A lot of people are now reading Scott Turner’s Purpose and Desire:What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It, and one of them is retired linguist Noel Rude (Native American languages).
Turner’s challenge to Darwinism is the fact that life shows internal purpose, which cannot be accounted for by the mere declaration that it evolved in order to do so.
Rude reflects,
Someone ought to write a book titled, let me suggest, “Materialism and its Dissidents.”
Having recently read J. Scott Turner’s “Purpose and Desire,” I’m reminded of what a fellow linguist used to call “Aristotle’s anima.” An ardent Darwinist, he nevertheless would tell me that Darwinism couldn’t work without the desire to live–something no completely materialist machine can duplicate. Once (we were in Mexico) he pointed to a dog and said, “That dog is not a machine.”
Lee Smolin would weaken materialism by bringing time back into the picture, this to allow for agency (ordinary folks do not know that physics has abolished time and free will, even though Darwinism needs lots of time and chance). Then there is Thomas Nagel’s teleology, Michael Denton’s directed evolution, and James Shapiro’s natural genetic engineering–and not to forget Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic resonances. Sheldrake says the term was used by the vitalists, just as Turner says of his emergent homeostasis. Sheldrake’s connection to the New Age movement might dissuade some from his insights, and theologians uncomfortable with time may balk at Smolin. Nevertheless, all these are prominent materialists who have adjusted the doctrine variously to accommodate purpose and desire and agency.
Another friend suggests adding Denis Noble’s Dance to the Tune of Life – biological relativity (2017), which brings teleology and Aristotle’s final cause back into biology.
A third reminds us that Stephen Talbott, Thomas Nagel, James Shapiro, Perry Marshall, and Gerd Müller are also offering serious challenges to Darwinism.
Yes, Ruse’s claims are last week’s toast but, let’s face it, in an increasingly sclerotic academic environment, that actually doesn’t matter until enough people understand what is changing. Any of the authors/books mentioned may be a good place to begin.
Can readers suggest others?
See also: Darwinian philosopher asks: Do we need purpose in biology? Ruse: “The answer is natural selection.” Of course, because Darwinism has become a fundamentalism and fundamentalisms always have one answer and always the same one: Natural selection explains why a live cat tries to stay that way while a boulder degenerates, absent any purpose, into sand.
and
J. Scott Turner on why we do not have a coherent theory of evolution… The concepts of agency, purpose, and intentionality are not problematic for life as we know it. We cannot observe life without noticing them. But discussing them is deadly to naturalism, as we can see from the incoherent ways by which naturalism (nature is all there is) attempts to cope with them.
Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity
by Denis Noble
“there may well be a limit to the human capacity to know the answers to ultimate questions”
Unending Revelation of the Ultimate Reality (c)
They ain’t seen nothing’ yet.
The most fascinating discoveries are still ahead.
The concert hasn’t started yet… the noise we hear is just the orchestra musicians tuning their individual instruments.
Work in progress… stay tuned.
Complex functionally specified informational complexity.
At the end of the day those exquisitely written books leave a fundamental question unanswered:
Where’s the beef? 🙂
“the noise we hear is just the orchestra musicians tuning their individual instruments.”
Nice one, Dionisio, nail, head.
Dio,
Prof Noble seems to have little support for his ‘extended evolutionary synthesis’, beyond ID circles.
He says genetic change is, ‘far from random’. Which I suppose is music to the ears of the ID community, but once again, a claim, and nothing else; ‘He says’? Indeed.
A very talented man indeed, and well respected, to a point. Does he support IC?
Is he an, ‘environment can alter the genome’ scientist, and that these characteristics altered by the environment can be inherited?
Isn’t this just a rehash of Lamarckism? Didn’t experiments by August Weismann flatly, and forever disprove this error, in 1892?
What purpose is being discussed here, an internal sense of purpose in the mind of each living creature or the external purpose for all living things in the mind of their creator? Note that purpose, as distinct from function, only exists in the mind of a “purposer”, the conscious intelligent agent capable of conceiving and formulating a purpose. And if purpose is one of the properties which distinguishes the living from the non-living, Is Professor Turner arguing that ants or earthworms or bacteria all have a sense of purpose?
As for all the challenges to Darwinism, that’s a bit like challenging Newtonism in physics. Somebody needs to tell these luminaries that the theory of evolution has moved on somewhat since 1859.
Sev @5,
that last sentence is interesting. “…that the theory of evolution has moved on somewhat since 1859.”
The ‘somewhat’, is a nice understatement. These popular science books which Coyne, Shubin, Miller, Dawkins, and many others publish are not research. Nor do these authors put them forward as such. They are to make the general public aware of the state of good science.
You shouldn’t promote this book as evidence for ID, merely as a populiser of ID.
Aristotle > Darwin.
@2 error correction:
They ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
🙂
Seversky:
True, but there still isn’t a scientific theory of evolution.
Had to look up emergent homeostasis. After reading one of Turner’s articles, I can see that he understands homeostasis accurately but fails when he tries to treat negative feedback as the ‘uncreated creator’. NF is not something that occurs in inanimate Nature.
NF came along with life, and there’s no way to reach it ’emergently’ as an underlying basis for life. If life doesn’t already have NF, life doesn’t survive long enough to randomly determine that NF is necessary for life.
A reflection and question on “The Origin at 150” by Eugene Koonin; one of the scientist at Third Way. Koonin is:
Updated Link:
Koonin’s Evolutoinary Genomics Research Group at NCBI
He writes on the subject…
The Origin at 150: is a new evolutionary synthesis in sight?
It’s a quick review of current state of affairs in evolution since Origin at 150. Written in 2009 of Darwin and failure of Modern Synthesis, along with other relevant information across time since Darwin. Prior and since it’s publication, more publications calling for extended synthesis has grown and debate still continues.
Some block quotes of Eugene Koonin’s quick review published 2009, Trends in Genetics…
continued, “… destroys not only the Tree of Life… but also another central tenet…, gradualism”
He continues, “Equally outdated…” and “shocking”
Interesting take by Koonin. He knows history of evolution theory, modern synthesis and current state of evolution. Scientist at Third Way and Discovery Institute well know the history of evolution theory, it’s progress, failures and current state from Darwin to Evo-Devo and more.
To state otherwise is misleading, or sarcastic and dismissive at best.
There is a split brewing for sometime between different sides and openly the last decade, culminating in meetings at the Royal Society in 2016 and in publications in Nature of each side in 2014. On whether Modern Synthesis should be Extended or Replaced.
It is precisely discovery of new mechanisms of change, variation and creative force that this split is taking place, being discussed and hotly debated.
In other words, Koonin is saying what I said earlier about evolutionary biology having moved on somewhat since 1859. He just says it at much greater length and from the perspective of genomics and molecular biology.
Wrong. He indicates there’s a revolution taking place far and away from Darwin and neo-Darwinism.
He’s saying much more than “moved on somewhat” as documented in his review. As are many other scientist at Third Way, ID and many more. Your ridicule of “luminaries” needing to be educated on history of evolution is a snide attempt at downplaying what is happening in the field. Minimizing the debate, the split and the revolution taking place.
Darwin and neo-Darwinism have failed to explain macro-evolution.
He uses extreme words to get his point across about unimagined, shocking and revolutionary finding that overturn the Tree of Life and leave Modern Synthesis being superseded.
The challenges to Darwinism and neo-Darwinism are real. The debates taking place now openly are whether to Extend or Replace.
You’re attempt to downplay the current split within evolutionary biology is to borrow a word, “somewhat” misleading. There’s more of course from Royal Society Meeting and papers presented by scientist like Gerd Muller, Department of Theoretical Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria and Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Klosterneuburg, Austria
Lets review what Koonin states again…
“Since then, the landscape of evolutionary biology (borrowing the phrase from the title of the 2009 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium) has changed completely owing to three distinct and non-contemporaneous but interlocked revolutions: molecular, microbiological and genomic.”
“changed completely” is not “moved on somewhat” Those are two different and wide interpretations of the current state of affairs of Darwinism, neo-Darwinism and Evolutionism as viewed by scientist on leading edge of these debates.
There’s a revolution taking place, that is overturning Darwinism, not supporting it, and neo-Darwinism could not save it.
Next he points out..
“However, there are also major problems with prokaryotes, which fundamentally differ from eukaryotes, in that they do not engage in regular sex but do exchange genes promiscuously, so species cannot be meaningfully defined10, – and the concept of species was at the center of both the first, Darwinian, and the second, modern, syntheses of evolutionary biology.
He’s stating the central concept of species put forth by Darwinism and neo-Darwinism “cannot be meaningfully defined”
That’s not “moving on somewhat” as we shall see, it tears down Darwinism’s Tree of Life as was taught for hundreds of years in schools and university systems. It’s trunk is cut off, it’s fallen. Horizontal Gene Transfer paints a much more radical picture of prokaryotes in the past than imagined by Darwinism and neo-Darwinist.
Koonin states the findings are a “far cry from” the vision of Darwin and creators of Modern Synthesis…
“The biological universe seen through the lens of genomics is a far cry from the orderly, rather simple picture envisioned by Darwin and the creators of the Modern Synthesis. The biosphere is dominated, in terms of both physical abundance and genetic diversity, by ‘primitive’ life forms, prokaryotes and viruses.
This was not foreseen by classical evolutionary biology. He uses the word “unimaginable” to show the scope of what was missed by Darwin and neo-Darwinist.
“These ubiquitous organisms evolve in ways unimaginable and unforeseen in classical evolutionary biology. Above all, it is an extremely dynamic world where horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is not a rarity but the regular way of existence, and mobile genetic elements that are vehicles of HGT (viruses, plasmids, transposons and more) are ubiquitous7, 12. We now think of the entire world of prokaryotes as a single, huge network of interconnected gene pools, and the notion of the prokaryotic pangenome is definitely here to stay13, 14. Although HGT is partially curtailed in eukaryotes, especially, the multicellular plants and animals, multiple endosymbioses accompanied by massive gene transfer were key to the evolution and indeed the very origin of eukaryotes. Moreover, most eukaryotic genomes teem with mobile elements which make them no less dynamic than the prokaryotic pangenome. The discovery of the all-encompassing genomic mobility puts to rest the traditional concept of the Tree of Life that has to be replaced by a network of vertical and horizontal gene fluxes. It
There you go, “puts to rest the traditional concept of the Tree of Life” that must be replaced.
This is a radical rethink, a far cry from and a revolutionary time for evolutionary science.
“Moved on somewhat” is not what Koonin is stating. As any reader can see. It’s moved on massively in “unimaginable” ways “unforseen” by Darwinist and neo-Darwinist.
the paper in PDF format at Royal Society by Gerd Muller and Konrad Lorenz expounds on current issues, arguments, and what Extended Evolutionary Synthesis incorporates and consequences of moving ahead with a new framework, leading to Modern Synthesis decline.
Why an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis is Necessary
Is a welcome and very good read on many levels as it exposes the weakness of standard evolutionary theory as explanatory mechanism for macro-evolution and arise of novel forms. As a creative force.
To start, I’ll quote one paragraph in particular from the paper.
Again, Current Evolution Theory, “largely avoids the question of how organizations of organismal structure, physiology, or behavior… actually arise.”
That’s a stunning statement. This confirms what ID scientist have been saying now for decades. So for 80 years according to Darwinist, neo-Darwinist, we had the answers. Turns out those answers did not exist.
This extended synthesis is actually a replacement…
The Extended Synthesis “differs” from “standard theory” in it’s “core logic.” This is not just some add-ons as we shall see. And not “somewhat” moved on. It’s a critical, radical rethink of “core logic” that has failed to account for macro-evolutionary events.
The authors remind us how Dogma works with a key quote from Albert Einstein, and current orthodoxy today from their introduction…
1. Einstein A. 1916 Ernst Mach. Physikalische Zeitschrift
17, 101– 104.
What’s happening? There’s a revolution taking place evolution theory. Those holding on to old dogma, content, conservative are fighting it out with the progressives in new fields. Even though they call it Extended Synthesis, it’s replacement of core logic long held, dogmatically for the last 80 years.
They go on to say…
To highlight again,
“A rising number of publications argue for a major revision, or even a replacement of the standard theory of evolution”
Yep, it’s “moved on somewhat” to the point of scientist calling for major changes to core logic or it’s replacement.
Question is, why a replacement and not just an Extension?
Due to “core logic” changes based upon new discoveries leaving antiquated theory behind.
Skipping down the paper to Consequences of EES – Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, the authors note this is not just add-ons or having “moved on somewhat” but a rethink of core logic and replacement.
Yes, it’s a major shift, not somewhat, not just add-ons.
As they review usual opposition arguments against change..
Yes, exciting times we live in. To see so much change taking place in our life time to what was once consider untouchable as settled science, being uprooted, extended, core logic replaced.
And to see ID scientist vindicated, they were correct in many respects for decades in their critiques.
Indeed, the floodgates are opening against Darwinism. Good to see.
TWSYF @15,
yes, soon Darwinism will be gone, and ID will take its rightful, untestable, theological place.
rvb8 is confused. ID makes testable claims and can be tested whereas evolutionism doesn’t make testable claims and cannot be tested. But that is what happens when one is a scientifically illiterate troll.