A world without evolution.

sunandshadow · Feb 9, 2009

What are the motivations of the gods? Do they want the world to stay exactly the same as they make it, do they periodically redecorate but otherwise not want change, do they all agree about what to do with the world, or each have a territory, or send their creatures to battle opponent gods' creatures, or do they want the world to evolve and surprise them with the ways it changes while they periodically drop experimental creations into it to test them out and see how they interact with the rest of the world?

sirensix · Feb 9, 2009

sunandshadow said:
What are the motivations of the gods? Do they want the world to stay exactly the same as they make it, do they periodically redecorate but otherwise not want change, do they all agree about what to do with the world, or each have a territory, or send their creatures to battle opponent gods' creatures, or do they want the world to evolve and surprise them with the ways it changes while they periodically drop experimental creations into it to test them out and see how they interact with the rest of the world?

I'll try to answer this as well as some other questions (haven't quite figured out how to quote multiple people yet, hehe.

The gods do not want the world to stay the same. In fact, they are hoping that humans, on their own and given free choice, without nudging from the gods, will develop along a certain path and achieve a specific thing. That is the Ultimate Object of the game, at which point the world ends because they dismantle it and possibly start a whole new project.

Some aspects of the world (humans most of all) were a joint project, contributed to equally by the gods. Others are more one god's pet project or territory. There are three gods, two of which get along and the third one REALLY DOES NOT. But none are evil. However, one of them believes that one of the best ways to develop the human soul is through suffering, and so made sure the world was designed in such a way that Bad Stuff Would Occasionally Happen.

The rift among the trinity does have repercussions in the physical world. I haven't specifically delineated all of those yet, since I'm still struggling with the very basics of "can trees be blue" and stuff.

Which brings me to the chlorophyll question. What about the sun's spectrum makes green the best color? The physics of light/colors has always baffled me a bit. I'd assume that green leaves mean that they are absorbing red light? Are you saying that the sun's spectrum is mostly red? Is there any way that different areas of the world could logically (not necessarily based on earth reality, but on logic for an alternate world) tend to manifest different colors in plant life?

Regarding memories of mankind when they were first created - this gets a little complicated but the easiest answer is, no, the first men had no memory. But it's kind of moot except for the fun of discussion, because no one alive in my stories actually knows anything about the first men. People alive at any point in my tale have various legends about the past and creation, but no one knows anything for certain.

And final question I think, if I have read back thoroughly: what is the gods' purpose, are they at cross-purposes, etc. A little of both. They are looking for humanity to achieve a specific thing, but using only the tools they were given when created. So humans have to develop civilization to a certain point and begin to put their heads together and figure out the patterns in the world around them, basically. The gods all want the experiment to succeed. HOWEVER, they all have vastly different ideas about what is best for humanity, and all try to "bend" the rules in varying ways to nudge things along when they feel like their theory is about to be proven wrong. One of them is particularly prone to rule-bending, when she thinks she can get away with it, and this always causes MASSIVE uproar in both the physical and spiritual world. My first novel (the WIP in my sig) is about what happens when one god decides to bend the rules just a little. Butterfly effect ensues.

By the way, I like the appendix example. Humans in this world would not have one. That is the kind of difference I'm talking about. Everything has a purpose, because nothing is just a "leftover" from evolution from a one-celled organism.

GregB · Feb 9, 2009

Given your premise, why are you insisting on natural (i.e. physical, material) processes for everything? It seems to me you need to indulge in a little magical thinking. You need a supernatural system (or rules), not a natural one.

Example: When a human couple conceives, they each share a part of their soul to create a new one. It follows that the offspring shares certain traits of the parents, and not just physical ones--moral, magical, spiritual, etc. If your father was a bum, folks will expect you to be as well. If your mother was a witch...yeah.

Maybe animals are the same way, if this is an animistic system, or maybe they don't have souls but some other means of hereditary transmission of traits. Maybe for animals the "divine spark" is in the blood.

Anyway, the point is, you can easily describe the world in this way. Humans have been doing it for most of our history.

sirensix · Feb 9, 2009

GregB said:
Given your premise, why are you insisting on natural (i.e. physical, material) processes for everything? It seems to me you need to indulge in a little magical thinking. You need a supernatural system (or rules), not a natural one.

Example: When a human couple conceives, they each share a part of their soul to create a new one. It follows that the offspring shares certain traits of the parents, and not just physical ones--moral, magical, spiritual, etc. If your father was a bum, folks will expect you to be as well. If your mother was witch...yeah.

Maybe animals are the same way, if this is an animistic system, or maybe they don't have souls but some other means of hereditary transmission of traits. Maybe for animals the "divine spark" is in the blood.

Anyway, the point is, you can easily describe the world in this way. Humans have been doing it for most of history.

That is something I have definitely been considering, but I want to see first if I can salvage some form of DNA first, since I basically know how inheritance works in the real world, and the less I have to make up, the quicker I can get this thing written, heh heh.

Re: balance of science and magic...

This is for those like Greg who are questioning why, in a world with magic, I care about making sure there's at least some vaguely scientific explanation based on a logical set of forces (albeit incorporating forces that don't exist in the real world).

For those readers who don't like to think about this kind of stuff, I want it to just appear to be "ooh, pretty magical land!" and for them to enjoy the strangeness of it and how it differs from reality. I don't ever want to get into actually EXPLAINING how DNA works, or doesn't work, etc., because in the course of my story science is not going to advance that far (late middle ages/renaissance equiv. is about as late as I want this world to go in my tales).

But for those who DO look more deeply into it, I want it to have a profound sense of logic and order. I want people to be able to say, "Oh, it's as though the DNA does BLAH or it's as though the light spectrum is BLAH. How interesting."

Even those who don't consciously realize they're looking deeply into it, I want them to be able to subconsciously understand the rules, to "predict" how a certain area might look or a certain creature might behave, even if they have never seen it before. I want there to be a sense of "rightness" about the world as I present it, so that something out of place will seem "wrong" without my having to specify that there is a Reek of Wrongness(omt) about it.

FennelGiraffe · Feb 9, 2009

Have I got this straight? Human design was a compromise agreed to collectively, but everything else was divided up and designed separately by individual gods?

One question is where the lines were drawn for the divided up stuff. Was it by geographical region or by ecological niche or...?

Another question is where to draw the line around humans. Just humans alone, or humans plus other primates, or...?

It seems to me that different gods might have made different choices at the cellular biology level. So that once your humans develop science far enough to look at cells, they'll find that cells from different species look very different inside.

Another thing that could result from separate design is plants from an ecosystem designed one way might not be nutritious to animals from an ecosystem designed another way. By not nutritious, I mean no matter how much they ate they would look like they were starving. But the plants could also be actively toxic to foreign animals, too.

Higgins · Feb 9, 2009

sirensix said:
Which brings me to the chlorophyll question. What about the sun's spectrum makes green the best color? The physics of light/colors has always baffled me a bit. I'd assume that green leaves mean that they are absorbing red light? Are you saying that the sun's spectrum is mostly red? Is there any way that different areas of the world could logically (not necessarily based on earth reality, but on logic for an alternate world) tend to manifest different colors in plant life?

There are red and brown algea and I've seen brown algea that looked yellow. You could have symbiotic creatures of any color you wanted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_pigment

sirensix · Feb 9, 2009

Now we're getting to some great questions!

FennelGiraffe said:
Have I got this straight? Human design was a compromise agreed to collectively, but everything else was divided up and designed separately by individual gods?

One question is where the lines were drawn for the divided up stuff. Was it by geographical region or by ecological niche or...?

It's not entirely that tidy - humans were the only full compromise, but there are certain things that maybe two of them worked on together and the third made one small tweak... etc. etc. The idea of "animal" for example is the brainchild of two of the gods, but then the third one said, "Oooh, I want some animals," and so stole the idea and made her own animals. There are definite geographical areas that the gods tend to favor, though no clearly drawn lines. There are some places that maybe one god worked on for a while, then the others took over, etc. It's mushy. But there are three distinct areas in the world that are kind of the "heartland" of each god and most purely reflect that god's nature.

Another question is where to draw the line around humans. Just humans alone, or humans plus other primates, or...?

Ah, good question - there are no other primates. My rationale behind eliminating them was that if you look at it from a deterministic POV (the POV from which this world is written), the other earth primates are essentially just stepping stones to get to humanity, and therefore weren't needed in this world.

It seems to me that different gods might have made different choices at the cellular biology level. So that once your humans develop science far enough to look at cells, they'll find that cells from different species look very different inside.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, I love this idea. This is exactly the kind of thing I am going for. So this would mean just doing a bit of research/imagineering to decide what the three different biologies would be.

I already know that one god favors mammals, one god favors fish, and one favors reptiles. I also know that reptiles have different skeletal structures from mammals (reptiles have six legs, mammals four). But I love the idea of each of them having completely separate biology. Keep in mind that when I say "reptiles" and "mammals" here I'm using the closest terms to earth equivalents. Reptiles = scaly cold-blooded things that lay eggs, mammals = furry warmblooded things that give live birth. Fish = smooth or scaly things that live and breathe entirely underwater. I'm not sure, other than that, exactly how similar they will be to their "class" namesakes otherwise.

Another thing that could result from separate design is plants from an ecosystem designed one way might not be nutritious to animals from an ecosystem designed another way. By not nutritious, I mean no matter how much they ate they would look like they were starving. But the plants could also be actively toxic to foreign animals, too.

LOVE THIS. LOOOOOVE THIS. This is exactly the kind of thing that I'm looking for. You've got my brain humming now. What are the ramifications of this, if I say that reptiles, fish, and mammals have different biological processes (how different? not sure yet...), birds are kind of a weird hybrid of reptile/mammal (joint project of those two gods) and amphibians fall under the same basic rules as fish? That classification would make sense theologically, but how can I make it make sense biologically?

Lhun · Feb 9, 2009

sirensix said:
Which brings me to the chlorophyll question. What about the sun's spectrum makes green the best color? The physics of light/colors has always baffled me a bit. I'd assume that green leaves mean that they are absorbing red light? Are you saying that the sun's spectrum is mostly red? Is there any way that different areas of the world could logically (not necessarily based on earth reality, but on logic for an alternate world) tend to manifest different colors in plant life?

Well, saying it's the spectrum of the sun was maybe a bit misleading. The sun is pretty much a full-spectrum lightsource. However the athmosphere absorbs different wavelengths than, for example, water, which explains why plants in water use different molecules for photosynthesis (this also depends on the depth they live in. Surface algae are mostly green.)
Anyway, to work, photosynthesis requires very specific wavelengths, depending on the catalyzing molecule. And which kind of molecule evolves for this purpose obviously depends on the wavelengths that are available. I'm not really into chromatic chemistry (never was) so i don't know which kinds of molecules (and thus wavelengths) are possible, i might be able to check up on it, but then, if you have a something as magical as direct creation by gods, you can also use some magic with the plants. Or with all natural laws, as i mentioned before.

Izunya · Feb 9, 2009

Some random thoughts:

Domestic animals would not necessarily have any connection with wild animals. If the gods have a definite interest in human survival they might have created some creatures specifically for human use—and these creatures might not even be capable of surviving in the wild. (At the moment I'm envisioning something like a tribble only larger so that it has more meat on it. They won't run away or butt you; in fact, they're incredibly docile and helpless.)

Likewise, you might have fruit trees that naturally bear seedless fruit. According to a discussion I once had on an astronomy board, this is one of the biggest signs that something sapient—us, that is—has been messing with Earth life.

A god might choose to create a ridiculously complicated symbiotic system as a kind of show-off project.

I think you can have your different colored plants. Even if green is the most efficient color for photosynthesis, the gods don't have to design green plants that will function everywhere. Oak trees die in Nevada, palm trees die in Maine—if there's no such thing as speciation, the gods can use climate, elevation and rainfall to keep plants in their "zone." All cactuses are orange; the tundra is purple. That kind of thing.

Shadow Ferret: if you're interested in the idea of humans coming into being *poof,* all at once—there's a David Weber book, called Off Armaggedon Reef IIRC, where the humans think this has happened. In fact, there's evil plots and memory manipulation involved, but the book goes into some detail about what humanity's religious life would look like in such a situation. For instance, humanity effectively has records going back to creation, because the first generation could read and write and wrote memoirs about their interactions with "God's angels." They also have proof of their beliefs in that their purity laws are all pretty well based in science: "A wound must be cleansed with carbolic acid, so saith the Lord."

Oh, that reminds me: no germs. Unless the god who believes in suffering as a stimulus decides to create some.

I've got to say, as someone who's played around with the idea of gods in my own work, I'm very interested in this idea.

Izunya

sirensix · Feb 10, 2009

Izunya, love your thoughts! And Lhun, I will have to look into that more. Gah, why do I feel like I have to have 48 different PhDs just to write fantasy?

Izunya said:
Oh, that reminds me: no germs. Unless the god who believes in suffering as a stimulus decides to create some.

This is what I'm thinking - that that particular god most certainly would be the type to invent disease. In fact, the whole idea of natural selection sounds like something this deity would invent. Tough divine love. So I think there will definitely be natural selection in this world - the only difference will be that we won't start with one-celled organisms but will start with fully-formed interlocking ecosystems of multicelled stuff.

But I still obviously don't know enough about DNA to understand why DNA couldn't exist as-is in this type of world. People lost me when they started talking about RNA, mitochondria, and why there couldn't be viruses or bacteria. I haven't heard most of these terms in over a decade (I'm looooong out of college), so until I know more about what's being tossed back and forth re: DNA I can't firmly decide on certain aspects of my world and whether I want DNA or some virtually-DNA magical replacement.

FennelGiraffe · Feb 10, 2009

sirensix said:
LOVE THIS. LOOOOOVE THIS. This is exactly the kind of thing that I'm looking for. You've got my brain humming now. What are the ramifications of this, if I say that reptiles, fish, and mammals have different biological processes (how different? not sure yet...),

One possibility could be that one of the gods designed a system of three sexes. There are a variety of ways for that to work. The simplest to think about is one egg-producer with two different kinds of sperm-producers, where both kinds of sperm are needed to fertilize the egg. They would have triple-stranded DNA (actually, a different molecule similar to DNA.)

Based on the details below, if I was going to use that, I'd make fish and amphibians three-sexed and leave reptiles, mammals, and birds two-sexed.

ETA: Or you could make some one-sexed. It would still require joining of genetic material from two individuals, so still double-stranded DNA, but with no distinction between egg and sperm. Any two individuals could reproduce together.

sirensix said:
birds are kind of a weird hybrid of reptile/mammal (joint project of those two gods) and amphibians fall under the same basic rules as fish? That classification would make sense theologically, but how can I make it make sense biologically?

If birds were a joint project between the reptile god and the mammal god, they will have had to make some compromises. I think you can decide pretty much whatever you want the compromises to be. Especially since I doubt you'll be going into any kind of detail about their biochemistry.

You could assume birds can thrive on foods from either the reptile ecosystem or the mammal ecosystem. Or you could assume birds need both kinds of food in their diet. Or you could assume there are certain foods that both mammals and reptiles eat, and those are the only foods birds can eat.

If amphibians were designed by the fish god, it's fine to assume they have the same basic biology as fish. I don't see any problem there.

What about insects? In the real world, there are many different insects filling many different ecological niches, but there are a couple you might want to think about. One is pollination. This may or may not matter, depending on what assumptions you make about how the plants work.

The really important one, though, is waste disposal. Many species of insects play a part in breaking down dead things. Without them we'd be knee-deep in rotting corpses (also leaves and wood).

Higgins · Feb 10, 2009

sirensix said:
Izunya, love your thoughts! And Lhun, I will have to look into that more. Gah, why do I feel like I have to have 48 different PhDs just to write fantasy?

This is what I'm thinking - that that particular god most certainly would be the type to invent disease. In fact, the whole idea of natural selection sounds like something this deity would invent. Tough divine love. So I think there will definitely be natural selection in this world - the only difference will be that we won't start with one-celled organisms but will start with fully-formed interlocking ecosystems of multicelled stuff.

But I still obviously don't know enough about DNA to understand why DNA couldn't exist as-is in this type of world. People lost me when they started talking about RNA, mitochondria, and why there couldn't be viruses or bacteria. I haven't heard most of these terms in over a decade (I'm looooong out of college), so until I know more about what's being tossed back and forth re: DNA I can't firmly decide on certain aspects of my world and whether I want DNA or some virtually-DNA magical replacement.

Bacteria and mitochondria and so on are things you can't have if you want to stop evolution. You're going to have to have them in the world if you want it to function even vaguely like this one. If it takes one god to make mammals it will take about 900 to design the bacteria since their metabolisms are far more varied than what you find in the metazoa.

Liosse de Velishaf · Feb 10, 2009

sirensix said:
But I still obviously don't know enough about DNA to understand why DNA couldn't exist as-is in this type of world. People lost me when they started talking about RNA, mitochondria, and why there couldn't be viruses or bacteria. I haven't heard most of these terms in over a decade (I'm looooong out of college), so until I know more about what's being tossed back and forth re: DNA I can't firmly decide on certain aspects of my world and whether I want DNA or some virtually-DNA magical replacement.

I'll start off with what I assume you know, and try to move on to the issues at hand.

DNA is what controls traits in an organism. It does this through a process which converts the info in DNA into the actual proteins that make up the organism. DNA replication is imperfect. Mistakes happen. If these mistakes occur in the DNA used for reproduction, they get passed on to the offspring. If the offspring surive, then this "mutant" trait is carried on by all the descendants. Many of these traits are not relevant to survival. Some are inimical, and some are beneficial. If the trait is inimical, the organisms that have it tend to die off pretty quickly, and the mutation disappears. If it is beneficial, then it will start to become more and more common. Once enough of these common beneficial traits build up in a species, you have evolution. You get a new species. (Simplified version.) With DNA, this is impossible to avoid. If there is any variation at all, even created by the gods, it will tend to become more and more pronounced. What works in one area won't in another, and so distributions within the population will change. Eventually, this may lead to the creation of a new species.

In a world with no genetic drift, no mutations, no changes, a system like DNA would not work. Either things change, and so you have evolution, or there is no change, which means a changing molecule like DNA will not meet your needs.

Viruses are basically DNA fragments in a protein coating. They function by forcing a cell to reproduce them by inserting new genes into the DNA. This changes the DNA.

Mitochondria are an organelle in the cell plasma that helps us to convert food into energy. Cellular respiration requires mitochondria, because otherwise, we would have anaerobic respiration, which is not nearly as efficient in the production of the energy molecule ATP. Mitochondria are believed to have evolved from endosymbiotic prokaryote cells. Mitochondria were not origanlly part of our cells, and so they would not exist in a world with the bacteria from which they evolved.

Layla Nahar · Feb 10, 2009

Aren't there computer simulation where they give a program a set of commandments and directives, an model the ability to reproduce, maybe the ability to elimate each other, etc etc and then they just let the programs run to see what happens (I wish I could give an example, or a better explanation - dunno if you get what i'm talking about). After the experiment is over, they work out some bugs and run it again. Do your gods have to tweak the designs at all?

sirensix · Feb 10, 2009

Higgins said:
Bacteria and mitochondria and so on are things you can't have if you want to stop evolution. You're going to have to have them in the world if you want it to function even vaguely like this one. If it takes one god to make mammals it will take about 900 to design the bacteria since their metabolisms are far more varied than what you find in the metazoa.

Actually I think bacteria will make a lovely project for the very same deity who would take delight in human suffering. This particular deity has an unfathomably Byzantine mind, and is in fact the embodiment of the very concept of intellect, and therefore from what you describe would be the only one smart enough to design bacteria!

sirensix · Feb 10, 2009

Thanks for the DNA 101! Some questions...

Liosse de Velishaf said:
DNA replication is imperfect. Mistakes happen.

What if they didn't? What if the world started with a variety of different organisms, but their replication was always perfect? You'd still have evolution, right? Just perhaps more limited/slower based on a redistribution of the most beneficial preexisting genes?

Viruses are basically DNA fragments in a protein coating. They function by forcing a cell to reproduce them by inserting new genes into the DNA. This changes the DNA.

Could this be something created by a god with a love of chaos? "Hey," says the deity, "let's come up with something that will occasionally mess with the very fabric of life without my having to do it directly." Perhaps the god responsible for law & order comes up with the whole idea of DNA - unchangable "rules" by which life is built - and then the other god says, "haha, I can mess it up and cause chaos by using your very own rules."

Mitochondria were not origanlly part of our cells, and so they would not exist in a world without the bacteria from which they evolved.

What if, in this case, it's the reverse? What if the law & order god says, "Hm, we need this kind of dealie in the cells of our animals if they're going to produce enough energy," and then the chaos god says, "oooh, watch me reverse-engineer that into a thing that can cause mayhem both good (decaying dead things) and bad (killing live things).

I am getting kind of turned on by this whole conversation!

Higgins · Feb 11, 2009

sirensix said:
Actually I think bacteria will make a lovely project for the very same deity who would take delight in human suffering. This particular deity has an unfathomably Byzantine mind, and is in fact the embodiment of the very concept of intellect, and therefore from what you describe would be the only one smart enough to design bacteria!

Bacteria still make the chemical world go round so its not really about suffering at all.

sirensix · Feb 11, 2009

Higgins said:
Bacteria still make the chemical world go round so its not really about suffering at all.

No, but that would be an elegant (as this deity would see it) side effect.

A world without evolution.

sunandshadow

Impractical Fantasy Animal

sirensix

Mediocre Sorceress

GregB

practical experience, FTW

sirensix

Mediocre Sorceress

FennelGiraffe

It's green they say

Higgins

sirensix

Mediocre Sorceress

Lhun

New kid, be gentle!

Izunya

sirensix

Mediocre Sorceress

FennelGiraffe

It's green they say

Higgins

Liosse de Velishaf

Layla Nahar

Seashell Seller

sirensix

Mediocre Sorceress

sirensix

Mediocre Sorceress

Higgins

sirensix

Mediocre Sorceress