Irreducible Complexity

Denyse recently linked to a presentation by Scott Minnich regarding the bacterial flagellum.  Minnich is probably among the dozen or so leading experts in the world on the bacterial flagellum.  Much of the information in his presentation will be familiar to followers of the issues, but a few points bear further examination. First a couple of bench-science items that jumped out at me: Minnich and his team discovered that DNA has a regulatory function in the form of a temperature switch.  Let me be clear, it is not that DNA codes for some molecular machine that is a temperature switch.  The DNA itself is the switch.  In simple terms, the coding portion that codes for a particular protein is bounded Read More ›

In the latest post at Design Disquisitions I focus on the excellent work on ID by British philosopher Peter S. Williams. He has published several papers, and has many high quality articles and media presentations on the subject. His work was instrumental in initiating my change of mind from theistic neo-Darwinism to design. Highly recommended stuff! Peter S. Williams on Intelligent Design  

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From ScienceDaily: How nature engineered the original rotary motor The bacterial flagellum is one of nature’s smallest motors, rotating at up to 60,000 revolutions per minute. To function properly and propel the bacterium, the flagellum requires all of its components to fit together to exacting measurements. In a study published in Science, University of Utah researchers report the eludication of a mechanism that regulates the length of the flagellum’s 25 nanometer driveshaft-like rod and answers a long-standing question about how cells are held together. While the biomechanical controls that determine the dimensions of other flagellar components have already been determined, the control of the length of the rod, a rigid shaft that transfers torque from the flagellar motor in the Read More ›

From a review by Jonathan Rosen of two books about owls at the Wall Street Journal: As both books detail, the anthropomorphic effect of the facial disc [of the owl] is an accident of evolution that has sculpted owl faces into satellite dishes that direct sound waves to their ears. (paywall) Our philosopher friend Laszlo Bencze writes to say, Let’s see: accidents have sculpted. Really? Somehow I thought that sculpting—as opposed to eroding—require a sculptor. Furthermore the result of the accidents is “satellite dishes that direct sound waves to their ears.” My my. None of the accidents in my life have ever resulted in anything half so marvelous. I just get smashed bumpers and broken crockery. Just once I’d like Read More ›

. . . here (at 194) in his amazing engineering thread as he responds to Dionisio: >>Dionisio: Thank you for summarizing that interesting discussion. I will summarize it even more. 1) Nobody knows how morphogenesis is controlled and guided. 2) Moran is no exception to that. 3) “Experts” are no exception to that. 4) However, according to Moran (and, unfortunately, he is probably quite right): “experts do not see a need to encode body plans and brain in our genome” 5) You and I, and probably some more sensible people, do see that need. 6) So, it seems, the problem is not about what we know, but about what we see as a need. Now, I notice that Moran says: Read More ›

Part two of my series looking at Jeffrey Koperski’s paper ‘Two Bad Ways to Attack Intelligent Design and Two Good Ones’ is now up on my blog. This one is quite in depth, but a couple of interesting issues come up along the way. I examine the concept of soft and hard anomalies in scientific theories and how they might affect theory change. I then look at the claim that ID’s scientific core is too meagre to be considered serious science. The final objection I analyse is the claim that ID violates a metatheoretic shaping principle known as scientific conservatism. In part one of this series looking at Jeffrey Koperski’s paper, Two Bad Ways to Attack Intelligent Design and Two Read More ›

This week’s post at Design Disquisitions is the first in a series of articles entitled ‘Critic’s Corner’ where I focus on a critic of ID. The main purpose of these posts is to document their work relevant to ID and also to document the direct responses to the particular critic in question, by those sympathetic to ID. These posts will be a useful resource for anyone wanting to find responses to a particular ID critic. This first one is on the work of Kenneth Miller (no stranger to anyone involved in this debate of course). If there are any articles I have missed, do let me know and I shall add it to the page.

Obviously, for all to see. A sentence appears in a paywalled article in a peer-reviewed publication (Journal of Molecular Evolution): Since the subject of cellular emergence of life is unusually complicated (we avoid the term ‘complex’ because of its association with ‘biocomplexity’ or ‘irreducible complexity’), it is unlikely that any overall theory of life’s nature, emergence, and evolution can be fully formulated, quantified, and experimentally investigated. But that is not a justified change in terminology and certainly not an improvement. “Complicated” is usually a pejorative term, that is, a term that means something negative. Compare: “The new system is more complicated” [= messy, time-wasting, not ergonomic, typical product of a committee, etc.… ] vs. “The new system is more complex” Read More ›

Commentator Metaxas’s Breakpoint commentary discusses ID theorist and biochemist Michael Behe’s 1996 book, Darwin’s Black Box, and the new DI video, Revolutionary, here: To make Behe’s meticulous arguments more accessible to the public, the folks at the Discovery Institute have just produced a documentary summarizing “Darwin’s Black Box.” It’s called “Revolutionary,” a tribute to the fact that Behe’s book forever changed the way we think about evolution. It also documents how, as David Klinghoffer writes at Evolution News and Views, “Black Box” sparked a public debate that rages to this day. Why is it so critical to understand this stuff? Well, as Ben Stein documented in his 2008 film, “Expelled,” it’s not scientific reasoning that’s keeping intelligent design on the fringe. Read More ›

Okay, dead leaves: See also: A moth’s wings feature two flies picking at a pile of bird dropping. It should be harder to be a Darwinist than our culture makes it. Follow UD News at Twitter!

From ScienceDaily: A team of Japanese researchers led by Homma’s laboratory of Nagoya University have now purified the stator protein MotA from a bacterium found in hot springs (Aquifex aeolicus) and analyzed its three-dimensional structure using electron microscopy mainly in cooperation with Namba’s laboratory of Osaka University. They found that it can form a structure of four MotA molecules (called a tetramer), which differs in shape from the previously predicted complex. The study was recently published in Scientific Reports. The MotA protein spans the bacterial membrane, and has previously been shown to form a tetramer complex with another transmembrane protein, MotB, creating the stator. In this latest work, MotA was expressed and purified from A. aeolicus, and found to be Read More ›

Biochemist Dr. Michael Behe speaks to the Apologetics Academy about the biochemical evidence for design. Behe is author of Darwin’s Black Box and Edge of Evolution Follow UD News at Twitter!

For the delight of programmers here at UD, I include this post. Over at the “Reference Frame,” a blog by Lubos Motl, string theorist, and physicist extraordinaire, he has this post on a new game for “gamers” calledQuantum Moves. I don’t have time for any in-depth comment; however, for the programmers among us, here is a titillating quote from Motl’s blog: In the paper, the authors remarkably demonstrated that using their intuition and heuristic approaches, the human players were able to find solutions to tasks in which the well-known classical optimization algorithms don’t work well – but the quantum computers would. The well-known classical optimization algorithms fail especially near the “quantum speed limit”, when the shortest process duration is combined Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: By looking at distantly related bacteria from different branches of the evolutionary tree, the team speculate that the ability to alter torque in this way may have evolved up to two billion years ago. “Entire branches of the bacterial family tree have evolved motors with different torques, leading to a diversity of species each geared to their own environment,” said Dr Beeby. The team is now investigating how and when the evolutionary steps that altered motor torque happened. More. Evolved two billion years ago? That’s not a lot of time for Darwinian evolution, even if a wheel could be achieved that way, given enough monkeys, enough typewriters. See also: You’ll never guess why biological wheels are not irreducibly Read More ›