Bio 103, week 6

Last time in class we were talking about how a spider is not more/better evolved than a human or a whale vs a chimp etc... however, this got me thinking: i feel that we are the only species that could wipe out life if we chose to. many animals are becoming extict due to loss of habitat (because of our growth of habitat) and hunting (because we are/encourage poaching); many forests no longer exist due to deforrestation; etc. the only thing i could think of that is alive and could possibly "take us [humans] out" would be bacteria--however--we then would just develope an antibiotic to "take it out". 

I can't see any other living organism that can keep us in check. i mean if all of humanity decided that we needed to destroy life, i believe we could. what keeps us in check? our mind? our belief in a higher power? do we have an innate affinity for life that keeps us from doing this? hmmm.... 

As we discussed in class, evoultion consistently moves from the "simple" to the more "complex." Evolution is the on-going process of trying new things with what currently exsists. This entire process is random meaning their is no such thing as a creature that is more or less adaptive than another. Taking into consideration these claims I can not help but wonder what happens in the universe. If random evolutionary change exists does it exist everywhere? If it exsists everywhere, what is the probability that life elsewhere will immitate the human species, replicate it or generate similar species that are in a sense "more adaptive" than the humanity that exists on Earth today? My thoughts lead me to believe that the concept of aliens may be a stronger probability then most people are willing to believe, especially if change is the only sure constant in life.

Is movement truly random if it can be predicted and/or patterned?

I have been thinking about the idea of constant change a lot over the past week. It both excites me and depresses me. Change makes the world go round, but it also means that nothing stays. As far a science is concerned, constant change is exciting. As far as my life is concerned, it makes me a little sad. People and places change. We've discussed the idea that people perceive that less change happens than actually does because it is often difficult to deal with. Now that I am more aware of constant change, I sort of feel like I perceive change everywhere; I perceive change in places and people that I wouldn't have previously.

Humans cannot perceive...well, we can't perceive what we can't perceive. We used to not be able to see atom/molecules, cells in our bodies or bacteria; now we can. Now we can see photos of outer space and our world from afar. WE have seen patterns at many levels beyond organic human perception. It seems no matter what, we are still confined by the way our brains work, the way we sense/see. I am tempted to look for "objective" patterns-- patterns that 'just exist' without me just believing they exist-- by looking at atoms. My instinct says "atoms are uniform. Each element looks the same as other units of that element." Atoms might not necessarily be the smallest particles in the universe, however. Though WE can't cut an atom up, an atom is still a 3D something, and can therefore be divided. An another reality is that, although one carbon atom looks just like another carbon atom (I think?), they are still different carbon atoms even if they physically look the same. If there were a uniform smallest particle then I would hypothesize that patterns exist independent of human perception. But since there is no known limit to how big the universe is (even though we talked about its diameter...), there's probably no limit to how small something can be. What I'm saying is that the existence of infinitely small or infinitely big would mean that absolutely no two thing are identical in the universe. Infinite difference is too much for the human brain to handle. For the purposes of of human clarity and stability, it's OK to only see/sense what we can see/sense... we can construct the patterns we are able to organically observe (w/o microscopes or the hubble).... But we cannot let ourselves believe that any sort of human perception is sufficient enough for us to start announcing [T]ruths about patterns of life. 

Some poetry from a museum I went to in California:

"Ever present never twice the same" and "ever changing never less than whole" -December Robert

My last fortune cookie: The only certainty is that nothing is certain.

Quotation from NYC sidewalk graffiti: "Change is the only constant"

We must recognize change in biology, because if you are not taking change into account, you are looking at the way things have been, instead of what we know about the way things are at present. Although change brings about different perspectives, sometimes it is useful to use one perspective to study something in particular. The perspective that is used however, can keep changing to incorporate different points of view, or that perspective can combine a few different points of view. We can accept random motion as a first cause, because something always has to come from nothing. We can see this even in life, which arose out of a long period of nothing.

jingber, sophie balis, c. k. koech, heatherl18

 By JyL, dchin, achiles, Emdoscio, and cejensen

We came to an agreement that we need to recognize change as a constant factor in our everyday lives and in the world, despite the fact we humans are not entirely comfortable with the idea of constant change (we often look for patterns, reasons, and constants). Because change is happening all the time, to deny it or ignore it would not be conductive to progress. However, on a personal level, people are allowed to, at the very least, perceive constants in themselves and their lives, because constant change on a personal level can be extremely distressing. On another note, humans like to prioritize perspectives and come to agree on perspectives with which we view the world and each other. However, these perspectives are also constantly changing. This change occurs through viewing things in retrospect. We must, therefore, also take into account the constant change of our perspectives. (group-members: feel free to reply to this if I left something out or got something wrong)