Prokaryotic Perspective

Abstract

‘Evolution’ is a word that came into biology from the discipline of geology and the word suggests that mountain ranges will erupt, will be worn down, only to erupt again. Abiotic change, even if called ‘evolution’, is quite distinct from biotic evolution. If a mountain ‘figured’ out a better way to ‘live’, there is no way for it to leave a legacy for later descendent mountains---it has no genetic system. Some aspects of abiotic evolution may be quick on a geological scale, like the development of random polymers after the precursors arise, but abiotic evolution can be slow and of long duration. For example, after the big bang, stars had to form and die and be reborn to cycle through several generations until one, like our own sun, could have a solar system with planets, with suitable elements, and a physical environment so that life forms could develop based on organic molecules. Thus the progression of star types is an evolution in which a descendent star has properties generated by the nucleosynthesis of its predecessor, but again this is not ‘adaptive’ as Darwin used the term ‘evolution’.