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Evolution and Imagination

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An interesting exercise is to read through a brief introduction to the origin of multicellular organisms, such as the Wikipedia article linked here.

Although a more rigorous analysis of the issues of the origin of multicellular organisms would be found elsewhere, Wikipedia, with its naturalistic predilection, still makes it plan that a scientific explanation is lacking.

When we consider the system-level functionality of even the simplest animals, we can use our imaginations to propose scenarios that might lead to their origin.  The Wikipedia article mentions several imaginative proposals:

“Multicellular organisms arise in various ways, for example by cell division or by aggregation of many single cells.”

“One hypothesis for the origin of multicellularity is that a group of function-specific cells aggregated into a slug-like mass called a grex, which moved as a multicellular unit.”

“A unicellular organism divided, the daughter cells failed to separate, resulting in a conglomeration of identical cells in one organism, which could later develop specialized tissues.”

The symbiotic “theory suggests that the first multicellular organisms occurred from symbiosis (cooperation) of different species of single-cell organisms, each with different roles.”

“The colonial theory of Haeckel, 1874, proposes that the symbiosis of many organisms of the same species (unlike the symbiotic theory, which suggests the symbiosis of different species) led to a multicellular organism.”

The oxygen availability hypothesis “suggests that the oxygen available in the atmosphere of early Earth could have been the limiting factor for the emergence of multicellular life.”

“The snowball Earth hypothesis in regards to multicellularity proposes that the Cryogenian period in Earth history could have been the catalyst for the evolution of complex multicellular life.”

All of these imagined scenarios, and others not mentioned, fail to fill in the void with any mechanism consistent with known laws of physics explaining how unguided natural processes resulted in functional biological systems that had never been seen (or imagined) before on Earth.

Imagine a world in which the existence of anything other than single-cell organisms is absent from reality.  What natural process, consistent with the action of the laws of physics, would cause single cells to move towards the unimagined goal of differentiating themselves into all of the needed types of cells that then organize themselves into an creature that possesses a digestive system, or a circulatory system, or a nervous system, or an immune system, or a reproductive system?

Does the committed evolutionist unconsciously impute their imagination into the supposed biological outworkings of the laws of nature? Should scientists imagine that a higher partial pressure of a certain gas can cause the origin of complex functional biological systems? 

Comments
SG, no observational base, no science. Show us your pre dna life or you are simply spinning empirically uncontrolled ideological speculations dressed up in a lab coat. And the information in the cell is observable, where did it come from, how. KFkairosfocus
October 22, 2022
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JVL: A particularly egregious misinterpretation of someone else’s comment.
Very true. Unguided origin of life researchers: 1) develop hypothesis, 2) conduct experiments, 3) review results, 4)modify hypothesis and repeat. ID origin of life researchers: 1) the unguided origin of life researchers haven’t been able to observe the origin of life therefore god-did-it. Saturday morning quiz. Which one of the above is following the scientific process?Sir Giles
October 22, 2022
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Kairosfocus: SG, kindly show us an actually observed life form not using DNA as the core of the cell. A particularly egregious misinterpretation of someone else's comment.JVL
October 22, 2022
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few scientists are suggesting that the first life form was DNA based.
Who observed and studied this "first life form"? If nobody then please don't use the word "science" in this context. ;)
Dr Shubin’s book
He believes in junk DNA. Maybe he has to keep up with science and choose not to stay ignorant of the actual data and research.whistler
October 22, 2022
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SG, kindly show us an actually observed life form not using DNA as the core of the cell. Until you get there all you have is just so stories told while dressed in a lab coat. KFkairosfocus
October 22, 2022
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KF: PS, the required chemicals to get to your codes dna etc as Dr Tour pointed out are enormously unstable and come from successive low yield processes
They are unstable under current environmental conditions, which include high levels of oxygen and biological activity. As previously mentioned, phosphate is critical for modern life, and is unstable in its biologically available form. But that is because of existing life and oxygen. Before life existed, oxygen wasn’t present in its free form, and phosphate would be far more stable.Sir Giles
October 22, 2022
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Kairosfocus: it is clear that you can only keep typing to project. It might make more sense to you if you bothered to even try and keep up with the research. little more than an ideological just so story If you don't bother to look at the data and make some attempt to understand the arguments then, yes, it would appear that way. The big gap is to get to cell based life, no solution. Next to cross seas of non function to dozens of body plans, no answer. Again, since you choose to stay ignorant of the actual data and research you come to erroneous conclusions. I have said over and over and over again that Dr Shubin's book is an accessible, easy to find, introduction to some of research which addresses many of your 'issues'. But will you read it? Not a chance. Why is that? Oh, by the way, you didn't tell me what you thought the first life form on Earth was. Nor did you tell me how the 'encoded algorithms' inside cells are stored or translated. Nor did you give me a specific example of one. Looks like you've got some catching up to do.JVL
October 22, 2022
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KF: OOL implies genetic information of order 100 – 1,000+ k bases and body plans 10 mn to 100+ million bases.
You full well know that very few scientists are suggesting that the first life form was DNA based.Sir Giles
October 22, 2022
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PS, just for a start on what co-optation (which requires onward origin!) requires:
IC is a barrier to the usual suggested counter-argument, co-option or exaptation based on a conveniently available cluster of existing or duplicated parts. For instance, Angus Menuge has noted that:
For a working [bacterial] flagellum to be built by exaptation, the five following conditions would all have to be met:
C1: Availability. Among the parts available for recruitment to form the flagellum, there would need to be ones capable of performing the highly specialized tasks of paddle, rotor, and motor, even though all of these items serve some other function or no function. C2: Synchronization. The availability of these parts would have to be synchronized so that at some point, either individually or in combination, they are all available at the same time. C3: Localization. The selected parts must all be made available at the same ‘construction site,’ perhaps not simultaneously but certainly at the time they are needed. C4: Coordination. The parts must be coordinated in just the right way: even if all of the parts of a flagellum are available at the right time, it is clear that the majority of ways of assembling them will be non-functional or irrelevant. C5: Interface compatibility. The parts must be mutually compatible, that is, ‘well-matched’ and capable of properly ‘interacting’: even if a paddle, rotor, and motor are put together in the right order, they also need to interface correctly.
( Agents Under Fire: Materialism and the Rationality of Science, pgs. 104-105 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). HT: ENV.)
In short, the co-ordinated and functional organisation of a complex system is itself a factor that needs credible explanation. However, as Luskin notes for the iconic flagellum, “Those who purport to explain flagellar evolution almost always only address C1 and ignore C2-C5.” [ENV.]
kairosfocus
October 22, 2022
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JVL, it is clear that you can only keep typing to project. There is nothing much to evolutionary theory and there is just no reason to believe that small increments of information from lucky noise can create a cell then turn it into a tree of life. In fact, it is all a priori imposition driven by huge question begging: cell based life -- from what, no answer that can pas scrutiny self replication -- no credible source chance variation cv + differential reproductive success drs --> descent with modification dwm dwm + deep time --> branching tree of life little more than an ideological just so story The big gap is to get to cell based life, no solution Next to cross seas of non function to dozens of body plans, no answer. Fail. KF PS, the required chemicals to get to your codes dna etc as Dr Tour pointed out are enormously unstable and come from successive low yield processes, there are not the billions of years to play with thanks to thermodynamics and entropy. Why do you think life forms spend so much effort on homeostasis?kairosfocus
October 22, 2022
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Kairosfocus: we both know that the relevant gains of function are claimed spontaneous, blind chance and necessity giving rise to dozens of body plans, starting with unicellular life forms. But they don't just pop into existence. It's very clear (if you really understand how the process works) that many, many times what is happening is that minor, small genetic changes can lead to existing structures being co-opted or repurposed which can lead to new functions without the creation of vast amounts of 'new information'. As I've said many times before, Dr Shubin's recent book, Some Assembly Required, is an excellent and accessible introduction to this sort of thing. You should read it so you better understand what the unguided evolutionary theory is actually claiming instead of your caricatured, straw-man version. OOL implies genetic information of order 100 – 1,000+ k bases and body plans 10 mn to 100+ million bases. And how do you know that? What do you think the first life form on Earth was? What's your evidence? As for, oh the information is there its just a change of regulation — “altering” [= new information allegedly puffed into existence by blind chance and mechanical necessity] control genes [i.e. informational molecules] — this is little more than knowingly begging the question of origin of information. Except it's not. It probably took billions of years for all the basic building blocks of life to get encoded into DNA and then it may have just been a matter of changing the timing of when certain genes were turned on and off. Like I said, you present a caricature of the actual, updated theory. No one makes the arguments these days you think they do. Which is why you should try and keep up so your arguments get updated instead of being stuck at the same stage they were 20 years ago. Why don't you just try and read Dr Shubin's book and then decide if what it says makes sense? If you refuse to do so then you are ignoring data and evidence which is not very scientific is it?JVL
October 22, 2022
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JVL, we both know that the relevant gains of function are claimed spontaneous, blind chance and necessity giving rise to dozens of body plans, starting with unicellular life forms. That's after getting to a first metabolising, encapsulated, smart gated, genetic code using, von Neumann kinematic self replicator using first cell in a darwin pond or the like. OOL implies genetic information of order 100 - 1,000+ k bases and body plans 10 mn to 100+ million bases. There is no blind chance and mechanical necessity mechanism observed to create even 500- 1,000 bits of FSCO/I, much less the requisites, where each additional bit doubles the config space, i.e. every further 3.32 bits is an order of magnitude larger search challenge. There is just one actually observed adequate cause of such increments in information, intelligently directed configuration. As for, oh the information is there its just a change of regulation -- "altering" [= new information allegedly puffed into existence by blind chance and mechanical necessity] control genes [i.e. informational molecules] -- this is little more than knowingly begging the question of origin of information. That's why I focus the Darwin pond case as the evasions can be instantly ruled out for the ROOT of the darwinist tree of life framework. See why, for cause, I am pointed to ideological capture and tainting thus compromise of the knowledge commons? KFkairosfocus
October 22, 2022
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Querius: Gain of function requires new information not already present in the system. Not necessarily. Altering control genes can make significant physical differences. That's not adding information, it's changing when certain processes are triggered. This can happen via random mutations.JVL
October 22, 2022
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Kairosfocus: Next you are trying to extract functionally specific bioinformation from in effect increments of lucky noise, the extinction of less favoured races being a SUBTRACTION of information as you full well know, and more. What functionally specific bio-information do you think was extracted way back when? AND you always neglect to mention that there is always new variation to add into the mix. But selectively looking at the evidence is part of your methodology isn't it?JVL
October 22, 2022
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Asauber: If these structures were similar, why would you then eliminate design as a possibility? I haven't eliminated it; I find the unguided argument more persuasive. It's not the same thing. It's ID proponents who claim they have 'eliminated' the unguided theory, thereby claiming they have proved a negative.JVL
October 22, 2022
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Kairosfocus @70, Another excellent point. Gain of function requires new information not already present in the system. Also worth linking to: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/at-rice-u-dr-tour-exposes-the-false-science-behind-origin-of-life-research/ -QQuerius
October 21, 2022
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JVL, thermodynamics governs energy flow and particularly the physics and chemistry of a darwin pond or the like, which you full well know. Next you are trying to extract functionally specific bioinformation from in effect increments of lucky noise, the extinction of less favoured races being a SUBTRACTION of information as you full well know, and more. For example intelligent, creative sources of information pay for their intelligently directed configuration work energetically elsewhere, KFkairosfocus
October 21, 2022
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Kairosfocus @49 and 62,
JVL, entropy is central to physical and informational processes. We live in a causal temporal, thermodynamically constrained world.
Yes, exactly! And now all we're getting is ad hominems, vacuous assertions, and blow-offs such as
Um, we weren’t talking about entropy so that’s an obvious non sequitur.
I’m sure you already know the answers to those questions. What is your point as it relates to what I was discussing?
It’s not your tone; it’s that you seem to want to swim in the Olympics when you don’t seem to be even able to float very well.
All these are variations of the theme, "You don't know what you're talking about." And this from someone who can be bothered to watch Dr. Tour's brilliant presentation of the problems with current OOL imaginative claims. Information in defiance of entropy is the core issue, but it's expressed in how molecules cannot be fabricated from racemic mixtures of virtually every impure chemical on earth regardless of how much imagination (musta, could, mighta) OOL researchers put into it. Dr. Tour alluded to the insurmountable problem of even starting with a smoothy made from bacterial molecules and then hitting it with electricity, hot rocks, ice, primeval gases such as methane, chants, acid rain, prayer wheels, incantations, meteorites, millions of years, or whatever, and not being able to resurrect one living bacterium from it. All the needed components are present! What's missing from the mess? -QQuerius
October 21, 2022
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"descendant of millennia of other similar structures" JVL, If these structures were similar, why would you then eliminate design as a possibility? Andrewasauber
October 21, 2022
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Asauber: OK, JVL. After examining the human hand (perhaps your own) closely, do you think it’s unreasonable to conclude it’s designed? I don't think it's unreasonable but I think it's important to look at all the data and evidence available. Clearly the human hand is pretty complex and sophisticated but considering the fossil and morphological and genological and bio-geographical evidence it seems fairly likely that the human hand is a descendant of millennia of other similar structures which we have evidence of. In that perspective it looks less a miracle but rather a refinement of things that had come before. Which fits in with the unguided evolutionary view. Designed is worth considering. But undesigned has a lot more support and data backing it up. I think.JVL
October 21, 2022
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"Perhaps you’d like to ask me a question?" OK, JVL. After examining the human hand (perhaps your own) closely, do you think it's unreasonable to conclude it's designed? Andrewasauber
October 21, 2022
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Asuaber: What is it saying? Can you tell us one or two points it says and that we are missing? I don't know what you are missing. Perhaps you'd like to ask me a question?JVL
October 21, 2022
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"what the unguided evolutionary paradigm is saying" JVL, What is it saying? Can you tell us one or two points it says and that we are missing? Andrewasauber
October 21, 2022
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Kairosfocus: first as you full well know, the issue is ooL, which is before reproduction exists so cannot be about biological evolution. You know I get this. The issue is, as was noted at length, thermodynamics. I'm not sure you are on solid ground there. you are gliding by the need to plausibly account for 10 – 100+ million bits of information, much of which has to be in place before you have a valid functional organism, where the systemic gaps between thousands of protein fold domains shows the island of function issue. No, I am trying to fight your straw man characterisation of what the unguided evolutionary paradigm is saying. Look, you think there are encoded algorithms in the cell. Please show them, explain how they are encoded, please explain they are inherited to the point where they are not degraded. Please explain how your scheme works.JVL
October 21, 2022
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JVL, no, first as you full well know, the issue is ooL, which is before reproduction exists so cannot be about biological evolution. The issue is, as was noted at length, thermodynamics. Secondly on origin of body plans, you are gliding by the need to plausibly account for 10 - 100+ million bits of information, much of which has to be in place before you have a valid functional organism, where the systemic gaps between thousands of protein fold domains shows the island of function issue. There is no actual observation and no good empirical reason to believe there is an incremental step by step path to dozens of main body plans from a unicellular ancestor. Indeed, as you will try to deny but it is true the fossil patterns show systematic gaps not the overwhelming number of stepwise incremental forms that would be required. In reality, just as Lewontin said, it is ideological a prioris that are driving the theorising and what is then imposed as a yardstick of censorship. Indeed, someone so significant as Dr Tour is being pounced on in technical chemistry work because he pointed out the synthesis challenges not properly addressed. That is whistleblower retaliation. KF PS, you can say what you want, the demand for an arbitrary decoder algorithm is a typical selectively hyperskeptical argument to distract from the obvious, readily observable facts of functional organisation, codes and algorithms. That such are being resorted to tells us volumes about the want of substance for OoL and body plan level macro evolutionary theorising.kairosfocus
October 21, 2022
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kairosfocus: Strawman, what has been shown is maximal implausibility to the point where it is unreasonable to expect this, on simple inductive reasoning. That is not true because it is based on your selective mis-interpretation of what the unguided evolutionary paradigm is saying. you know full well that there is no general purpose decoding algorithm, which is what drives your second selectively hyperskeptical demand. It's not hyperskeptical; it's a basic request of people purporting to be participating in science.JVL
October 21, 2022
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EDTA: I don’t which ones you are prepared/able to refute. You pick the one with which you are most familiar. You pick and I'll let you know.JVL
October 21, 2022
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JVL, I don't which ones you are prepared/able to refute. You pick the one with which you are most familiar.EDTA
October 21, 2022
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PS, you know full well that there is no general purpose decoding algorithm, which is what drives your second selectively hyperskeptical demand. Observe function, observe specificity [perturbing configuration a bit destroys function], observe complexity beyond threshold, infer design. That's not hard, except for those determined to lock out design at any cost, even basic reasonableness. That is why we are being told there is no coded algorithm in the cell, never mind the evidence.kairosfocus
October 21, 2022
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JVL, >>side from the bad logic of: we haven’t seen unguided generation of this or that so we conclude it can’t be done>> Strawman, what has been shown is maximal implausibility to the point where it is unreasonable to expect this, on simple inductive reasoning. As for you cannot define it, the phrase is itself descriptive and we have known all along the difference between simple repeitive patterns, random chaos and functionally specific configurations. Here is Orgel, 1973 -- yes recognising FSCO/I is antecedent to the modern design theory -- as has been pointed out to you any number of times but studiously ignored:
living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals are usually taken as the prototypes of simple well-specified structures, because they consist of a very large number of identical molecules packed together in a uniform way. Lumps of granite or random mixtures of polymers are examples of structures that are complex but not specified. The crystals fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; the mixtures of polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity . . . . [HT, Mung, fr. p. 190 & 196:] These vague idea can be made more precise by introducing the idea of information. Roughly speaking, the information content of a structure is the minimum number of instructions needed to specify the structure.
[--> this is of course equivalent to the string of yes/no questions required to specify the relevant J S Wicken "wiring diagram" for the set of functional states, T, in the much larger space of possible clumped or scattered configurations, W, as Dembski would go on to define in NFL in 2002, also cf here, -- here and -- here -- (with here on self-moved agents as designing causes).]
One can see intuitively that many instructions are needed to specify a complex structure. [--> so if the q's to be answered are Y/N, the chain length is an information measure that indicates complexity in bits . . . ] On the other hand a simple repeating structure can be specified in rather few instructions.  [--> do once and repeat over and over in a loop . . . ] Complex but random structures, by definition, need hardly be specified at all . . . . Paley was right to emphasize the need for special explanations of the existence of objects with high information content, for they cannot be formed in nonevolutionary, inorganic processes [--> Orgel had high hopes for what Chem evo and body-plan evo could do by way of info generation beyond the FSCO/I threshold, 500 - 1,000 bits.] [The Origins of Life (John Wiley, 1973), p. 189, p. 190, p. 196.]
Now, Wicken:
‘Organized’systems are to be carefully distinguished from ‘ordered’ systems. Neither kind of system is ‘random,’ but whereas ordered systems are generated according to simple algorithms [i.e. “simple” force laws acting on objects starting from arbitrary and common- place initial conditions and/or repetitive stepwise procedures] and therefore lack complexity, organized systems must be assembled element by element according to an [ --> originally . . . ] external ‘wiring diagram’ with a high information content . . . Organization, then, is functional complexity and carries information. It is non-random by design or by selection, rather than by the a priori necessity of crystallographic ‘order.’ [“The Generation of Complexity in Evolution: A Thermodynamic and Information-Theoretical Discussion,” Journal of Theoretical Biology, 77 (April 1979): p. 353, of pp. 349-65. (Emphases and notes added. Nb: “originally” is added to highlight that for self-replicating systems, the blue print can be built-in.)]
These are actually the source for the abbreviation! Conclusion, if you are determined enough to object and cannot answer the substance, deny its reality or definability. KFkairosfocus
October 21, 2022
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