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Schrodinger, Erwin - What is Life - Mutation
Identifier
004002
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
It may be helpful to refer to the sources section and the description of Darwin.
Some background to the quote. An individual may well breed prolifically before it is found to be unsuited to survival in that environment and in fact observation shows that as resources become depleted a species will breed prolifically. As such a threatened species may well breed faster than a secure unthreatened species. The ‘fittest’ do not survive, it is the heavy breeders that survive. But not for long.
In any environment, assuming it is a closed environment, once the resources upon which it depends have been depleted, however, it will then die off. It may even be that having used the resources to the point where they cannot be regenerated the whole species in that environment die. This is where the ‘survival of the fittest’ does occur, as they have been proved unfit by using up their resources. Prolific numbers plus elimination of resources [food, water etc] signals the end of the species in that environment.
But mutation enables some members of the species to survive by using different resources. Assuming they learn not to breed prolifically and to preserve resources they will survive and outlast the unfit members [as long as they do not support the unfit members]. Species survive that learn – learn not to waste resources, to marshall what they have, conserve what they have, husband what they have and also learn to restrict their breeding to manageable proportions. The fittest are actually the intelligent ones – in the long run.
This makes it look as though mutation is geared long term towards the intelligent and those destined to survive – that there is a plan to mutate according to long term suitability.
But what causes the mutation? Who is the farmer?
A description of the experience
Erwin Schrödinger – What is Life?
We know definitely today that Darwin was mistaken in regarding the small continuous accidental variations that are bound to occur even in the most homogeneous population, as the material on which natural selection works. For it has been proved that they are not inherited.
But about 40 years ago the Dutchman de Vries discovered that in the offspring even of thoroughly pure-bred stocks, a very small number of individuals, say 2 or 3 in tens of thousands, turn up with small but ‘jump-like’ changes, the expression ‘jump-like’ not meaning that the change is so very considerable. But that there is a discontinuity inasmuch as there are no intermediate forms between the unchanged and the few changed. De Vries called that a mutation. The significant fact is the discontinuity
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Mutations are inherited as perfectly as the original unchanged characters were … [in effect they] breed perfectly true, that is to say all their descendants inherit the characteristic …. When the mutated individual is crossed with a non mutated one – exactly half of the off spring exhibit the mutant characteristic and half the normal one