Arrival of the Fittest
Solving Evolution's Average Puzzle Hardcover
“Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. Nature’s many innovations—some uncannily perfect—call for natural principles that accelerate life’s ability to innovate, its innovability.”
Darwin’s theory of natural selection explains how useful adaptations are preserved over time. But the biggest mystery about evolution eluded him. As genetics pioneer Hugo de Vries put it, “natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the arrival of the fittest.”
Can random mutations over a mere 3.8 billion years solely be responsible for wings, eyeballs, knees, camouflage, lactose digestion, photosynthesis, and the rest of nature’s creative marvels? And if the answer is no, what is the mechanism that explains evolution’s speed and efficiency? Maybe, but Most Likely Not.
In Arrival of the Fittest, renowned evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner draws on over fifteen years of research to present the missing piece in Darwin's theory. Using experimental and computational technologies that were heretofore unimagined, he has found that adaptations are not just driven by chance, but by a set of laws that allow nature to discover new molecules and mechanisms in a fraction of the time that random variation would take.
Consider the Arctic cod, a fish that lives and thrives within six degrees of the North Pole, in waters that regularly fall below 0 degrees. At that temperature, the internal fluids of most organisms turn into ice crystals. And yet, the arctic cod survives by producing proteins that lower the freezing temperature of its body fluids, much like antifreeze does for a car’s engine coolant. The invention of those proteins is an archetypal example of nature’s enormous powers of creativity.
Meticulously researched, carefully argued, evocatively written, and full of fascinating examples from the animal kingdom, Arrival of the Fittest offers up the final puzzle piece in the mystery of life’s rich diversity.
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NOTA DESTE BLOGGER:
Andreas Wagner é um renomado biólogo evolucionista, professor no Instituto de Biologia Evolucionária e Estudos Ambientais na Universidade de Zurique, na Suíça, e professor externo do Instituo Santa Fé. Além de palestrar pelo mundo, ele é membro da American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (a Sociedade para o Avanço das Ciências dos gringos).
Para pensar cum grano salis - se gente da Academia diz isso da teoria da evolução de Darwin através da seleção natural e n mecanismos de A a Z (vai que um falhe...), fica corroborado que a atual teoria da evolução - a Síntese Evolutiva Moderna, é uma teoria científica morta desde 1980, e que posa de ortodoxia somente nos livros didáticos aprovados e recomendados por autoridades educacionais no mundo inteiro. No Brasil, MEC/SEMTEC/PNLEM. Além disso, a Nomenklatura científica e a Galera dos meninos e meninas de Darwin ficam desmascarados na sua afirmação de que não existe crise nenhuma com a teoria da evolução. Sabe de nada, inocente! Será que não sabe mesmo?
Realmente não existe crise, a teoria da evolução de Darwin colapsou fragorosamente no contexto de justificação teórica, e o que é defendido com unhas e dentes é unicamente uma agenda e posição filosófico-materialista que posa como se fosse ciência. Nada mais falso!
