Congratulations to Michael Behe, Eric Anderson, David Chiu, Kirk Durston (members of ISCID). They were mentioned in the peer reviewed journal International Journal of Molecular Sciences. References were made to Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe, “Irreducible Comlexity Reduced” in ISCID’s PCID by Eric Anderson, and peer-reviewed works by David Chiu and Kirk Durston.
Here is the paper: The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity
Great paper!
The cause and evolution of complexity are frequently addressed in the literature [10, 134-141]. How complexity relates to life has attracted innumerable papers [6, 142-148]. Systems Biology emphasizes the growing genomic and epigenetic complexity [149-151]. Attempts to deal with Behe’s “irreducible complexity” [152] are appearing more often in scientific literature [153-157].
The much vaunted Avida community is indirectly criticized:
Despite the appealing similarities of terms like “chromosomes,” GA’s have no relevance whatsoever to molecular evolution or gene emergence. Inanimate nature cannot define a fitness function over measures of the quality of representations of solutions. GAs are no model at all of natural process. GA’s are nothing more than multiple layers of abstract conceptual engineering. Like language, we may start with a random phase space of alphabetical symbols. But no meaning or function results without deliberate and purposeful selection of letters out of that random phase space. No abiotic primordial physicodynamic environment could have exercised such programming prowess.
Neither physics nor chemistry can dictate formal optimization, any more than physicality itself generates the formal study of physicality. Human epistemological pursuits are formal enterprises of agent minds. Natural process GAs have not been observed to exist. The GAs of living organisms are just metaphysically presupposed to have originated through natural process. We can liberally employ GAs and so-called evolutionary algorithms for all sorts of productive tasks. But GAs cannot be used to model spontaneous life origin through natural process because GAs are formal.
The OOL community is indirectly criticized. “Choice with intent” might be a stealth phrase for intelligence. “Choice with intent” is required of any agency that creates organization:
Organization ≠ order. Disorganization ≠ disorder. Self-ordering of many kinds occurs spontaneously every day in nature in the absence of any organization. Spontaneous bona fide self-organization, on the other hand, has never been observed.
“Self-organization” is logically a nonsense term. Inanimate objects cannot organize themselves into integrated, cooperative, holistic schemes. Schemes are formal, not physical. To organize requires choice contingency, not just chance contingency and law-like necessity. Sloppy definitions lead to fallacious inferences, especially to category errors. Organization requires 1) decision nodes, 2) steering toward a goal of formal function, 3) algorithmic optimization, 4) selective switch-setting to achieve integration of a circuit, 5) choice with intent.
The only entity that logically could possibly The only entity that logically could possibly be considered to organize itself is an agent. But not even an agent self-organizes. Agents organize things and events in their lives. They do not organize their own molecular biology, cellular structure, organs and organ systems. Agents do not organize their own being. Agents do not create themselves.
…
We will point to hundreds of peer-reviewed papers with “self-organization” in their titles. But when all of these papers are carefully critiqued with a proper scientific skepticism, our embarrassment only grows with each exposure of the blatant artificial selection that was incorporated into each paper’s experimental design. Such investigator involvement is usually readily apparent right within Materials and Methods of the paper.
passing mention of macro evolution is made:
Linear digital prescription in physical nucleic acid has thus far invariably been associated with life. A fully post modern anthropocentrism cannot argue a logically consistent macroevolutionary paradigm.
the conclusion:
To focus the scientific community’s attention on its own tendencies toward overzealous metaphysical imagination bordering on “wish-fulfillment,” we propose the following readily falsifiable null hypothesis, and invite rigorous experimental attempts to falsify it:
“Physicodynamics cannot spontaneously traverse The Cybernetic Cut [9]: physicodynamics alone cannot organize itself into formally functional systems requiring algorithmic optimization, computational halting, and circuit integration.”
Notes:
1. “choice is the defining feature of intelligence” — William Dembski
2. The relationship of “choice” versus “chance and necessity” as well as the relationship of “choice” and “intelligence” was discussed peripherally at UD here: Cosmological ID in 1744?
3. The only mention of Darwin in this paper was in the title of with Behe’s book and in sentences with words like “confused”.