The emergence of life: could it be different?
WRONG! That science is called Abiogenesis. Evolutionary theory only explains how life changes.
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WRONG! That science is called Abiogenesis. Evolutionary theory only explains how life changes.
I know. You aren't the first person to address this, and you could read the thread given that it is only 2 pages long so far.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
Then biological evolution, most of the time they aren't looked at together.
I think from context, it is clear that I am talking about speciation, and particular life-forms.
You might say that you've caught me in an error, but I know the difference, it is just not the most relevant issue to my question. Because of that, I am not going to spend a lot of time checking for technical correctness and typing out "abiogenesis AND evolution" given that I am merely expressing the idea that I am not talking about Intelligent Design or Scientific Creationism, but rather a modern secular scientific framework.
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Wham bang topic
And suddenly....the universe was, and life evolved. That was the end of spontaneity.
Or was it? Genes and proteins can change very suddenly, as in mutations. There was an interesting aside in this thread to the FOXP2 gene, which has been implicated in the genetic events leading to language development ( Not a Chimp,Taylor, 2009). The whole second chapter deals with language and communication.
But big brains are expensive to run, as Taylor gets into farther along in Not a Chimp . There must have been an advantage to them getting bigger. And big brains require more glucose. Somewhere else in the universe for intelligence to have become more complex there must be a diet that can support this, and the means to ensure it is available. If it was different at all, we might not even recognize it as such.
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Given several mass extinctions over the last billion+ years, yes, it's quite possible. There was a 'pre-Cambrian' explosion of life forms (I think that's the right period), but most were wiped out.
The dinosaurs were wiped out in turn. But for an asteroid here and there, any other intelligent life-form could have developed.
I hold that intelligence is a successful response to evolution in the absence of being perfectly adapted to the envionment; humans and the descendant primates evolved in an environment that was changing from one form to another (woodlands to savanna), and led to us. Given the multitude of worlds, conditions, etc., intelligence would take an adaptive form, adapting to the environment rather than being changed by it.
Actually, silicon-based lifeforms could evolve as well.
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