On 24 Jul 2003 10:45:20 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

Moosh:] wrote:
On 21 Jul 2003 12:09:43 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

But you are leaving it to the plant to do the organisation after it is
damaged. You are not specifically implanting genes to outwit the natural
scheme of adjustment.


You believe in Gaea?

More like what I posted recently:


Fritjof Capra already in 1996 reports about Kauffman (1993):

`sytems biologists have begun to portray the genome as a
self-organizing network capable of spontaneously producing new forms
of order. "We must rethink evolutionary biology," writes Stuart
Kauffman. "Much of the order we see in organisms may be the direct
result not of natural selection but of the natural order selection
was allowed to act on... Evolution is not just a tinkering ... It is
an emergent order honored and honed by selection."'

And I called this "surmise". But of course, what happens can be
charcterised in many ways.

So if survival in the past had come about through mutating more when under
stress, then that would happen again under stress. I think that is
accepted.

Chemical reactions occur when and where they can. There is no choice.
Evolution only progresses faster when much stress is about, coz the
less lucky organisms in the lottery of random mutations are dying off
all around, and only the few lucky ones survive.
Mutations are happening all the time, just not giving great advantage
to those who win them when times are good.

And anyway it is hard to tell that sort of thing from a Gaia if there is
one.

What was the origin of the first enzymes?

Random mutation that allowed a chemical change to occur more readily.