My Insights

My favorite topic and a very interesting one for sure is ‘life’. Where did we come from? What is the purpose of life? Is there GOD? The list can go on and there is no end to contemplation. I will be posting a considerable number of posts on the topic in the future and I would like to know what others think about what I think.

To begin with, I would like to talk about Evolution. It is very interesting to look at different theories of evolution. One of the theories I came across in 7th grade goes something like this. The lapse of time is probably not going to help me in remembering facts very accurately.

Supposedly, The primordial atom dropped from space into the ocean when the earth was still forming its structure. Over millions of years, this atom increased in number and there were of course mutations of the atom that made it suitable for survival in the earth’s oceans. This was the first essence of life. There is no saying where this primordial atom came from in the first place. Let’s assume that its origin does not matter for the time being. Moving on, these mutations in the original form of the atom were not all alike. There were different mutations based on the location and environment of a particular group of atoms. Mind you, all of this is still taking place in the oceans. All types of sea dwelling creatures take form. Life begins to thrive in water.

One may ask then, how did life come to land? The way the theory explains is that some of these creatures got washed to the shorelines and started dwelling there. Occasionally, some got washed to the beaches. How can creatures that thrived in water survive on land? The fact is that they can’t. But the move to land was a gradual one. Some creatures started living on the beach where the waves would periodically provide water to these poor creatures. Eventually, these creatures moved further onto land and got water with the coming of the high tide and survived without water during low tides. This is how amphibians came into being. They only need to be in water for a couple of hours.

Slowly, with the progression of time, there were more and more and more mutations of these amphibious creatures. These mutated creatures survive without water for a long time and developed lungs for breathing. Even in the oceans, genetic mutations were having its effects and many species formed eventually. Slowly but steadily, different life creatures began to thrive both on land and in water.

There are a lot of flaws one can find in this theory. Also, the fact that I read this in 7th grade adds a lot of ambiguity about the nature of any flaw. Maybe the flaw just exists in my interpretation of the theory at that time. Who knows? But, this is one story that sticks out in my memory when I think about evolution. I want to know what you guys think about this theory in particular. One of the questions that remains unanswered in my mind is, ‘How did all of this lead to intelligent life and sentient species?’

PS: I will write about all the questions I asked in the beginning of this post at some later point in the future. Please try to refrain your comments to this particular theory and evolution in general.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2003 at 7:13 pm and is filed under History, Philosophical, Recovered Entries (01/19/2005). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.