Senapathy's request to remove humans from the primordial pond

Senapathy's Primordial Pond
with worm, crab, frog, turtle, butterfly, fern.
All with 'tails' of a DNA double helix.
(image on the front cover of the book)

On 29th December 2002, I published a review of Periannan Senapathy's book "Independent Birth of Organisms. A New Theory That Distinct Organisms Arose Independently From The Primordial Pond Showing That Evolutionary Theories Are Fundamentally Incorrect" (1994). That is the full title of the book. 

On 6th September 2021, I received the following email from Periannan Senapathy:

---

Dear Gert,

For business reasons, I had to search for my name on Google today. When I did, I observed that your website was the third to be displayed on the results page, and the caption under the website title stated the following,

"Independent researcher Periannan Senapathy came up with an extraordinary solution: the independent origin of all organisms, including humans."

As you know, life in the animal kingdom is classified into the successive ranks of Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. The core prediction of my theory is that fundamentally distinct organisms with unique body plans originated independently. By fundamentally distinct, I refer to the organisms that biologists had to separate into the highest-level taxa such as phylum and class. Humans are not classified in a high-level taxon, but the lowest rank of a species.

    For the reason outlined above, I would appreciate it if you could remove the statement "including humans" at the end of your description. It is a very prominent statement, which diminishes the core principle of my theory. What I had intended to stress in my book was that any fundamentally unique body plan, from the 'simplest' invertebrate to the most 'complex' vertebrate, must have originated independently. Nevertheless, organismal evolution would have worked on these body plans over millions of years, giving rise to numerous low-level taxa such as families, genera, and species, including humans. I hope this clarifies my view.

Best regards,

Sena

---

 

Removing "including humans"? This is human exceptionalism [5]. If you remove humans, logically, the meaning of the statement becomes:

"... the independent origin of all organisms, excluding humans."

That means humans did not originate from his Primordial Pond! So, how did humans originate? 

In his theory there are only two ways humans (or any organism) could originate: 

1. by the spontaneous origin in the Primordial Pond by random DNA assembly
2. by mutation and natural selection from 'simpler' predecessors
   

So, if not (1) , then (2) must be true. They must have evolved by mutation and natural selection from a more 'primitive' ancestor (Mammal, Primate, Ape?). He did not tell us. But, that is evolution and that contradicts his own theory, as the full title of his book shows: Showing That Evolutionary Theories Are Fundamentally Incorrect. If evolutionary theories are fundamentally incorrect, he cannot use them in his theory. Furthermore, according to Senapathy genomes are essentially immutable, so evolution is impossible.

The first option, humans arose in  the Primordial Pond, is in fact prescribed by his own theory. Humans are eukaryotes. All plants and animals are eukaryotes. Eukaryotes are organisms with split genes. Split genes are genes with introns. Introns are random pieces of DNA that are removed before a protein is synthesized. According to his theory, eukaryotic genomes arose from the primordial pond by random DNA assembly. How could he prevent that humans (eukaryotes) were born in the primordial pond? [6].

Here is a quote from Senapthy (2008) about humans: 

"It is remarkable that all the characteristics of random DNA are still essentially present in the split genes of present day intron-dense large genomes such as those in the human." [3]

The following quote:

"In my opinion, without this fundamental finding about the genes which are central to life, it would be impossible to show that multicellular animals and plants could have directly originated in the primordial pond. " [4]

he claims that multicellular organisms without any restriction have directly originated in the primordial pond.

According to Senapathy's computer simulations, any eukaryotic gene can be found in random DNA sequences if those random sequences are sufficiently large. So, any eukaryotic genome can originate in the Primordial Pond. So, any eukaryotic organism can originate in the Primordial Pond.

As a consequence, the genomes of any eukaryote, including humans, can originate in the Primordial Pond. Making an exception for humans and not for chimpanzees? Why? Humans are eukaryotes just like the worm, crab, frog, turtle, butterfly, and fern in the cover illustration of his book. Note: this is according to his own theory. This is what he states in his book:

"it is clear that all organisms were born independently, and were — and are — also immutable. This is the secret of life, and of its origin and history." page 373. [2]

Furthermore, Senapathy writes about mammals:

"When we consider the case of the independent birth of mammals, it is reasonable to think that a conglomeration of a large number of cells and biochemicals in the primordial pond could have formed an environment akin to that of the placenta and uterus of mammals. There, a seed cell can differentiate into an embryo and a full-grown offspring". (Senapathy, p.309 chapter 8) [7]

So, if this is true for mammals, it is true for humans because humans are mammals.

In my review, I formulated a thousand objections. But this is what his own theory predicts.

That is the reason, removing 'including humans' would violate his own theory as published in 1994. My review is about that book. Therefore, I did not remove them. So far.

So, I am waiting for a good reason to remove those two words. 

I invited Senapathy to continue the discussion on this blog.

Notes

1. The review can be found on my Was Darwin Wrong? website: What's Wrong with Independent Birth of Organisms? (first published 29 Dec 2002)
2. added: 4 Jul 2022
3. added: 14 Jun 2023
4. added: 3 Jul 2023
5. added 23 Oct 2023. Human exceptionalism is the paradigm that humans are profoundly different from all other organisms. The question arises: did the closest relatives, the Chimpanzee, Bonobo, Orangutan arose directly from the Primordial Pond?
6. These two sentences added for clarification  23 Oct 2024
7. Quote added   25 Oct 2024
   

Previous blog about Senapthy

• Senapathy publiceert in Nature Precedings, 7 Jan 2011