Chapter category: Evolution
On the Evolution of Humans
The Genomic Potential Hypothesis: A Chemist's View of the Origins, Evolution and Unfolding of Life
Edited by: Christian SchwabeISBN: 1-58706-044-2
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Chapter authors:
Christian Schwabe
Ancient bones are somewhat like wind vanes that show from which direction a particular hypothesis breezes across the fossil field. If a paradigm is useful one should be able to predict what will be found at the end of the projected course. This means that one can put a general evolutionary hypothesis like a grid over the pattern of evidence and see how fossils and expectations match. In the standard model predictions are not possible because the phenotype lattice radiates from one spot (the common ancestor) with every beam studded with chance-initiated branch points that give rise to unpredictable patterns.1 By rules of the Genomic Potential Hypothesis the future position of a species in the hierarchy of taxa is, in principle, predictable. The discussion of our own past will reflect this fundamental change in philosophy.
The human brain is monstrous even if compared to our closest competitor, the great ape, but our truly unique property is the physiological (as opposed to habitual) upright walk which includes special anatomical features such as a narrow pelvis, the slightly inward-directed thigh bones, and plantigrade feet.2, 3 Upright-walking species show a foramen occipitalae at the base of the skull rather than the posterior aspect. These are unmistakable markers that are readily recognized in the fossilized form. Anthropologists will always be looking for ancestors that do not show these features because the old school says that the upright walk developed slowly from a quadruped animal by gene duplication and mutations. That proposal is of beguiling simplicity if one forgets the biology and biochemistry required for that transition. Looking back in time one is faced with the fact that the brain had all but disappeared at Lucy’s (A.afarensis) developmental stage, yet she was fully bipedal.4 To find the presumed quadruped ancestor would lead to insurmountable identification problems unless, as shown in a cartoon by an unknown artist, step-less melting of one form into the other can be observed.
Additional chapters from this book:
The Genomic Potential Hypothesis: Introduction
Christian Schwabe
The Genomic Potential Hypothesis is a biochemists' view of the origin, evolution, and development of life. Large numbers are second nature to a biochemist an...
Quintessence
Christian Schwabe
Steven Weinberg once said that the complexity of physics today reaches very close to the edge of the human intellect.1 Where would that leave us, the bioch...
Experiments in Evolution
Christian Schwabe
Conceptual science interfaces with the experimental world as predictions emanate from the internal logic of a paradigm. Hypotheses concerning the origin and unfolding...
Molecular Geneology
Christian Schwabe
Is it rational to expect proteins such as insulin, relaxin, hemoglobin, or cytochrome to have followed the evolutionary route of the organisms from which they were taken? Of course it is , but...
On the Evolution of Humans
Christian Schwabe
Ancient bones are somewhat like wind vanes that show from which direction a particular hypothesis breezes across the fossil field. If a paradigm is useful one should ...
The Invariance Concept
Christian Schwabe
Tucked away, if it were possible, within the hollow of the tip of a dart gun needle aimed at man or beast one could make a memorable discovery. Just a moment after sk...
Natura non facit saltum (Nature does nothing in jumps)
Christian Schwabe
Latin is intimidating, and people tend to defer to anything expressed in that venerable language. Of all the errors chiseled into our cultural foundation in Latin, th...
Thoughts on Multi-Cellularity: How Nature got Around Darwin
Christian Schwabe
Reproductive success is the ultimate criterion for survival in the Darwinian paradigm, and since micro-organisms are undisputed champions of reproduction the countles...
Development of Biological Potential
Christian Schwabe
Should development come after speciation? Yes, of course, in the new model it is natural, one produces the Anlage and develops it to its potential. The word evolution...
The Origins of Species
Christian Schwabe
There was never a time on earth when only one kind, one species, existed. At least there is no evidence to that effect and a plausible extension of that simple though...
The Condensation of Life
Christian Schwabe
The course of biogenesis was carved into molecular structures by the events of the primeval initiation of our universe. The speed at which pure energy segregated into...
Our Young Planet: One is not a Choice
Christian Schwabe
The old model begins with one origin and the biochemist knows that to be impossible. The scientific basis for the genomist’s position has been discussed and will...
The Origin of Complexity
Christian Schwabe
Clearly, molecular complexity was a precondition for biogenesis. Contiguous molecular structures are monkey bars for electrons that provide the stream of energy requi...
Genomism and the Nature Trail
Christian Schwabe
As genes move into the center of a hypothesis one needs an "ism" to refer to the background of ideas that make up the new model. Thus, as the term Darwinism...
The Frame for New Hypotheses of Evolution
Christian Schwabe
How does one present any new idea, which is in principle impossible to proof? Hypotheses are self-limiting and an old paradigm of evolution will fall victim to its er...
Life in a Tenuous Universe
Christian Schwabe
The question is, do we live independent of the shape of our universe, or are we an intimate partner as well as a beneficiary of its peculiar structure and its awesome...
