Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

At Evolution News: Natural Machinery Operates Without Intervention; But How?

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

David Coppedge’s article was originally pulished in 2015 but is even more relevant now:

Paley’s “watch on a heath” was only an analogy in 1805. Now, we can see real biological clocks of amazing design and precision in the cells of life. Current Biology talks about “unexpected biochemical cogs” in a cyanobacterium, freely using the word “clock” as well as “oscillator,” “regulator,” and “switch.” The circadian clock runs on a much slower schedule than most cellular reactions. It’s calibrated to the 24-hour day-night cycle, and keeps constant time even when the temperature changes. It would have been astonishing to Paley or Bacon to learn that a three-protein oscillating machine is found in such a tiny organism. In higher vertebrates, biological clocks are even more elaborate.

David Coppedge, “Natural Machinery Operates Without Intervention; But How?” at Evolution News (May 13, 2022)

David Coppedge offers many similar examples, noting

Those are a few recent examples of the “machine talk” pouring out of labs around the world. This is not just metaphorical language for “nature” like the Victorians used. It’s observation and description of realities the early mechanical philosophers could not have imagined. And it’s everywhere. Machine talk is driving an explosion of discovery in science.

The old mechanical philosophy is hopelessly inadequate for these realities. The reason? We know from our experience that unguided natural law does not produce machinery, factories, and quality control. Something else is required: information.

David Coppedge, “Natural Machinery Operates Without Intervention; But How?” at Evolution News (May 13, 2022)

And he has a suggestion:

Willaim Dembski’s book Being as Communion would serve as a fine discussion starter. [David] Wolpert comes so close, but is still so far from explaining what he set out to explain: why the moon differs from the earth. He talks about information flow through the system, but the moon gets exactly the same sunlight the earth does. And he never defines what information is, or where it comes from. Here is where intelligent design can offer real, substantive insight.

Information is the key to a “mechanical” philosophy for the 21st century. We know, because we have a great deal of experience producing information and imposing it on matter. We build computers. We make robots. We make clocks and trucks and factories. Indeed, we can even make machines that make other machines, and robots that increasingly look and act like us.

David Coppedge, “Natural Machinery Operates Without Intervention; But How?” at Evolution News (May 13, 2022)

You may also wish to read: Casey Luskin: ID as a fruitful approach to science The trouble is, many people would just as soon that research into evolutionary computation anatomy and physiology, and bioinformatics, however fruitful, not be done if it undermines a comfortable Darwinism.

Comments
What? What is your 300 B.C. idea based on? There is no such thing as repurposed. Any invention requires a certain level of necessity and/or obvious utility. When the Wright Brothers successfully flew a powered aircraft, the military took it up as a weapons and reconnaissance platform relatively quickly. Forget "new thinking." No such thing. Can it be used in an obvious way? Is it cheap enough versus its intended use?relatd
May 23, 2022
May
05
May
23
23
2022
09:10 AM
9
09
10
AM
PDT
A new tech can certainly enable better understanding of old problems. Example: The phonograph could have been invented by Rome in 300 BC. All the mechanical elements were available. The phonograph was just an hour away from invention in the music boxes and clocks of 1500. The entire system was right there, waiting to be slightly repurposed. But it was never even imagined until 1876, after the telegraph and telephone opened up new thinking about information.polistra
May 23, 2022
May
05
May
23
23
2022
05:28 AM
5
05
28
AM
PDT

Leave a Reply