A friend points out that the researchers would seems to be implying that natural selection does not play a major role in the origins of anatomical novelty:
Origins of higher taxonomic groups entail dramatic and nearly simultaneous changes in morphology and ecological function, limiting our ability to disentangle the drivers of evolutionary diversification. Here we phylogenetically compare the anatomy and life habits of Cambrian–Ordovician echinoderms to test which facet better facilitates future success. Rates of morphological evolution are faster and involve more volatile trait changes, allowing morphological disparity to accrue faster and earlier in the Cambrian. However, persistent life-habit evolution throughout the early Palaeozoic, combined with iterative functional convergence within adaptive strategies, results in major expansion of ecospace and functional diversity. The interactions between tempo, divergence and convergence demonstrate not only that anatomical novelty precedes ecological success, but also that ecological innovation is constrained, even during a phylum’s origin.
Novack-Gottshall, P.M., Sultan, A., Smith, N.S. et al. Morphological volatility precedes ecological innovation in early echinoderms. Nat Ecol Evol (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01656-0
The paper requires a fee or subscription.
Natural selection is about genetics. Why would it have anything to do with Evolution?
Because Darwin got it backwards, we dutifully act as if he didn’t.
Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, and especially with their shunning of Intelligent Design, are not even on the correct theoretical foundation in order to properly understand “Anatomical Novelty” and/or morphology in the first place.
In fact, Darwinists themselves excluded biological form from the conceptual framework of the Modern Synthesis as being ‘irrelevant’ when they first formulated the Modern Synthesis, i.e. Neo-Darwinism
Notes:
Verse:
BA77
Doug Axe:
Doug Axe (molecular biologist) graduated from Caltech. As far as i know, Caltech is a technical university (California Institute of Technology ), they work with NASA.
Caltech’s graduates are engineers (mostly).
Axe might be right, that we are missing something, but i as an engineer would say, that we just don’t understand what exactly is going on inside the cell and how a species is being built (developed) from scratch.
I as an engineer, I am pretty sure, that all the information IS stored in DNA (so i rather disagree with Axe, but he still might be right). I would not be surprised, if after all, the blueprint for how to build e.g. a human body is stored in the ‘Junk’ part of DNA ….
In any case, the way species are being built from single cell, then the cell divides and divides, and after couple of months you get a full-size, fully autonomous, moving, very sophisticated 3D-‘object’, this is really an engineering SCI-FI … unfortunately, lay people can’t appreciate what i am talking about … lay people don’t think about such things… lay people listen to Darwinists, biologists, natural science graduates, romantics, who never made anything – Darwinists have no idea how this is done … which is not surprising, how could they … yes, Darwinists try hard to reverse-engineer the cell, but obviously, this technology is still beyond human comprehension …
Doug Axe wrote something similar about fruit flies:
unfortunately, and this is good for Darwinists, lay people will never appreciate that … lay people have no idea how things work … only engineers do …
… simultaneous changes limiting our ability to disentangle the drivers …
In other words, God said Let there be life. And there was life.
There is not enough information in DNA . DNA is slave ,not master. DNA is just a local panel ,act only on cell level. Who coordonate the billions of cells like an orchestra? Must be a network that is supracellular ( brain). Cell send messages to brain and receive instructions from brain that will turn on/off the local switches according to signals received. In a hotel there is a central electronic panel (brain) that control all local room panels(cell) The wires are the nerves +chemical messengers/hormones in blood,lymph, interstitial liquid,etc.
Martin_r, “I as an engineer, I am pretty sure, that all the information IS stored in DNA (so i rather disagree with Axe, but he still might be right).”
Well I use to think so too Martin, but I found out that I was wrong. Simply put, and not to go into too much detail right now, but from a thermodynamic perspective, far more ‘positional information’ is required to explain biological form that can possibly be stored on DNA, (or even within an entire cell for that matter).
The information content that is found to be in a one cell bacterium, when working from the thermodynamic perspective, is found to be 10 to the 12 bits,,,
,,, Which is equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. ‘In comparison,,, the largest libraries in the world,, have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.”
Whereas obviously, again from the thermodynamic perspective, the information content necessary to explain a human form would be exponentially more than a single bacterial cell.
To give a ballpark figure for the amount of ‘position information’ that is required to explain the human form, the following video states that “There are 10^28 atoms in the human body.,, The amount of data contained in the whole human,, is 3.02 x 10^32 gigabytes of information. Using a high bandwidth transfer, that data would take about 4.5 x 10^18 years to teleport 1 time. That is 350,000 times the age of the universe.”
As a engineer, here is a semi-related ‘head-scratching’ question for you that I think you will appreciate Martin: Namely, “,,, the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?”
Verse and Image
Martin_r@3
I don’t think this is even remotely possible – there is simply far far too much information incorporated in the brain’s structure, to speak nothing of the rest of the incredibly complex body.
The following is looking at it at the level of individual cells, and does not even consider the vastly greater complexity at the atomic level.
On average, a human brain contains about 100 billion (10**11) neurons and many more neuroglia which support and protect the neurons. Each neuron may be connected to up to 10,000 other neurons, passing signals to each other via as many as 1,000 trillion (a million billion, 10**15) synapses.
For each synapse to be specified in the map of the brain would require many bits of additional information for each synapse giving the type of synapse, 3-D position, identity of the connecting neurons, etc. etc. Therefore the total information equivalent of the brain’s neurons would be very much greater.
Then there are all the cells comprising the rest of the body. The total is presently estimated to be about 100 trillion cells including the brain, making up the 13 exceedingly complex organ systems, where each cell in this system of systems has to be specified as to its position and many other parameters.
The DNA of the human genome is miniscule in magnitude compared to all this. The DNA is approximately 6.4 billion letters (base pairs) long. Equivalent to about 725 MB of information. That includes the “junk DNA”.
It seems evident that the DNA must primarily exist to specify the needed proteins and where and when at the organ and tissue level to express them, not the total structure of the organism.
Doubter, LCD …
i don’t entirely understand, why do you think, that lots of information is needed for the brain’s structure …
Everything is made of cells … cells divide/multiply … in IT, you can run the same subroutine, over and over and create/develop “a huge” structure using a single subroutine … in other words, even with a few bits of data you can create ‘huge structures’. Moreover, you don’t need to store everything … you can create required data from scratch e.g. using math …
LCD, this is a great question, the growing of the body itself is an engineering marvel …
However, i don’t think that a central panel is required for this purpose … There is so called intercellular signaling … cells communicate with each other via signaling molecules … i can imagine, that such a intercellular signaling can be used for coordination of any process …
PS: a cell is a high advanced technology … and you guys underestimate it a bit … or did you mean, that we are missing something inside the cell in respect to how a body form is defined ? it looks like you would suggest some other process/set of data outside the cell …
Martin_r
I think a good analogy would be a very large automated factory. It is a complex system of systems incorporating input mechanisms, transport systems within the factory, manufacturing subsystems, repair subsystems, machinery to make replacement parts, output mechanisms, a central brain, it goes on.
Consider what it takes to build such a system. What it takes fundamentally starts with a library of blueprints and specifications containing all the information detailing exactly how each part of the system needs to be constructed and how they need to be interconnected.
There’s no way to get around this. The information needs to exist in some form or another before the factory can be built, whether or not many subsystems in the factory actually fabricate other parts of the factory. In other words, even in that case the information still had to exist, even if it is by design built into these precursor parts of the factory. This information had to exist in some form before the factory existed. To reuse an old phrase, there’s no free lunch.
In the case of the human brain, the myriads of patterns of synapses allowing specific logic designs of communication between neurons is an incredibly complex design, where the information to build it must exist before the brain is formed. Whether this information is in the form of 3-D coordinates and other information, and/or mathematical equations and algorithms, and/or language, or whatever. No free lunch.
Of note:
1.The hypothalamus( a small neurosecretory part of brain )was specialized for the communication between the Central Nervous System and the endocrine system ;
2.The endocrine system consists of ductless glands that release their hormones into the bloodstream;
3.The total number of hormones in humans exceeds 130;
4.The hypothalamus itself secretes its “releasing” hormones from nerve endings.
5. Each of the hypothalamic-releasing hormones controls the synthesis of a specific pituitary hormone, which, in turn, stimulates secretion of a specific hormone by the target endocrine glands.
6.Changes in the external environment are perceived in the brain through the animal senses, and the hypothalamus is connected to the external world through the forebrain .
7.The hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis is a major player in the vertebrate response to stress.
Who monitors and regulates the body temperature, sodium chloride, glucose levels, and chemistry of body fluids in general,controls most of the involuntary activities in the animal body, including innate behaviors? Every cell individually or brain ?
Doubter
the cell is the factory – the cell already exists … nothing needs to be built.
look at 3D printers. Basically, a 3D printer does what a cell does. Of course, a 3D printer is a very primitive device. Requires external source of power, requires so called filament tape (when it is out of filament, it can’t print) and so on … but basically, a 3D printer and a cell is a very good analogy.
Every cell individually or brain ?
I think both …
guys, in general, i understand what is your point.
e.g. how a particular cell of out several trillions knows, where to go, where it is its place in your body. The one who will figure this out gets a Nobel. Basically, that particular 3D-position defines the body form. But this information could be stored in DNA. I don’t see why not. Like i said, you don’t need to store everything, you can acquire some needful yet not-existing data by using stored data and make more of them … e.g. to get a right half of the body, you just need to mirror the left half or vice versa … (i know, a human body is not entirely symmetric, but i hope you got my point )
Martin: “But this information could be stored in DNA. I don’t see why not.”
At about the 40:00 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Jonathan Wells, (who specializes in embryology), using a branch of mathematics called category theory, demonstrates that, during embryological development, ‘positional information’ must somehow be added to the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method, in order to explain the transdifferentiation of cells into multiple different states during embryological development.
Study notes:
There are millions of species. Each has a body plan.
Where is it?
Some species have much larger genomes than others. Why?
It should be possible to do knock out experiments to see what affects body structure if at all.
Everyone should read “The DNA Delusion” by Stephen Blume to understand why the secrets of life are not in the DNA.
An engineer should be able to understand what he is saying.
The is no body without the blueprint of whole body that include the exact position of every cell of every organ of every system.
Darwinism got everything wrong and was somehow natural for scientists(who considered darwinism true by default) to make consecutive chained wrong assumptions about DNA . When you start with wrong assumption down the stream everything is wrong.
Jerry @16
here you go, a 2021 research:
of course, it is not entirely what you meant, but obviously, JUNK DNA has something to do with embryo development, and thus, eventually, with body form too …
Jerry, BA77
BA77, … i think that Mr. Wells is wrong ( and i hate to disagree with Mr. Wells )
Here is another engineering point of you:
As an engineer, you have to protect the body form information. As we all know, the data/information in DNA molecule is protected very well, in many ways. The structure of DNA itself is sort of protection/redundancy.
This is another reason, why i, as an engineer think, that the body form blueprint IS stored in DNA. To think anything else, does not make much sense. To have ‘two storage systems’ – then you need to protect them both – then the whole system becomes more fragile …. i don’t know … does not sound very rational.
Like i said, we still don’t entirely understand, how a cell is processes all the data … i am pretty sure, that one day, it will be discovered how the body form is defined, and on that day, Darwinism will finally break apart …
How a cell build for example the digestive system ?
Does it?
How many species have “junk DNA?” From what I understand a high percentage don’t. And the type varies by species that do.
So that would obviously eliminate Junk DNA as the place for this information.
Read Stephen Blume. It won’t cost you much in time and money.
Everyone should read Stephen Blume’s short books. It would get rid of a lot of nonsense ideas. The two best writers on Evolution are Stephen’s. Stephen Meyer and Stephen Blume.
I have the kindle edition though I just looked on Amazon and it wasn’t listed.
Martin at 19 you state, “i think that Mr. Wells is wrong ( and i hate to disagree with Mr. Wells)” and you also claim “I, “as an engineer think, that the body form blueprint IS stored in DNA,,,”.
Well Martin, it is not only that you are personally disagreeing with Dr. Wells, it is that you are also disagreeing with the scientific evidence itself. Which. obviously, is far more troublesome for you than merely personally disagreeing with Dr. Wells.
Although it is dogmatically assumed within the reductive materialistic framework of Darwinian evolution that the ‘blueprint’ of an organism is reducible to DNA, there simply is no experimental evidence that Darwinists can appeal to to prove that the ‘biological form’ of an organism is reducible to DNA. i.e. “A technique called “saturation mutagenesis”1,2 has been used to produce every possible developmental mutation in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster),3,4,5 roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans),6,7 and zebrafish (Danio rerio),8,9,10 and the same technique is now being applied to mice (Mus musculus).11,12. None of the evidence from these and numerous other studies of developmental mutations supports the neo-Darwinian dogma that DNA mutations can lead to new organs or body plans–,,,”
Moreover, as Dr. Wells has now also shown, the “central dogma” neo-Darwinism, the belief that “DNA makes RNA makes protein makes us”, (i.e. ‘the blueprint model’), is now found to fail at every step.
And Dr. Wells is far from the only person who has found the central dogma of the modern synthesis, i.e. Neo-Darwinism, (i.e. ‘the blueprint model’), to be in direct conflict with the scientific evidence. As far as the scientific evidence itself is concerned. i.e. ,,, “DNA cannot be seen as the ‘blueprint’ for life,”
Shoot, DNA does not even determine what the shape of its genome may take, thus, obviously, much less can DNA possibly explain the overarching biological form that any organism may take.
Specifically, the spatial organization of genomes is now found to be ‘context dependent’ depending on which tissue the genome may be in. i.e. “Our results demonstrate that the spatial organization of genomes is tissue-specific and point to a role for tissue-specific spatial genome organization in the formation of recurrent chromosome arrangements among tissues.”
Moreover, in direct contradiction to ‘the blueprint model’, in the following article Dr. Jonathan Wells states, “I now know as an embryologist,,,Tissues and cells, as they differentiate, modify their DNA to suit their needs. It’s the organism controlling the DNA, not the DNA controlling the organism.”
Likewise, researchers, from Princeton University no less, express their amazement that, “It is hard not to be impressed how a repeatable form reliably emerges despite considerable variation in both genes and environment.”
Perhaps the clearest experimental demonstration that DNA cannot possibly be the ‘blueprint’ of the biological form of an organism is the following.
in the following article it is noted that, “Richard Lewontin once described how you can excise the developing limb bud from an amphibian embryo, shake the cells loose from each other, allow them to reaggregate into a random lump, and then replace the lump in the embryo. A normal leg develops. Somehow the form of the limb as a whole is the ruling factor, redefining the parts according to the larger pattern.”
Again to repeat, “the form of the limb as a whole is the ruling factor, redefining the parts according to the larger pattern.”
Along that line of experimental evidence is this personal testimony from a UD blogger,
Moreover, in the following study, “researchers implanted human embryonic neuronal cells into a mouse embryo”.,,, Yet, “the human neurons, despite having human DNA, had a mouse morphology”. If DNA really ruled morphology, we would have expected a human morphology.
So Martin, is not that we just don’t know how the ‘blueprint’ is specified in DNA and that someday we will possibly figure it out, It is that we now know, ‘experimentally speaking’, that the ‘blueprint’ for an organism cannot possibly be stored in the DNA. PERIOD!
As the old joke goes, ‘you can’t get there from here’.
Moreover, (as if the preceding was not already bad enough for reductive materialism), the failure of the reductive materialistic framework of Darwinian evolution to be able to explain the basic form, i.e. ‘blueprint’, of any particular organism is now mathematically proven, via Godel’s incompleteness, to occur at a very low level. Much lower than DNA itself.
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 remark 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.”
Moreover, advances in quantum mechanics and quantum biology also now experimentally prove that all the information needed to specify the ‘biological form’ of an organism cannot possibly be stored in DNA, (nor can it be stored in any of the other biomolecules of life).
Specifically, it is now known that classical information, such as the information encoded on DNA, is a subset of quantum information.
In explaining this, it is first necessary to elucidate some background.
In the following site entitled “Quantum Information Science”, a site where Charles Bennett, (of quantum teleportation and reversible computation fame), himself is on the steering committee,
On that site, they have an illustration showing classical information to be a subset of quantum information. Underneath the illustration they state, “The well-established theory of classical information and computation is actually a subset of a much larger topic, the emerging theory of quantum information and computation.”
And as Charles Bennett states in this following lecture, ““Entanglement is ubiquitous: Almost every interaction between two systems creates entanglement between them… Most systems in nature… interact so strongly with the environment as to become entangled with it almost immediately.”… 44:00 minute mark: “A classical communications channel is a quantum communication channel with an eavesdropper (maybe only the environment)… A classical computer is a quantum computer handicapped by having eavesdroppers on all its wires.”
And indeed the classical information in DNA, (which you, Martin, hold to contain the ‘blueprint’ of an organism), is now found to be embedded within a ‘cacoon’ of this larger matrix of quantum information.
in the following video Dr Rieper states, “What happens is this classical information (of DNA) is embedded, sandwiched, into the quantum information (of DNA). And most likely this classical information is never accessed because it is inside all the quantum information. You can only access the quantum information,,,”
In fact, (in direct contradiction to the reductive materialist’s ‘blueprint model’), Quantum Entanglement and/or Quantum Information is now found to be what gives DNA its helical structure, i.e. to be what give DNA its ‘form’;
The thing that is so devastating for the reductive materialistic framework of Darwinists, besides the fact that it is quantum information that is determining the helical ‘form’ of DNA, is that it takes a ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, cause in order to explain quantum entanglement and/or quantum information,
As the following paper entitled “Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory” succinctly stated, “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
Darwinian atheists, with their reductive materialistic framework, and especially with the falsification of Einstein’s ‘hidden variables’, simply have no beyond space and time cause that they can appeal so as to be able to explain the non-local quantum coherence and/or quantum information that is now found to be ubiquitous within biology.
Whereas on the other hand, Christians readily do have a beyond space and time cause that they can appeal to so as to explain quantum entanglement and/or quantum information. As Colossians 1:17 states, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
Shoot, the beginning of John, i.e. John 1:1-4, is also directly relevant to this line of scientific evidence of finding ‘non-local’ quantum information to be ubiquitous within life.
One final note, it is also important to realize that quantum information, unlike classical information, is ‘conserved’. As the following article states, In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed.
The implication of finding ‘non-local’, (beyond space and time), and ‘conserved’, (cannot be created nor destroyed), quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious.
That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff states in the following article, “the 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.”
Personally, I consider these recent findings from quantum biology to rival all other scientific discoveries over the past century. Surpassing even the discovery of a beginning of the universe, via Big Bang cosmology, in terms of scientific, theological, and even personal, significance.
As Jesus once asked his disciples, along with a crowd of followers, “Is anything worth more than your soul?”
Verse:
@Martin_r
Being engineer could you try to build a scenario to translate what happens in the next video into comparable engineering processes ?
General Embryology Review in 20 minutes
LCD @26
yes, i watched lots of videos on fertilization before, it is just amazing. I don’t understand, how any rational person can think that these irreducible complex processes evolved by some blind unguided process. It is just insane …
And, i can’t imagine how this can be compared to anything human made. In the first place, i can’t imagine any FULLY AUTOMATED, FULLY AUTONOMOUS process engineered by humans, that would last to work for hundred of years, let alone for thousands or millions of years … (without any intervention)
PS:
BA77, please give my some time to read through your links … i still think, that my DNA proofreading/repair/redundancy argument is very strong in respect to body form information protection, but i definitely will have a look at your links.
LCD
Digestive system or any other part of human body is made of specific cells (cell differentiation). Good analogy would be LEGO bricks. Each cell/Lego brick knows where to go, what is its position in human body. A cell is a very advanced Lego brick. Of course, when you play Lego, you know where to put the particular Lego brick. The question is, and that is the whole debate about, in biology, how a Lego brick (a cell) knows WHERE to go AND WHEN (and what type of brick). Of course, it is more complicated, because human body is a very advanced Lego kit, when you consider, that after e.g. a circulatory system is assembled (all the veins/pipes), you also need to fill it with fluids (e.g. blood). From engineering point of you, this is just amazing.
Your lego example it’s interesting but doesn’t help too much because you are outside of pieces of lego (cells) ,not inside pieces so you use your eyes ,spatial geometry and intelligence from OUTSIDE and you have already in mind the plan/ blueprint . How would you building your lego model being inside of one of the piece(cell) and you don’t have access to an external spatial perspective required to build something? :))
LCD,
This is wrong. A cell is a fully autonomous stand-alone system. It is a very advanced ‘lego brick’ technology, no ‘outside intervention’ is required, exactly this is how it differs from common human thinking and approach.
A CELL KNOWS WHAT TO DO – it reads the software stored in cell’s nucleus. It is a very smart Lego brick.
Just keep in mind – first you have 1 lego brick, then 2 lego bricks and so on … all these lego bricks know what to do and where to go. This is an entirely different engineering approach how to build things, we humans are not used to, it is beyond our comprehension. We designed 3D printers to mimic this process a bit, but a 3D printer is a child play compared to a cell.
So like i said, no “outside intervention” is required to build e.g. a human body. That is why i call it an engineering SCI-FI. If you would figure out, how this is done, i am sure that: 1. you get a Nobel 2. you will be very rich (various patents).
Believe me, I thinking of it every day, how this is done.
A time ago, I watched a time laps zebra fish development video, but i can’t see any pattern … There are some many cells in zebra fish, that you get lost very quick watching the video.
If there would be a species with only a few cells (like hundred), perhaps that would help, easier to follow …
In any case, this is an engineering marvel …
Moreover, it is obvious, that the development process is not that straight forward, look at this video:
when you want to assemble a human hand – fingers – you also have to REMOVE some ‘lego bricks’ that you have used earlier (in the video it is called ‘notch between digital rays’)
at 0:43
https://youtu.be/VpbdqGJ9LWk?t=43