Rorrenig
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~ clearthought 18:06, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Your edit to Evolution has truncated the article - losing the final several paragrpahs, including See Also, Ext Refs, categorisations, interwiki, etc. etc. I would have reverted - but this would have lost your edits. You should think about repairing the article - otherwise someone else is likely simply to revert. Thanks, Ian Cairns 13:43, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
- As anticipated, your last edit was reverted - as above. Ian Cairns 14:45, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Edit summaries
editAbout this edit summary, you should provide meaningful edit summaries for major reversions. --JWSchmidt 13:45, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Evolution
editThanks for the reference.
My major problem with the opening paragraph is that this:
"Evolution is ultimately the source of the vast diversity of life: all contemporary organisms are related to each other through common descent as products of cumulative evolutionary changes over billions of years."
Is tantamount to claiming that a single common ancestor is an established fact. This is beyond what the current evidence shows, and it is uneccessary. My edit to:
"Evolution is potentially the source of the vast diversity of life: theoretically all contemporary organisms may be related to each other through common descent as products of cumulative evolutionary changes over billions of years."
Keeps it as a theory with the tentativity expressed. The rest I can do without, though it is important to me -- especially in arguing against creationists -- that we be clear on the boundaries of evolution and abiogenesis, that evolution starts with some initial population to act on, and abiogenesis is how that first population may have developed:
"In biology, evolution is the change in the heritable traits of a population over successive generations, as determined by the shifting allele frequencies of genes."
And that the theory of Common Descent is the bridge between abiogenesis and the facts of evolution we observe today.
When it comes to the origins of life I am willing to say "we don't know (yet)" and that included in that "we dont' know (yet)" is the possibility of several independent life forms or proto-life forms in the initial stages (perhaps some even using D-amino acids: we don't know).
Horizontal gene transfere in early unicellular organisms can easily act to homogenize the kinds of replication systems used with the best system(s) becoming universal by Natural Selection.