Darwin Day: 4 Snapshots from the Evolution of Evolution

Miracle Girl: Darwin Day: 4 Snapshots from the Evolution of Evolution

Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!

Take a Darwin Day trip through the evolution of evolutionary thought, as you tour four key moments on the journey to a biological Theory of Everything.

Many who paved the way of evolutionary thought clung to the holy writ their theories undermined. Not so, Charles Darwin. 

Evolution Caught in the Act: A Darwin Day Sampler Pack

Miracle Girl: Evolution Caught in the Act: A Darwin Day Sampler Pack

Just in time for Darwin Day, new research has revealed evolution -- and even speciation -- in real time. And in one case an instant.

Wanna see Ken Ham's head explode?

Darwin’s Day: 4 Snapshots from the Evolution of Evolution

Miracle Girl: Darwin’s Day: 4 Snapshots from the Evolution of Evolution

In celebration of Darwin Day, I survey the contributions of Darwin and other scientists of his day to our understanding of evolution...whether they liked it or not. The implications of natural selection caused Charles Darwin to lose his faith. Others didn't, but contributed to our evolutionary understanding anyway.

Seeking a New Year's Evolution

Miracle Girl: Seeking a New Year's Evolution

Will humanity ever evolve away the need to believe in an all-powerful god? Well, I believe religion isn't hard-wired in the human brain. That's a hopeful sign for the future.

The Abuse of Use and Disuse

The Secular Spectrum: The Abuse of Use and Disuse

Keith and I have different memories of the incident I recount in The Abuse of Use and Disuse. He remembers it as him reading aloud to me the encyclopedia passage about how Lamarckism had displaced Darwinian natural selection. But I distinctly recall staying up until the wee hours of the morning, after deciding to thumb through the delightfully Art Deco Funk and Wagnalls volumes from 1934 he had just purchased. Before my coma, I had the bad habit of staying up late to read things when I should be getting ready for bed. And how could I resist finding out what they had to say about my favorite subject, evolution?

The next day--or should I say later in the day--I told him excitedly about what I had found. I remember struggling to find the relevant passages. Was it in evolution or natural selection? Where was that quote about Lamarckism?

When I mentioned the idea for the SecSpec post recently, we dug out the encyclopedias. I initially didn't remember thumbing through such small volumes. But as I looked through them again in preparation for writing the post, the memories flooded back. My eyesight had deteriorated enough for me to require a magnifying glass to read the tiny print.

Who was right? Well, obviously, I think I am. My memory of the incident is more detailed and defined, and I have a better long-term memory than Keith has. That afternoon, we read through all the relevant entries, reading aloud the juiciest bits. That could be what Keith is remembering.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Winning the Everlasting Gobstopper of Life

My latest post for the Secular Spectrum: Winning the Everlasting Gobstopper of Life

This is my brain on strokes. But despite what my doctors proclaimed, the damage wasn't "profound." They knew that my damage was in the watershed areas--as my hospital records attest--but didn't take into account that my relative youth and the nature of watershed-area stroke damage gave me a better chance of recovery, which they listed as poor.

My neurologist told me that the watershed areas tend not to control the most vital systems and they tend to bounce back faster after they've been damaged. My relative youth also meant that I had a better chance of recovery.

To me, the fact that the less important systems blink out first and recover better strongly suggests that this is an evolutionary triage system,

Natural selections saved my life, even though I was hardly the fittest.

A watershed moment

This isn't my MRI, but it demonstrates the"string of pearls" pattern of watershed area stroke damage in my brain.

According to Wikipedia, a common classification system for strokes is called TOAST (Trial of Org 10172 in Acute Stroke Treatment). Toast, I was fortunately not, thanks to the watershed area stroke damage I suffered. If you absolutely have to have multiple strokes on both sides of your brain--and I would recommend against it--this is the kind you want.

Here is how I described watershed stroke damage in my Skeptical Inquirer article:

My neurologist told me that the reasons I've recovered so well are I was younger than the average stroke victim, and most of my brain damage was in the watershed areas. Watershed areas lie between two major arteries. By the time blood reaches these sections, there’s less oxygen in it. It’s a bit like a wetland fed by two trickling tributaries. Together, they provide just enough water, but when the flow diminishes, the land between the tributaries dries up. As she explained, watershed areas don’t generally control vital functions. They die more quickly than more important regions, but also spring back faster after damage has occurred. Ain’t evolution grand?

But why is this natural selection in action? I'm glad you asked. What would aid your survival if you experienced a sudden loss of blood or blood pressure to your brain--say a sabertooth chomping down on your skull? It looks like you're about to be sabertooth cat chow, but in the nick of time, members of your tribe come to your rescue. You've lost a lot of blood, but you're still alive. So far, you're brain has sacrificed the areas that will cause the least amount of long-term damage. You won't be the same for some time, but you will eventually recover. Fortunately for you, humans instinctively help others who need assistance (especially if they are kin), as indicated by some of the crippled skeletons of early humans and our close cousins, the unfairly stereotyped Neandertals. Now it's only a matter of time before you recover enough to once again be a productive member of the clan.

Substitute sepsis for the sabertooth, strokes for the cranial trauma, and writer for the productive member of society part, and you have what happened to me. 

What evolution gave my survival in general is humanity so intelligent in the aggregate that it could develop medicine and technology advanced enough to maintain my life while my other bodily systems recovered according to their evolved survival mechanisms. An early modern human in my situation would have indeed been toast.

As I mentioned in the article, dialysis and a respirator gave my kidneys and lungs time to begin healing so that they could eventually start working again. Later, the nursing home permitted my body time to recover enough to begin walking somewhat. Still, the evolution of care in our society, namely our healthcare "system," meant that Kaiser handed me my walking papers when I could still barely walk.

Further proof that evolution is not unidirectional.