocks and find the layers from the different eras. They can characterize certain aspects of the earth centuries ago by the differences in the rock. But when we think about rocks we think about them as being strong and steadfast; they are not alive; they don't die and decompose. They are part of the earth and remain through the ages showing the marks of time.
And then I thought about life in respect to time; we were told that it cannot make sense without time being a factor. You can look at a person's face and you can get an idea of what her ethnic background is. Although I don't look it with skin tone or hair color, I still have people acknowledge my Japanese heritage by the shape of my face and my bone structure. The physical traits of a person show the culmination of traits of her ancestors.
When looking at the big picture, we tend to look at life as insignificant - we are so small compared to the cosmos and our lives are so short compared to eternity. We do live and die, and yet we don't. Maybe we won't be remembered within a few centuries, but isn't it amazing to think that the people we see now are show some of the history of the human race through their physiology and that we may perhaps someday have offspring who will in turn give some part of us to future generations?
Name: Leah Rayner
Username: lrayner@brynmawr.edu
Subject:
Date: 2001-09-23 21:59:25
Message Id: 265
Comments:
It's interesting to think about the way in which we categorize things. Most people's inclination in lab was to categorize plant life by size. What would it mean to our society if instead of classifying people by skin color we were to classify people by height? Would we then be able to say that all of those under a certain height are children, those between two heights are teenagers, and those above a certain height are adults? That would certainly rid society of racism. However, it obviously wouldn't work for a variety of reasons. The heights chosen would not define the stage of growth for everyone because people grow at different rates. Likewise, the categories of race that society has defined are arbitrary in the same way as categorizing people by height.
As there are more and more discoveries scientific categories evolve. As different races of people in the United States learn more about those with skin color that differs from their own their definitions of race evolve. I wonder how much scientific observation it will take until our society realizes that skin color is not an adequate way to classify.
Name: viv
Username: vbishay@brynmawr.edu
Subject:
Date: 2001-09-23 22:03:02
Message Id: 266
Comments:
when i first thought about the concept of nature's "clumpiness," i accepted the idea with certainity; we can all agree that there are imaginable species, not existent in our world, that could smooth out this "clumpiness"? thinking back to a documentary i saw on deep sea exploration made me question such easy acceptance. biologists discovered several new species on the ocean floor. these animals were like nothing i had seen before, a fish-like creature with visible vestigial structures, another with protruding teeth the size of its body length that looked as though it had crawled out of the paleozoic era. every day scientists, with the aid of technological advancements, are unearthing new species. will these 'missing links' help to smooth out some of nature's "clumpiness"?
Name: Sasha
Username: skarlins@brynmawr.edu
Subject:
Date: 2001-09-24 01:00:11
Message Id: 267
Comments:
We don't think of cats as clumped together, but we don't think of them as seperate either. Cats have variations (some have no tails, some have longer fur, and almost all of them have different patterns.) When there are diifferences between species we are astonished by the similarity. When there are differences within other species, we are impressed by the variety. In our own species we seem to either hate variety and supess it, or to ignore it so we can all be the same. I think we should be impressed with similarities and differences all the time.
Name: Jennifer Trowbridge
Username: jtrowbri@haverford.edu
Subject: Life...?
Date: 2001-09-24 01:18:54
Message Id: 268
Comments:
I particularly enjoyed our discussion this week about life on different scales. I've always found it interesting that astronomy seems to study things bigger than the Earth, and Biology seems to study things that are smaller than it. Firstly, I'm happy to see that we're including in our study of life the POSSIBILITY of life. I also find it fascinating that while we seem to be looking at both ends of the spectrum, we know much more about the small end. I believe there is life in other galaxies, if not somewhere in our own. I find it fascinating that we can take pictures of distant galaxies, yet we will never be able to explore them because they are so far away. (It's amazing to think that even at light speed it would take billions of years to get to many of these places.) So while the immense amount of space leaves infinite amounts to be discovered, it is also extremely limiting BECAUSE it's so vast. Very paradoxical...
Name: Tua
Username: schaudhu@brynmawr.edu
Subject: Evolution and diversity
Date: 2001-09-24 03:15:16
Message Id: 269
Comments:
In the late Victorian Era, when Darwin's theories were being applied to everything, those who thought it fashionable to study them, biologically classified the "poor" as another race which was prone to alchaholism, criminal natures, and poverty--as if these were heriditary traits. We have taken "survival of the fittest" to mean the same thing as "the best man wins' which is not true. What it means in nature is the continued reproduction of the group, species, etc that has been able to adapt to a changing environment. What may be useful in one environment may be absolutely useless in another. It all depends on if you can adjust, change, mold yourself to fit the environment in which you end up.
For lack of a better system, we define things by comparison to other things. Humans are all part of the same kingdom, the same species, the same phylum, the same family, yet we insist on further separating ourselves in different races, classes, and even colors. As we said in class, we are all unlikely assemblies that just happened to come out of the bag. We could have just as easily turned out to be someone else. But, biologically, it wouldn't matter because we would still be unlikely. The fact that we are so similar and yet different in so many tiny ways is amazing.
Sasha commented how we either suppress or ignore our variety. I agree that we don't appreciate the small differences that we do have. Biologically, we aren't all that diverse because we haven't given evolution a chance to experiment. For the most part, we find others similar to oursleves and huddle together in small groups. On Friday, we began to think about what effect time might have on this whole process. Just as with diversity, many people ignore and suppress change. I wonder, as a species which doesn't like change or diversity, what, in evolutionary terms, are our chances of survival over time?
Name: Claudia
Username: cginanni
Subject:
Date: 2001-09-24 09:09:39
Message Id: 270
Comments:
We sometimes speak of adaptive "strategies," as if the organisms that evolved from other organisms intentionally changed themselves. Clearly, that's not how evolution works, but when I look at our species in the context of geological time, I wonder if we should consider the technologies we've developed as part of the evolutionary process. Or perhaps they will ultimately have the effect of retarding the evolutionary process, since one of the things we try to do with them is to alter our environment to suit us. Apparently, we have unintentionally altered our environment (through the porduction of greenhouse gases) to the extent that it threatens to become unfit for us.
Name: Lydie
Username: lparnell@brynmawr.edu
Subject:
Date: 2001-09-25 00:14:59
Message Id: 281
Comments:
We adapt to live within certain contexts, adapting to the environment in which we live. Yet at the same time we have the ability to shape our own environment and thus affect our own adaptibility. It's a bit bizzare right?! We are constantly adapting to changing times, changes that have been brought on by our own species. Such changes begin by social and culture norms, just think about how much women and men have changed because of changes in societal ideals. But all in all things don't change that much, things might appear structurally different, but in terms of emotional wiring all people share the same dreams, thoughts and desires.
Name: Rianna
Username: rouellet@brynmawr.edu
Subject: size and time
Date: 2001-09-25 09:57:36
Message Id: 282
Comments:
When we were talking about size and time scales in class, it all appeared very impressive. The concept of measuring distances in light years and time in millions of years can be difficult to fathom when somedays just walking the mile to the grocery store seems like a long haul and waiting two hours for class to be over an eternity. When considering these vast time spans, we can notice that the human race hasn't been around for very long. And yet it is fascinating; we are still infants timewise and already we have come up with (or at least think we have) explanations for our existance, our planet's existance, and have even ventured a guess for the existance of the universe. But when dealing with time in clumps of millions of years, is it not possible that our existance (as intrigued with it as we are) could just wink out like that of so many other creatures without so much as a by your leave?
Name: celina
Username: cvaladar@brynmawr.edu
Subject: race
Date: 2001-09-25 20:07:10
Message Id: 294
Comments:
We have already established that humans have a need to categorize and that we do this through the clumpiness we observe in life...
Why does this need to differentiate living things lead to placing higher value on certain things? What criteria are we using to determine the value of one thing versus another?
What happens when we try to categorize things that have no clumpiness? However people try to define human races no clumpiness appears. There are so many more people in between categories than there are people in those categories….
Name: Akudo Ejelonu
Username: aejelonu@brynmawr.edu
Subject: Evolution and Time
Date: 2001-09-25 21:23:11
Message Id: 295
Comments:
In classss we wre talking about evolution and gow it relates to time. The concept of evolution puts time as a time perimertre of biological system.we are continous in time both past and present. About 65 million years ago dinaosurs romaed the earth nd all the continents were connected. but over a period of time, the dinosaurs extinct and the continents shifted from eachother.The world is still evolving. i think that the sad part about dying is not being able to experience change;in technology and society.
In my middle school science class, I was taught that humans evoloved from homosapiens over a period of time. But in church, I was tuaght that God created the universal sepically humans. These stories give account to the diversity but the don't provide explanations for the clumpy diversity. The Milky Way is clumpy and it consist of stars and plantets all clump ito together but why is that so? If i was to tarvel out of space, I would see only vast space but if i traveled a billion light years, i will see the a lot of stars. Stars have life span and evolve overtime. It amazes me to know that I will not be existing in ythis world if it wasn't for the sun to generate hydrogen atom. evoltion is good and though it will take the sun a billion more years till it dies out, time is essential to my life.
Name: Joelle Webb
Username: jawebb@brynmawr.edu
Subject: Animal Classification
Date: 2001-09-25 23:47:27
Message Id: 296
Comments:
Taxonomy has always been a puzzling and yet intriguing topic for me. The validity and necessity of the process of classification in and of itself has already been questioned. The perplexing part of the Taxonomic system that still remains for me is the almost arbitrary means by which we group animals. Let us think about this logically for a second: we have a targeted set of rules for defining a species, the basis of our taxonomical system, but the other divisions and groupings have no such structure. When we were discussing the various animals on that website and the characteristics that define each group all of the criteria seemed unrelated to me. However, at this point I will refrain from criticizing the system any further for I can offer no alternate.
Name: debbie wang
Username: dwang@brynmawr.edu
Subject: the big experiment
Date: 2001-09-26 04:57:00
Message Id: 297
Comments:
Many have mentioned the connection between evolution and adaptability. This brings us back to our version of the scientific method. Adaptability is just an ever changing series of observations and implications "resulting" (never really a result) in many summaries that still work and summaries that still need replacement. Is evolution just one huge scientific question being applied to the scientific method?
Name: Jessica Blucher
Username: jblucher@brynmawr.edu
Subject: what adapts to what?
Date: 2001-09-26 13:45:14
Message Id: 300
Comments:
I found today's class interesting, especially the point about how we change our environment just as much as the environment changes us. I never thought of it that way before. If simpler organisms could change the environment, doesn't that drastically change the whole evolution theory? At least then it makes more sense. I'm amazed at how we're still trying to figure out how life got here in the first place (from a scientific standpoint)...
Name: Neema
Username: nsaran@brynmawr.edu
Subject: Darwinism
Date: 2001-09-27 00:07:16
Message Id: 316
Comments:
Darwin's "survival of the fittest" theory was indeed a powerful breakthrough in evolution. However, one of the negative effects of this theory was that supremacists twisted Darwin's theory into a theory they called "Social Darwinism." This theory perpetuated stereotypes and negatively characterized people of lower socio-economic status. In fact, Social Darwinism was used as a justification for British Imperialism. It's incredible how a theory can be completely taken out of context and have disastrous effects for humankind.
Name: Margaret Pendzich
Username: mpendzic@brynmawr.edu
Subject: evolution and life
Date: 2001-09-27 21:11:54
Message Id: 322
Comments:
What strikes me about science and humankind is how even the most noble of intentions often results in dramatic tragedies. Through science and other disciplines, humans have been able to form more of a complete picture of life and what it means to be a human living on the Earth and with all these other life forms. However, the methods that we have used to gain this understanding are often used to impose control over situations that are uncontrollable. Several people have metioned genetic engineering in animals and the prospect of doing so in humans, and this is where, once agina, the best of intentions goes awry. Genetic engineering is a way to produce hearty crops that will be able to feed humanity and the animals that we depend on, but when it is appled to humans, it becomes a method of controlling evolution, which is something that is incontrollable, and this exactly why we try to control it. I wonder what further disasters will occur in our attempts at control.
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