[asa] Scaling natural selection

Our inclination seems to be to think of the process of natural selection
and resultant evolution to only be operative at the level of consideral
biological complexity. Herein, I take the risk of oversimplifying and
making giant leaps with insufficient elaboration, with the intent of
making the point that natural selection and evolution can arguably
"profitably" operate in the context of relatively simple (sub-bio)
molecular structures.

It seems to me that as soon as you have an assemblage of molecules that
in some form reacts in some physical way (bending, coiling, twitching,
electric charge redisposition, etc.) to some natural stimulus present in
the physical context, you have the beginnings of some differentness that
a process of natural selection (temperature, salinity, turbulence,
etc.) might interact with. A given responsive behavior may or may not
not do anything beneficial with respect to preferentially conserving
that particular behavior. But if this is not the only possible
configurational modification that can happen in that population of
starting materials, then over time, other configurations may prove
"beneficial", preferentially surviving in that ambient. Even if the
response is only very slightly different from the norm, it is the
universe's way that there can be lots of time for the mechanism to
operate. Moreover, opportunity extant in any given "puddle" is
multiplied a gazillion times over simply because of the enormous
population of atomic or small molecule building blocks present, making
for a shorted "development" time.

This line of thought does not help much with defining any transition to
awareness (whatever that is in its essentials), but it does speak to how
the natural selection process may operate in very simple form and
without bio-predators as the forcing natural selection function.

Another observation that may be germane is that in Creation, one of the
keystone properties of bio-matter is that it concentrates energy in
recoverable form. I am certainly not clear how this basic attribute
might work specifically when scaled down (back) to very simple molecular
structures. However, that said, it is my sense that once you start
binding up a little surplus energy in some molecular configuration,
however simple, and particularly if that energy's release can be
subsequently be triggered by some condition or incident, then the game's
afoot. The blending of a little additional energy into the recipe (like
the flexing of a molecule) could reasonably be expected to change and
accelerate the evolution-via-natural-selection game substantially
(binding, releasing, modifying, and such).

Bottom line is that the natural selection process per se does not
require the involvement of biology or predation. It is functional at
many levels, including societal (or greater?) at the other end of the
dimensional scale. What I have described is well below the scale of the
huge DNA and RNA structures. But given time, and lots of it - a generous
commodity in our universe - evolution to greater complexity should be
possible from the more modest beginnings.

The key seems to be a pervasive theme throughout all of Creation that is
typified in the stunningly creative detail of bonds among atoms and
molecules in certain structures being robust enough to endure, and yet
always under some circumstance fragile enough to accommodate
modification. And there always seems to be present somehow somewhere
that agent in some measure which can exercise that fragility. The wonder
of diversity is direct the result of that intriguing duality.

JimA [Friend of ASA]

rpaulmason@juno.com wrote:

>If I understand Adami and Schneider They make the same error Dawkins makes in the Blind Watchmaker. He skips over the main problem - how do you get the functional reproducing units (genes) in the first place. They are basically taking a bunch of ALREADY functioning units and putting selection pressure on them. But in DNA a triplet is not able to produce a functional protein, a selectable trait - you need hundreds of bases and there is the problem. There are so many alternate orders for a couple hundred bases for just ONE gene that it exceeds the upper limits of possibility - never mind at least 200 genes for the first cell and dozens to hundred for simple structures. The flagellum probably needs dozens of genes to code for the actual proteins that make it up and dozens more for its assembly.
>
>For a computer program to run a realistic test it would have to select a small number of useful orders from among many nonsense orders. The number of different orders for ONE gene that is about 300 bases long (tiny) is about 10 to the 180th. There have only been about 10 to the 110th events in all time. Thus a computer could not have time to test and find the good orders for ONE gene and one gene is usually not selectable for it must act in concert with hundreds of others (that have the same probability problems) to get a replicating unit. In fact if you had 10 to the 80th computers (one for every atom in the universe)randomly generating 10 billion genes a second for 20 billion years you would only have produced about 10 to the 110th orders(assuming no duplications). Your chances are still only 1 out of 10 to the 70th (subtract the exponents) of getting even if up to 1% of the orders were useful it would still be improbable to get one, and then you need another 199 that wor!
 k!
> with it - harder than winning the lottery 200 times in a row!!!!
>
>Once you have useful genes that can work together THEN they can be shuffles and mixed and slightly mutated and reflect the selection pressure. Natural selection can only act on functional (respirating) replicating (reproducing) units (cells for a minimum).
>
>Natural selection explains the survival of the fittest but not the arrival of the fittest.
>
>What has ID given science? This is a brief list of what it has explained for me.
>For me ID has provided statistical support for the following
>
>1. Some of the gaps in the fossil record which may be real not just missing (which I fully accept as ancient - I'm not a YEC)
>
>2. How the first cell could overcome chemical thermodynamics and that normally would drive macromolecules to break up outside cells.
>
>3. How you could get 200 genes in one place at one time for a first cell when 199 of them could not function until the last one was in place.
>
>4. Why so many of our "ancestors" seem to be side branches and dead ends - they could have been surrogates for the next species. I call it Zygote Theory. God added or altered genes, possibly at the zygote stage leaving the rest of the genes in place. A new species (male and female) was birthed that could be cared for by the existing species until it could live on it's own. see http://zygotetheory.wordpress.com/ for more details.
>
>5. The fossil record seems to show jumps and then stasis instead of gradual transitions because there were sudden infusions of information.
>
>6. How the incredible odds of getting useful genes by chance could be overcome
>
>7. Why there was an explosion of forms in the Cambrian (not that there can't be earlier life forms or prototypes)
>
>8. Why some forms (ie sharks etc) have remained remarkably stable when mutation and drift could have dispensed with them long ago - they could be lucky.
>
>9. How so many millions of complex, seemingly irreducibly complex structure and chemical pathways could appear when they seem impossible to work up to step by step. I wondered why the bacterial flagellum was the best we could do for design but that's just Behe's expertise - there are actually millions of what appear to me to be irreducibly complex structures or behaviors, etc. see Billions of Missing Links: A Rational Look at the Mysteries Evolution Can't Explain: Books: by Geoffrey Simmons - I can imagine solutions to some of the problems but that's all it is : imagination - we don't have fossils or living intermediates for most of the irreducibly complex structures.
>
>10. How so many chicken or the egg relationships got started - like DNA needing enzymes to replicate and make proteins but the enzymes need the DNA to build them.
>
>11. If it is true ID has uncovered the secret of life that is no small feat and this does not mean research into HOW all of these mysteries could have been done has to stop - direct intervention may be the cause or we may yet find secondary causes God used, we can keep looking but we can't say we WILL find a secondary cause - that's metaphysical materialism.
>
>12 It explains how creatures can develop defenses to new offenses and how animals can mimic each other's appearance.
>
>13. It solves the riddle of how malaria can't seem to overcome the sickle cell trait or even resistance to cold even though it can become resistant to some drugs. Drug resistance only takes one destructive mutation of a surface molecule - the other traits would take several coordinated genes forming and working together (huge probability barrier).
>
>14. How both male and female can co evolve when almost any change in a species would usually make it unable or unwilling to be mated with.
>
>15. ID points out the vast number of different possible configurations of DNA and proteins.
>
>16. If life is as complex and improbable as ID has calculated then life may be rare, ET may not exist, even a single cell ET unless an IDer put life on other planets.
>
>17. It makes life, especially human life and intelligence even more precious in that the human brain may well be the most complex physical structure in the universe.
>
>18. ID confirms that particular patterns of DNA are so improbably that it is unlikely that the same gene would evolve twice thus the order of the bases in a gene can be used to identify relationships in nature. If genes were as easy to come by as some evolutionists think then who's to say the same sequence couldn't arise many times - but ID says the complex specific orders of DNA are too improbable to arise twice by pure chance.
>
>19 The improbability of specific complex orders of DNA arising by chance is what makes it possible to identify viruses by their genes - or to use DNA fingerprinting in identification of criminals. IF genes evolved easily you couldn't trust a DNA test.
>
>20. ID in the form of Zygote Theory explains how life could make the big jumps between major groups - such as from amphibian to reptile and yet still have many genes in common.
>
>21. and in the non biological world the fine tuning of the universe seems to be more and more real and the "gap" is growing larger with each new discovery as ID would predict, not smaller as materialism would predict. (the fine tuning I have read includes the Big Bang which I accept as the best theory at present for origin of the universe)
>
>
>Other predictions
>1. hominids would continue to look like dead end side branches as we learn more about their structures and genetics
>2. hypothesies on the origin of life would continue to run into walls of probabilities to be overcome for the first cell to appear on it's own.
>3. The probability barrier for the origin of functional genes and especially clusters of genes that work together will not be overcome by realistic computer programs or biochemistry.
>4. More irreducibly complex structures and molecular pathways will be found as we learn more about life. Originally cells were thought to be little blobs of protoplasm - now they appear to be complex chemical nano machines.
>
>Paul Mason (ASA Member)
>
>
>
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Received on Sun Sep 16 01:40:56 2007