ASTR BC 1753x Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Genetic Engineering, Selective Breeding, Tinkerer
17 Oct 2016
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Novel properties relative to the fundamental entities from which it is made. The early start of life on earth means that. Evolution by natural selection was proposed by darwin in his 1859 book on the origin of species . Strong initial opposition to the theory because: the timescales were so long they had no direct experience of it, belief system was incompatible with the idea that humans evolved from primates (ideological resistance) Even today, there is a divide between the scientific consensus and the public consensus, particularly in the u. s. But species which have much shorter life cycles than us can be observed to evolve. It is not necessarily increasing complexity (e. g. viruses may be stripped down to microbes) Although there are rules, it is impossible to exactly predict future species due to mutation (=random) component. Evolution is a tinkerer, not an engineer (doesn"t have a final game plan)
