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Don't do that!!! You need to be convinced and to do that you must study. Start with Josh McDowell's book (a basic although not very complete and in places over simplified but a good start). Another good book is:
Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species
by Lynn Margulis, Dorion Sagan, Ernst Mayr
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Product Details
- Hardcover: 256 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.91 x 9.46 x 6.36
- Publisher: Basic Books; ISBN: 0465043917; 1st edition (June 18, 2002)
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- Amazon.com Sales Rank: 11,700
Editorial Reviews
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A challenger of the orthodox "neo-Darwinist" interpretation of evolution, microbiologist Margulis has made her professional mark touting an alternative: symbiogenesis. She and coauthor (and son) Sagan have presented their ideas in earlier popular works (
What Is Life?, 1995), but never as vigorously as in this volume. Essentially, the debate between neo-Darwinists and Margulis hinges on the definition of a species, and the manner in which a new one appears. To Margulis and Sagan, the neo-Darwinist model, which asserts random gene mutation as the source of inherited variations, is "wildly overemphasized," and to support their view, they delve deeply into the world of microbes. They detail the anatomy of cells with and without nuclei, positing a process of genome ingestion that creates a new species. Surprisingly, the upshot of Margulis' theories is the rehabilitation of Jean Baptiste de Lamarck, whose theory that supposedly acquired traits are hereditary has been ridiculed for 150 years. Polemical and provocative, Margulis and Sagan's work should set many to thinking that evolution has not yet been completely figured out.
Gilbert TaylorCopyright American Library Association. All rights reserved
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(what's this)Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species, November 13, 2002
Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species written by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan will definitly open your eyes and is on the cutting edge of how species are formed.
This is one of those groundbreaking books that trys to answer one of Charles Darwin's long standing mysteries... how do species originate. Darwin could never quit put his finger on the answer, he was close and I'm sure with time and the right equipment, like what is available today, he might have even solved this nagging question.
Margulis has been working on this same question for the last thirty years and she makes a very convincing argument, symbiotic merger is the main thrust of her thesis in this book. This book has some real mind-spinning ideas and you'll have to know some biochemistry, biology, chemistry, cell-biology to prepare yourself for a provocative wild ride through this book as some of the material directly challenges the assumptions that we hold about diversity in the living world.
Margulis has for many years been the leader in the interpretation of evolutionary entities as the products of symbiogenesis. Symbiogenesis is the major theme of this book. The authors show convinvingly that an unexpectedly large proportion of the evolutionary lineages had their origins in symbiogenesis. Ok, I know some of you are saying what is symbiogenesis, well it's the combination of two totally different genomes form a symbiotic consortium which becomes the target of selection as a single entity. This is achieved by the mutual stability of the relationship, symbiosis differs from other cases of interaction such as carnivory, herbivory, and parasitism.
Now, that I've said all of that, you realize that this book can get pretty deep at times, but the author has a pleasent styled narrative, always keeping the reader involved. Prehaps the greatest merit of this book is that it introduces the reader to the fascinating world of microbes, delving into providing an enthralling description of protists and bacteria.
I found this book to be most enlightening about the enigma of evolutionary biology and how species are formed, comprehensive in scope and supported by scientific theory. This book will make you think. If you want to know about the cutting edge of evolutionary thinking then this is the book for you. To realize that everything on earth is inter-related and that life will carry on when faced with tragedy.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A compelling, attention involving survey, December 7, 2002
In Acquiring Genomes, authors Lynn Margulis & Dorion Sagan collaborate to present a fascinating theory regarding the origins of species as they probe Charles Darwin's original ideas of evolution, and then taking them a step further in identifying the source of inherited variations that give rise to new species. The authors cogently argue that random mutation is not the main factor in such changes: more significant is how new genomes are obtained by symbiosis. Lynn Margulis & Dorion Sagan is highly recommended as a compelling, attention involving survey offering new insights based on meticulous research.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Coauthorial Critique, December 5, 2002
First of all let me apologize for criticizing this work, not only because I wrote part of it and don't want to hurt my own feelings (any more than is absolutely necessary), but to you for any appearance of arrogance or impropriety. However, some more evidence in its favor has come to light since this book was written; in addition, there are a few mistakes (some corrected in proof which somehow Basic Books neglected to fix) and, more importantly, a basic potential misunderstanding about what the book does and does not say, which I see no reason not to address.
The main point of this book, which I cowrote, is that, although mutation leads to evolutionary change, all the best examples of speciation, including all that have actually been observed, have been through symbiosis. The greatest amount of biodiversity, including all basic metabolic modes from photosynthesis to oxygen respiration, evolved in the bacteria via mutation and gene transfer. But although given Linnean species names for the sake of convenience and via convention, speciation does not really apply to bacteria, which trade genes (via techniques borrowed by human beings practicing biotechnology) with little regard for species barriers. True speciation only evolved in the eukaryotes--protists, fungi, plants, and animals. These largely sexed beings pose the Darwinian problem of speciation proper. And here all the best examples of speciation involve symbiosis, the coming together of different kinds of organisms. Since Acquiring Genomes was written, more evidence has come to the fore to show that its central thesis--that the presence or absence of genomes, particularly those of microbes, can lead to speciation--is correct. In a recent Montreal conference on molecular biology and phylogeny, for example, John Werren from the University of Rochester in New York showed a picture of a chromosome of a sperm cell from a parasitic wasp: rod-shaped bacteria, Wolbachia, were nestled in the chromosome. Wasps can have their sex change due to the presence of bacteria, and antibiotics can make separate species of jewel wasps interbreed again. At this same meeting Professor Harold Morowitz (who is developing a Universal Metabolic Chart, on the model of the Periodic Table of the Elements) was impressed by the plasticity of ever-changing gene formations--emphasizing the need to look for metabolic pathways shared by most or all organisms to understand life's origins. Because life is an open thermodynamic system, as well as an open informational one, genomic transfer is rampant.
It is important to realize two things that Acquiring Genomes does not say. The book does not say that all bacterial diversity is the result of genome acquisition. As suggested above, and by Canadian biologist Sorin Sonea and others, despite the bacteriological convenience of their species names, bacteria arguably do not have species due both to rampant genetic transfer as well as the premier, zoological definition of species as an interbreeding population; since all bacteria can theoretically trade genes with each other either directly or through through vectors (and do not need to reproduce to do so), the animal definition of species does not really apply to them. The original genetic and metabolic diversity in bacteria must owe significantly to neodarwinian-style mutations but, since bacteria arguably do not possess species, such mutations do not occur for speciation.
As Ernst Mayr suggests in his Foreword, the evidence for speciation by genome acquisition in birds and mammals is not compelling. The argument for genome acquisition here depends on the possible symbiotic status of the ends of chromosomes, called kinetochores. (Bacteria don't have true chromosomes, they have chromonemes.) Because chromosome arrangements differ slightly in closely related mammal species (e.g., dogs and wolves) that no longer breed with each other, and because the spontaneous splitting of these chromosomes may owe to their separate bacterial origin, we make the argument that even vertebrate speciation may owe to the symbiotic aftershocks of microbial genome acquisition. The main point to remember is for every example of speciation for which there is actual evidence, genome acquisition is the causative factor; and that, despite mountains of theory, this is not the case for mutations.
Finally, the thermodynamics section is only an at best tantalizing foretaste of a much more comprehensive argument and regrettably contains a couple of mistakes, such as the characterization of Benard cells as octagonal (they're hexagonal) and appearing from a chemical gradient (they don't; they appear in a temperature gradient). And one final comment: both Lynn and I read Stephen King's On Writing after A.G.'s composition and realized belatedly how much it could have been improved, despite the complexity of some of the arguments, by eliminating further needless words.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A challenge to Darwinism, November 27, 2002
| Reviewer: A reader from Middle America |
Acquiring Gnomes is an attempt to support the theory of symbiogenesis, the idea that organisms evolve by exchanging genes and as a result of symbiosis relationships, such as lichen. The authors are the leading experts in the field of symbiosis, and this shows in this well done work. The major strong point of the work is it explains in detail what biologists have known for years but often do not admit publicly, namely that evolution by the accumulation of small mutations has not been supported by either laboratory or field research. The authors also show that Darwin has been almost a god for over a century, yet his work was neither original (and he failed to credit those he plagiarized his ideas from - see p. 27) and his classic 1859 book The Origin of Species is "laced with hesitancies, contradictions, and possible prevarication" (p. 26). Having shown neo-Darwinism is now effectively dead, the authors make an excellent case for their own theory of the origin of species. The only problem is they demonstrate that many lower level organisms have probably exchanged genetic material throughout history, yet this does not explain its origin, only its spread. We are still left with the question "where did the genome information come from in the first place?" It may be best to admit that we do not know (and present theories do not explain this problem) so that future scientists are encouraged to look for the source instead of discouraging research by teaching students that we know the source when we do not. As a college teacher for over 35 years now, in my classes I stress what we do not know in my field (molecular biology) with the hope that my students may be inspired to find some of the answers. This book is a good place to begin. The authors also show that anyone who questions Darwin "are often dismissed as if they were Christian fundamentalist zealots or racial bigots" (p. 19). This is tragic.
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