Man: the fast-breeding fruit fly

At Francis Bacon Institute researchers now interrogate the whole human DNA sequence with riot batons and hard science guess work

https://substack.com/home/post/p-153829023?source=queue

(The ancient-DNA era for the human species is not yet 15 years old. It kicked off with the 2010 paper Paleo-Eskimo genome (followed by blockbusters on Neanderthals and Denisovans). Today, remains from tens of thousands of ancient humans offer us decipherable DNA information, each contributing to fill in gaps in our understanding of prehistory.)

Genomics and ancient DNA are now finally allowing scientists to study humans like they would the fast-breeding fruit fly. Freed of the need for controlled breeding, laboratory experiments, fast generation time, or even patience, researchers now interrogate the whole human DNA sequence, comparing all three billion pairs across thousands of individuals. Novel statistical methods are being developed to meet the possibilities presented by the massive emerging surfeit of data, as researchers look for deviations and broader patterns, and try to smoke out the role of selection within the genome. To understand natural selection in the genome means tracing out new mutations’ arc of variation. Fruit fly generations are 10 days, offering the vantage of some 70 generations in the space of a 2-year research project. Going back to the advent of fruit fly research meanwhile would offer 4,234 generations. In human terms that’s like 1,800 years and 105,000 years respectively. With ancient DNA we can now examine selection in our species by reviewing the natural experiments of our past. It’s true, we don’t have controlled laboratory experiments, but we do have a species that has expanded across six continents, innovating and adopting countless different lifestyles along the way. And little by little, we accumulate more and more ancient samples of that species’ tell-all DNA.

Berdyaev—Man, transformed into the tool of an impersonal actualised process within time, is already no longer a man. The social collective might think it so, but not the person. In the person there is always something independent of the flood of time and of the social process. The smothering of contemplation is the smothering of an enormous part of culture, with which is connected its summit and blossoming -- mysticism, metaphysics, aesthetics. A purely at work actualist civilisation transforms science and art into a mere accommodation of the productive technical process. We see this in the intent of Communistic Soviet culture. This is a deep crisis of culture. The future of man, the future of culture depends on this, whether man should still want for a moment to be free, to consider and think about his life, to turn his gaze towards the heavens. True, the idea of labour and a labouring society is a great and fully Christian idea. The aristocratic contemplation by a privileged cultural class, freed of participating in the labour process, frequently became a false contemplation, and in such a form it has scarcely any place in the future. But every working man also, every man has a moment of contemplation, immersed within himself, of prayer and praise of God, of the beholding of beauty, of an unselfish appreciation of the world.

We walked on the river bank in a cold wind, under a grey sky. We both agreed that life seen without illusion is a ghastly affair.”

~Virginia Woolf