Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

A friend suggests, just for fun: enter “irreducible complexity” in the search box…

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The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution

on this page, for Eugene V. Koonin’s forthcoming book, The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution (FT Press, 2011), and see what turns up.

From Overview:

The book examines a broad range of topics in evolutionary biology including the inadequacy of natural selection and adaptation as the only or even the main mode of evolution; the key role of horizontal gene transfer in evolution and the consequent overhaul of the Tree of Life concept; the central, underappreciated evolutionary importance of viruses; the origin of eukaryotes as a result of endosymbiosis; the concomitant origin of cells and viruses on the primordial earth; universal dependences between genomic and molecular-phenomic variables; and the evolving landscape of constraints that shape the evolution of genomes and molecular phenomes.

Friend notes: And so the ship of science turns — slowly, ever so slowly, but it DOES turn.

Comments
Type in "intelligent design" in the search box, and you will see an indirect reference to IC..zephyr
July 19, 2011
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"...the inadequacy of natural selection and adaptation as the only or even the main mode of evolution." Despite several inquiries to Nick M, I guess I finally got the answer to my question, "does the observed 50000+ adapting generations of e-coli show sufficient mechanism." Apparently no.junkdnaforlife
July 19, 2011
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Dr REC at 2: But he has to front that "malicious nonsense" crap. The guy has quit the Darwin cult.News
July 19, 2011
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I'm not sure being called "malicious nonsense" would warm my heart.... "The phrase “irreducible complexity” was coined by Michael Behe, one of the chief advocates of the antievolutionary intelligent design (ID) concept, in his (in)famous Darwin’s Black Box book (Behe, M. J. 2006. Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. New York: Free Press). To Behe and other ID advocates, the “irreducibility” of complex biological structures is evidence (even proof) of the inevitability of ID. Of course, ID is malicious nonsense, but the term “irreducible complexity” is quite evocative; however, evolutionary biologists might prefer to speak of “apparent” or “purported” irreducibility of complex structures."DrREC
July 19, 2011
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He explains evolution as a stochastic process based on historical contingency, constrained by requirements for maintaining cell organization and modulated by adaptation.
A stochastic process. Is that like monkeys typing on keyboards?
...these insights make the twentieth-century scientific consensus about evolution appear outdated and incomplete...
Just a product of the time.
Robustness, evolvability, and the creative role of noise in evolution
Yes, noise creates confusion. And confusion leads to...Mung
July 19, 2011
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