Research led by the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the University of Washington has shown that the biological diversity needed for evolution can be generated by changes in protein modifications. The findings, published in Science, provide valuable insights into how different species adapt to different environments and could shed light on how pathogens evolve and become resistant to drugs.

“This study is about understanding how evolution works, which tells you how species adapt to changing environments over many generations,” says Pedro Beltrao, a research group leader at EMBL-EBI. “For example, when you compare humans and chimps, they are obviously different, even though a good part of their genetic makeup is more or less the same. Our task is to figure out how diversity is generated, so that we can see in detail how life evolves. That helps us understand how plants and animals adapt and change, and how cancers or bacteria find their way around drugs”. (1)

Interesting.

And revealing.

A scientific research trying to find out how a specific (theoretical) mechanism works. Typical stuff in science, right? Right. But few truly understand the implications and the meaning of such a simple research.

Notice that subtle but crucial detail?

Notice how we “know” that evolution works and we are now trying to find HOW it works? But… if we do not know how it works how do we know that it works in the first place?

Science is all about stating the axioms and then building the theories on them. Today’s science is much more arrogant: Today we start by stating the truthiness of the theories themselves and then we work on these theories to build the “little details”, like for example… “how it works”.

A philosophical tsunami is what we need. Because it is not that we have the cup full, so that we cannot fill it with anything else. It is that we have broken all other cups as well.

Break that last cup you hold and go up the mountains.

You must start gathering tea leafs again.

But there are no leafs.

You have to believe in them…