Yes, this is quite an interesting discussion...I hope I haven't come on too negatively in the last few posts...I don't mean to reject any plausible theories outright, just to point out that one should be cautious about "making up" new theories that postulate much greater hidden complexity when an already adequate, and simpler, theory has had so much research behind it, and has so much empirical weight behind it.

 

>> I agree that research to date shows fairly conclusively that evolution is based

>> mostly on natural selection survival rates.

And reproductive success.

 

>> ...And if that bird that's born with a beak that allows more food to be aquired,

>> and subsequently, a stronger bird, which mates more, then those traits will be

>> passed on.

Right. 

 

>> However, there in humans, there are many cases where traits are passed on to the

>> children. And of course it's documented and so common place that to say you've >> never seen it is questionable. Musical talent, Artistic talents, physical traits, are all

>> commonly passed on through generations. Even such wierd traits as the

>> likelyhood of military service is usually something that can be traced back for

>> generations. Could this be encoded in DNA? It's certainly probable.

There are definitely human traits that are passed from parent to child, and these traits could definitely include a propensity for musical and artistics talents, maybe even some psychological trait that would predispose someone toward something like military service, as well as physical traits...hell, physical traits being passed from generation to generation is a basic precept of the theory of natural selection!  And of course music, art, training, and even military service are things that are passed culturally from generation to generation.  I hope I haven't mistakenly sounded like I'm saying I haven't seen evidence of such a phenomenon.  What I am sincerely skeptical about, though, is the idea of some specific thing that someone has learned somehow being coded back into the DNA stored in their gametes...everything I know about the physics behind the DNA->RNA->protein coding process tells me that this is something that very probably does not happen.

 

>> DNA is not just physical traits, that is just the area that is reasearched more and

>> documented more. On the other hand, I have never seen Junk DNA refered to as

>> something that is useless or as a unknown. In most cases, junk dna is improperly

>> formed dna sequences that have been rejected and rewritten. There are

>> components that are responsible for error checking sequences....

This kind of "error checking" DNA is not what is commonly referred to as "Junk DNA".  Junk DNA is, actually, sequences of DNA that seem to never be expressed to create proteins, and is thought to, perhaps, contain retro-viruses (or sets of DNA that block the infection of human cell nuclei by dangerous retroviruses), etc.  The funny thing about DNA transcription is that one segment of DNA controls how another segment of DNA is expressed, and it's entirely possible that for some evolutionary reason the expression of some chunks of DNA have been suppressed because of fitness reasons.

 

Here is a link to an article about Junk DNA and how it can be used to study evolution genetically be comparing the "Junk DNA" of differing species (good point on that, by the way, imbas):

 

And here is a link to an article about the possible roles of Junk DNA...it's on a Christian site and seems to be trying to use it to support creationism, but I see nothing on it that supports an argument about evolution by natural selection:

 

>> I think it's important to understand that indeed, our reality is changing constantly.

>> And today or tomorrow there will be more information discovered or realized in a

>> great many areas. One should never take a hard stance and think that no more

>> can be discovered about any subject. But even Occam's Razor has exceptions.

That's true.  There is a percept in science that says the simplest sufficient explanation is the favored one, but there's nothing to say that for some reason a given simpler explanation won't someday be shown to be insufficient, in which case a more complicated one must be selected as a better approximation.  <points at Newton/Einstein/String Theory discussion>  And it's just about impossible to ever be completely sure that you have the right solution...hence science is always at work attempting to falsify current explanations that may be faulty while at the same time looking for better ones...

 

>> The key to this discussion though is Is Will a Force of Evolution

Right...maybe I got a little off track, here.  I think a lot of the rambling in here is actually in lieu of begging for a definition of "Will".  Does "Will" mean neurally-based conscious control that that originates neo-cortically, or does it, in this context, mean something a bit more spiritual?  I would say that the former does not influence evolution through DNA transmission in any direct way, but that latter might do, through sub-atomic interactions that we have little or no idea of the workings of.

 

>> It certainly seems probable that as far back as the primordal soup, the will to live

>> has been a key tenet of evolution.

Not necessarily so...it's hard for me to ascribe a "will to live" to a chunk of RNA floating around that just happens to replicate itself more faithfully (through purely chemical means) than its "competitors".  An appropriate link here would be an article on "pre-cellular life", so here is one: http://www.panspermia.org/rnaworld.htm 

 

>> All things seem to evolve and not just physically. So why wouldn't it be at least a

>> minimal probability that Will as a mental trait can evolve. Many mental traits have

>> evolved. The trait described as Willpower has just as much a chance of evolving

>> also.

I definitely agree with this, if we are talking about Will as a mental trait.

 

>>  If so, it is unknown at this time how it could evolve, but the probability that it

>> could evolve in such a way as to influence physical traits, or cause such trait to

>> written to a DNA strand is still valid.

All right.  With the pre-stated caveat that I would never want to say this is impossible, all of the evidence I've seen points to it being highly unlikely.

 

>> And it has been shown before that by considering new ideas, new discoveries can

>> be made. Is this not the basis for how we create our reality?

Good point!  And this is defintiely something I'd like to see studied more experimentally.  If there is some kind of chemical/electrical/physical way for mental Will to screw around with DNA in a more or less intelligent fashion, it would be quite a revolutionary discovery.  I can even think of a few experiments that might be done to study the possibility...it wouldn't be too hard to do comparitive studies of male gametes from a single person throughout their life in a controlled way to see if they can somehow Will changes into their DNA.

 

This discussion has brought up an interesting topic in my head that I have discussed a couple of times with my Supervisor and some of the professors and students here, that seems in some way relevant to this discussion:

 

Over the course of evolutionary time, there have been fundamental shifts in the way information is encoded and transmitted...a rough sketch of some of the fundamental steps could be something like (I have these steps laid out more cherently somewhere, but can't find them at the moment...):

1) Amino Acids

2) "Free" strands of RNA

3) Simple asexually reproducing organisms

4) More complex sexually reprducing organisms

5) ???????

 

The shift to cultural transmission fo information may have been another evolutionary step.  Looked at this way, we can concieve of our growing understanding of how our own DNA works as preparing for another fundamental step in evolution, where we will, through technological tools, be able to very directly modify the DNA in our reproductive cells...and by so doing "cut out the middle man" as it were, and greatly accelerate our own biological evolution.

 

This could very well be seen as mental Will attaining the power to directly affect the course of biological evolution...so evein if it's not, yet, a force of Evolution, it may well be in the not-too-distant future!

 

-- sæskwač