I'm a biologist and ecologist by training. In the last 20 years, I've expanded beyond that with study and teaching about complexity or systems sciences -- a revolution in science equivalent to relativity theory and quantum physics, and a true scientific renaissance -- which includes biology and ecology (and virtually everything else). I became a biologist starting in high school -- looking at pond water microbes under a microscope totally hooked me -- then followed it through multiple college degrees. I jumped over to ecology during my doctoral studies. I've taught it at the college level -- from cell biology to ecology -- and still do, but in the context of complexity. Living things -- including my own life -- fascinate me. I often find myself in awe of life -- not just living things, like microbes and organisms, but the concept of life itself, which is rarely ever satisfactorily addressed in contemporary biology; it's not even in the glossary of major college/university biology books -- mainly because they don't teach biology from a complexity perspective, and the only way to really grasp what life is is from a complexity perspective. We'll get to that another time. In this thread, I'd like to do a couple of things at least. One is to post cool videos and links to interesting articles about life, especially ones that involve complexity. Another is to discuss -- with any who are interested -- the phenomenon of life: what it is, how, etc. And yes, we'll touch of evolution, also; it's virtually impossible to discuss biology outside the context of evolution, one of the most poorly understood concepts in our society, in large part because it's often taught so poorly, and -- importantly -- our understanding of the process has accelerated greatly in the last few decades due to our understanding of complexity. Notably, we've come to understand that natural selection and genetic mutation are necessary but not sufficient for understanding evolution. In fact, they comprise less than half of the factors involved. So, to start, just some cool videos. I found this one via a friend on Facebook -- a rather famous writer with two parents who were two of the most famous scientists of the 20th century; one was Carl Sagan. I've known about sting rays and their relatives for decades. They belong to a class of fishes called "Chondrichthyes" -- the cartilaginous fishes that include sharks. (As opposed to regular bony fish, Osteichthyes.) But I had no idea that they can do this until I saw this a week or so ago. Admittedly, this is modified with some slow mo action, but still, it's astounding and elegant. Be sure to check out the back flips. https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1993215024231954
Here's an article about a new breed of sheep developed here in Maine called Katahdin. It's a meat sheep that grows long hair in winter (for warmth) but sheds it in summer, thus does not require sheering. It might be of interest to all the sheep lovers here. Here are a few excerpts from the article. _______ In two of the last three years, there have been more Katahdins registered in the U.S. than any other breed of sheep, he said, and has also been the most popular breed of sheep registered in Mexico. Katahdins have been exported to Central and South America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and the United Kingdom. ... “It’s very well suited for many parts of the United States, especially the eastern parts. … It does well in the heat and also the cold. Not many breeds of livestock can do well in the southern tip of Florida and also be raised in the Arctic circle.” Katahdin sheep are a good choice for many farmers for many reasons, according to Anderson, the Unity College barn manager. They have great flocking instincts, don’t need a lot of extra care and maintenance, are parasite resistant and are very weather-hardy, she said. Also, they are good mothers and tend to have very easy births.
I would like you to explain "complexity or systems sciences" in terms anyone can understand. I think that would make the conversation easier. (And to contribute to the thread a video) A handful of years ago when I was self educating on the subject I was directed to this man's work. He quite literally wrote the book
I'd be happy to do that. I love talking about this stuff, and that's a logical place to begin. I'll take it up tomorrow. But right now, it's Saturday night 10 pm (which is actually 11 pm since DST begins at 2 am), I'm eating a very late dinner of corn beef and cabbage (started St Pat's day early) with vodka and watching Ragnar Lodbruk become earl for the third time. Bed may come early tonight. Ah, Dr. Futuyma. Yes, I remember him and his book. It was THE main text on evolution. Keyword, "was". I used it in grad school while studying for my comp exams. Still a fine text on classic evolutionary theory, aka neo-Darwinian evolution. (Yes, I'll define that, also.) But much has happened since then. We've moved far. I'll do my best to explain why. But for now, back to earl Ragnar.
So, I'm being slow to respond to T'dore's request for an explanation of complexity sciences. I'm not really slacking, just slacking -- I'm caught up in a rash of spring fever, but spring isn't here yet -- another nor'easter on the way with 1' - 2', and it's just affected me weirdly. So to keep this thread from sliding off the page, I'll just post another video of cool life. My undergrad was in "invertebrate zoology" with a focus on bugs. I studied mostly animals without a backbone. Some of the most "primitive" animals on Earth, some of the first to evolve **, are jellyfish and their relatives. (** Animals were not the first to evolve. First came bacteria about 3.8 billion years ago (that's 3,800 million years ago). Then came the Protoctista, (mostly single-celled) nucleated creatures like ameoba, ciliates, algae, etc -- they popped up first in the fossil record about 1.5 billion years ago.) Here's a short video of an amazingly beautiful little jelly fish that lives really deep in the ocean -- around 3000 m. They're such graceful critters. https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10154425389638951
Thanks for the thread Stone. I'm currently in my junior year, majoring in biology with a focus in ecology. O-Chem 2 is kicking my ass right now, but after it, some cell/molecular and then genetics all of my course work will basically be studying plants/animals/other organisms. I'm hoping to do some work with the DNR or perhaps get into a park as a naturalist. I too got hooked after working in a lab and identifying microbes and I currently do a little work with water quality in the rivers around my home. I'll check these out when I get some free time away from my textbooks.
Kaw-liga, thanks for checking in here, and your introduction. Sounds like you're on a great academic path. When I started my college studies back in the late 60's, I had exactly the same goals in mind as you: I planned to get into forestry and work for the NFS. Over the next few years, my focus and goals changed significantly -- mainly as I learned I didn't really want to work for .gov (after some research and talking with some employees), but more importantly, I just fell in love with studying life. I couldn't quit. Sixteen academic years later (22 years total, but some were out of school), I finally finished my studies and got my first real job teaching. I don't regret my choices. My training set me up very well to do what I'm doing now. The only thing I'd do differently is get more formal training in cell/molecular biology; I'm largely self-taught there, but can recommend some good books as a result -- I'll do that at a later time. And yeah, I know what you mean about O-chem kicking butt. [For any who don't know, that's organic chemistry, aka petroleum chemistry, a prerequisite to biochemistry.] Two terms of that stuff with lab was one of my most unpleasant experiences in my undergraduate years. Dry, dry, dry, boring. May have been my instructors and the text (Morrison and Boyd, THE classic text with many editions) because other friends at other schools enjoyed it. But biochem was MUCH more fun for me, and easier for me to grasp. I think the difference was, with organic chem, I was studying compounds that mostly don't occur in living things (benzene, alkanes, alkenes, etc, etc, etc, mostly used to make plastics); in biochem, I was studying the chemistry of life inside my own (and all) cells. That set me firmly on biology path. Looking back, I wish I could have added some p-chem (physical chemistry, one gateway into quantum physics), too, but I wasn't willing to wade through quantitative and analytical chem to get to it. (In grad school, I had a multiyear relationship with a woman doing grad school in p-chem; she liked it better than me, and the relationship ended. She went on to become a moderately-famous researcher in DNA sequencing.) Anyway, I think I can share some stuff with you here that will help you tremendously in your studies and subsequent career, and I can virtually guarantee that you (unfortunately) won't get it from courses in your formal training, even though it should be part of every college program -- not just biology and ecology but every discipline -- because complexity is applicable to virtually everything. Even though ecology was one of the four main scientific disciplines from which complexity evolved (along with cybernetics, quantum theory and physiology), it's rarely taught in university biology and ecology programs. More's the pity. Having said that, I see you're from Georgia. That was the home of some of the most famous ecologists ever: Eugene Odum and his brother, Howard Odum. Both of them did pioneering work in general systems theory that led to complexity sciences. Lucky you if you get to study with any of their academic offspring.
Since we're talking about biology and ecology and complexity sciences, it's probably best to be clear from the gitgo about what science is and how it works. Here's a short essay I just posted in a different thread (Space Trash) to clarify the important distinction between speculation, hypothesis, theory and model. ______ Just a little tangent for a minute about the process of science as a way of knowing our world. I teach courses in a particular new set of sciences called complexity or system sciences; those courses are mostly about the principles that have been discovered in complexity, but I also teach a class in science itself -- what it is, how it works, it's limitations, relationship to philosophy and pseudosciences (this flat Earth bunk is one of the latter). There are unfortunately many egregiously inaccurate views in our society about science. It's because the process of science is rarely taught in intro courses, especially non-majors courses. Oh, sure, usually there's one class period where the basics of hypothesis testing are laid out, and maybe even a lab exercise or two. But that's it until at least grad school. The remaining courses in science for four years -- physics, chemistry, biology, ecology, anthropology, geology, climatology, meteorology, oceanography, astronomy, etc, etc -- are not really about "science" per se, but concepts and principles that have been discovered using science. Therefore, it's not surprising in the least that people get confused about what science really is and how it works, and how it differs from philosophy and pseudosciences. It's not their fault, but the fault of the education system. Now, to my main point here. The word "theory". A couple of people above in this thread mentioned the flat Earth "theory". In everyday use, many people use "theory" as a synonym to "hypothesis" or even "speculation" or "guess". But they are fundamentally different concepts. It works like this. When scientists make observations, then ask questions about them, they form a hypothesis or multiple hypotheses as testable answers to those questions. The key word is "testable"; if a hypothesis is not testable with currently available technology, then it's not really a hypothesis, but speculation. Hypotheses then lead to predictions that can be tested. The relationship between hypothesis and prediction is the very core of science; it's an if/then relationship: if the hypothesis is accurate, then the prediction will be found accurate, and the hypothesis can be supported. If not, then the hypothesis can be rejected. Note the wording there: supported or rejected, not proved or disproved. Proof is not really possible in the sciences; the reason is technical and rooted in probability theory from which statistical analysis is derived. Hypotheses can be supported (p < 0.05), strongly supported (p < 0.01) or very strongly supported (p < 0.001), etc, but never fully proven. So what's a theory? In most uses in science, it's a well supported hypothesis or set of hypotheses about some phenomenon that has/have been tested, retested and retested again and again by multiple independent researchers for long periods of time, using different kinds of procedures and tests with different kinds of (usually statistical) analysis, peer reviewed results and publication in professional scientific journals -- usually for at least years, more often decades -- and consistently supported by test results. The theories of gravity, planetary motion, electromagnetism, optics, atoms and evolution are but a few examples. Also crucial to theory formation now -- starting in the 19th century, but especially increasing during the 20th -- is this: there MUST be an underlying explanatory mathematical and/or computer model that demonstrates the basics of how the phenomenon works. In fact, a model is often a mathematical hypothesis since if it's a good model, it not only demonstrates what's already been observed, but it leads to new predictions about the phenomenon that can be tested, and either supported or rejected. So this flat Earth bunk is not a theory. It's at best a hypothesis, and it has been soundly rejected by all evidence for hundreds of years. Easiest test of it: stand on a dock -- or on top of a skyscraper on a coast -- with a pair of binocs or a telescope -- and watch a ship sailing toward the horizon. Long before the ship gets too small to be seen, it disappears. Why? It goes over the curvature. Flat Earth hypothesis rejected. On news reports or in newspapers, I very often hear/read reporters reporting on a crime, and they claim that police have a "theory" about who committed the crime. I roll my eyes and mutter under my breath, "No they don't; they have a hypothesis. Now they have to gather evidence to support or reject it." Law uses the principles of science, too.
Here's an addendum to my post above, also from that other thread, stimulated by a good point by @Theodore. We can develop this later in this thread, because this idea is more relevant to biology, ecology and evolution than space trash. There's an important distinction between sciences that deal mostly with relatively simple kinds of systems -- physic and chemistry -- and those that deal with hugely complex systems, like biology, ecology, evolution and climatology. In physics and most of chemistry, reasonably accurate predictions can be made. But when it comes to predictions about ecosystem dynamics -- especially long term -- accurate quantitative prediction is impossible; that is, predicting the specific value of variables in the future -- like population size or concentration of some element in the soil -- becomes essentially impossible. There are just too many variables and parameters, so contingency -- chance -- becomes a significant factor and screws with accurate predictions. Qualitative predictions can often be made; we can predict that a variable will increase, decrease, or oscillate periodically or chaotically. But accurate quantitative predictions are usually impossible. In those cases, two options exist, both of which are used. One is retrodiction: that's like prediction into the past. Newton's laws of motion work to predict the position of planets in the future, but also to retrodict their position in the past. Non-equilibrium thermodynamics and ecology are different. Accurate quantitative prediction is often impossible, but retrodiction can yield insights into the validity (or not) of an explanatory hypothesis or theory. The other technique is much newer, and hasn't caught on yet in most of science. It involves the work of a famous scientist, the late Per Bak, and his work in a field that he founded called self-organized criticality (SoC). It's a different kind of analysis that allows testable predictions about complex systems like ecosystems, economies and climate. I won't get into it here. My basic class about it involves reading his book and numerous hours of class time. But it's fascinating stuff.
Over the years, I've had conversations with several forum members about what I do professionally. It's often hard to describe in simple, short form, in part because I'm an independent or freelance educator carving out a new niche, outside of mainstream academia, and because I'm teaching concepts -- complexity sciences -- that are rarely taught (yet) in most academic programs, at least in a complete, integrated and accessible way, especially at introductory (i.e., freshman/sophomore) levels. I want to invite a few of those members to this discussion group in case they don't see the thread in "new posts" or whatever. @ManOfSteel , @Wolfman Zack , @anrkst6973 and @FortyTwoBlades come immediately to mind.
I can tell that I am going to enjoy this thread, but I doubt I will have any deep thoughts to share. As to organic chemistry, I had a small section of it in high school and really enjoyed it. Even did a demo, with a couple of fellow students, for a fourth grade class on refining crude oil. Pretty fun. But the best part of o-chem was that it seemed to be the basis for much in the way of explosives. That got my attention, but didn't hold it for long enough.
Yeh, I excelled in organic 1 and that was just last semester. I'm sure it had to do with the practical application of some of the concepts and the fact that I could wrap my brain around them. Organic 2 (same Professor, same textbook) is seemingly way over my head. The labs seem easier but the concepts behind them seem a lot more complex. I've definitely ruled out wanting to earn a minor in chemistry.
There was an interesting concept that I was introduced to in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series regarding being able to predict the general direction that a society will take in the future. Individuals were hard to predict, but cultures do trend in ways that can be predicted at least in a general direction. Someplace I think I may still have a math book on that subject. I never read it, but I picked it up someplace.
As a math major (note I did not say mathematician), I struggled with all the formulas in chemistry because it seemed that so many of the symbols used were used in more than one context and you had to remember which was which based on what you were doing. Math seemed way less complex than chemistry. I received my BS over 30 years ago and have not used much in the way of advanced mathematics since. Operations Research was fun. Statistics were confusing. I got the formulas, but you needed to know from what population your data came so you could apply the correct analysis to it and I struggled in correctly identifying the populations. I enjoyed physics and was able to understand the concepts, but I took physics over a decade after getting my BS and was not able to keep up with the calculus needed to solve the problems. The teacher was good about it (I was not the only one to struggle with the math), and allowed us to get partial credit by explaining the forces involved and what was happening even if we were not able to derive the proper formula to solve the problem.
Two fine posts ^there^, ATS. Turns out that you do, indeed, have substance to contribute here, even though you may not understand why yet. What you're writing above -- including thoughts about Asimov's ideas, Operations Research (OR; one of my profs on my MS in probability theory was an OR specialist), and calculus will all play a role in our continued discussion. I'll address them more later -- but right now, time for a picnic lunch in the back woods with the snowshoes on ~1' of fresh, blizzard-deposited new snow. For now, just two points, the second of which is truly a game changer not only for this thread, but for my professional life. First, this. Instead of digging out that Asimov book, get ahold of a different one, published in the early 2000's (I think, 2002 -- mine's in the other room) called How Nature Works: The Science of Self-Organized Criticality by Per Bak. You won't even have to read past the first chapter to get the crux idea, even though the entire book is very accessible to anyone, even with no math in their background. It picks up where Asimov left off on the distinction between quantitative and qualitative predictions, and how the latter are done using two seemingly universal characteristics of self-organized critical systems at the edge of chaos (which is almost everything in the universe, including life). Those characteristics are fractals (mostly spatial) and power laws (mostly temporal), notably a power law called "the 1/f distribution" or "1/f noise", a member of the lognormal probability distribution (which is turning out to be orders of magnitude more common and important than normal distributions). I'm working on a set of study notes for that book, starting with chapter 1, and in a few months, I'll have a video short course ready about it, part of a larger set of video "classes" about complexity, life, ecology, etc. Second, that life changing article. It is here. Those with a little biology and/or chemistry will get it more, but everyone should get it on some level. But it won't necessarily be obvious to most readers why this is such an amazing development. The best metaphor for me is that this is kind of equivalent of the discovery of molecules for chemistry; the development of cell theory in the early 1800's in biology; the discovery of gravity by Newton; relativity by Einstein; the structure of DNA by Watson, Crick and Franklin; something on that order. This is HUGE, and only the beginning. For those of us who study, teach and do research in (I do not do the latter only) complexity sciences, especially non-equilibrium thermodynamics (NET), this is not surprising in the least. Indeed, I fully expected it to happen, but I wasn't hopeful that I'd see it in my life time. But now, in work at University of Cambridge -- one of the most prestigious universities on Earth (Harvard stands in its shadow**) -- new research has now opened the door to the processes involved in the very origins of life on Earth almost 4,000 million years ago. (That's 4 billion, but since Brits used to define "billion" differently than we do, it's best to be clear; besides, too many don't really understand the concept of "billion", but thousands of millions makes more sense intuitively.) [**I laughed out loud at the statement by the Harvard biologist near the end of the story; so stuck in ancient models, is he. I'm less impressed with Harvard as the years go by.] As always, both the author of the story and even the research teams involved are missing some really important -- crucial -- pieces of this puzzle. Specifically, they are missing several crucially important concepts, principles and models addressed in several texts that I use as references and texts for introductory and advanced courses. One is Bak's book mentioned above. There are three or four others I'll get to later in the thread. The main concepts they're missing here -- that address the very problems they discuss at the end of the story -- is autocatalysis and autocatalytic cycles. (A famous example of the latter is the citric acid cycle, more central to life than the glycolytic pathway or the other metabolic pathway they address in the article. It is found in ALL cells, bar none, except yeasts involved in alcohol production; and is probably directly related to the origin of life on Earth. I'll explain more about that in later posts.) Ok, time for a walk. I gotta think about all this some more ....
Interesting. If I read it right, they are saying that they have detected, not metabolism itself, but the products of metabolic action. Is there a process, other than metabolism, that can produce these products? Are there intermediary products that could be detected to see if the path taken from starting chemicals to the end products that would indicate that it was indeed a metabolic process that produced the end products? I am using the term "products" because I can't think of something else more descriptive to use. One problem I have with evolution is the beginning of life question. Just where did the first cell come from? I would think that not all early cells or precursors would have survived long enough to evolve into something more advanced and so the process would have had to start over again or at least had to endure many reversals over the millennium before it finally reached a point where it could maintain a level of advancement that was hardy against setbacks. I remember reading that in the Miller experiment (I think it was Miller), that while they were able to produce something that looked promising, the chemical "soup" that they used was very inhospitable to the very type of life they were trying to create in the experiment. Basically, the mixture that seemed able to produce some part of the early cell was also toxic to it. I may be off a little in my description, but I am thinking that @Stone can decipher what I am referring to. That is still and interesting article.
Yeah, I'm with you. And all reasonable questions. However, it's after 1 am here, I took a LONG walk on snowshoes through the woods and down into the ravine this afternoon in 20 - 30 F temps in snow showers, have eaten a large meal of pasta with Parmesan and anchovies, had a couple of drinks while I edit the video footage of the walk (draft one; fairly raw; will post a line here after upload finishes around 2 since I mention this paper in the video), and thus, I am well past rational processing about science tonight. But I'll get back to you tomorrow or Friday. Your questions are perfect segues into a deeper understanding of what this paper is about, if I can succinctly describe it while answering your questions. Mind you, the answers come from like 40 years of study, and upteen billions texts, essays and papers read; so my job is to extract relevant details, string them together into a coherent format that addresses your question concisely, but completely enough, given that you don't have the same background that I do. But that makes it challenging and fun, so I'll try. But video and sleep first ... "Gar·çon! More vodka and peanuts!"
