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Has Evolution Really Been'seen In The Lab?

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A0140153X | Soon Hao Jing
USS Week 11 Essay
1 November 2015

Question: (1) Has evolution ever really been ‘seen’ in the lab? (2) How has enough time elapsed since the beginning of life on Earth to account for the kind of development into complexity claimed by evolution? (3) Isn’t the argument from evolution the equivalent of claiming that a bunch of parts in a junkyard might be ‘blindly’ assembled into a functional airplane through the lifeless, brainless power of the wind?

1 - Evolution occurs in a population over many generations, which usually means we would not live long enough to see the outcome of it. However, in species where the lifespan is short and succeeding generations spring up in a short time, observing evolution is possible. Such a species favoured by scientists working in labs would be the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. One study was able to evince signs of evolution in a population which had been selected for resistance to drought conditions. Of course, while the experimenters artificially imposed conditions on the Drosophila populations to compel artificial selection, it does not affect the validity of the observations. Outside the lab, it is merely …show more content…

Critics may argue that evolution, being blind and unguided, cannot produce its results - life as we know it - in such a timespan. However, with self-replicating chemicals (like DNA or RNA), a reliable source of energy (the sun), and a vast surface area and lots of water, organic chemicals and other substances, and a vast amount of time (a year alone has over half a million minutes), it is not difficult to imagine how life could have proliferated, diversified and evolved over aeons, after first appearing as a self-sustaining system supporting and supported by a series of chemical processes happening in tandem and interacting with the

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