/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.2007055]

sci there is something i dont understand about evolution. how did animals or humans developped ears or organs that can sense odor.

does evolution has awareness, how could a body possibly know about soundwaves and developpe organs to percieve these sounds? what the scientific point of view on this?

[Anonymous No.2007073]

bump

[Anonymous No.2007068]

Being able to perceive vibrations and odors were competitive advantages, those that did were more likely to survive and reproduce.

[Anonymous No.2007096]

Are you guys talking about evolution?

[Anonymous No.2007097]

Evolution isn't aware of anything; its a non-thinking biological process.

One day a cell developed which could just barely detect odour, sound, or light through completely random mutation. Then the organism with this cell started to kick ass and gradually improving its sense organs.

[Anonymous No.2007098]

I just LOVE evolution!

[Anonymous No.2007109]

I put a random assortment of objects on a hill. How did the round ones know to get to the bottom? How did the flat ones know to stay at the top? Does gravity have awareness?

[Anonymous No.2007135]

>>2007097

I'm sick and tired hearing about this bullshit simply because scientists don't have a way to explain it yet. These randomly mutated things were horribly fucking lucky to consistently randomly mutated up to the point to develop such advanced organisms we see today during such a short period as 4-ish billion years. You know what, fuck oyu.

[Anonymous No.2007146]

>>2007135
0/10

[Anonymous No.2007149]

>>2007135
>4 billion years
>short period of time

and i can count to graham's number, amiright?

[Anonymous No.2007152]

When it rains, how do puddles of water know the exact shape of a pothole? ALL of those individual drops just *happened* to land in the right place? Yeah right! Must be fucking magic, you scientists and your science bullshit suck you know nothing!!!

[Anonymous No.2007154]

Hearing: Even single-celled organisms have cilia. Waves of water pressure cause cilia to move back and forth. Cells that responded differently when their cilia were moving would have an evolutionary advantage.

Smell: cells that respond differently to different chemicals in their environment would have an evolutionary advantage.

[Anonymous No.2007157]

>>2007135
consider the average lifespan of the lifeforms and possible reproduction rate at the start. a new generation eve fews days. Also 4 billion years is a very very very long time, especcially when you think of it in these terms and how quickly the next generation will be produced [ in relative terms].

[Anonymous No.2007156]

>>2007135
dear god I hope it's a troll.

There's no such thing as "luck".
How hard is it to believe that over the course of millions of years, across billions of generations, random mutations occasionally work in the favour of a species, and therefor give the individuals of that species a genetic advantage (however slight it may be) and thus make them more likely to survive, thrive, flourish and pass on their genes to future generations. This creates the possibility of that helpful gene being chosen over its allele and even mutating further to be more beneficial through the same process I have described above.

[Anonymous No.2007162]

>>2007156
I just realized I said "Dear god" in a post dealing with evolution.. I feel quite the fool now.

[Anonymous No.2007165]

>>2007055
Evolution doesn't aim for certain traits. Those that provide a benefit, such as being able to smell danger, or a food source; or being able to hear danger, or a food source; are more likely to survive and reproduce than those who cannot.

[Anonymous No.2007166]

>>2007097
That doesn't work. The cell would die without the organism knowing the difference, because it needs a neural connection to the brain and brain wiring that can make use of the information for any good to come from it.

[Anonymous No.2007170]

>>2007165
The question is how the arose in the first place, not why they survived.

[Anonymous No.2007176]

>>2007166
>brain

Incorrect. That isn't a requirement for an organism to perceive changes in its environment.

[Anonymous No.2007182]

>>2007170
Mutations and genetic drift.

That's actually a lot simpler a question to explain...

[Anonymous No.2007180]

>>2007170
It arose because of random mutations. They happen all the time.

[Anonymous No.2007200]

>>2007055
Smell is the sensation of particulate matter interacting with the olfactory nerve. Organisms which can sense things that are too small to see or touch gained an advantage, therefore they reproduce more.

[Anonymous No.2007206]

>>2007135
OK say you get a few Steven Hawkins/Einstein types in a certain aria, these people have great potential for success, they start a Utopian scociaty that no one can stop because they have nukes, clean energy, etc. they will survive better, and there offspring will survive better, congrats, evolution.

[Anonymous No.2007214]

Evolution of the sense of smell would be incredibly simple.

"smelling" is just detecting chemicals by direct contact. Even bacteria "smell." In fact, it's a major part of their existence.

Higher organisms have specialized cells for detecting chemicals.

The nose is just a specialized organ for detecting chemical in air, where as taste buds do the same thing in saliva.

Now ears are completely different. There's no way evolution can ears. It's some sort of voodoo Jesus magic.

[Anonymous No.2007225]

>>2007206
That makes sense, except for one little thing. Offspring are not the beneficiaries of intellectual evolution. It is the students, or followers that benefit. Thus the number of those who believe in their ideas will multiply, thus spreading the belief. Informational evolution occurs much more rapidly than biological evolution.

[Anonymous No.2007226]

>>2007214
>Now ears are completely different. There's no way evolution can ears. It's some sort of voodoo Jesus magic.

>Detected vibrations in the air
>voodoo magic

[Anonymous No.2007236]

>>2007214
>voodoo Jesus magic
>voodoo
>mfw

[Anonymous No.2007237]

>>2007225
>Offspring are not the beneficiaries of intellectual evolution.

Recent twin studies would like to disagree.

[Anonymous No.2007242]

>>2007236
Holy shit, I remember those.

[Anonymous No.2007407]

>>2007237
I think what he meant was that acquired traits are not inherited.

[Anonymous No.2007437]

>>2007407
Lamarckian evolution?
What I wrote still holds true, as several recent studies have shown the inheritance of behavioral traits acquired by the previous generation.

See;
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=3596539
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22061/
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0006405

[Anonymous No.2007449]

>>2007182
Yes, it's a simple answer. The question is whether it is right. The complex things like sense organs are quite a lot for random drift to come up with even in what seems to us like the long times involved.

[Anonymous No.2007451]

>>2007407
But we're learning that that's not necessarily true.

[Anonymous No.2007456]

>>2007449
That's a common misconception. A sense organ is in no way stranger than the development of a backbone, limb, lungs or a heart.

[Anonymous No.2007462]

>>2007214
nose is a lot more complicated than ears. Ears only have to communicate to the brain a two-dimensional signal with frequency and amplitude. The dimensionality of smell is ridiculously high... I can't even guess how the nose might encode that information for transmission along neurons. All other sense organs, the tongue, eye, ear, have individual cells for each taste/color/frequency of sound, but that I don't think that would be possible with the number of combinations that the nose is responsible for detecting

[Anonymous No.2007463]

>>2007437
>He thinks Lamarckian genetics and epigenetics are the same thing!
>laughinggeneticists.png

[Anonymous No.2007466]

>>2007463
*Sigh*...

[Anonymous No.2007469]

>>2007456
Yes, it's true -- the development of any new organ would be quite a trick for mere random drift.

[Anonymous No.2007480]

>>2007469
That's simply your understanding, or lack thereof, of the phenomena - not a problem with said phenomena.

[Anonymous No.2007523]

Evolution don't take place by luck, it's a biological process that takes profit of the chance that gives some mutations to the organisms. As has been said evolution has been taking place for a loooooong time (not long cat motherfuckers) and for every step that has directed in a formation of whatever that made evolve an organism there have been a brutal number of wrong steps that didn't contribute a shit.

And what about of awareness you are talking? Cells know how to develop depending on various axis, even have organelles within that have sensory functions like the cilium, so what's the problem of finding this habilities in high-order organisms?