You are starting way too late. Living beings are the way the protiens in the primordial soup have created to replicate themselves. Sometimes the replicated protiens are slightly different, and most of the altered protiens don't replicate as well and a few protiens form a competing branch.
On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 11:05 AM, John Gilmore <[email protected]> wrote: > Gerhard's generic point is well made, but the chicken-egg situation is > in fact very complicated. One of the most widely quoted apothegms > most widely quoted among modern evolutionary biologists is Peter > Dawkins' (or perhaps Samuel Buitler's) > > A chicken is only an egg's way of making more eggs > > It has been quoted with approval by Jacques Monod and Sir Peter Medawar. > > There are, I think, two usefully separated issues here. The first is > that of how a specific avian species arises out of the reproductive > activity of different predecessor species (Darwin's preoccupation in > 'The origin of species'). > > The second is the more metaphysical one: Why chickens? > > There are many variants of this second question. The proteins, which > on one view a virus manufactures to provide itself of descendents, can > instead be put first: a virus can be viewed as the mechanism these > proteins use to provide themselves with offspring. > > John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA > -- Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
