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Evolution driven by laws? Not random mutations?

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So claims a recent book, Arrival of the Fittest, by Andreas Wagner, professor of evolutionary biology at U Zurich in Switzerland (also associated with the Santa Fe Institute). He lectures worldwide and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences.

From the book announcement:

Can random mutations over a mere 3.8 billion years solely be responsible for wings, eyeballs, knees, camouflage, lactose digestion, photosynthesis, and the rest of nature’s creative marvels? And if the answer is no, what is the mechanism that explains evolution’s speed and efficiency?

In Arrival of the Fittest, renowned evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner draws on over fifteen years of research to present the missing piece in Darwin’s theory. Using experimental and computational technologies that were heretofore unimagined, he has found that adaptations are not just driven by chance, but by a set of laws that allow nature to discover new molecules and mechanisms in a fraction of the time that random variation would take.

From a review (which is careful to note that it is not a religious argument):

The question “how does nature innovate?” often elicits a succinct but unsatisfying response – random mutations. Andreas Wagner first illustrates why random mutations alone cannot be the cause of innovations – the search space for innovations, be it at the level of genes, protein, or metabolic reactions is too large that makes the probability of stumbling upon all the innovations needed to make a little fly (let alone humans) too low to have occurred within the time span the universe has been around.

He then shows some of the fundamental hidden principles that can actually make innovations possible for natural selection to then select and preserve those innovations.

Like interacting parallel worlds, this would be momentous news if it is true. But someone is going to have to read the book and assess the strength of the laws advanced.

One thing for sure, if an establishment figure can safely write this kind of thing, Darwin’s theory is coming under more serious fire than ever. But we knew, of course, when Nature published an article on the growing dissent within the ranks about Darwinism.

In origin of life research, there has long been a law vs. chance controversy. For example, Does nature just “naturally” produce life? vs. Maybe if we throw enough models at the origin of life… some of them will stick?

Note: You may have to apprise your old schoolmarm that Darwin’s theory* is “natural selection acting on random mutations,” not “evolution” in general. It is the only theory that claims sheer randomness can lead to creativity, in conflict with information theory. See also: Being as Communion.

*(or neo-Darwinism, or whatever you call what the Darwin-in-the-schools lobby is promoting or Evolution Sunday is celebrating).*

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Comments
gpuccio, Thanks for your substantive responses. I haven't been able to review them in detail yet, as work has taken up too much time this week. Hopefully I'll be able to get back into this conversation tomorrow or the day after; I'll probably respond on your new thread, which seems on a quick review like a continuation of this one. Best, LHLearned Hand
November 12, 2014
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MT: The same for you. Note, the issue is not that proteins once created can fold and function [and may need to be chaperoned to do the right thing cf prions and suspected causes of Alzheimer's etc . . . ], but that getting AA sequences that will then fold and function and coding for them in D/RNA is a super search challenge in AA sequence space much less the wider space of organic chemistry. Recall, codes, NC assembly machines and associated support systems all need to be explained, starting with Darwin's pond or the like. If Blind Watchmaker thesis thought is to rise from being in effect ideological just so stories dressed up in a lab coat and solemnly pronounced as incantations in suitably impressive tones. KFkairosfocus
November 11, 2014
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D, welcome. You may find what I just put up here helpful, though I confess it is loaded with allusions across several disciplines of thought and years of exchanges in and around UD. KFkairosfocus
November 11, 2014
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#691 kairosfocus
We don’t actually need to quantify to recognise, but we can quantify and the result is the quantification helps us see how hard it is for the atomic and temporal resources of the observed cosmos to arise beyond sparse search of very large config spaces implied by the possible arrangements of parts vs the tight configurational constraints implied by needs of interactive, specific functional organisation. KF
Thank you for the detailed explanation.Dionisio
November 10, 2014
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MT, kindly read 695 above, you are misdirecting your focus and inadvertently are begging the crucial questions. G/night. KFkairosfocus
November 10, 2014
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Video: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/videos/crop-circle-creation/kairosfocus
November 10, 2014
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KF @ 689
MT: In reality, we are dealing with AA chains where each position in A1-A2 . . . An can take 20 values, yielding for n, W = 20^N possibilities. With a shortish typical length of 250 AA’s, that’s 1.8 * 10^325 possibilities, whilst the sample window of the observed cosmos is like 10^111
The probabilities are huge but Protein folding depend on diverse folding mechanisms and are not just probabilistic. See mechanisms HERE KF @690
PS: BTW, that’s 250 degrees of freedom, or 250 dimensions
Then the volume of search space to be searched is even lessMe_Think
November 10, 2014
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MT, The design inference on FSCO/I requires joint application to a given aspect of a phenomenon, of functional specificity and sufficient complexity; regularities will be assigned to mechanical necessity, stochastically distributed and reasonably plausible contingencies to chance, and variations to both. As has been pointed out over and over, a general decoding algorithm is not a reasonable expectation, on theory of computation. Show your functional specificity and complexity beyond a reasonable threshold, and you are going to find good reason to infer design. And we can see examples on the matter here, where I am strongly inclined to suspect that natural crop disturbances will not show precise geometric figures with clean cut edges following precise mathematical loci for arcs of circles, straight lines and other similar curves [e.g. ellipses, spirals etc], or patterns consistent with the sort of artistic representations that became popular post Cubism etc, and which have become a part of the visual language of commercial logos and symbols. Nor will they follow the sorts of patterns that archaeologists have long called crop marks that point to archaeology underneath as opposed to natural. KFkairosfocus
November 10, 2014
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MT: The problem is not the fraction of the space that are near neighbours, it is that if one starts in an arbitrary location, one embarking on a random walk or a dynamic stochastic walk is likely indeed to be remote from any island of function and so is nowhere able to get a functional signal to reinforce success. Actually, in a sense, that ever falling fraction of the possibilities space accessible in a random direction step of Hamming distance radius r, is exactly the problem, it means that if you are in the deep bulk of non-functional possibilities and are forced to be in a sparse search by steps of a very large space (due to the constraint of atomic and temporal resources in the sol system or the observed cosmos) you are vastly unlikely ever to find an island of function by such processes. (Try, Darwin's pond of salts or the like as a start, the OOL root of the tree of life that so many evo mat thinkers are so reluctant to start from.) The old story on hill climbing based on increments up a slope imply being present on an island of function. This is the big problem with all those evolutionary computing models that are so often trotted out, they are misdirected to the wrong problem and beg the real issue at stake.. Recall, the problem is that functional complex interactive organisation confines one to a narrow range of possible configs in the wider space, the island of function effect. Just think, a bag of parts for the ABU 6500 3c shaken up, vs assembled in accord with its exploded view wiring diagram. To get the next level of it, imagine the bag now has parts for similar but incompatible reels added in and is shaken some more --- even arranging for the right part to be in the right place at the right time can be a big, information rich problem. Predictably, the low information approach will fail, the high information one is likely to work but is a design approach. Precisely, because of the difference between blind contingency driven by chance and necessity, and intelligently directed choice contingency . . . design. Which BTW is one reason why we routinely intuitively recognise designs as configs that are readily seen as only likely on design. KFkairosfocus
November 10, 2014
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In short there is a design filter explanatory process applied and it differentiates those that seem to come about by chance and necessity from those that show signs of being designed, the overwhelming majority. Just what is that filtering process, the Wikipedia are rather reluctant to admit.
It is easy to distinguish a Natural crop circle from a man-made one. Natural crop circles have bent stalk (unlike Man made which shows signs of breakage), Natural Crop circle shows star burst pattern in the stalk, the area around the natural crop circle shows higher EM readings. Ball lighting phenomenon is observed in natural Crop circles, Stalk strength measurement shows weakness. The point is dFSCI would not be able to distinguish Natural crop circle from similar man made crop circles. You need to make stalk level observations.Me_Think
November 10, 2014
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Joe, courtesy wireframe analysis, we can use bit based info metrics to deal with the organised complexity of some things, and witht he just plain complexity of others, but the problem is as noted in my recent post on FSCO/I, mech counts easily run to 5 - 7 figures, and the work involved takes up far too much time for a bog type post. Besides, it is routinely done in technical drawing work or computer animation work. Part of how we are literally surrounded by cases in point of FSCO/I . . . even our clothing and the PCs we type on as well as glasses etc are cases in point -- and the routinely empirically known source of FSCO/I. Where, ever since Paley was strawmannised by ignoring his moving beyond the ordinary watch to a thought exercise of a self replicating one, there as been a serious point on how the additional-ity of self replication gives further reason to infer design, as that too is FSCO/I. I am beginning to make a cultural diagnosis of resistance to threatening change, based on denial driven by selective hyperskepticism. It's beginning to sound like a strategic change gap analysis with dominant groups vested in a status quo and the need to empower the marginalised, intimidated and apathetic to demand their right to sit at the table and to refuse to take dismissals or abuses as acceptable responses . . . indeed to see them as showing a dominant cluster of factions being willing to be abusive to sustain its power and apparent legitimacy. Where of course the Marxists were the classic case in point of abusive nihilistic rebels who when they gained power continued in their bad ways, with horrific consequences. KFkairosfocus
November 10, 2014
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uh oh, sorry on italicisationkairosfocus
November 10, 2014
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D, As I recall, crop circles -- and they started out as that, circles in fields -- came to significant attention in the early 80's, and speculations about where they came from and what they meant arose. There were speculation about Electric fields and whether oddities, etc but they pretty much vanished when lines and shapes like stars or elaborate evidently composed patterns like logos began to appear. At some point a group came up and confessed. They function as artistic drawings on a grand scale much like Nazca lines and various public monuments or murals, e.g. try horses in chalk rock outline on English countryside hills etc. Such things are amenable to nodes-arcs analysis and wireframe meshes -- cf my recent post here which has illustrative images tied to the ABU 6500 C3 mag reel [& DV I will do something on the morrow, though I have an urgent letter cropping up . . . ], and can be seen as manifesting functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information, FSCO/I. BTW, one of the astonishing things about the resistance to evidence that we can see above and elsewhere is that we live in a world of technology and are literally surrounded by examples of FSCO/I and its routinely known and generally recognised -- save where it seems to be very inconvenient to a certain dominant evolutionary materialist ideology that likes to dress up in a lab coat and call itself science -- origin in design as causal process. We don't actually need to quantify to recognise, but we can quantify and the result is the quantification helps us see how hard it is for the atomic and temporal resources of the observed cosmos to arise beyond sparse search of very large config spaces implied by the possible arrangements of parts vs the tight configurational constraints implied by needs of interactive, specific functional organisation. KF PS: WIKI
A crop circle is a sizable pattern created by the flattening of a crop such as wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rapeseed. Crop circles are also referred to as crop formations because they are not always circular in shape. The documented cases have substantially increased from the 1970s to current times, and many self-styled experts alleged an alien origin. However, in 1991, two hoaxers, Bower and Chorley, claimed authorship of many circles throughout England, after one of their circles was certified as impossible to be made by a man by a notable circle investigator in front of journalists.[1] Circles in the United Kingdom are not spread randomly across the landscape, but they appear near roads, areas of medium to dense population, and cultural heritage monuments, such as Stonehenge or Avebury, and always in areas of easy access.[2] Archeological remains can cause cropmarks in the fields in the shapes of circles and squares, but they do not appear overnight, and they are always in the same places every year. The scientific consensus is that most or all crop circles are man-made, with a few possible exceptions due to meteorological or other natural phenomena. . . .
In short there is a design filter explanatory process applied and it differentiates those that seem to come about by chance and necessity from those that show signs of being designed, the overwhelming majority. Just what is that filtering process, the Wikipedia are rather reluctant to admit. No prizes for guessing where this all points.
kairosfocus
November 10, 2014
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PS: BTW, that's 250 degrees of freedom, or 250 dimensions.kairosfocus
November 10, 2014
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MT: In reality, we are dealing with AA chains where each position in A1-A2 . . . An can take 20 values, yielding for n, W = 20^N possibilities. With a shortish typical length of 250 AA's, that's 1.8 * 10^325 possibilities, whilst the sample window of the observed cosmos is like 10^111. With protein fold domains scarce. And the search is via variations of genes filtered through generations of differential reproduction. KFkairosfocus
November 10, 2014
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KF, Since our interlocutors don't want to answer my questions in posts 675 and 676 (apparently they don't want to answer most of my questions anywhere - maybe my questions are too simple for their elevated intellectual level?), can you please clarify this whole thing about the crop circles for me? I'm not familiar with this "crop circles" stuff, but wanted to know if they have any known functionality? Do the FSCO/I and dFSCI concepts apply to nonfunctional objects or systems? Thank you.Dionisio
November 10, 2014
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KF @ 680
PS: The issue is to find a coding that generates a physically remote folding-functioning protein AA sequence with sparse search relative to scope of space
The search space reduces dramatically at hyperbolic dimension. Imagine a solution circle (the circle within which solution exists) of 10 cm inside a 100 cm square search space. The area which needs to be serached for solution is pi x 10 ^2 = 314.15 The total Search area is 100 x 100 = 10000. The % area to be searched is (314.15/10000) x 100 = 3.14% In 3 dimesions,the search area will be 4/3xpix10^3 Area to search is now cude (because of 3 dimensions) = 100^3. Thus the % of area to be searched falls to just 4188.79/100^3 = 0.41 % only. However Protiens are in hyperdimensions, so Hypervolume of sphere with dimension d and radius r will be (Pi^d/2 x r^d)/r(d/2+1) HyperVolume of Cube = r^d At 10 dimensions, the volume to search reduces to just: 0.000015608 % It is not as difficult as envisioned.Me_Think
November 10, 2014
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Reality:
Will you please be kind enough to name a variety of things that are or are not “readily amendable into bits”
Things that are: DNA; RNA; polypeptides; computer programs; text Things that are not: Rock formations; baseballs; paintings
to name, describe, and demonstrate those “other design detection tools”
All that are in use today. Or do you think archaeologists flip coins to determine design? Perhaps that is also how forensic scientists determine if a crime was committed? Fire was an arson because the coin landed head's up. We use our knowledge of cause and effect relationships. We also look for signs of work and counterflow.
to substantiate and demonstrate the existence of and use of dFSCI in detecting design?
With respect to biology dFSCI is what Crick defined as biological information. It exists in all biological organisms. It cannot be accounted for via purely materialistic processes and it matches the positive criteria for intelligent design. That said if someone could step forward and demonstrate that biological information can arise without A) existing biological information and B) via physics/ chemistry, we won't be able to use the existence of biological information as an indication of intelligent design. ID is based on three premises and the inference that follows (DeWolf et al., "Darwinism, Design and Public Education", pg. 92):
1) High information content (or specified complexity) and irreducible complexity constitute strong indicators or hallmarks of (past) intelligent design. 2) Biological systems have a high information content (or specified complexity) and utilize subsystems that manifest irreducible complexity. 3) Naturalistic mechanisms or undirected causes do not suffice to explain the origin of information (specified complexity) or irreducible complexity. 4) Therefore, intelligent design constitutes the best explanations for the origin of information and irreducible complexity in biological systems.
The people who say that "Naturalistic mechanisms or undirected causes suffice to explain the origin of information (specified complexity) or irreducible complexity", have all of the power. They don't need to attack ID and by attacking ID they are admitting that point 3 is correct. OK so when dFSCI is applied to living organisms we get a positive detection of intelligent design. And guess what? There isn't even an alternative testable hypothesis. So we don't care if you attack our concepts as you definitely don't have anything to offer to compare to.Joe
November 10, 2014
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Reality, with all due respect, empty assertions, in effect our side has some hyperskeptical dismissive talking points so there. Go, look at some FSCO/I rich entities and then come back and tell us it is not really there, why. And explain to us how say tossing in a bag and juggling parts of an ABu 6500 reel will get it to work, as opposed to the wiring diagram guided assembly. And so forth. KFkairosfocus
November 10, 2014
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Joe said: "Also I wouldn’t use dFSCI to determine design of something that isn’t readily amendable into bits. There are other design detection tools that are better in some situations." Will you please be kind enough to name a variety of things that are or are not "readily amendable into bits" and to name, describe, and demonstrate those "other design detection tools" and to substantiate and demonstrate the existence of and use of dFSCI in detecting design? Please stick to things that are not already known to be designed.Reality
November 10, 2014
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MT: I rather doubt it; the only way I am aware of to get electrical and magnetic fields into perfect five pointed star patterns etc would involve intelligent direction, and would involve equipment that if at ground level would severely disrupt the fields, if in the air the means of elevation would likely have the same effect.
A very interesting analysis of Crop Circles can be found here (Please see video): http://realitysandwich.com/18277/secrets_crop_circles/Me_Think
November 10, 2014
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kairosfocus, endlessly repeating your FSCO/I claims does nothing to substantiate them, and these claims of yours; "...the FSCO/I concept is not my creation nor that of design thinkers. It is a commonplace in Engineering though it may not be put in those words, and as you can see it traces to work by Orgel and Wicken...", are just more of your non-scientific, underhanded attempts to legitimize your FSCO/I claims. Your "islands of function" claims are also based on false premises, which has been pointed out in refutations of your claims that you are or should be fully aware of.Reality
November 10, 2014
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Me Think:
All Natural crop circles are formed by Electromagnetic force and weak paddy stem – leading to folding of the stalk which forms circle design.
Evidence please.Joe
November 10, 2014
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PS: The issue is to find a coding that generates a physically remote folding-functioning protein AA sequence with sparse search relative to scope of space, cf the recent Axe paper discussed here on the w/end. Okay.kairosfocus
November 10, 2014
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MT: I rather doubt it; the only way I am aware of to get electrical and magnetic fields into perfect five pointed star patterns etc would involve intelligent direction, and would involve equipment that if at ground level would severely disrupt the fields, if in the air the means of elevation would likely have the same effect. And airships are notoriously bulky and hard to control in winds, to hover. Naturally occurring B and E fields do not take on geometries likely to do that which you ascribe. Can you show an experiment or natural-world observation of cause in process, that did that, and generated stars, successive circles and so forth in a compositional pattern etc? The issue here is not calculation of components and odds but empirical demonstration of ability to generate complex patterns fitting artistic compositional patterns in these cases. KFkairosfocus
November 10, 2014
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Joe @ 672 and kairosfocus @ 673
I don’t see any natural crop circles there. Also I wouldn’t use dFSCI to determine design of something that isn’t readily amendable into bits.
When it comes to crop circles as a suggested case, find us one showing FSCO/I that reasonably came about by blind chance and mechanical necessity . . . ironically, this is a case where a design inference is routinely made on FSCO/I.
All Natural crop circles are formed by Electromagnetic force and weak paddy stem - leading to folding of the stalk which forms circle design. Minimum inventory/Maximum diversity system (refer: Peter Pearec)ensures elaborate modular designs from just few design component, so what looks complicated is quite easily achievable by natural forces. Similarly, IMHO, Protein folding mechanisms are diverse and need not be by ID agent. Unless dFSCI takes the alternate methods into consideration and calculates the probability of those methods to be zero, it can't infer that protein folding is guided . Some natrural mechanisms for protein foldings are HereMe_Think
November 10, 2014
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IBM had a motto on every office desk many years ago: THINKDionisio
November 10, 2014
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#671 Me_Think
You can check Crop Circle images from various sources. One of the great source is : Crop Circle Images I am curious how dFSCI calcuation would be able to detect which one of them is Natural and which is man made.
As far as it is known by now, What's the function of those crop circles? What do they do? What happens if there are too many or too little of them? What if there are none? What does the F in dFSCI stand for? What about the other letters in that acronym? Are those concepts related to the crop circles in any way? How? Sorry for asking these childish common sense questions. Please, be considerate and don't laugh at me. :)Dionisio
November 10, 2014
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#671 Me_Think
You can check Crop Circle images from various sources. One of the great source is : Crop Circle Images I am curious how dFSCI calcuation would be able to detect which one of them is Natural and which is man made.
Is there any functional specified complex information associated with those crop circles?Dionisio
November 10, 2014
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PS: The circles can be analysed via nodes and arcs meshes in a wireframe, i.e. FSCO/I, which is reducible to bits.I would scan and vectorise. Stars, circles, patterns of circles etc all looking a lot like commercial art-inspired drawings.kairosfocus
November 10, 2014
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