Especially call Simon Conway Morris (right). Collect, Cambridge.
From ScienceDaily:
Extra-terrestrials that resemble humans should have evolved on other, Earth-like planets, making it increasingly paradoxical that we still appear to be alone in the universe, the author of a new study on convergent evolution has claimed.
Extra-terrestrials that resemble humans should have evolved on other, Earth-like planets, making it increasingly paradoxical that we still appear to be alone in the universe, the author of a new study on convergent evolution has claimed.The argument is one of several that emerge from The Runes Of Evolution, a new book in which the leading evolutionary biologist, Professor Simon Conway Morris, makes the case for a ubiquitous “map of life” that governs the way in which all living things develop.
It builds on the established principle of convergent evolution, a widely-supported theory — although one still disputed by some biologists — that different species will independently evolve similar features. Conway Morris argues that convergence is not just common, but everywhere, and that it has governed every aspect of life’s development on Earth. Proteins, eyes, limbs, intelligence, tool-making — even our capacity to experience orgasms — are, he argues, inevitable once life emerges.
The book claims that evolution is therefore far from random, but a predictable process that operates according to a fairly rigid set of rules.
Okay. And the aliens?
If that is the case, then it follows that life similar to that on Earth would also develop in the right conditions on other, equivalent planets. Given the growing number of Earth-like planets of which astronomers are now aware, it is increasingly extraordinary that aliens that look and behave something like us have not been found, he suggests.
Well, of course, in evaluating the matter one should start by facing squarely the possibility that aliens aren’t found because they aren’t there.
They could just happen not to be there. We can’t command them into existence because they support our theory.
No? well, now things get odd.
“Convergence is one of the best arguments for Darwinian adaptation, but its sheer ubiquity has not been appreciated,” Professor Conway Morris, who is a Fellow at St John’s College, University of Cambridge, said.
“Often, research into convergence is accompanied by exclamations of surprise, describing it as uncanny, remarkable and astonishing. In fact it is everywhere, and that is a remarkable indication that evolution is far from a random process. And if the outcomes of evolution are at least broadly predictable, then what applies on Earth will apply across the Milky Way, and beyond.”
Yes, but the Darwinians seem firmly on the side of randomness, on this side of the Milky Way or the other, in this and any other universe.
If this is so, as the book suggests in its introduction, then it makes Enrico Fermi’s famous paradox — why, if aliens exist, we have not yet been contacted — even more perplexing. “The almost-certainty of ET being out there means that something does not add up, and badly,” Conway Morris said. “We should not be alone, but we are.”
No, something isn’t adding up, but…
“It makes people slightly uneasy that evolution can end up reaching the same solutions to questions about how to catch something, how to digest something, and how to work,” Conway Morris added. “But while the number of possibilities in evolution in principle is more than astronomical, the number that actually work is an infinitesimally smaller fraction.”
Yes, that’s true. And the usual way such solutions are reached is an intelligently guided search.
Rob Sheldon writes to say,
Simon Conway Morris draws conclusions from the ubiquity of convergent evolution.
“It makes people slightly uneasy that evolution can end up reaching the same solutions to questions about how to catch something, how to digest something, and how to work,” Conway Morris added. “But while the number of possibilities in evolution in principle is more than astronomical, the number that actually work is an infinitesimally smaller fraction.”
Given Dembski & Marks on the inability to find “something that works” with a random search, is Morris acceding to design? If not, how does his search work?
The book was published by Templeton Press. That may tell us something about the need to remain confusing on the question of whether a non-random search requires intelligence.
Here’s Conway Morris’s convergent evolution Map of Life.
Also, from Creation-Evolution Headlines:
He envisions planets filled with mushrooms, sharks, and other familiar things. The problem is: there’s no evidence. You can’t build a system from a sample of one, we’ve seen in the case of extrasolar planetary systems (7/05/14). In response, Conway Morris might argue that convergence here on Earth provides evidence for convergence in space. But this begs the question of whether convergent evolution is true. Other evolutionists deny it (see PhysOrg and PNAS, for instance), saying that evolution is radically contingent, unconstrained by any predictable process. Until there is evidence for extraterrestrials, SETI believers are lost in space, whistling in the dark.
Actually, these speculations are fun. But that’s all they are, until we get serious about information, intelligence, and design.
See also: “Behold, countless Earths sail the galaxies … that is, if you would only believe …”
Don’t let Mars fool you. Those exoplanets teem with life!
and
How do we grapple with the idea that ET might not be out there?
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