Reflections on Week 3

This week’s reading, Chapter 3, focused on the evidence for evolution because of similarities and differences between organisms.

Here are the key ideas that will be significant for me.

1) The fundamental similarities between organisms are so similar, that humans cannot help but feel kinship between themselves and all other species.  However, this runs against many narratives, in which humans are essentially different, and made to dominate all other creatures.

2) Speciation.  I’m interested in how species become so separate from others that they become incapable of interbreeding with other species.  Is this always a gradual process?  Were there exceptions? 

In Darwin’s Radio, an endogenous retrovirus begins to rapidly evolve humans in the womb.  A generation gives birth to a completely different human species.

Here’s the science of how this is supposed to work.

In Quest for Fire, homo sapiens and homo neanderthalis are shown interbreeding.

In Robert J. Sawyer’s The Neanderthal Parallax, in a parallel Earth, homo neanderthalis has become the dominant species. 

3) Heredity

In Oryx and Crake, the bioterrorist, Crake, has decided that the human species has evolved with far too many imperfections, not the least has been the complicated sexual reproductive process and the cultural byproducts.  His solution is terrifying.

4) Mutations:  Because we are analog, not digital, errors in copying happen.   But this imperfect copying results in mutations, and some of these mutations could be advantageous. 

X-men - Mutated humans are born with abilities that make them frightening to the non-mutated population.   Two mutants, one who has decided mutants represent a superior evolutionary leap, wishes to leave humans behind, while the other wishes to continue to help and assist humans.  Meanwhile, the human population fears mutants, and wishes them to be placed in camps separate from the rest of the population.

the evolution of the virus through mutation is a big part of Darwin’s Radio.