It turns out that biological fine-tuning goes to the very extremes of physics. In this lecture, William Bialek shows that eyes can detect individual photons, and a number of other phenomena where biology operates on the very edge of what is possible in physics.
12 Replies to “Biological Fine-Tuning Goes to Extremes”
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If you watch to the end, it gets ridiculous when they start talking about evolution (it borders on complete nonsense). But, until then, it’s quite fascinating stuff.
It is fascinating stuff and it is also worth noting that this knowledge is the product of naturalistic science operating very successfully on materialistic/physicalist assumptions. Thus far, it has not required anything else.
One quibble: He distinguishes mammal eyes from insect eyes sharply, saying that we have one lens for all the receptors, while insects have one lens for each receptor. Actually our eyes are more similar than that. Each retinal receptor has its own glial lens, which focuses and filters colors for the needs of the receptor. So our eyes are sort of like insect eyes turned inside out, with the compound lenses arranged concavely instead of convexly, and a single lens magnifying before all the compound lenses.
Reply to 2 Seversky:
It seems you may be trying to take a kind of “stolen valor.” Many of the great biologists were Christians or theists and did not use “materialistic/physicalist assumptions.” Two examples are Carolus Linneaus and Louis Pasteur–you should know many other examples. Theistic assumptions were required to get science in general and modern biology in particular started. And theists continue to make biological discoveries. Do you have evidence for the claim in your comment?
Rorydaulton @ 4
On the contrary, there is no denying that many current researchers and many if not most of the great scientists of the recent past were theist of some denomination and were inspired by their beliefs.
It is also true that science has been practiced in other places, ancient China, India, Egypt, Greece and by Islamic states where they did not enjoy the benefits of Christianity.
And if you look at the actual research produced by the great scientists of Europe, for example, where do you find them invoking non-materialistic assumptions? Is there a term in Maxwell’s equations that designates divine intervention at any point?
If there is to be an accusation of “stolen valor” it should rather be leveled at Christians who try to arrogate to their faith sole responsibility for the science we have today.
Seversky is trying to be a thief again and steal science away from Christianity again
Christian philosopher Peter S. Williams, who provides the above quote from Barbour in his on-line article, “Does Science Disprove God?” lists several presuppositions of science that he argues “derive warrant from the theistic doctrine of creation:
Again, notice that these presuppositions themselves cannot be proven by empirical science. Therefore, a science based epistemology, i.e. “scientism,” of any kind cannot be true.
Williams observes that, “There is thus a wide-ranging consonance between Christianity and the presuppositions of science.” He then goes on to quote Barbour again.
Barbour is not alone in his claim that Christianity was necessary for the rise of modern science.
The famous Christian writer and University of Cambridge professor C.S. Lewis summarized the position this way:
The only ‘stolen valor is from materialists who have tried to steal science away from. its Christian roots:
Supplemental note:
seversky:
That is total BS. Thanks to materialism we have no idea how we came to be the way we are. Nothing. Materialistic assumptions have hindered our growth, intellectually.
ET to Sev:
That is an understatement.
Although the Darwinist firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science, (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that Darwinists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to:
Thus, although the Darwinian Atheist firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science, indeed more antagonistic to reality itself, than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
Einstein was not raised in a religious household. There was a reason his parents named him Albert and it had nothing to do with anything other than making a secular point with their son. The atheists of his day kept trying to claim him as one of their own, which he had no problem refuting. He made it clear that the more he studied the universe, the more he believed in God. He also made it clear he did not care how God created the universe, but how God did it.
You cannot have the laws of physics without a designer to create them prior to the universe coming into existence. Remove God as the designer and you cannot have a single law.
In the OP JohnnyB states
And in post 9 BobRyan states,
As to BobRyan’s second point in post 9, Atheistic materialists believe that the finely tuned laws and/or universal constants of nature arise via bottom up physical processes. In the following comment Origenes clearly explains why such a ‘bottom up’ scenario is logically impossible,
Origenes was not just whistling Dixie. In the following article entitled ‘Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics’, which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remarked that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings “challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”
The same logical impossibility faces Darwinian materialists. Darwinian materialists believe that all life can, ultimately, be explained via reference to ‘bottom up’ physical processes. As George Ellis stated, “A key assumption underlying most present day physical thought is the idea that causation is bottom up all the way:”,,, “However there are many topics that one cannot understand by assuming this one-way flow of causation.”,,, “living systems are highly structured modular hierarchical systems”,,, “The lower level interactions are constrained by network connections, thereby creating possibilities of truly complex behaviour. Top-down causation is prevalent at all levels in the brain: for example it is crucial to vision”,,,
Indeed if there was not some type ‘top-down’ constraint and control over and above the ‘bottom up’ physical processes in life, then it would be impossible to differentiate one species from another species (much less would it be possible to explain the inner complexities of how life operates).
And indeed Darwinists, with their ‘bottom up’ materialistic scenario have no way to differentiate one species from another species.
You don’t have to take Logan Paul Gage’s word for it. Last year a Darwinist honestly admitted that “The most important concept in all of biology, (i.e. species), is a complete mystery”
As well, it is also a ‘complete mystery’ to ‘bottom up’ Darwinists how the human eye can possibly detect a single photon. And the following researcher honestly admitted, “Research,, has shown that humans can detect the presence of a single photon, the smallest measurable unit of light”.,,, “it is remarkable: a photon, the smallest physical entity with quantum properties of which light consists, is interacting with a biological system consisting of billions of cells, all in a warm and wet environment,”,, and the researched added, “The response that the photon generates survives all the way to the level of our awareness despite the ubiquitous background noise. Any man-made detector would need to be cooled and isolated from noise to behave the same way.”,,, “What we want to know next is how does a biological system achieve such sensitivity? How does it achieve this in the presence of noise?”
And as JohnnyB alluded to in the OP, “Photoreceptors operate at the outermost boundary allowed by the laws of physics, which means they are as good as they can be, period. Each one is designed to detect and respond to single photons of light — the smallest possible packages in which light comes wrapped.
“Light is quantized, and you can’t count half a photon,” said William Bialek, a professor of physics and integrative genomics at Princeton University. “This is as far as it goes.” … the system couldn’t get faster, more sensitive or more efficient without first relocating to an alternate universe with alternate physical constants.”
Darwinists, with their ‘bottom up’ materialistic framework simply have no clue how it is possible for “Photoreceptors (to) operate at the outermost boundary allowed by the laws of physics,”
Indeed, commenting on a 2013 video that was made by Harvard Biovisions (that was made specifically to try to counteract the overwhelming impression of Intelligent Design in the cell), Carl Zimmer, via his Darwinian presuppositions, commented that the molecules of the cell “flail blindly in the crowd. Our cells work almost in spite of themselves.”
Carl Zimmer, via his ‘bottom up’ Darwinian presuppositions could not be more wrong.
As the following 2016 paper stated “crowding in cells doesn’t hamper protein binding as much as they thought it did.” In fact, finding a lack of ‘collisions’ in the crowded cell was a ‘counterintuitive surprise’ for the researchers: Specifically one of the researchers stated: “This was a surprise,” “It’s counterintuitive, because one would think collisions between a protein and other molecules on DNA would slow it down. But the system is so dynamic, it doesn’t appear to be an issue.”
In fact, instead of a biological systems being “dominated by randomly colliding individual protein molecules”, as Darwinists falsely presuppose with their ‘bottom up’ materialistic framework, the fact of the matter is that biological systems are now shown to be extremely resistant to random background noise. As the following article on photosynthesis stated, ‘These biological systems can direct a quantum process,,, in astoundingly subtle and controlled ways – showing remarkable resistance to the aggressive, random background noise of biology and extreme environments.’
in the following article, the authors even go on to state that ‘this reverses the previous orthodoxy, which held that quantum effects could not exist in biological systems because of the amount of noise in these systems’,,, Environmental noise here drives a persistent and cyclic generation of new entanglement.
Thus instead of the molecular machines of the cell being dominated by random noise in the cell, as Carl Zimmer, via his ‘bottom up Darwinian presuppositions, had falsely claimed in his New York Times article, the molecular machines of the cell are instead now shown to have ‘remarkable resistance to the aggressive, random background noise of biology and extreme environments.’ Moreover, molecular machines are apparently designed in such an ingenious way so as to feed off the noise in the cell. Quote unquote, “Environmental noise here drives a persistent and cyclic generation of new entanglement.”
Finding the ‘random background noise’ of the cell to be tightly constrained by quantum processes is simply not even on the radar of Darwinists. As Jim Al-Khalili stated, “,, Physicists and Chemists have had a long time to try and get use to it (Quantum Mechanics). Biologists, on the other hand have got off lightly in my view. They are very happy with their balls and sticks models of molecules. The balls are the atoms. The sticks are the bonds between the atoms. And when they can’t build them physically in the lab nowadays they have very powerful computers that will simulate a huge molecule.,, It doesn’t really require much in the way of quantum mechanics in the way to explain it.”
And indeed, finding ‘top down’ quantum processes to be ubiquitous within life are simply devastating to the entire ‘bottom up’ reductive materialistic framework of Darwinists.
Specifically, in order to explain quantum correlations within molecular biology, it is necessary to appeal to a beyond space and time cause.
Darwinists, with their ‘bottom up’ reductive materialistic framework simply have no beyond space and time cause to appeal to, whereas Christians, on the other hand, have postulated a ‘top down’ beyond space and time cause for life all along,
Moreover, it is also interesting to point out that quantum information is physically conserved and therefore cannot be created nor destroyed,,,
Thus, since quantum information cannot be created nor destroyed, and since quantum information is also found to be ubiquitous within molecular biology, then that gives us some fairly strong empirical evidence for the physical reality of a ‘soul’ that is capable of living past the death of our material bodies.
As Stuart Hameroff states in the following video, ‘quantum information,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. ,,, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul’.
Thus, the ‘top down’ constraint and control that is found to be ubiquitous within life,, and that the ‘bottom up’ Darwinian processes are a complete loss to explain the existence of, are, to consternation of atheists, actually turning out to be, in the end, evidence for a soul.
And that is, despite how atheists may feel about it, VERY GOOD to learn and know!
Great posts with interesting posts, Bornagain77!
A fundamental assumption in science is that everything can be reduced to simpler components, and at the bottom of scientific investigations are fundamental entities from which all properties, laws, and macro behaviors are emergent. This assumption has failed repeatedly as deeper strata of information becomes more complex rather than less complex and the role of information looms ever larger in the context of the scientific endeavor to understand.
Nevertheless, the curators of the sciences and the scientific process are resolute in their a priori rejection of a supernatural infusion of information and design, grimly hanging on to their convictions that despite all evidence to the contrary, there simply must be a naturalistic explanation for the source of this information and design. As a result, scientific progress is slowed or halted.
• A geologist finds an out-of-place artifact and attributes it to “differential erosion.”
• A biologist looks at DNA and imagines this incredibly complex code to be almost all junk.
• A physicist desperately tries to find a way that information is preserved on the event horizon of a black hole, but never asks how the information arose in the first place.
• A theorist in quantum mechanics tries to find a materialistic and deterministic interpretation for what appear to be immaterial mathematical probability waves.
• A cosmologist postulates an infinite number of unobservable universes while a physicist postulates an infinite number of unobserved worlds, each of which are spontaneously generated at every choice or event in the universe—the most egregious violation of parsimony ever devised.
Nevertheless, the various multiverse interpretations open wide a door that scientific theorists never intended to open—namely that by the anthropic principle, we live in the one universe where all of the miracles in the Tanakh and in the New Testament actually did occur and that Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the Son of God who came to provide the way to forgiveness and escape from God’s judgment.
-Q