Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1999 16:33:30 -0500
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: "Mark M. Mills" <mmills@htcomp.net>
Subject: Re: Two biology questions
In-Reply-To: <bea727fb.24e7b88a@aol.com>
At 02:30 AM 8/15/99 -0400, you wrote:
>OK, I'll bite on the first question... but I'd certainly be curious to know
>what you're driving at.
><< 1. Has there ever been a new species created by scientific research or
> breeding?
>If what you're really asking is " Have scientists or breeders
*intentionally*
>created, in our lifetimes, something that is *currently* generally
>recognized as being a new, separate species?".. Then I believe the answer is
>no.
Thanks for the reply. The above answer uses the sense I had in mind.
As to why I ask:
I am looking into the use of Barbieri's Genotype-Ribotype-Phenotype scheme
for evaluating evolutionary change, 'The Semantic Theory of Evolution'
(1985). I think the Rtype notion may straighten out confusion regarding
usage of Lynch-meme and Gatherer-meme definitions. Most people are
familiar with the Gtype and Ptype concepts. The Rtype is less familiar.
In von Neumann terms, it is the universal constructor. In protein
creation, it is the ribosome.
The first question relates to natural selection. Barbieri claims natural
selection is conservative and cannot account for diversity. One supporting
argument was that natural selection experiments had never produced a new
species.
The second question is related to the evolutionary history of cellular
elements. To paraphrase, Barbieri claimed ribosomes were the most complex
cellular structures to be crystallized. He uses this to make some claims
about ribosome evolution prior to cellular life. I was wondering if
anything more complex had been crystallized in the 15 years since the book
was written.
Mark
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