Blog 2: Major Transitions

While reading Mayhew he discusses eight major transitions that caused evolutionary change, starting from the very simple single celled organisms to eventually the very complex multi-cellular humans arisen from genetic recombination and variation throughout multiple generations. Dawkins also has a similar approach in that he also believes that life spawned from simple organisms with the ability to replicate. Both authors suggested how these organisms underwent a process of transition to increase in their complexity. Behavior as well as language (as Mayhew suggests) evolved as well. Although they share similar views when it comes to the simplicity in the beginning, they significantly diverge from one another view when it comes to the process of which they underwent to become complex. Dawkin’s has a very gene-centric point of view that dominates his book. Like in Chapter 3 when he introduces the idea of the replicators, substances emerging from the earth’s “primordial soup” and over many generations developed into organized and complex beings with abilities that their predecessors only dreamed of. It is this heterotrophic viewpoint that I best relate to and agree with. Dawkins continue to add that these “survival machines” were incapable of producing their own nourishment and therefore became dependent on other organisms for consumption and energy source. Nonetheless as time went on their abilty to become more complex beings aided in their survival as opposed to other whom which they had also emerged with.
Mayhew on the other hand sees a different perspective from that of Dawkins. He introduces and supports the autotrophic view to the origin of life. Mayhew argues that early life lacked protein enzymes to catalyze reactions, instead utilizing RNA instead. This was a point that I disagreed with, I leaned more towards the heterotrophic theory Dawkins supports. Dawkins idea of emergence from a primordial soup which contained the precursors for DNA is a more appealing scenario to me. Dawkins to me better complements Darwin’s theory of natural selection than Mayhew. To the idea of lacking the ability to catalyze such fundamental processes leaves the scientist at a stalemate. This to me is a very unlikely probability.