“Just a Theory”: 7 Misused Science Words
Article Excerpt: Hypothesis. Theory. Law. These scientific words get bandied about regularly, yet the general public usually gets their meaning wrong.
Now, one scientist is arguing that people should do away with these misunderstood words altogether and replace them with the word “model.”
My comment: I’ve already replaced these misunderstood words with a “model.”
Nutrient-dependent/pheromone-controlled adaptive evolution: a model
Conclusion [from my model]: An environmental drive evolved from that of nutrient ingestion in unicellular organisms to that of pheromone-controlled socialization in insects. In mammals, food odors and pheromones cause changes in hormones such as LH, which has developmental affects on pheromone-controlled sexual behavior in nutrientdependent reproductively fit individuals across species of vertebrates.
Comment from the article linked above: Genes may influence human beings, but so, too, do epigenetic changes. These modifications alter which genes get turned on, and are both heritable and easily influenced by the environment. The environment that shapes human behavior can be anything from the chemicals a fetus is exposed to in the womb to the block a person grew up on to the type of food they ate as a child, Kruger said. All these factors interact in a messy, unpredictable way.
My comment: In my model of adaptive evolution, the environment interacts with genes in a very predictable way. The epigenetic ‘landscape’ becomes the physical landscape of genes (i.e., DNA) via the epigenetic effects of olfactory/pheromonal input (i.e., food odors and pheromones). Thus, Kruger misses an important fact in the context of my model. “[C]hemicals a fetus is exposed to in the womb…” and the metabolism of food to species-specific pheromones during development predictably result in the de novo creation of olfactory receptor genes. The de novo creation of olfactory receptor genes links the ecological environment to the social environment during predictable development of nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled behaviors in every species on this planet. See for example, this graphic representation of my model, presented earlier this month at a conference that Daniel Kruger helped to organize.
