Is Death Responsible for Diversity? Essay -- Philosophy Essays

Is Death Responsible for Diversity? Some of the hardest questions we struggle to final result in life surround the phenomenon of demolition. What happens when we die? Is on that point something beyond close? Is one way to go better than another? Is it possible to efflux death? Why do we die, anyway? Why couldnt we moreover perish forever? One explanation for death may come from the account statement of evolution. To explore this question, let us imagine a hypothetical situation, a world in which nothing dies. (We will imagine also, for now, that organisms would continue to larn along the same trajectory as they do at present.) each organism that has ever existed in the past would exist now, along with each organism present and any organism that has yet to exist. Not plainly would the world contain these organisms, but all potential organisms. However many a(prenominal) ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead or rathe r, not alive. Richard Dawkins (p 104, Dennett) All the representations of the ways of being not alive would be there, including those that we could not perhaps fathom, those that are not necessarily contingent to our present environment. What this signifies, this absence of death, is a lack of inherent selection. When nothing can die, everything is selected for, nothing is selected against. No death implies no tests, no judgments of fit or unfit, no randomness or weeding-out of the genome, no consequence to anything that is potentially detrimental to the species. This hypothetical situation is a look at the unchanging set of all possible options, every combination of DNA that could potentially give rise to life. Every supposition is valid. This version of the world could only exist if we ign... ...t and habitat. The world would be just one big quoin, where anything goes, anything is possible. If we do away with natural selection, then we mustiness consequently do away with ch ange, with evolution, with boundaries. Whenever a species acquires a new capacity, it acquires, so to speak, the key to a different niche or adaptive geographical zone in nature. (p 208, Mayr) The key merited is contingent to the change only be display case the niche is locked before the change occurs. The boundaries we see are what create the selection pressures that cause organisms to change and are often products of selection pressures themselves. There is a institutionalise relationship between these phenomena. If we have change (evolution) and niches, then death and natural selection are mandatory. SourcesMayr, Ernst. What Evolution Is. New York Basic Books, 2001. Dennett, Daniel. Darwins Dangerous Idea.