The Altenberg Sixteen

_{Paul Nelson
March 4, 2008

Intelligent Design

2}_{Categories
Intelligent Design}

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HT to Larry Moran’s Sandwalk for the link to this fascinating long piece by journalist Suzan Mazur about an upcoming (July 2008) evolution meeting at the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Altenberg, Austria.

“The Altenberg 16” is Mazur’s playful term for the sixteeen biologists and theoreticians invited by organizer Massimo Pigliucci. Most are on record as being, to greater and lesser degrees, dissatisfied with the current textbook theory of evolution. Surveying the group, I note that I’ve interacted with several of the people over the years, as have other ID theorists and assorted Bad Guys. This should be an exciting meeting, with the papers to be published in 2009 by MIT Press.

Mazur’s article is worth your attention. Evolutionary theory is in — and has been, for a long time — a period of great upheaval. Much of this upheaval is masked by the noise and smoke of the ID debate, and by the steady public rhetoric of major science organizations, concerned to tamp down ID-connected dissent. You know the lines: “Darwinian evolutionary theory is the foundation of biology,” et cetera.

But the upheaval is there, and increasing in amplitude and frequency.

[Note to Kevin Padian: journalists don’t like it when you do this to them. Mazur writes:

Curiously, when I called Kevin Padian, president of NCSE’s board of directors and a witness at the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover trial on Intelligent Design, to ask him about the evolution debate among scientists –- he said, “On some things there is not a debate.” He then hung up.

That hanging-up part…not so wise. If you’re going to say there’s no debate, explain why.]

Comments

Poachy: There is a substantial issue on the table. Kindly address it. [E.g. cf. nos 88 - 90 just above.] GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{March 6, 2008
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That’s the blog where a federal judge was depicted with fart noises
Actually, the animation was not here, but at anohter blog called Overwhelming Evidence. I think that is one of Denyse's blogs and I thought it was a clever way to introduce ID to a yonger generation. Although, I thought the enhanced version was going to be restored, but only the cleaned up version is still there the last time I checked.poachy_{March 6, 2008
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Hi Dave, Allen, Charlie, GP, TH et al: First, I see that Dr/Mr Allen MacNeill has been ill: I wish you a speedy and complete recovery. Now also I see that his thread has had quite a side-discussion on civility or the want thereof. On this, I must say I agree with DS that there is need to move beyond ad hominems and the like. On BOTH sides; though on my observation across years and many contexts -- including several personal experiences [up to and including my being called a Nazi] -- it is the Evolutionary Materialism advocates who as a rule are the by far and away most guilty, up to and including a growing number of cases of unjustified career busting. But equally, ID thinkers and advocates should note on how above A used the slipping into uncivil remarks to divert from having to address the issue of the credible ORIGIN of genetic and wider biologically functionally specified, complex information [FSCI, a subset of CSI] squarely on the merits. Further, it is indubitable that AMacN and co have indeed much resorted to all sorts of uncivil behaviour, as was abundantly documented above. So, Allen: if uncivil behaviour is unacceptable when it targets you, why have you and others of your ilk used it so much in speaking to/of ID thinkers? Do you think such adds anything positive to the discussion? [Onlookers, have a look here at my recent update remarks on objectionism, in my online discussion of selective hyperskepticism.] But then, that is all on a side track. On the merits -- and I can freely bring these back into focus as I have not participated in any ad hominems: 1] Information generation at OOL:
fr TH, 22 supra: Regarding Mr. MacNeill’s apparent belief that universal probability bounds don’t apply to biological information because “natural selection isn’t random”, may I ask how his naturalistic theories overcome the improbable series of allegedly un-guided steps that got us from a pile of rocks to abiogenesis, before RM+NS could have even been called into play? By what means did the first self-replicating information processor create itself and then proceed to write upon itself the minimum information neccesary to begin synthesizing proteins in the first functioning cell?
2] Body-plan level macroevolution:
22, again: Could Mr. MacNeill please specify the EXACT RM+NS sequence of small, linear, successive steps that got us from the first life forms to the kind of complexity the Encode project is talking about?
3] The UPB: I note that Kaufman has put his finger on the core of the issue in his response to the journalist, though he did not elaborate enough to show the debt owed to a certain much-despised WmAD (against whom the rhetoric of spite has descended to the utterly childish level of maliciously and contemptuously distorting his surname):
Well there’s 25,000 genes, so each could be on or off. So there’s 2 x 2 x 2 x 25,000 times. Well that’s 2 to the 25,000th. Right? Which is something like 10 to the 7,000th. Okay? There’s only 10 to the 80th particles in the whole universe. Are you stunned?
Oh, yes, re TC at no 54: on the premise that each of the changes is in effect sufficiently independent of the others so that the entire potential config space is accessible [and Kaufman is highly qualified to know that], each of the on/off switches becomes a multiplicative term: 2 * 2 * . . . 25,000 times is 2^25,000 ~ 5.62*10^7,525. I hardly need to add the basis for the UPB, here from that oldie but goodie by Dan Peterson on the RH column:
Dembski has formulated what he calls the "universal probability bound." This is a number beyond which, under any circumstances, the probability of an event occurring is so small that we can say it was not the result of chance, but of design. He calculates this number by multiplying the number of elementary particles in the known universe (10^80) by the maximum number of alterations in the quantum states of matter per second (10^45) by the number of seconds between creation and when the universe undergoes heat death or collapses back on itself (10^25). The universal probability bound thus equals 10^150, and represents all of the possible events that can ever occur in the history of the universe. If an event is less likely than 1 in 10^150 [or ~ 2^500], therefore, we are quite justified in saying it did not result from chance but from design. Invoking billions of years of evolution to explain improbable occurrences does not help Darwinism if the odds exceed the universal probability bound.
If we want to suggest that in the relevant config spaces, functionality clusters in islands, that leads to isolation of islands in the space. My simple way to address that is to say the islands are up to 10^150 states in size, as a reasonable upper bound. So, instead of 500 bits of storage capacity, we up to 1,000. In such an expanded space, it is then essentially impossible to access the shores of these islands of function on the gamut of the observable cosmos. And, the space we are looking at is 2^25,000 >> 2^1,000. 4] But NS is not random so this is irrelevant . . . Not so fast. First, let's take in a 101 level look at NS, via the ever so handy materialism-leaning "prof" Wiki:
Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable traits become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common. Natural selection acts on the phenotype, or the observable characteristics of an organism, such that individuals with favorable phenotypes are more likely to survive and reproduce than those with less favorable phenotypes. If these phenotypes have a genetic basis, then the genotype associated with the favorable phenotype will increase in frequency in the next generation. Over time, this process can result in adaptations that specialize organisms for particular ecological niches and may eventually result in the emergence of new species.
The "more likely" part is a giveaway. For, indeed, there are cases of mutations etc that are incompatible with life function and the cell or the organism dies. That is indeed not a matter of chance per se, it is a matter of destruction of biofunctionality. (H'mm, way back in my radiation and safety course, the key point was that radiological damage hits especially water molecules, and if hard enough the cells die off and you get radiation sickness that can lead to death. At lower levels of damage through this plainly chance-based, effectively random process, longer term harm comes into play, including of course cancer and genetic mutation.) But, at less extreme levels of undirected variation, the issue of chance does come in: hence, more/less likely to survive and reproduce in ecological niches and in contexts of existing competitiors. Thence, population shifts contingent on -- on an evolutionary materialist scenario -- many factors set by chance. [Where high contingency is at work, chance or intelligence are the only reasonable alternatives, necessity being per definition, about regularities not contingent variability. Put together heat, fuel and oxidiser and reliably you have a fire.] So, natural selection is a FILTER, one that is partly deterministic and partly chance-based. [Whether we use various random or pseudo-random or chaotic models to get to the chance is immaterial to the point.] 5] Variation and information-generation Obviously NS is not the source of information, it is a biofunctionality-based absolute or relative filtering out mechanism. That brings us back to the other half of the NDT-as-extended dynamic: CHANCE variation [CV] + NS -> claimed OO body plans and species etc Bio-information or potential bio information taking in OOL, can only come from chance or mind, as it is highly contingent. However, given the sorts of complexity and functionality and sensitivity to perturbation involved, we are well beyond any reasonable version for the UPB, whether at OOL [300 - 500,000 4-state base pairs plus the epigenetics] or body-plan origination. For the latter, a good indicator is in this from Meyer's famous Proceedings article:
One way to estimate the amount of new CSI that appeared with the Cambrian animals is to count the number of new cell types that emerged with them (Valentine 1995:91-93) . . . the more complex animals that appeared in the Cambrian (e.g., arthropods) would have required fifty or more cell types . . . New cell types require many new and specialized proteins. New proteins, in turn, require new genetic information. Thus an increase in the number of cell types implies (at a minimum) a considerable increase in the amount of specified genetic information. Molecular biologists have recently estimated that a minimally complex single-celled organism would require between 318 and 562 kilobase pairs of DNA to produce the proteins necessary to maintain life (Koonin 2000). More complex single cells might require upward of a million base pairs. Yet to build the proteins necessary to sustain a complex arthropod such as a trilobite would require orders of magnitude more coding instructions. The genome size of a modern arthropod, the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster, is approximately 180 million base pairs (Gerhart & Kirschner 1997:121, Adams et al. 2000). Transitions from a single cell to colonies of cells to complex animals represent significant (and, in principle, measurable) increases in CSI . . . . In order to explain the origin of the Cambrian animals, one must account not only for new proteins and cell types, but also for the origin of new body plans . . . Mutations in genes that are expressed late in the development of an organism will not affect the body plan. Mutations expressed early in development, however, could conceivably produce significant morphological change (Arthur 1997:21) . . . [but] processes of development are tightly integrated spatially and temporally such that changes early in development will require a host of other coordinated changes in separate but functionally interrelated developmental processes downstream. For this reason, mutations will be much more likely to be deadly if they disrupt a functionally deeply-embedded structure such as a spinal column than if they affect more isolated anatomical features such as fingers (Kauffman 1995:200) . . . McDonald notes that genes that are observed to vary within natural populations do not lead to major adaptive changes, while genes that could cause major changes--the very stuff of macroevolution--apparently do not vary. In other words, mutations of the kind that macroevolution doesn't need (namely, viable genetic mutations in DNA expressed late in development) do occur, but those that it does need (namely, beneficial body plan mutations expressed early in development) apparently don't occur.6
Some serious questions need some serious answers -- answers that I observe over years of trying to get them, are persistently conspicuous by absence. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{March 6, 2008
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(Sal, you just beat me to the reference to Trevors and Abel.) Turner Coates (66): "Much better examples of self-organization in living things, comprehensible to laypeople, are flocking of birds and schooling of fish ... reassembly of a sponge colony after it’s been forced through a sieve is a good example. [etc.]" "Self-organization" is a nonsense term. "Self-ordering" should be used instead. D.L. Abel, J.T. Trevors, "Self-organization vs. self-ordering events in life-origin models", Physics of Life Reviews (2006):
Abstract Self-ordering phenomena should not be confused with self-organization. Self-ordering events occur spontaneously according to natural “law” propensities and are purely physicodynamic. Crystallization and the spontaneously forming dissipative structures of Prigogine are examples of self-ordering. Self-ordering phenomena involve no decision nodes, no dynamically-inert configurable switches, no logic gates, no steering toward algorithmic success or “computational halting”. Hypercycles, genetic and evolutionary algorithms, neural nets, and cellular automata have not been shown to self-organize spontaneously into nontrivial functions. ... Inanimacy cannot “organize” itself. Inanimacy can only self-order. “Self-organization” is without empirical and prediction-fulfilling support. No falsifiable theory of self-organization exists. “Self-organization” provides no mechanism and offers no detailed verifiable explanatory power. Care should be taken not to use the term “self-organization” erroneously to refer to low-informational, natural-process, self-ordering events, especially when discussing genetic information.
j_{March 6, 2008
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Regarding Stuart Kaufmann, there seems to be a forgotten peer-reviewed paper highly cirical of his work. See: William Dembski and 3 IDers cited in a significant OOL peer-reviewed article by Trevors and Abel. For self-organization to be believable, it should be in abundant evidence empirically. Snowflakes and salt crystals evidence self-organization with such an abundance, biotic materials do not. Therefore spontaneous self-organization is not believable with respect to biology. In fact there is strong empirical evidence and sound theoretical reasons to suppose that biotic materials are not amenable to self-organization. It appears the Desinger chose exactly those materials that would resist explanations attributable to self-organization.scordova_{March 6, 2008
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Allen why do insects all have just six legs Because the that's an artificial classification. Insects by defintion have six legs. If they have more than six they're an arthropod but still have all the other identifying characteristics of insects. Even in the case of insects a butterfly is an insect but its larval form has dozens of legs. I don't get the point you're trying to make.DaveScot_{March 6, 2008
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Sure thing, Dave.Charlie_{March 6, 2008
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Allen, Charlie, and others: Could we dispense with the history of incivility? We're all guilty of it so let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Let's just move along with the topical discourse and in the process not repeat our past ad hominem indiscretions. DaveScot_{March 6, 2008
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Allen You wrote Many of the comments and questions in this and other threads seem to indicate to me that most of you consider genetic information to be the sine qua non of evolutionary biology, Don't count me in that number. In my view as a systems design engineer I find it bordering on ludicrous that a system as complex as the human body can be fully described by a mere gigabyte (the information carrying capacity of 3 billion nucleotides). Clearly though the information IS contained within a single cell (all the information needed to build a chicken resides inside the shell of the egg). I believe not just some but rather a majority of the heritable information required to construct a human body must reside external to the DNA molecule but still inside the cell wall of the egg. In another thread I suggested that the structure of the cytoskeleton might be where some of that epigenetic information resides. When looking for the non-genetically coded information (the genetic code is one dimensional) think of 3 dimensional topology as a potential coding mechanism and see where it leads. DaveScot_{March 6, 2008
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Hi Allen, On Dr. Dembski's "unprovoked" "attempted" banning of you: You need not search for that link as I think I have found it. At least this is the one I remembered. Is this where you thought Dr. Dembski had "attempted" to ban you, and would have if not for Sal's speaking up for you? https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/the-groupthink-syndrome/#comment-68613 Or do I have it wrong? Is this not the incident you had in mind? Since I don't see Sal's name anywhere on the thread I just might have the wrong one? As for Dr. Dembski being unprovoked (and as an example of your gentlemanly discourse): http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2005/12/guest_post_allen_macneill_fisk.php This link has your "bald-faced liars" line as well as many other accusations of deceit, from December 2005.Charlie_{March 6, 2008
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Allen Well I'm sure glad there are a few other souls out there who realize Darwin was follower of Lamarck's inheritance of acquired characters. That actually makes the Origin of Species plausible IMO (but it still doesn't make non-intelligent origin of life credible). That said, Lamarckism goes full tilt against the central dogma of molecular biology: information flows in only one direction from DNA to RNA to protein. What might be called the central dogma of intelligent design is that only with proactive involvement of an intelligent agent can complex specified information flow in opposition to the central dogma of molecular biology. How is it you propose information flows from the environment into DNA other than through the roundabout means of random genetic mutations filtered by natural selection or through intelligent agency? DaveScot_{March 6, 2008
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jerry The house I grew up in and still spend summers in is ON old Route 17 in New York one door down from the U.S. 219 junction. The house actually on the junction (still standing and occupied by an elderly distant cousin) was built by my great grandfather in the 1800's. He brewed some of the best beer around and there's still some hops growing wild near the house, hops that he planted close to 120 years ago.DaveScot_{March 5, 2008
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Hi Allen, First of all, I must reiterate my earlier comment about my appreciating your commenting here. I generally agree with all Sal has had to say about you. But after your ill-advised attempt to lecture others on gentlemanly discourse I'm surprised that you chose to follow it up with the tu quoque and martyr defence you did. As well as being the Allen MacNeill referenced in your comment (and attacked by the Pandas for it) I continue to find it ironic to have the same Allen MacNeill come to Dr. Dembski's blog telling others how they ought to behave when he had the following to say over at Telic Thoughts:
MacNeill quoted by another commenter:I will agree with one assertion of Dembski and his ilk: there is a "cultural war" being waged in the popular media. It's a war on science and the objective understanding of nature, a war that was declared by the enemies of science, by people like Phillip Johnson and William Dembski. And, as the old saying goes, the first casualty of war is the truth. It's time for everybody on both sides of the issue to face the fact that Dembski and his cohorts are either profoundly deluded, or deliberate, bald-faced liars. My money's on the clean-shaven hypothesis… MacNeill defending his position: I have also commented on some of the weaknesses of M. Behe's arguments, but find him (unlike Dembski) to be a gentleman, a scholar, and a worthy opponent. ... What makes Behe a worthy opponent (and Dembski an unworthy one) And then: And indeed, I stand justly accused of the kind of behavior that I have criticized in Dr. Dembski. My students and friends will understand that I shall try to amend such behavior in the future.
I know there's a more recent example as well, but couldn't find it as of this writing. And, speaking of Hannah and your summer course, aren't you the same Allen MacNeill who had to shut his own blog down for a couple of days' cooling-off-period after violating his own rules against ad hominems and calling somebody a liar? http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com/2006/07/06/doggies-are-better-than-weasels-2/#comment-432 I do recall when Dr. Dembski "attacked you personally" here on this blog, and I recall him saying that, given your past comments, you really were quite capable of taking care of yourself. Actually, come to think of it, didn't Dr. Dembski say that he was tempted to ban you but didn't want to give you a martyr-complex? I bet you have the link to set me straight. But thanks for telling me to read and learn from Huxley. Is there a quote in there about the phrase "lie for Jesus"? Or maybe we can get back to enjoying your insights on variation and selection and let those with smaller beams critique the specks in the eyes of others. ps. I'm also enjoying your take on the history of the biological sciences and the role metaphysics has often taken - even superseding empirical observations. I've often suspected as much. Thanks again.Charlie_{March 5, 2008
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GilDodgen:
Let’s be honest about the passions in this debate. For the average person like me, design simply screams from every corner of human experience.
While it is true that design simply screams from every corner of the human experience, what if NFV+NS really does explain it all? Surely there are dozens of other examples within science that are counter-intuitive. Intuition, even "screaming from every corner of the human experience" cannot be the proof. Is a simple filter like NS sufficient intelligence to explain the development of DNA's code? Surely the answer lies in a careful study of DNA itself. It is clear that Allan MacNeill is unprepared to provide a defense when systems level evolution is presented. You and I both know the significance, the unlikelihood of evolvability of two genes, a SNRP and a coding gene, producing dozens, nay hundreds of working protein variants. Even the simple HAR1F gene is baffling -- you can't get half-way there from here, you've got to go all the way or not at all. Though design simply screams from every cornder of human experience, the fact that should be of greater challenge to the detatched scientist is that the data does not fit the model. NFV+NS doesn't explain the data -- end of story.bFast_{March 5, 2008
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Let's be honest about the passions in this debate. For the average person like me, design simply screams from every corner of human experience. Darwinism is a desperate, scientifically naive, 19th-century attempt to explain the obvious away for philosophical and theological reasons (primarily the problem of evil). It all comes down to ultimate nihilism versus ultimate purpose, and nothing could be more meaningful or important in our lives.GilDodgen_{March 5, 2008
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Well, Al, I mean Dr. MacNeill, maybe I will take you up on it some day and buy you a couple of cold ones. I use to make the trek up Rt 17 five to six times a year to see my son when he went to Cornell or to take my other son to play hockey in central and western New York. Now all we need now is the fifth dimension, ID.jerry_{March 5, 2008
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jerry asked: "...is Allen MacNeill a Lamarkian?" If I am, I'm in pretty good company. Lamark asserted that "use and disuse" was the primary mechanism driving the evolution of such adaptations as long necks in giraffes. So did Darwin, beginning in the first edition of the Origin of Species. Indeed, by the sixth edition, he had expanded his views on the subject to the point that many of his arguments were indistinguishable from Lamark's. Weissman, not Darwin, rejected Larmarian inheritance, for primarily metaphysical (rather than empirical) reasons. Anti-Lamarkism became one of the cornerstones of both Mendelian genetics and the founders of the "modern synthesis" (Fisher, Haldane, and Wright). However, in both of these cases the reasons were again primarily metaphysical, rather than empirical. As Jablonka and Lamb have pointed out, there are a whole suite of Lamarkian mechanisms now known and published in the scientific literature. As we find more of them, we are doing what science is supposed to do; change its theories in response to new empirical findings. So, you can call me a neo-Darwinian, neo-Lamarkian, evo-devonian supporter of four-dimensional evolutionary theory. Or you can call me Al...if you buy me a cellar-cool Sam Adams.Allen_MacNeill_{March 5, 2008
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gpuccio wrote: "...cannot be predicted nor mathematically modeled, but only described as historical events”, than it is not science, but [chronicle]." You are exactly right, and that is exactly what I am saying about macroevolution. Perhaps we were more honest when we called it "natural history", the way Darwin and his colleagues did? However, I doubt whether anyone would argue that geology is not a "true" science, when it almost entirely lacks any fundamental underlying mathematical models. The same could be said for the science behind the hertzsprung russell model of stellar evolution, which is almost entirely descriptive, rather than based on an underlying mathematical formalism. For that matter, most of developmental biology (including evo-devo) is descriptive and depends fundamentally on historical contingency (a developing embryo is an "historical" entity), yet it is one of the hottest disciplines in biology. The idea that a field of inquiry isn't science unless it has some underlying mathematical model(s) is precisely the viewpoint that I am criticizing when I criticize the "modern evolutionary synthesis". Yes, the mathematical models formulated by Fisher, Haldane, and Wright provided the basis for the "modern synthesis," but more recent research has shown them to be inadequate models of biological reality. It seems to me to be doubly ironic that some of the members of UD should support the idea that "true science requires mathematical foundations" when this is precisely what I (as an evolutionary biologist) see as the problem with the "modern synthesis".Allen_MacNeill_{March 5, 2008
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"This lecturing about civil discourse on William Dembski’s blog is especially ironic." That's the blog where a federal judge was depicted with fart noises, the way my nine-year-old son likes to ridicule his classmates. That's the same William Dembski who attacked me personally on this blog without provocation and attempted to ban me from this site, until other members of this community (including Sal Cordova, among others) came to my defense. For that matter, I am the person who became in/famous for inviting Hannah Maxson (founder of Cornell's IDEA club and winner of the Casey Luskin award) to be a co-presenter in my evolution-design seminar course at Cornell. That's the same Hannah Maxson with whom I have been corresponding for the past year, while she volunteers caring for infants in Mongolia (we've been jointly doing a critical reading of Menuge's Agents Under Fire, and maintaining a civil and collegial relationship while doing so). Please read T. H. Huxley's letter to Charles Kingsley at http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/letters/60.html and learn how true gentlemen (and women) who profoundly disagree on these issues can and should treat each other.Allen_MacNeill_{March 5, 2008
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Turner Coates wrote "Nothing in nature actively selects." Precisely; natural selection is an outcome, not a selective process (and certainly not a "creative force"). Darwin himself preferred the term "natural preservation" later in life, but by then his original term had become too deeply entrenched.Allen_MacNeill_{March 5, 2008
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Turner Coates: You wrote: "Clearly there is no discrete locus of control of the colony of organisms, and organization of the whole emerges through interaction of parts." Now we may be onto something. As I explained in an earlier comment, this is precisely how many of the components of eukaryotic cells do what they do. What appears to be a fantastically complex system of "intelligently" interacting parts is, upon closer examination, a system of similar parts that interact according to a relatively small set of "interaction rules." Like Conway Morris's Game of Life, a very simple set of rules can produce a very complex set of outcomes. This is what we are now just beginning to learn about in the study of the "laws of variation", about which Darwin admitted he was entirely ignorant. And I agree that if such rules do, in fact, exist, they would constitute a kind of "front-loading". But how would that be different from the "front-loaded" systems that Newton described in his Principia? Like him, "I make no hypotheses" about such things, asserting that they are quite literally outside the purview of the natural sciences, which require empirical verification.Allen_MacNeill_{March 5, 2008
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I just read some of the reviews of Jablonka's book and it says Jablonka is a Lamarkian. Now is Allen MacNeill a Lamarkian?jerry_{March 5, 2008
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CJYman: You wrote: "...life is a network of artificial intelligence which artificially discovers the solution to problems." How would one empirically distinguish between that and the following: "...life is a network of natural intelligence which naturally discovers the solution to problems." or, for that matter: "...life is a network of intelligence which discovers the solution to problems." Let me be clear about this: I am not necessarily advocating any of these. Rather, I'm asking how one would empirically distinguish between them (i.e. not speculate about their metaphysics)?Allen_MacNeill_{March 5, 2008
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Here's an intersting question for us all to think about: assuming (for the sake of argument) that we replace "random mutation" (RM, the traditional formuation) with "non-foresighted variation" (NFV, my preferred term), how would one go about determining whether or not a particular phenotypic variation were, in fact, "non-foresighted." Obviously one could do so after the fact, when a new variation began to significantly increase in frequency in a population, but ex post facto explanations are not explanations at all, but rather descriptions (at best, and rationalizations at worst). To me, this is the same problem one faces when determining whether an alteration in phenotype is "random" — "random" with respect to what, exactly? I would be in favor of dumping the entire concept of "randomness", especially in biology. All descriptions of "random" sound to me to be either ex post facto, or a form of metaphysical speculation. In other words, is there any way to determine empirically if a phenotypic variation is, indeed, non-foresighted when it first appears? Personally, I can't think of one, but I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.Allen_MacNeill_{March 5, 2008
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Magnan: How is it "obfuscation" when I have cited a recently published book (Jablonka & Lamb/Evolution in Four Dimensions which discusses both the mechanisms and their implications in detail? Furthermore, Eva Jablonka is one of the invited participants in the Altenberg conference, and will undoubtedly elaborate on many of the points that I have already discussed in this thread.Allen_MacNeill_{March 5, 2008
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Excellent post, gpuccio (#55). Allen MacNeill seems to be trying to have his cake and eat it too, in that he feels compelled to admit the untenability of the mainstream "modern synthesis" Darwinist view in which natural selection is the only ongoing source of nonrandom "design" information. But he still tries at least to give the impression of retaining the notion of undirected natural processes with no feedback from environment and phenotype to genome being the only factors in evolution. It seems to be a sort of obfuscation, where part of the scheme is to point out a greatly expanded list of sources and types of genetic variation, and the fact that many of them aren't physically random with respect to the genome structure. The implication is taken that somehow such "nonrandom" variations can be a key source of information to direct adaptation and speciation. But all of his 47 types of known genetic variation, though they greatly exceed the number of simple point mutations, still are (as far as known) inherently random with respect to fitness. The same applies to epigenetic variation. But the only way the scheme is actually tenable is to invoke some form of Lamarkian process where somehow the phenotype, experience of the organism, etc. can appropriately effect the genotype/epigenetic structures. This key point is disguised, and is the basic obfuscation.magnan_{March 5, 2008
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No, JPCollado, let's not play divide-and-conquer.
Pigliucci cites epigenetic inheritance as one of the mechanisms that Darwin knew nothing about. He says there is mounting empirical evidence to "suspect" there's a whole additional layer chemically on top of the genes that is inherited but is not DNA. Darwin, of course, did not even know of the existence of DNA. Lewontin asks whether it's "suspect" or "know"? Nevertheless, these kinds of phenomena are part of what's loosely being called self-organization , in short a spontaneous organization of systems. Snowflakes, a drop of water, a hurricane are all such spontaneously organized examples. These systems grow more complex in form as a result of a process of attraction and repulsion.
Mazur is simply listing common examples of self-organization, with no apparent understanding that they are inappropriate in this context. No biologist would suggest a close analogy of anything going on in epigenesis to snowflake formation. In fact, Mazur quotes Kauffman emphasizing that snowflakes are not alive. And I have never before seen a claim that self-organization in hurricanes is due to "attraction and repulsion." Have I missed out on something? Much better examples of self-organization in living things, comprehensible to laypeople, are flocking of birds and schooling of fish. The complex organization of the school/flock emerges when individuals follow a few simple "rules." Though I haven't seen it used anywhere, I think reassembly of a sponge colony after it's been forced through a sieve is a good example. One may move from that to the observation that the human body is a colony in which 90% of cells are non-human. Clearly there is no discrete locus of control of the colony of organisms, and organization of the whole emerges through interaction of parts. I'm far from the best person in the world to explain such things, but at least I've provided some non-strawmen.Turner Coates_{March 5, 2008
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Just an observation: Every one of Dr. MacNeill's engines of variation require a very specific system and non-random yet also non-lawful (high information) template. Every engine of variation requires: 1. A template of forms and function pre-set by a set of physical laws (of which our life permitting laws are in the smallest percentile of all available combinations of laws which will actually allow life) from which the environment can subsequently choose. 2. This template must be non-random in character, with linking structures of form and function (a template with high information content) in order for an evolutionary scenario to take effect. 3. An instruction tape which is not defined by any laws so that it can freely store information. 4. An information processing system to process the instruction tape and coax out the pre-set forms and functions that the environment can then select from. 5. According to NFL and COI, there must be problem specific information programmed (fron-loaded/inputed) into the search procedure in order for any selection process to produce better than chance performance ("new" information), which is exactly what an evolutionary algorithm does. In fact, over the past year, I've come to the conclusion that life is a network of artificial intelligence which artificially discovers the solution to problems. So, how does artificial intelligence operate? It only learns what it is programmed to learn. Outputted information can be no greater than inputted information. Thus, information is conserved. Can your AI robot servant do anything other than what he is programmed to do as he searches through a solution space that you've provided for him with the problem specific programming that you've inputted into him? A "learner... that achieves at least mildly than better-than-chance performance, on average, ... is like a perpetual motion machine - conservation of generalization performance precludes it.” --Cullen Schaffer on the Law of Conservation of Generalization Performance. Cullen Schaffer, "A conservation law for generalization performance," in Proc. Eleventh International Conference on Machine Learning, H. Willian and W. Cohen. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 1994, pp.295-265. “The [computing] machine does not create any new information, but it performs a very valuable transformation of known information.” --Leon Brillouin, Science and Information Theory (Academic Press, New York, 1956). Therefore, the actual engine of variation is the programming that goes into setting up an information rich system of artificial intelligence. The pseudo-random natural selection filter merely searches through a non-random search space, guided by previously inputted problem specific information to pre-set targets. Of course, from those targets (solutions) there can be some minor effects and cyclical variations in accordance with a truly random search of the space immediately surrounding a pre-programmed potential solution (target). Whatever you want to call the latest version of evolution, if it is the hypothesis of the creation of information at consistently better than chance performance via the environment selecting from a random palate, it is the largest scientific hoax in history with not a shred of evidence in its favor and all observation, experimentation with EAs, and information theorems against it. In information terms, the above type of evolution is literally an attempt to sell a perpetual motion free energy machine. Buyer, you'd better beware!CJYman_{March 5, 2008
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Turner Coates wrote: "Mazur is not the brightest bulb. The 2nd and 3rd quotations in #4 are of her, yet JP treats them as views of dim-wit scientists. Greetings Mr. Coates. I'll be delighted to examine this in piecemeal fashion starting with the 2nd quote, which runs thus:
Snowflakes, a drop of water, a hurricane are all such spontaneously organized examples.
OK, Mr. Coates, just to understand you clearly....are you saying that the analogies Mazur brings above, regarding spontaneous organization, are purely her own inventions, having nothing to do with what other world renown scientists have been saying about the "highly ordered behavior" of certain inorganic matter? If this is true, then what are we to make of Ilya Prigogine's (just picking on one famous scientist) vortex example?JPCollado_{March 5, 2008
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Charlie, I think you have missed the sense in which natural selection "does nothing." There is no active process of selection in nature. "Natural selection" merely designates a consequence of, to quote Allen's first comment in this thread,
fecundity (the implications of which were first pointed out by Malthus, and which virtually no one disputes today)
That is, population size tends to grow geometrically (according to Malthus), and there must come a point where variants are in competition for scarce resources. Some variants will do better than others at surviving and gaining resources to reproduce successfully. To reiterate, the idea is that the variants in the population actively compete. Nothing in nature actively selects.Turner Coates_{March 5, 2008
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