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Originally Posted by Robert Tulip
A basic theory of biology is that all life becomes more finely attuned to its niche over time when left in peace.
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There are few of those. The best way to visualise evolution is that there are no long term "niches". Each organism exists in a dynamic evolutionary landscape that is continuously changing due to the evolution of those organisms with which it interacts/competes, etc. In other words, its "niche" is a moving target. It's hard to think of an organism that is "left in peace", and that description certainly does not apply to homo sapiens.
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Undisturbed ecosystems evolve to ever deeper complexity through the Darwinian process of cumulative adaptation.
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No. Increasing complexity, like the popular perception of evolution being like climbing a developmental mountain, is a myth. If there are no selective pressures for a particluar feature, then that can easily wither away over time, for example the fish that live in caves that no longer have working eyes. Most "adaptations" have a cost associated with them, and if the benefit does not outweigh the cost then those adaptations will disappear, or not appear in the first place.
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It is not so much a matter of being able to 'sense' the underlying constant factors making up its niche, but that these factors influence the nature of life at a reproductive and sub-sense level.
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What benefit would a sensitvity to precession bring that would make an organism more likely to pass on its genes? Remember that there would be a cost associated with the formation of structures that were sensitive to precession.
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Each species has a natural range, based on the accidents of reproduction and its cumulative adaptation to niche factors such as rainfall, predation, temperature, etc.
I argue that cosmic factors, including the age cycle of precession, are a part of the ecological niche of life on earth.
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Do these effects ever rise above the background noise during one reproductive cycle?
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A tree may not be able to 'sense' climate change such as a rise in average temperature by 0.1 degree, but such a change (especially over millions of years) can have a big effect on which genes are successful in the process of natural selection.
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It is sensitive to temperature, but not to the gradual change in temperature.
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Of course, cosmic factors are extremely weak by comparison to the immediate terrestrial environment, but my argument is that this weakness is counterbalanced by permanent regularity.
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Have you worked out how weak they are? Could we build a sensor that could do the job?
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The moon has circled the earth 50 billion times since the dawn of life. The lunar cycle may or may not produce immediate 'sensed' advantages, but this permanent regularity makes it plausible that species are adapted in deep subtle genetic ways to diurnal and monthly lunar cycles.
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The Moon has quite obvious effects on the terrestrial environment. The most obvious is the effect on tides, i.e. it modifies the height of high tide, etc. Here we have an effect on the earth that could influence organisms that live in the tidal zone, for example.
What effect does it have on the Earth?
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The earth's axis has precessed about 175,000 times since life first evolved. On the theory that there are twelve ages per precession,...
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Where does this theory of 12 ages per precession come from?
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... this makes about two million ages, each lasting 2147 years if the axial wobble rate has been constant, since our oldest genes came into existence.
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What advantage does an organism gain by being sensitive to something with a timescale that is nearly 100 times the length of its reproductive lifetime?
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I do not argue that our genes 'sense' the ages, but that the ages provide a cosmic structure of terrestrial time, and human culture is part of this cosmic structure just as a fish is part of a river. The fish may not 'sense' a small change in water quality, but will be affected by it nonetheless.
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Of course water quality affects fish. That is clear. How does precessional "quality" and its cyclic nature affect the ability of a member of homo sapiens to reproduce?
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Precession provides a basis for a theory of karma as causality, with deeply imbedded cycles within planetary history operating at very long time scales.
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I don't see the need for a "theory of karma as causality", so there does not seem to be a need for its basis.
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This thread examines main events over the two such cycles within recorded western history to find evidence for this theory, examining whether the historical outlines of these ages are comparable. I think the evidence here is strong for a 2147 year wave pattern whereby human history reflects the main cosmic structure of terrestrial time.
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Others on this thread have identified problems with this. I might just add that for your hypothesis to be meaningfull you need to demonstrate it over more than one cycle.