Does neo-Darwinian Theory Include the Origin of Life?

Or better yet, for some real shrieking and howling rejection, try proposing that life originated as very complex perfect forms such as described in the Garden of Eden and the story of evolution is really a story of devolution from originally perfect, diverse forms.

Well, yes. There’s a very good reason for that (although the response would more often be laughter, not shrieking). It’s because we actually have the physical proof that life did not start as complex forms.

Unless of course you’re claiming that it devolved backwards…

A very interestin comment. But In Türkey ,,moderate” islamist goverment makes schools, universtity teach simplicimus creationism, is not science like Inteligen Design or even ration.

If Boss Man say ‘Is work of Allah, no more question please’, how can ID scientist do job?

This is important Problem in Türkey this day.

One thing is for sure- If living organisms did NOT arise from non-living matter via non-telic processes there would be no reason to infer its subsequent diversity arose solely via non-telic processes.

Also-

Can evolution make things less complicated?:

Instead, the data suggest that eukaryote cells with all their bells and whistles are probably as ancient as bacteria and archaea, and may have even appeared first, with bacteria and archaea appearing later as stripped-down versions of eukaryotes, according to David Penny, a molecular biologist at Massey University in New Zealand.

Penny, who worked on the research with Chuck Kurland of Sweden’s Lund University and Massey University’s L.J. Collins, acknowledged that the results might come as a surprise.

“We do think there is a tendency to look at evolution as progressive,” he said. “We prefer to think of evolution as backwards, sideways, and occasionally forward.”

“…it’s possible that intelligent life evolved somewhere else in the universe first…”

I’ve never understood how this line of argument makes sense for the ID proponent. On the one hand, ID essentially posits that evolution is not sufficient to explain the existence of complex life in a proximate environment that we can study, observe, measure and actually know a lot about. To claim on the other hand, that such life might have evolved on a distant, hypothetical, unobservable elsewhere that we know nothing about… while this is theoretically possible (just about anything that can be imagined is theoretically possible), there’s nothing about it that is scientific.

Even if we say the argument’s hypothetical, staking out this ground actually provides firmer footing for the naturalist. Let’s say that we are a large and complex science experiment beamed here from Andromeda, and the creatures that did the seeding arose from purely naturalistic processes. In the end, this confirms Dawkins’ world view: the original origin of life did occur by unguided processes; law and chance is sufficient (ultimately) to explain the complex life we observe here; the blind watchmaker is alive and well.

Th late Stephen J. Gould was very clear on this point: there is absolutely nothing inherently “progressive” about evolution at all. On the contrary, there are good examples of natural selection producing considerably less complex descendants from ancestors (endoparasites are just one example).

However, there is a problem with the hypothesis that eukaryotic cells preceded the evolution of archaea and bacteria. The chief problem is the fact that, with very few exceptions (such a s mammalian red blood cells), virtually all eukaryotic cells have mitochondria. As Lynn Margulis has pointed out, mitochondria are almost certainly the evolutionary descendants of formerly free living aerobic prokaryotes (probably bacteria, not archaea) that were ingested but not digested by the ancestral ur-eukaryotic host cell.

Mitochondria are aerobic, but all of the geological evidence points to the conclusion that the early atmosphere of the Earth contained no free oxygen gas (that is, O2). Hence, if the “eukaryote first” hypothesis is to be maintained, one must assume that endosymbiotic mitochondria were a later addition (as were chloroplasts and other plastids).

However, if one removes mitochondria (and chloroplasts) from eukaryotic cells, what is left looks an awful lot like a “primitive” archaean, and so we are back to the “archaea first” hypothesis currently favored by most evolutionary biologists.

Favored on the basis of accumulating empirical evidence like the foregoing, I might add, not because of a commitment to some pre-existing ideological position. Indeed, the idea that there even was a third domain (i.e. the Archaea) was a hotly debated hypothesis a decade ago, but new discoveries have mostly supported the “Archaea hypothesis”.

As to DaveScot’s question about the importance of OOL to evolutionary biology, I assume it was stimulated by the discussion in the comments following the Altenberg Sixteen post. As I stated there, it is quite possible that there will never be any convincing empirical evidence to answer this question, given the immense amount of time that has elapsed and the lack of fossilizable evidence. Under such conditions, as a scientist dedicated to the proposition that all valid theories must have empirical support, I would assert that the question of the OOL (like the question of the origin of energy and matter in physics) must remain in the realm of metaphysics, rather than science.

Joseph wrote:

“If living organisms did NOT arise from non-living matter via non-telic processes there would be no reason to infer its subsequent diversity arose solely via non-telic processes.”

And indeed, the converse would also be the case: there would be no reason to infer its subsequent diversity arose solely via telic processes either.

The point to my continued assertion that this a non-issue in evolutionary biology is that there is no empirical evidence either way, nor is it likely that such evidence will eventually be forthcoming. Under such conditions, I would prefer not to argue over metaphysical positions, but rather discuss those processes for which we do have abundant empirical evidence. That is, the pattern of macroevolutionary changes as reflected in the fossil and genomic records and the processes by which such patterns have come about: phenotypic variation, inheritance, fecundity, and differential survival and reproduction; evolution, in a word.

Joseph,

Have you read the article by Kurland et al. (2006)?
Kurland CG, Collins LJ, Penny D. Genomics and the irreducible nature of eukaryote cells. Science. 2006 May 19;312(5776):1011-4.

Interesting read, even the Garden of Eden (no unicellular raptors in that garden apparently) is mentioned.

Several OOL researchers assert Darwinian processes in the procession from small molecules to life. There is constant mention of limited resources and the more efficient processes stealing the resources from the less efficient. And the constant upward movement to the first cell. So there is a definite progression in their theories as an inevitable characteristic of nature primarily based on the Darwinian paradigm.

Why, if this progressive process if accurate, should it stop when the first cell came into being. That is nonsense. So it will be hard to get away from progression as that is a basic characteristic of life as we have seen it. But what caused the progression? We are learning that Darwinian processes are very limited.

Of course there is never any details but only assertions by the OOL people just as it is with the evolutionary biologist who are great at creating models but short on empirical verification.

Empirical verification will come soon for the evolutionary biologists as more and more genomes are sequenced and there will be information if anything of consequence happened when species separated.

Allen –

“I would assert that the question of the OOL (like the question of the origin of energy and matter in physics) must remain in the realm of metaphysics, rather than science.”

The problem as I see it is that large portions of evolutionary theory are founded on assumptions about the origin of life. Tracing decent through homologies only works if you assume that the biochemical network was not there at the beginning of life, and it had to develop. If that assumption is not there, then a lot of current evolutionary theory, even for the fossils we do have, goes into the realm of metaphysics as well.

However, I don’t think we need to go into metaphysics to decide the origin-of-life questions. The answer to the question “where _can_ a self-replicating code come from” is one that is fully answerable, even in the absence of fossil evidence.

Here is the ID side of that case:

http://www.idnet.com.au/files/.....atural.pdf

Jon

I have a question about early uni cellular fossils. We see pictures of black like streaks in ancient rocks and are told that these are the fossils. I assume that these streaks have been analyzed for chemical content. Would the chemical content differentiate between the type of cell it might have been. Would we expect to find different proportions of elements in a pro karyote than a eukaryote?

I am sure this was done but have never seen anything published on this nor what are the chemical differences between the two types of cells in terms of proportion of elements.

As Lynn Margulis has pointed out, mitochondria are almost certainly the evolutionary descendants of formerly free living aerobic prokaryotes (probably bacteria, not archaea) that were ingested but not digested by the ancestral ur-eukaryotic host cell.-Allen_MacNeill

Sure if you only assume that euks evolved from proks.

How is her testing coming?

If living organisms did NOT arise from non-living matter via non-telic processes there would be no reason to infer its subsequent diversity arose solely via non-telic processes.”

And indeed, the converse would also be the case: there would be no reason to infer its subsequent diversity arose solely via telic processes either.

If living organisms arose via telic processes it would be very safe to infer the subsequent diversity had something to do with telic processes.

If living organisms arose from non-living matter via non-telic processes then ID is a false concept. No teleology required.

The point to my continued assertion that this a non-issue in evolutionary biology is that there is no empirical evidence either way, nor is it likely that such evidence will eventually be forthcoming.

Umm, transcription, translation= molecules building molecules to build molecular machines.

Right we see that in a test tube by just adding the right chemicals.

Under such conditions, I would prefer not to argue over metaphysical positions, but rather discuss those processes for which we do have abundant empirical evidence.-Allen

The processes that demonstrate a wobbling stability? That is populations oscillate but that is about it.

It matters to an investigation whether or not that which is being investigated arose via agency involvement or nature, operating freely.

Have you yet to even demonstrate that the transformations required are even achievable via any known process?

It’s all magical mystery mutations plus father time.

Not quite what one would expect from a science.

Have you read the article by Kurland et al. (2006)?-Telic Meme

Not yet.

I will look into it. Thanks

The gulf between inanimate matter and life is far greater than that between unicellular and multicellular organisms. To me, the process that sparked the first living entity has far more consequence……a pivotal event that would serve as a key to understanding the emergence and proliferation of subsequent and ever more complex life forms, and not the other way around (i.e., taking observed processes and extending it backwards to the first simple entity).

Allen McNeill:

I think you are entirely correct to insist on empirical evidence for intelligent design in the origin of life debate. So here are two predictions I’d like your comments on.

(1) An intelligent agent that wished to seed the Earth with life would have no reason to hang back, once Earth became habitable. From what I’ve read, this would have occurred around 3.9 billion years ago, when massive asteroid bombardments (which repeatedly sterilized the Earth) finally eased off. If fossil life-forms were found dating back 3.9 billion years, this would lend support to the hypothesis that life was designed. From what I have read, Carbon-12/Carbon-13 ratios might be one way to test for the presence of life in rocks of this age. If, on the other hand, these ratios consistently pointed to an absence of organic material in the oldest rocks, then that would count against a designer. What are your thoughts on this test?

(2) The DNA code should itself be optimal, if it was designed by an agent. As I wrote in an earlier post (14 January 2008), “If anything in nature was designed by a Higher Intelligence, DNA was. If something is intelligently designed for some purpose, then it should be optimal for that purpose… [O]ne simple prediction that ID would make is that NO biologist will ever be able to build a genetic code which can do a BETTER job than DNA for ALL of the following purposes: regulating the development and functioning of organisms; transmitting genetic information faithfully from one generation to the next; and making minor adjustments (mutations) in response to environmental changes. If someone can design a molecule that excels DNA in one of these areas and equals it in the others, then ID is falsified.”

In my earlier post (14 January 2008), I drew attention to an an article in “Science Daily” (Feb. 9, 2007) at http://www.sciencedaily.com/re…..230116.htm refers to DNA as “nearly optimal for encoding signals of any length in parallel to sequences that code for proteins.” It reports that Dr. Uri Alon and his doctoral student Shalev Itzkovitz “showed that the real genetic code was superior to the vast majority of alternative genetic codes in terms of its ability to encode other information in protein-coding genes.” Additionally, the researchers “demonstrated that the real genetic code provides for the quickest incorporation of a stop signal–compared to most of the alternative genetic codes–in cases where protein synthesis has gone amiss.” The vital question here is: can any alternative genetic code outdo DNA in overall efficiency? (I say “overall” efficiency because when an entity is designed for many different purposes which have conflicting requirements, some sort of engineering compromise is required, which means that in certain respects, the entity’s design may be sub-optimal.) My prediction regarding DNA is that IF some alternative genetic code turns out to be better than DNA at BOTH of the tasks mentioned in the article (encoding other information as well as incorporating a stop signal) then there should definitely be some other function of DNA (e.g. long-term transmission of genetic information) for which the alternative genetic code does not perform as well as the code which we find in DNA.

You are a biologist. I’m not. So my question to you is: is there any sense in which the DNA molecule can be said to be optimal?

If a theory is to be hailed as the cornerstone of a particular field of study it should at least fruitfully address the origin of the very thing that it purports to explain.

Life is the all-encompassing theme permeating the study of biology, and if Darwinism cannot even come close to giving a worthy account of how it came into being, then it has no business dealing with origins.

Joseph. What are your credentials?

JPCollado:

By your criteria, then, physics has no business studying gravity, since it proposes no origin for it, and chemistry has no business studying atoms, as it proposes no origin for subatomic particles.

Furthermore, as I have repeated multiple times, evolutionary biologists do not speculate on the origin of life. Darwin didn’t, nor do virtually all of my colleagues in the field. Speculating about the origin of life is mostly an avocation of geochemists, physicists, and philosophers. More power to them, if that’s what they want to do, but it isn’t evolutionary biology, which presupposes the existence of life in the same way that gravitational physics presupposes the existence of gravitational force.

JPCollado wrote:

“…a pivotal event that would serve as a key to understanding the emergence and proliferation of subsequent and ever more complex life forms.”

This is an assertion, not a conclusion based on empirical evidence. Do you have any evidence to back it up, or is it simply your opinion? If so, you are certainly entitled to it, but please don’t call it science.

To be blunt, there is no empirical evidence at all for how the transition from non-living to living material came about. Hence, any discussions about the process are pure metaphysical speculation, nothing more, and nothing less.

Joseph asked (about Lynn Margulis):

“How is her testing coming?”

Just fine, thank you. She’s been working hard in the field and in the laboratory, collecting empirical evidence that has convinced virtually every scientist in the world that her serial endosymbiotic theory of the origin of eukaryotes is the best supported theory for that process. Some of this is summarized in Symbiosis in Cell Evolution (for which she has been repeatedly nominated for a Nobel Prize). Have you read it?

And, while we’re at it, what field and laboratory research have you done to collect empirical evidence for an alternate theory, and where has it been published?

Jerry asked:

“Would the chemical content differentiate between the type of cell it might have been. Would we expect to find different proportions of elements in a pro karyote than a eukaryote?”

Lynn Margulis (among others) has published extensively on precisely this question. I recommend you start with her book, Early Life and then follow up on the references she cites in the bibliography and references cited.

johnnyb wrote:

“The problem as I see it is that large portions of evolutionary theory are founded on assumptions about the origin of life. ”

Name one.

I teach evolutionary biology at Cornell and have never mentioned it except in passing, for the reasons I have repeatedly discussed in this and other threads. Furthermore, it’s not my field, and I hesitate to discuss subjects about which I have not done extensive reading and study.

If you’re interested in how the subject is addressed by people working in the field, I recommend chapter 16 of Scott Freeman and Jon C. Herron’s book, Evolutionary Analysis, 3rd ed, published by Pearson/Prentice Hall. In particular, following up on some of the references listed on pages 659 to 662 will give you a much better idea of the state of understanding of this subject than I can, especially given the constraints of this format.

DaveScot wrote:

“Phylogenesis, in other words works the same way as ontogenesis except over a much longer timescale. ”

And your evidence for this assertion is…?

Yes, there seem to be some analogies between the two processes. It was such similarities that prompted Ernst Haeckel to formulate his “ontogenetic law” that “otogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” Are you affirming Haeckel’s principle, but in reverse order?

Furthermore, arguments by analogy alone are not considered legitimate. What evidence, beyond mere appearance, is there for your assertion that phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny?

Alan Macneil is one zealous Darwinian.

PannenbergOmega,

We should be thankful that someone like Dr. MacNeill has agreed to talk with us. It is how we learn. I believe he has changed his attitudes toward some ID’s proponents a little in the last couple years. He certainly knows that most of ID is not based on religion and that is a plus. Most scientists who are Darwinist would not spend any time with us here.

Dr. MacNeill,

Jablonka amd Lamb’s book arrived today. So in a couple weeks I may have some questions for you if you are still around here.

Hi Jerry,

I suppose you are right.

It seems they want to have their soup and eat it too.
Evolution 101 at berkeley.edu

Jerry:

We should be thankful that someone like Dr. MacNeill has agreed to talk with us. It is how we learn….Most scientists who are Darwinist would not spend any time with us here.

A sad truth is that a number of scientists, zachriel comes to mind, have shared their knowledge on this forum in a reasonably tactful fashion, and got banned. I agree with you that knowledgable people from the other side of the equation are essential for our growth, and for keeping us honest.

There is a new book out by ISCID fellow Jeffrey Schwartz.

http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Bra.....48-6788821

This is relevent to ID prediction number 7.

http://post-darwinist.blogspot.....esign.html

jerry:

I would be delighted to discuss Jabloka and Lamb’s book, Evolution in Four Dimensions. I find them to be refreshingly iconoclastic vis-a-vis the “modern evolutionary synthesis”, as well as terrifically up-to-date on the subject of epigenetic (and non-genetic) inheritance. Their chapter on genetic assimilation, in particular, was both exciting and eye-opening. I recommend it very highly, not the least because they provide very strong evidence that mutations in many cases are anything but “random”. Indeed, they explain how many mutations (perhaps almost all) happen in precisely the regions of the genome that are most likely to code for adaptations that are reacting to environmental stress. I intent to add this to the “it-ain’t-RM-&-NS-anymore, -so-let’s-move-on” list the next time I update it.

This is why science is both fun and endlessly fascinating to me! Let’s do science!

Allen_MacNeill: “To be blunt, there is no empirical evidence at all for how the transition from non-living to living material came about. Hence, any discussions about the process are pure metaphysical speculation, nothing more, and nothing less.”

Actually, it would be more accurate to say there is no empirical evidence in support of that transition via an undirected process. But that does not imply that there is no relevant evidence available. It only looks like “no evidence” if one thinks exclusively in terms of “supporting evidence”.

We can study evidence from physics and chemistry that indicates in principle that such a transition is not to be expected from undirected processes. That is still true scientific evidence (if it is allowed to be heard). We are not left with nothing more than metaphysics.

This was done with The Mystery of Life’s Origin. A more recent work in the same line is Stuart Pullen’s Intelligent Design or Evolution? Why the Origin of Life and the Evolution of Molecular Knowledge Imply Design.

Absent intelligent agency, there is no support in experience or in theory for a prebiotic “engine” that could apply and direct available energy toward the kinds of work that would be required. Nor does the blind prebiotic world have access to direction toward the future benefit of symbolic representation.

In short, it is our scientific knowledge about chemistry and undirected processes that informs the always-tentative but justified conclusion that chemicals, left to themselves, do not behave at all like that.

That said, I agree with your point that this has little practical relevance to the working evolutionary biologist who begins with life as a given.

As always, thanks for your regularly informative posts.

According to the article by Law, Phillips, and Myers (cited above) the atmosphere of the Earth may have had significant concentrations of free molecular oxygen (i.e. O2) as early as 2.8 billion years ago. However, this in no way contradicts the assertion that the primordial Earth’s atmosphere lacked free oxygen. According to the best estimates (based on multiple lines of empirical evidence) the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Fossil evidence of living organisms (spherical prokaryotes) have been unambiguously identified in rocks that date to about 3.8 billion years ago. Therefore, those prokaryotes (and their ancestors) were living in an atmosphere virtually devoid of free oxygen gas.

So, where did the 21% oxygen in our atmosphere come from? Virtually all but a tiny percentage of it is a by-product of non-cyclic photophosphorylation, a metabolic process that apparently evolved about 3.5 billion years ago. That still leaves about 700 million years between the origin of cells that released oxygen into the atmosphere and the iron pisoliths that Law, Phillips, and Myers describe in their paper.

So, to answer DLH’s question, I will indeed mention these discoveries in my upcoming evolution textbook.

p.s. It is ignorance about something that allows us the freedom to believe that anything can happen. It is through increase of knowledge that we begin to understand in principle both what to expect and what not to expect.

In this way, the hope of alchemy (or of abiogenesis) gives way to the understanding of chemistry and physics regarding limitations.

“Notice, however, that the sharp edge of this critique is not what we do not know, but what we do know. Many facts have come to light in the past three decades of experimental inquiry into life’s beginning. With each passing year the criticism has gotten stronger. The advance of science itself is what is challenging the notion that life arose on earth by spontaneous (in a thermodynamic sense) chemical reactions.”

– The Mystery of Life’s Origin, Summary and Conclusion, p. 185.

Regarding prebiotic oxygen levels, The Mystery of Life’s Origin devoted a chapter to “Reassessing the Early Earth and its Atmosphere”.

As a caveat, this is not something that I have been keeping up with. But they noted evidence along multiple lines that the higher UV production of the young sun produced significant free oxygen from photodissociation of water in the atmosphere.

On the high end of estimates (they cite several different sources and estimates):

“Brinkmann calculated the amount of O2 generated from photodissociation and consumed in oxidation of rock, etc. He concluded that a minimum of 25% of the present level (0.25 PAL) of oxygen existed over 99% of geologic time.” (p. 79)

Other estimates were more conservative, but there is a strong case that the earth did not need to wait for life to have free oxygen.

p.s. FYI: After looking further in the chapter, it appears that the upper bound suggested by other estimates for photodissociation alone are in the range of 1% to 10% present levels (or 0.01 to 0.1 PAL). (At some point, ozone begins to block that process.)

In any case, for anyone truly interested in nailing this down in detail, I would recommend checking for more recent research.

The main take away point is that until the ozone (O3) layer was established, photodissociation was likely at work even before living organisms were present.

Footnote:

If 1% of present Oxygen levels were present, according to Thaxton et al, the evidence is that it would “poison” a Miller-Urey type reaction. [Note how M-U used a reducing atmosphere, and how latterly there have been many attempts to remove the origin of life-relevant monomers from contexts tied to the atmosphere, e.g. comets, other planets, or undersea vents. And that does not even begin to address the implications of the sort of mineral found, that point to an oxidising atmosphere from earth's earliest days.]

And, we have not even begun to address the realistic concentrations of M-U type components, nor the chaining to get to polymers, nor the implications of the resulting racemic forms vs the chirality for the interlocking geometry of life, nor the constraints on said chaining to get to bio-functional polymers, nor the need for encapsulating these in close proximity in appropriate structures and with energy and materials flows across the membrane, etc.

In short, there is a lot of easily and directly observed empirical evidence relevant to the formation of life by chance + necessity only, based on requisites of life as we observe it.

It is just that it does not point the way that devotees of the evolutionary materialist paradigm want.

That is why, for instance, we can read Shapiro in Sci Am on the RNA world type hypothesis:

The RNA nucleotides are familiar to chemists because of their abundance in life and their resulting commercial availability. In a form of molecular vitalism, some scientists have presumed that nature has an innate tendency to produce life’s building blocks preferentially, rather than the hordes of other molecules that can also be derived from the rules of organic chemistry. This idea drew inspiration from . . . Stanley Miller. He applied a spark discharge to a mixture of simple gases that were then thought to represent the atmosphere of the early Earth. Two amino acids of the set of 20 used to construct proteins were formed in significant quantities, with others from that set present in small amounts . . . more than 80 different amino acids . . . have been identified as components of the Murchison meteorite, which fell in Australia in 1969 . . . By extrapolation of these results, some writers have presumed that all of life’s building could be formed with ease in Miller-type experiments and were present in meteorites and other extraterrestrial bodies. This is not the case.

A careful examination of the results of the analysis of several meteorites led the scientists who conducted the work to a different conclusion: inanimate nature has a bias toward the formation of molecules made of fewer rather than greater numbers of carbon atoms, and thus shows no partiality in favor of creating the building blocks of our kind of life . . . I have observed a similar pattern in the results of many spark discharge experiments . . . . no nucleotides of any kind have been reported as products of spark discharge experiments or in studies of meteorites, nor have the smaller units (nucleosides) that contain a sugar and base but lack the phosphate.

To rescue the RNA-first concept from this otherwise lethal defect, its advocates have created a discipline called prebiotic synthesis. They have attempted to show that RNA and its components can be prepared in their laboratories in a sequence of carefully controlled reactions, normally carried out in water at temperatures observed on Earth . . . . Unfortunately, neither chemists nor laboratories were present on the early Earth to produce RNA . . . .

The analogy that comes to mind is that of a golfer, who having played a golf ball through an 18-hole course, then assumed that the ball could also play itself around the course in his absence. He had demonstrated the possibility of the event; it was only necessary to presume that some combination of natural forces (earthquakes, winds, tornadoes and floods, for example) could produce the same result, given enough time. No physical law need be broken for spontaneous RNA formation to happen, but the chances against it are so immense, that the suggestion implies that the non-living world had an innate desire to generate RNA. The majority of origin-of-life scientists who still support the RNA-first theory either accept this concept (implicitly, if not explicitly) or feel that the immensely unfavorable odds were simply overcome by good luck.

And, Orgel [PLOS] rebuts, on the metabolism first scenario:

It must be recognized that assessment of the feasibility of any particular proposed prebiotic cycle must depend on arguments about chemical plausibility, rather than on a decision about logical possibility . . . few would believe that any assembly of minerals on the primitive Earth is likely to have promoted these syntheses in significant yield. Each proposed metabolic cycle, therefore, must be evaluated in terms of the efficiencies and specificities that would be required of its hypothetical catalysts in order for the cycle to persist. Then arguments based on experimental evidence or chemical plausibility can be used to assess the likelihood that a family of catalysts that is adequate for maintaining the cycle could have existed on the primitive Earth . . . .

The most serious challenge to proponents of metabolic cycle theories—the problems presented by the lack of specificity of most nonenzymatic catalysts—has, in general, not been appreciated. If it has, it has been ignored. Theories of the origin of life based on metabolic cycles cannot be justified by the inadequacy of competing theories: they must stand on their own . . . .

The prebiotic syntheses that have been investigated experimentally almost always lead to the formation of complex mixtures. Proposed polymer replication schemes are unlikely to succeed except with reasonably pure input monomers. No solution of the origin-of-life problem will be possible until the gap between the two kinds of chemistry is closed. Simplification of product mixtures through the self-organization of organic reaction sequences, whether cyclic or not, would help enormously, as would the discovery of very simple replicating polymers. However, solutions offered by supporters of geneticist or metabolist scenarios that are dependent on “if pigs could fly” hypothetical chemistry are unlikely to help.

I think both are right.

And, let us observe the force of Shapiro’s “then” on atmospheric composition. That is, the Miller Urey type experiment is of historical not scientific interest.

We can draw out some pointers if not conclusions: We have FSCI, we have algorithms and machinery that implements it. We know where such information based systems routinely come from. Agent action.

So, why is it that so many resist such an empirically anchored explanation for the origin of life? [And, given the same basic constraint on information generation, the body plan level diversity we observe across say a starfish, a trilobite and a turtle?]

GEM of TKI

Joseph asked (about Lynn Margulis):

“How is her testing coming?”

Just fine, thank you.

Has she observed free-living bacteria engulfing other free-living bacteria, with the engulfed bacteria continuing to live inside of the first one?

She’s been working hard in the field and in the laboratory, collecting empirical evidence that has convinced virtually every scientist in the world that her serial endosymbiotic theory of the origin of eukaryotes is the best supported theory for that process.

Many scientists also are convinced that whales “evolved” from land mammals. However there isn’t any data that would demonstrate that such a transformation is even possible.

Some of this is summarized in Symbiosis in Cell Evolution (for which she has been repeatedly nominated for a Nobel Prize). Have you read it?

I have read much of her work. I have read quite a bit on serial endosymbiosis- pros & cons. I will see about that book though. Thanks.

Have you read:

Kurland CG, Collins LJ, Penny D. Genomics and the irreducible nature of eukaryote cells. Science. 2006 May 19;312(5776):1011-4.

Al Gore received a Nobel Prize for something that turned out to be bogus.

And, while we’re at it, what field and laboratory research have you done to collect empirical evidence for an alternate theory, and where has it been published?

I have been too busy working on national security issues- detecting biological & chemical agents- and recovering from injuries I sustained in Iraq- three surgeries down and hopefully only one more to go.

BTW without free oxygen how did the nucleotides- you know the building blocks of DNA & RNA- come to be?

(only the purine adenine is without O)

H’mm:

First, best wishes to Joseph for a speedy recovery.

It also seems from his remarks just above, that there is an issue that needs to be firmly addressed:

[Allen:] And, while we’re at it, what field and laboratory research have you done to collect empirical evidence for an alternate theory, and where has it been published?

[Joseph:] I have been too busy working on national security issues- detecting biological & chemical agents- and recovering from injuries I sustained in Iraq- three surgeries down and hopefully only one more to go.

We need to look seriously at the issue of empirical testing and scientific hypotheses, as there is a whole province of such testing that, IMHBCO is not being properly and squarely faced by advocates of the evolutionary materialist paradigm.

Accordingly, I [again this morning . . .] need to excerpt from the Altenberg thread at 204:

Science is indeed in large part about inference to best current explanation, and retroductive, unifying explanation of diverse phenomena is as important and often at least as powerful as prediction.

Some would indeed argue that prediction is a subset of such empirical explanation, i.e providing a unifying construct that points to as yet non-instantiated empirical data. That is, the logic in basic form has structure, where T – theory, O – observation of fact, P – prediction of not yet observed fact:

T –> {O1, O2, . . . On} AND {P1, P2, . . . Pm},

where the marker between O’s and P’s is set temporally and sometimes financially. [Recall here the unbuilt super-collider that was going to be the lifetime employment programme for a lot of physicists . . . pardon my hints of cynicism.]

However, there is a further factor, as — as GP hints at — domains in science interact.

Namely, there are also points where theories have bridges (B) to other domains in science and associated bodies of accepted theory. Thus, we extend the basic model:

T –> {O1, O2, . . . On} AND {P1, P2, . . . Pm} AND {B1, B2, . . . Bk}

The classic current a case in point would be quantum physics which unifies across a very large cluster of domains across several entire fields of science and associated technologies, brilliantly. Never mind its own gaping inner challenges.

Now, too, let us observe: when a bridge to another established domain in science opens up, all at once there is the major potential for cross-checks across entire domains.

Thus, the opening of a bridge is fraught with potential for confirmation and disconfirmation, as all at once whole new domains of fact and associated theories are exposed to mutual cross-examination. If there is mutual coherence and support, then it lends our confidence in the underlying constructs in both domains a greatly enhanced weight of credence. [For instance, think here on the import of key bridging concepts such as atoms, energy, particles such as electrons, the wave concept, and now information.] But, on the other hand, where there is incoherence, we then have to look at the weights of the relevant alternative explanations and come to conclusions on where the changes need to be made.

That is a major reason why I take the design inference seriously, as the progress of molecular scale biology over the past 60 or so years has revealed elements of a complex, in part digitally based information system at the core of cell based life. Onward, that bridges to an even more established domain of science, thermodynamics. One may deny the bridges but they plainly are there and it boils down to this: the current dominant chance + necessity only paradigm in biology is deeply challenged to account coherently for the information systems and content at the core of cell based life.

Now, there is an alternative paradigm, design, that can. But it is controversial as it cuts across major worldview level commitments of many leading practitioners in the sciences. So, we now see a major political dust-up taking place, across entire domains of science and also in the education system and wider culture, where key dominant elites have embedded in key elements of the evolutionary materialist paradigm in their worldviews and life/culture agendas.

1 –> The existence of the information bridge implies, inter alia that work in information science is relevant to work on relevant alternate theories.

2 –> The key points on the exhaustion of probabilistic resources in searching config spaces of 10^300 or more cells on the gamut of the observed cosmos to find islands of bio-functionally relevant information, has been published in all sorts of peer reviewed literature by many people, as can easily be documented from the list of peer-reviewed articles at DI.

3 –> Actually though the peer reviewed research issue is a red herring leading to a strawman. For the underlying issue is well known and long since deeply embedded in the world of experience. Functionally specified complex information is to date only observed to be produced by intelligent agents, usually in the context of intentional activity, i.e design. The posts on this web page are immediately accessible cases in point. [Cf my "lucky noise" discussion in Section A of my always linked.]

4 –> So, there is a burden of proof shifting attempt going on. The real issue is that evo mat advocates are asserting — in the teeth of overwhelming improbability linked directly to the reasons we have confidence in the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the law of large numbers in statistics [cf my thought expt case study here, that expands Hoyle's 747 in a junkyard by a tornado illustration] — that mere bare logical or physical possibility is enough to overcome such overwhelming improbability.

5 –> Sorry, we aren’t buying that story anymore — you are up against overwhelming improbabilities on the scale of the observed cosmos, so much so that there is in praxis no effective difference between the probabilities and a practical/empirical zero. [Indeed in stat thermodynamics it is common to see odds of 1 in 10^50 being viewed as effectively zero.]

6 –> Nor does positing quasi-infinite arrays of cosmi with suitably scattered physical parameters get you any further than directly implying that we have crossed over from empirically anchored science to metaphysical speculation. On philosophy, we have a right to demand that ALL materially relevant alternative worldviews be admitted to the level playing field of comparative difficulties.

7 –> And that is before we get to discussing the outrageous censorship and career-busting multiplied by outright slander being carried out by the evolutionary materialist establishment. (Hence the likely success of Expelled.)

As they say in my homeland: “wheel and tun and come again.”

GEM of TKI

Allen,

Thanks for the book recommendations. I will be reading them.

The book Jerry just received “Evo in 4 Dim” at least appears to mirror Dr Lee Spetner’s “non-random evolutionary hypothesis” in which “built-in responses to environmental cues” is the main mechanism for adaptation.

Thanks again- live long and prosper…

Having not read Spetner’s book, wouldn’t his hypothesis be easy to test. Just change the environmental cues and watch what happens. I am sure this has been done many times with various species. There should be a lot of published results.

Allen — with regard to DLH post 43.

It seems almost self-evident that OOL and evolution are conflated. You may not think it proper but that is the reality.

tribune7 @ 33 wrote:

“It seems they want to have their soup and eat it too.” Origin of Life in Evolution 101 from Understanding Evolution at Berkeley.edu

Hey tribune, thanks for the web link. And great rejoinder too! This contradicts Mr. MacNeill’s assertion @ 23, when he wrote:

“Furthermore, as I have repeated multiple times, evolutionary biologists do not speculate on the origin of life.”

Perhaps Mr. MacNeill could clarify, especially when the site,

[...] is a collaborative project of the University of California Museum of Paleontology and the National Center for Science Education.

[in addition to the following organizations]
American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS)

National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent)

[And also]

Support for Understanding Evolution has been provided by The National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Maybe Mr. MacNeill is not aware of his colleagues’ efforts in the field?

Mr. MacNeill?
{DLH added Origin of Life Link & corrected other link to Evolution of Life http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/home.php }

University of California at Berkeley has been on record for several years that evolution is not concerned about the origin of life

See this on their website about evolution

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/.....eory.shtml

It is standard with evolutionary biologists to not be concerned with OOL. It is an important issue and one often misrepresented in textboøks but usually only a minor discussion within the discussion of evolution.

Thank you jerry. Let me provide the link once more since the one I included @ 53 above apparently has the wrong file:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/.....soflife_01

Now if it is true that evolutionary biology plays a minor or insignificant role in OOL research, then the heading of the article is very misleading:

“From soup to cells — the origin of life”

How can a website devoted to the furtherance of evolutionary education make such a strong statement without providing the facts? Surely, this will entail discussion of OOL, which is what supposedly evolutionary biology is not concerned with. Yet, the statement compels further discussion and explanation of the matter. How do they know that the original cell formed from a soup of chemicals? Do they really want to get into the foibles of such ponderings? Is it not better just to start with the cell and proceed from there? If OOL is not the mainstay, it would behoove them not make statements like that, for obvious reasons.

The site continues:

It’s important to keep in mind that changes to these hypotheses [about how life originated] are a normal part of the process of science and that they do not represent a change in the basis of evolutionary theory. [emphasis mine]

How do they know it would not change their current understanding of evolutionary theory when OOL is not even a domain of research, or when all of the full blown implications of such research have not been clearly spelled out as of yet? This sounds to me more like an emotional response to the dilemma posed by OOL. If it is determined that the process that gave rise to the first cell is in fact imbued with intelligence, then this will have tremendous implications for a theory that is materialistic-based and reductive-mechanistic by nature.

Notwithstanding, my question to Mr. MacNeill still merits attention: the statement that “within the field of evolutionary biology, the origin of life is of special interest” thus spurring the creation of hypotheses to deal with this issue is still in conflict with what Mr. MacNeill maintained @ post # 23.

JPCollado:
“If a theory is to be hailed as the cornerstone of a particular field of study it should at least fruitfully address the origin of the very thing that it purports to explain.”

Allen_MacNeill @ 23 responded:

“By your criteria, then, physics has no business studying gravity, since it proposes no origin for it, and chemistry has no business studying atoms, as it proposes no origin for subatomic particles.

Speculating about the origin of life […] isn’t evolutionary biology, which presupposes the existence of life in the same way that gravitational physics presupposes the existence of gravitational force.”

Mr. MacNeill,

You are providing a faulty analogy.

(1) first of all, the study of gravity and atoms is akin to the study of homeostasis and cells in biology, yet neither is called upon as a proper framework for the initial exploration of the origin of the universe or life, respectively.

(2) the origin of gravity has been intensely studied and is well established, albeit some minor exceptions.

(3) scientists have also proposed to explain the origin of the universe by way of multiple theoretical models, not the least of which is the Big Bang, the grand-daddy of them all (which, again, has nothing to do with gravity and atoms as starting points – see note 1 above).

(4) gravity is a known law of nature confirmed by repeatable testing and precise calculations, similar to quantum electrodynamics which is accurate to 13 unyielding decimal places. But Darwin’s theory makes no identical predictions at all and has not been observed with the same degree of mathematical precision and experimental certainty.

(5) we don’t hear cosmologists, physicists or chemists praising a particular theory as the cornerstone of the physical sciences. We do, however, hear about Kepler’s laws of planetary motion as forming an important foundation for later cosmological research and further enrichment of our understanding of the heavens. Kepler’s rigorous methods, though, are vastly different from those employed by evolutionists.