Resources for individual classes
Before the 4th Class,
• Please read the following stories in The Complete Cosmicomics:
-- The Aquatic Uncle
-- How Much Shall We Bet
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From The Aquatic Uncle:
“The first vertebrates who, in the Carboniferous period, abandoned aquatic life for terrestrial descended from the osseous, pulmonate fish whose fins were capable of rotation beneath their bodies and thus could be used as paws on the Earth.”*
• After reading, The Aquatic Uncle, watch or read the following resources:
The first animals:
The first land animals:
WHAT? Whales and several other sea animals descended from LAND animals?
More than once, it turns out:
Question: In the previous two videos, do you discern differences in the way the narrators describe evolutionary change? Change often entails solving a problem posed by environmental changes like climate change, emergence of predators, or new food opportunities. But narrators in these two videos use quite different language to describe how responses to change come about.
Evolutionary Trees
Click the next figure, a very detailed evolutionary tree, to go to https://evogeneao.com/en, where you will find an interactive version of the tree, with guides to understanding its meaning and how to use it.
All of the evolutionary paths that reach the top surface of the diagram represent species that exist today. Notice how many of the evolutionary paths end before reaching the surface (by far the most of them!).
What does this suggest about the nature of evolutionary change?
If you find this kind of thing interesting, https://evogeneao.com/en has tools to teach you the deeper meaning of such trees, as well as how to use it to compare evolutionary distances between pairs of organisms. The best way to start is to watch this introductory video:
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From How Much Shall We Bet:
“The logic of cybernetics, applied to the history of the universe, is in the process of demonstrating how the galaxies, the solar system, the Earth, cellular life could not help but be born. According to cybernetics, the universe is formed by a series of feedbacks, positive and negative, at first through the force of gravity that concentrates masses of hydrogen in the primitive cloud, then through nuclear force and centrifugal force which are balanced with the first. From the moment that the process is set in motion, it can only follow the logic of this chain.”*
• After reading How Much Shall We Bet?, consider these resources and questions:
Read Cybernetics at Wikipedia. Just the first few paragraphs, to get a general notion of the term.
Look over Cybernetics, A Brief History.
If you find all of this a bit vague, you are not alone.
Think about these questions:
• How likely is it that even if an all-knowing entity like Qfwfq could predict -- from their knowledge at the time when Qfwfq and Dean(k)yK are betting -- that the laws of physics would allow them to predict the outcome of that semifinal match in London, played between Arsenal and Real Madrid? (Me, I would have to bet on Real Madrid -- in all of sports, trophies follow money, and Real Madrid have the deepest pockets.)
• What's the difference between 1) prediction of motion by Newton's laws (good enough for placing satellites in precisely defined orbits), and 2) predicting specific events far in the future?
Even though we know much about principles of evolution, and can work out much about the history of life, what can we say about specific courses of evolution in the future?
ADDED LATE
In the email reminder for today's class, I provided these links about the Game of Life by John Conway:
Playable version and introduction to the game HERE.
Wikipedia entry for the Game of Life HERE.
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*Excerpts From
The Complete Cosmicomics
Italo Calvino
https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-complete-cosmicomics/id1517985510
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