1. a. Our early ancestors probably spent much of their time in trees long after they had fully mastered the art of walking on two legs because they were used to climbing in trees and trees often have sumptuous and nutritious fruit in addition to providing fresh oxygen and good energy!"
1. b. "We Live in an Age of Bacteria."
A major threat to humankind is the antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria that have survived and been naturally selected by overuse of antibiotics. There are fascinating things to be learned about bacteria. The world that comes to mind is 'androgyny,' but that is a misnomer because after mating, the female bacteria actually turn into male bacteria. "Maleness" in bacteria land is an infective venereal disease, which is sure to make some women laugh. Bacteria can actually swim very fast despite the fact that they live in a medium that has the density of asphault. They can go forwards or backwards up to a speed of 30mph, but they can never stop, which must make mating kind of a mess. While bacteria can learn, they also divide every twenty minutes, so they must restart their education. I wonder if bacteria have feelings? Or are they just some primordial blobs of cell masses- deterministic yet blind in their plight forward?
2. These are the points I found particularly interesting regarding Human Genetic Evolution:
• Human DNA is 98 percent the same as the DNA of chimpanzees; but it's also 70 percent the same as the DNA of yeast.
- • The African-American population is an African-European hybrid, with about 70% of the genes having come from Africa and 30% from Europe. However, some populations (e.g. Charleston, SC, and the Sea Islands of Georgia) have over 90% African genes.
- •The American Indians came from Asia and appear to be most closely related to Mongolians rather than to the groups that currently occupy northeast Asia. The Hispanic populations of Texas have a high frequency of alleles that came from American Indian ancestry and hence Asia.
It was interesting to read that we homosapiens have ancestors in the Homo Genus that are now extinct and whose skulls resemble chimpanzees more than humans.
3. "The modelling of non-linear systems in physics has led to the concept of chaos, a deterministic process characterized by extreme sensitivity to its initial conditions." This sentence reminds me of the example through which a lot of people are introduced to the idea of chaos where the flapping of a butterfly's wings in one part of the world- through a series of complex air currents- starts a storm somewhere else.
Autopoesis refers to a closed system capable of re-creating itself. Think of a cell that effortlessly reproduces itself. "Like complexity theory it is a systems perspective, and is applicable to brains and societies as well as to biology and artificial life."
