A friend draws our attention to this piece by Brian Miller at Evolution News & Views:
Intelligent Design and the Advancement of Science
DNA was expected to be the primary source of causality behind the operation and development of life. Such beliefs have previously raised concerns from leading scientists and mathematicians. For instance, physicist Walter Elsasser argued that the unfathomable complexity of the chemical and physically processes in life was “transcomputational” — beyond the realm of any theoretical means of computation. Moreover, the development of the embryo is not solely directed by DNA. Instead, it requires new “biotonic” principles. As a result, life cannot be reduced to chemistry and physics. An unbridgeable gap separates life from non-life.
Similarly, mathematician René Thom argued that the 3D patterns of tissues in an organism’s development from egg to birth and their continuous transformation cannot be understood in terms of isolating the individual proteins generated by DNA and other molecules produced in cells. The problem is that the individual “parts” composing tissues and organs only take on the right form and function in the environment of those tissues and organs. More recent work by Denis Noble further has elucidated how every level of the biological hierarchy affects every other level, from DNA to tissues to the entire organism. Based partly on these insights, Thom concluded in his book Structural Stability and Morphogenesis that the process of development should be thought of as being controlled by an “algebraic structure outside space-time itself” (p. 119). Likewise, Robert Rosen argued that life can only be understood as a mathematical abstraction consisting of functional relationships, irreducible to mechanistic processes. He observed that life is fundamentally different from simple physics and chemistry. It embodies the Aristotelian category of final causation, which is closely related to the idea of purpose. The conclusions of these scholars challenge materialistic philosophy at its core. More.
Right. It’s all ridiculous now, including the Darwin-in-the-schools lobby’s frantic claims about imminent theocracy in front of textbook hearings and the current all-supply/no-demand market for splintered lecterns.
But how do we move forward?
See also: Stake in heart of school Darwinism lesson: Bilaterian nerve cords probably evolved many times. Convergence means that, instead of starting out from the fabled Common Ancestor, life forms or parts thereof arrived at the same destinations from multiple origins. That could support either design or structuralism (an underlying pattern, based on physics and chemistry, governs evolution) — but not Darwinism, the only form of evolution known to pop science, according to which, it is all random.
Synthetic chemist James Tour wonders why “everyone is lying” about the origin of life. He doesn’t literally mean that “everyone is lying” but rather that the problem is so much bigger and deeper than it is often portrayed that typical science media claims are not reliable.
and
New butterfly has 46 chromosomes, like a human, not the expected 68, like a close relative. Remember this when we are told that it is “anti-science” to doubt whatever the current bumf is around Darwinian evolution.
Darwinism is toast. Great headline.
Heading should have been “Darwinism is extinct” 🙂 Guess Darwinism was not fit enough to be naturally selected, and ID is fitter.
“…the development of the embryo is not solely directed by DNA. Instead, it requires new “biotonic” principles.”
does this somehow relate to gpuccio’s “procedures”?
BTW, i’m patiently waiting for gpuccio’s next OP.
“what will replace it?”
Maybe the third way?
🙂
huh?
Hmm…
duh!
have we heard this before?
huh?
Hmm…
duh!
did it take them this long to see that?
oh, really?
are you sure about that?
🙂
Did somebody say “the whole is more than the sum of the parts”?
“Moreover, the development of the embryo is not solely directed by DNA. Instead, it requires new “biotonic” principles. As a result, life cannot be reduced to chemistry and physics. An unbridgeable gap separates life from non-life.”
No ya think they might finally admit that what they’ve ignored is encoded Design Information? Or must must “Intelligent Design” be relabeled “Intelligent Biotonics”?
Recent books showing they’re struggling to find an explanation to the unexplainable except through design
https://www.amazon.com/Matter-Life-Information-Causality/dp/1107150531/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1513377249&sr=8-3&keywords=sara+walker
https://www.amazon.com/Dance-Tune-Life-Biological-Relativity/dp/1107176247/ref=pd_sim_14_5?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=6AMYW4GQJHQC6ENAECP0
“Let’s be sincere: we have really no idea of how the complex levels of regulatory proteins, regulatory RNAs, regulatory epigenetic layers, and so on, are related, controlled and guided. Where are the basic decisions initiated.” – gpuccio
@15 in this thread:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/are-there-really-22-genes-associated-with-intelligence/#comment-638891
What will replace it? Why IDvolution of course….:)
IDvolution – God “breathed” the super language of DNA into the “kinds” in the creative act.
This accounts for the diversity of life we see. The core makeup shared by all living things have the necessary complex information built in that facilitates rapid and responsive adaptation of features and variation while being able to preserve the “kind” that they began as. Life has been created with the creativity built in ready to respond to triggering events.
Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on Earth have the same core, it is virtually certain that living organisms have been thought of AT ONCE by the One and the same Creator endowed with the super language we know as DNA that switched on the formation of the various kinds, the cattle, the swimming creatures, the flying creatures, etc.. in a pristine harmonious state and superb adaptability and responsiveness to their environment for the purpose of populating the earth that became subject to the ravages of corruption by the sin of one man (deleterious mutations).
Darwinism has been toast for over 75 years.
buffalo @12:
I think the headline question refers to a replacement within the materialistic context.
Your option does not qualify.
The most visible candidate for replacement is the third way.
However, they still have to figure out what their main postulate is about.
Eventually it might be the 4th way, then the 5th, 6th, 7th, and so on.
Until the end of this age of grace, when Christ will come back. Then every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that He is Lord.
But by then it’ll be too late for those who didn’t accept Him now.
That may happen anytime. No one knows the time.
For something to replace Darwinism, it would need to not only explain everything that Darwinism does, just as well, but explain some crucial difference between some critical test between Darwinism and that theory.
No such theory has been proposed. Nor can a critical test can exist between a non-existent theory and Neo-Darwinism.
For example, organisms appear in the order of least to most complex.
ID’s designer is abstract and has no defined limitation. This includes no limitation as to what it knew, when it knew it, etc. So, nothing prevent it from creating organisms in any order, such as most complex to least complex or even all at once. At best, one could stay organisms appear in that order because “that’s just what the designer must have wanted”
On the other hand, Neo-Darwnism does explain this order in that the knowledge necessary to construct them genuinely did not previously exist. Nature cannot build organisms until the necessary knowledge to construct them was genuinely created via variation and selection.
Nor will ID be updated to account for this limitation. Why? Everyone knows the designer is actually God.
To Whom This May Concern
Apparently this was written by materialist scientists, not ID proponents:
http://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/
Emphasis added.
English is not my first language and my reading comprehension is rather poor, but the above quoted text tells me that there are three ways to explain the given subject:
Way 1: Divine creation. Unacceptable.
Way 2: Neo-Darwinian theory.
Way 3: The third way.
If someone disagrees, discuss it with the authors of that text.
I disagree, but don’t have anything to discuss about it. I believe the first way is the only way, which in the first century of this age of grace was known as The Way.
@16 correction
There are two known ways and the authors propose a third one.
No known theories -whatever their names- can seriously, coherently and comprehensively explain the appearance of a single bacteria cell or a eukaryotic multicellular system, for example.
Other opinions are gossiping chat for pop tabloids.
I would agree. Under the current conception of physics, an explanation is very awkward and difficult to express.
But an exact explanation is possible using a new mode of explanation: constructor theory.
Dionoso:
Thank you for that quote and link.
What I find most interesting is how our Darwinist friends have begun to recognize the deep trouble that they are in when all of the latest findings and research contradict Neo-Darwinism and Neo-Darwinistic mechanisms.
Let’s examine this statement a little closer.
In paragraph one.
He is only interested in biological diversity. Nice sidestep from the problem of OOL and the origin of information. That’s okay, I’ll be happy to talk about biological diversity.
In paragraph two.
He does what all the Neo-Darwinists do and lump ID into Creationism. This is unfair, as while there is significant overlap between ID and Creationism there is not identity. This is used as a rhetorical cudgel to avoid dealing with the significant scientific arguments of ID.
In paragraph three.
I agree. Neo-Darwinism does invoke a set of unsupported assumptions about the accidental nature of hereditary variation. It’s all random, that is until it isn’t. Then the mutations look designed. They want it both ways.
This needs a slight corrective to be true. Replace “rapid evolutionary processes” with “rapid adaptive processes” and you have a true picture of the world around us. Organisms are designed to adapt, not evolve. This results in occasional new species or occasionally a new genus but no new Families of organisms. This is exactly what the fossil record demonstrates. Sudden appearance at about the Family level, followed by stasis and then disappearance or in some cases persistence to the present. The tree of life should be replaced by the brush of life.
Ever notice when you see a tree of life that there are organisms out at the tips but none at the nodes? That’s because there are no nodes. The brush enters the ground at about the family level.
Exactly right.
If you begin to see the need to explore the world of biologic diversity through the lens of adaption with limits it begins to make sense. But then that lets a designer get a foot in the door. Can’t have that.
CR@18
Constructor theory assumes information.
Now where would non-material information come from?
Constructor theory is a self referential mess.
Actually, it doen’t. Constructor theory allows an exact definition of information, it that it is permitted due to specific transformations being possible. Digital information must be possible. It doesn’t consider information an a priori concept. The constructor theory of information brings information into fundamental physics.
Nor does constructor theory represent the current conception of physics. It’s not about initial conditions and laws of motion. It’s a new mode of explantion.
Some designer that “just was”, complete with the knowledge of just the right genes that would result in just the right proteins that would result in just the right features, already present, does not serve an explantory purpose. That is because one could more efficiently state that organisms “just appeared”, complete with the knowledge of just the right genes that would result in just the right proteins that would result in just the right features, already present.
(And no, the latter isn’t the constructor theory of life or new-Darwinism.)
@21
Nice try, but wrong. Try again.
No known theories -old or new, whatever their names- can seriously, coherently and comprehensively explain the appearance of a single bacteria cell or a biological multicellular system, for example.
Other opinions are gossiping chat suitable for pop tabloids.
CR@21
Heh! You joker.
A whole thread where you harp on constructor theory.
Information constantly mentioned.
https://uncommondescent.com/origin-of-life/upright-bipeds-summary-on-information-systems-in-cell-based-life/
Constructor Theory—rationally incoherent.
@latemarch
A subsidiary theory that defines information would, well, mention in information in the process.
Even then, it’s not even clear that you have same thing in mind when you say “information”, as it the definition does not entail knowing subjects, etc.
So, no, you haven’t contradicted what I said.
@Dionisio
Of course, Dionisio. No theory could possibly explain the biosphere. After all, if the biosphere was explicable, that would exclude God as having done it, because God is inexplicable. And since you also, know God did it, you know no theory could possibly explain the biosphere.
A theory that claims to explain information would, well, mention what is required for it to exist – particularly given the fact that the unique physical conditions of memory (like the gene system, our origin) have been known for over half a century (and were predicted prior to their discovery).
But if a proponent of that theory cannot provide an explanation for those physical conditions, and instead, repeatedly argues that those conditions do not scale to a “quantum storage medium”, then that proponent should certainly be able to provide an example of such a medium that doesn’t require the physical conditions in question. If he can’t, then his claim is not coherent with observed reality.
critical rationalist, watching you sell your arguments here is like watching the guy who trips while crossing the street, then stands up, dusts himself off, and looks up to a speeding bus.
@25:
Wrong! Totally wrong! Again.
God, revealed to His people in the Christian scriptures, is not a “god of the gaps”, but the God of the whole show.
If God were anything close to what atheists describe, I would be the leader of worldwide atheism.
Thank God that’s not the case. Far from it. Completely different.
In biology research, the known -not the unknown- clearly points to complex functionally specified informational complexity, which has been empirically proven to be solely the product of an intelligent mind.
The unknown only serves as a strong motivation to keep researching.
Oh, well, the unknown also serves as the badly needs gaps Neo-Darwinism relies on while still hoping to someday find some kind of explanations.
Note that the problems we see around wouldn’t have existed had we remained in Eden. But we chose not to, because we prefer to do things our ways, like in Paul Anka’s famous song, popularized by Frank Sinatra, whose rendition stayed 75 weeks in the UK Top 40, a record still today.
That song, along with John Lennon’s “Imagine” made the favorite hymn in Hades.
I’ve been an ID advocate for years, but unfortunately I still can’t count neo-Darwinism as toast yet. The evolutionary biologists are still beavering away at it, and they now admit to the reality of irreducible complexity, but claim they have found a mechanism that regularly evolves IC biological systems.
The claimed mechanism is that hidden “cryptic genetic variations” are stored as “evolutionary capacitors” and unmasked under environmental and other stresses, to bridge the deep valleys in the fitness landscape that make certain mechanisms irreducibly complex. The paper came out in 2014, at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4258170/ . Title: “Cryptic Genetic Variation Can Make Irreducible Complexity a Common Mode of Adaptation”.
Of course this is theory only and has not been applied to any actual real world irreducibly complex biological system, with the needed detailed testable step by step model.
D, sounds suspiciously like the hopeful monster hypothesis. Certainly, saltationism. KF
doubter @ 28: I look forward to reading the paper you link to. It seems like just another a/mat attempt to avoid design at any cost, but I will take time to read it since you took time to recommend it. Thanks.
The last two words of the paper’s title got cut off. The full title is “Cryptic Genetic Variation Can Make Irreducible Complexity a Common Mode of Adaptation in Sexual Populations”. It appears that this mechanism would not apply to the origin of asexual bacterial IC molecular machines such as the flagellum.
From the Introduction: “One mechanism that may allow the evolution of complex adaptations is the revelation of cryptic variation, via a phenomenon known as evolutionary capacitance. When the environment changes and organisms are stressed, evolutionary capacitors switch the status of genetic variation from “off” (phenotypically cryptic) to “on”. After revelation by a capacitor, this previously phenotypically silent genetic variation can acquire fitness consequences, producing a burst of “new” genotypic effects that are potentially adaptive in the new environment. A growing body of both theoretical and laboratory work suggests that such revelation events are a common feature of biological systems.”
KF,
Yes, that’s an interesting observation.
A theory of information would indicate what is necessary for symbols to exist. Namely, the interoperability of information. It would be more fundamental than, say, Shannon’s theory and even semiotic systems. Furthermore, your incomplete theory of information does not even address copying. Newton’s laws have been “known” for over 300. Does that somehow pose a problem for General relativity?
I’ll try this once again. We had no theory of information that scaled to both classical and quantum systems. This is because one of the required tasks – cloning – is impossible in quantum systems. So a more fundamental theory of information is needed. One that is more fundamental than symbols.
Apparently, you think presenting an incomplete theory of information somehow makes it immune to constraints found quantum system. That would be like presenting a theory of human reproduction that assumes all pregnancies are immaculately conceived, then assuming you don’t have to worry about the problem with two females trying to conceive. It’s not currently possible for females to produce sperm, in the same sense that cloning specific aspects of quantum systems is not possible.
As I’ve said, it’s like you’re trying to defend Newton’s laws. “But, look, you can use it to launch rockets into space! You cannot refute that!”
I don’t need to refute that. We have a more fundamental theory of information that suggests something completely different is happening there in reality which doesn’t necessarily require anthropomorphic aspects of information that you are depending on. (Regardless, virtually no one thinks semiotic systems in nature implies ID in the first place)
Still unable to provide an example of a “quantum storage medium” where they don’t encode the input and interpret the output, eh, CR?
A quantum storage medium is part of a semiotic system, just as I told you months ago.
The reason you refuse to give an example is because an example would immediately refute your argument. The unavoidable consequence here is that your blatant refusal has also ensured that anyone following this conversation knows this to be true.
I’ve told you that we can resume our conversation when you are able to acknowledge the reality. If you remain unwilling to do so, then there is obviously no reason to continue the discussion. If the demonstrable facts at the heart of your counter-argument don’t matter (as you suggest), then your claim becomes detached from evidence and reason, and there is no point in discussing it.
Unfortunately, it does appear you are more inclined to find inactive threads (like this one) and use them to post comments that are irrelevant to the fact (that your counter-argument actually requires semiosis in order to function).
In suitable irony, you sabotage the very mechanism behind your own theory of knowledge. But that was your choice. You can correct it only by acknowledging the fact.