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"THE EYE of the Trilobite was already highly sophisticated by Cambrian time - yet, it was hardly a perfect design - rather, it resulted from the tinkering of natural selection on the genomic ingredients that already existed." https://lnkd.in/dfRbEgj View in LinkedIn

OLD PARADIGM. "The immune individual rejects anything that is not “self.” Accordingly, if it were not for the immune system, opportunistic infections would prevail (as they do in cases of immune deficiencies) and the organism would perish." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

RAPID MICROBE EVOLUTION. "​In a decade bacteria can produce 200,000 generations — about the number of generations of humans there have been since our lineage split from that of chimpanzees. So it’s hardly surprising that in less than a human lifespan we’ve seen the evolution of new diseases such as HIV and numerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria."​ https://lnkd.in/dv-JiV6 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues the contemplation of self in a biological sense. Our mindset is geared to assume that individuality is a reality in living organisms, and that competition between individuals is the grist of natural selection, niche expansion, and eventual speciation. But a new perspective is emerging, that the individual is a community of species that co-evolve, collaborate, and are inseparable. View in LinkedIn

HUMAN VERSUS VIRUS. "We might like to think of ourselves as the most “highly evolved” species but, in terms of how many rounds of mutation and selection we’ve undergone, we are one of the least evolved species. Around 10 billion new viral particles can be produced every day in the body of a person infected with HIV. By contrast, the total human population on Earth was no more than a few million until a few thousand years ago."​ https://lnkd.in/dv-JiV6 View in LinkedIn

A MERE BLINK OF THE EYE. "We have no idea what future evolution has in store for humans. Biologically, modern humans have only been in existence for about 200,000 years, a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms; culturally and technologically, advanced human societies have only arisen in the last 4000 years or so, an even more miniscule timespan when placed against the history of life on earth." https://lnkd.in/dq73Az6 View in LinkedIn

FLAWED DESIGNS. "Evolution’s lack of foresight can produce inherently flawed designs. The vertebrate eye – with its back-to-front wiring and blind spot where the wiring goes through the retina – is one example. Later adaptations have compensated for these problems to a large extent but once natural selection fixes upon a flawed, but workable, design, a species’ descendants are usually stuck with it."​ https://lnkd.in/dv-JiV6 View in LinkedIn

INEVITABLE. " And another related viewpoint is that we humans were somehow the inevitable outcome of the evolutionary process." https://lnkd.in/dq73Az6 View in LinkedIn

BEYOND EVOLUTION. "A related viewpoint that I’ve heard said is that we humans have managed to extricate ourselves from the evolutionary struggle: our technological prowess has enabled us to raise ourselves above the survival of the fittest; we are, quite simply, the fittest." https://lnkd.in/dq73Az6 View in LinkedIn

THE PINNACLE. "Almost invariably in these conversations, someone expresses the opinion – as though everyone there takes it for granted – that humans are the end point, the goal, or the pinnacle of evolution." https://lnkd.in/dq73Az6 View in LinkedIn