[Marxism] Anthro 101 and Apes and Monkeys

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 Thanks for your discussion, Comrade.

Just a thought. Could it be that in a certain environment allowing less in (
being more "selective" in what the 2-celled organism lets in) could be an
advantage, instead of a disadvantage, compared to the one-celled organism ?
Maybe the 2-celled organism took in more "poison".

Charles


*       From: Ken Ranney <kranney@xxxxxxxxxx>


True! (I think, but off-hand I cannot recall any 2-celled organisms.)  But
what I have postulated is double-celled organisms evolving from
single-celled organisms, not present-day 2-celled organisms, which might
not have evolved from single cells.  The 2-cells joined together would have
existed in exactly the same environment.
To put the argument more precisely, the volume of a sphere is proportional
to the cube of its radius:
Volume =  4/3 X Pi X Radius to the 3rd power.
The area of the surface of a sphere is proportional to the square of its
radius:
Area  = 4 X Pi X Radius to the second power.
It is clear that as the sphere grows in size, the ratio of the surface area
to the volume will decrease.
Simple calculations show the following:
For two cells combined, the surface area is, instead of twice as big as for
one cell, only 1.59 times as big. The ratio of the surface area capable of
absorbing nutrients compared to the volume is reduced to 0.794
For 5 cells, the ratio is reduced to 0.584
For 10 cells, 4.64, the ratio is reduced to 0.464
  For 100 cells, 21.5, the ratio is reduced to 0.215
For 1,000 cells, the ratio is reduced to 0.1
For 10,000 cells, the ratio is reduced to 0.064
So for the very first evolutionary change toward multi-celled organisms,
there was a reduction in surface area. This is not the advantage needed for
Darwin's natural selection.The move to multi-celled organisms is a definite
disadvantage.

It is conceivable, and in fact likely that the two cells which stuck
together did not form a perfect sphere, but they must have been in contact
at some point, and to the extent that their surfaces overlapped, they were
at a disadvantage, so the same mathematics applies, but to a lesser extent.



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