Johnicholas, Szathmary would be the authority, I think, but I’ve only read one chapter of his in a book called “Levels of Selection in Evolution”.
But indeed, from the perspective of immediate advantage, a cell probably just stops diffusion. The reason it opens a gate in the search neighborhood and speeds up evolution is that it solves a problem of selfish versus cooperating genes. Evolution doesn’t plan that sort of thing, but it happens anyway.
Since evolution doesn’t plan ahead, the whole history of life is a history of some innovations opening the path to other innovations purely by accident.
Divia, sure. I’m aware of the antiparasitic hypothesis and it seems plausible. I didn’t mean to say we had no good candidate solutions, just that the problem isn’t straightforward.
Johnicholas, Szathmary would be the authority, I think, but I’ve only read one chapter of his in a book called “Levels of Selection in Evolution”.
But indeed, from the perspective of immediate advantage, a cell probably just stops diffusion. The reason it opens a gate in the search neighborhood and speeds up evolution is that it solves a problem of selfish versus cooperating genes. Evolution doesn’t plan that sort of thing, but it happens anyway.
Since evolution doesn’t plan ahead, the whole history of life is a history of some innovations opening the path to other innovations purely by accident.
Divia, sure. I’m aware of the antiparasitic hypothesis and it seems plausible. I didn’t mean to say we had no good candidate solutions, just that the problem isn’t straightforward.