Re: [asa] Endosymbiosis

hi David, you are more of a biologist than most of us on the list. would it be fair, in your opinion, to say 'cooperative evolution' in natural-physical sciences is non-Darwinian? yes, of course C.D. did mention cooperation. but his focus was nevertheless more on competition and he 'accepted' H. Spencer's 'survival of the fittest' phrase. in other words, can we say that Darwin 'exaggerated' the influence of competition? this is perhaps important in recognizing a 'non-Darwinian' or 'post-Darwinian' (as Margulis calls it) view of biology. people like D. Venema just can't turn the corner to say something like 'non-' or 'post-' given the centrality they place on C.D. in their 'science.' is this fair to say? gregory ________________________________ From: David Campbell <pleuronaia@gmail.com> To: asa@calvin.edu Sent: Mon, November 2, 2009 4:13:31 PM Subject: Re: [asa] Endosymbiosis It's fairly generally recognized within standard evolutionary biology that cooperation or competition (or finding a way to avoid everyone else) can be successful.  I think it's also fairly well recognized that some things show a more gradual pattern of change and some show a more punctuated pattern. Cooperative symbiosis is indeed an idea from Margoulis that has really taken off; however, she very likely overdid it.  She was the person behind getting the "caterpillars are onychophoran-insect hybrids" paper published in PNAS, a rather far-fetched model (though we'd need an onychophoran genome to absolutely refute it). -- Dr. David Campbell 425 Scientific Collections University of Alabama "I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams" To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message. __________________________________________________________________ Ask a question on any topic and get answers from real people. Go to Yahoo! Answers and share what you know at http://ca.answers.yahoo.com

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Received on Mon Nov 2 09:29:16 2009