Donald
On Sun, 19 Jul 1998 21:23:10 -0500, Glenn R. Morton wrote to Donald
Howes:
>DH>Sorry, what I was trying to say was that after reading all that you guys
>>wrote about this I have no idea what to think. I didn't understand half the
>>stuff you wrote! So my plan was to say, I don't know if it is possible or
>>not.
GM>...The issue revolves around the animal getting
>the information from the environment. The information is pumped into the
>genome by natural selection telling each generation which sequences are
>viable and which are not.
First, Glenn uses active voice wording that implies that natural selection has a
positive action, but as the atheist Darwinist philosopher Antony Flew points
out, this is false:
"...Darwin draws too positive an inference. Natural selection does not
positively produce anything. It only eliminates, or tends to eliminate, whatever
is not competitive." (Flew A., "Darwinian Evolution," Paladin: London, 1984,
p25)
Second, the *evidence* does not support the Neo-Darwinian theory that
evolution has proceeded by the gradual accumulation of micromutations
guided by natural selection:
"Here we review this evidence. We conclude-unexpectedly-that there is little
evidence for the neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the
experimental evidence supporting it are weak, and there is no doubt that
mutations of large effect are sometimes important in adaptation." (Orr H.A., &
Coyne J.A., "The Genetics of Adaptation: A Reassessment," The American
Naturalist, Vol. 140, No. 5, November 1992, p726).
Third, even if it can be shown that natural selection can cause *some*
information build up in *some* genomes does not mean it can or did cause
*all* information build up in *all* genomes. As Christian philosopher Peter
Van Inwagen (who incidentally is a friend of ultra-Darwinist Daniel Dennett and
fully aware of all such Darwinist arguments), points out, this is equivalent to
"someone who, having observed that tugboats sometimes maneuver ocean
liners in tight places by directing high-pressure streams of water at them,
concludes that he has discovered the method by which the liners cross the
Atlantic."
"...It looks to me as if natural selection is not a complete explanation of the
diversity of life. I am inclined to think that its primary "function," if I may use
that word, is to insure that species possess sufficient diachronic flexibility that
they aren't just automatically wiped out by the first environmental change that
comes along. And, of course, natural selection is a very efficient fine-tuning
mechanism: once a species has found an ecological niche for itself, natural
selection tends to optimize its "fit" into that niche. And I am willing to allow a
little more to natural selection than this. I am inclined to think that "unaided"
natural selection can produce new species; I have a very hard time believing
that it can produce, say, new classes. There are...mechanisms involved in
biological diversification that are as unknown, and probably as unguessable,
today as the release of surplus binding energy in nuclear fusion was in the year
1900....It looks to me as if Darwinians are like someone who, having observed
that tugboats sometimes maneuver ocean liners in tight places by directing high-
pressure streams of water at them, concludes that he has discovered the
method by which the liners cross the Atlantic." (Van Inwagen P., "Doubts
About Darwinism", in Buell J. & Hearn V., eds., "Darwinism: Science or
Philosophy?" 1994, p186)
GM>If this is true, then the animal doesn't have to invent the information by itself,
>it is available from the environment.
Third, there is no way that Glenn or anyone else *knows* (or *can* know)
how *all* the information got into *all* genomes. But what we do know is
that for Neo-Darwinism to be true, all points in Genetic Phase Space (GPS)
must be contiguous in order to be reachable by the Blind Watchmaker's
random search process:
"On the basis of the neo-Darwinian concept of accumulative selection, Richard
Dawkins argues that such an intelligence is not needed. In brief, all living
things are the products of specific genomes, which are blueprints written in the
same language (describing protein structure) upon the same medium (DNA).
This means that any genome could be turned into any other by just changing
(mutating) the right DNA bases (letters) (as cog becomes dog if the c is
"mutated" to d). So, all possible genetic messages (genomes) are points in a
single multidimensional probability space, which has been called genetic phase
space, "GPS." Since random change or movement can be used to search such a
probability space, all that is needed to move (evolve) from worm to Einstein is
to chance upon, and then accumulate, the right base changes. Neo-Darwinism
states that mutation randomly throws up new sequences and environmentally
based selection accumulates those that are useful. In this way, the cosmos itself
can act as a "blind watchmaker," and no exterior blueprint is needed as formal
cause." (Wilcox D., in Templeton J.M, ed., "Evidence of Purpose," 1994,
p173)
But as Wilcox points out, there are several problems with this. The first is the
sheer size of GPS:
"....First, the size of the matrix: GPS, the probability space of all possible
genomes, has an information content of 2n bits where n is the number of bases.
Biomorphs, on the other hand, are described by a sixteen-digit number. Thus
Biomorph Land has a probability space of only 10^15, whereas the GPS of
genomes of mammalian size, (2. 5 billion bases), contains around
10^1,000,000,000 binary bits of information." (Wilcox D.,1994, p173)
The second is the limited search capacity of the Blind Watchmaker:
"Second, the fraction of the probability space made available to selection each
generation is much smaller in genetic systems. No matter how many offspring
are generated, they clearly represent (search) a much smaller fraction of the
GPS than the equivalent set of Biomorph "probes." Further, Biomorph
"probes" show all possible offspring each time, whereas mutation reveals only
a vanishingly small fraction of possible mutants This means that finding the
next step in a possible trajectory in GPS will be far harder, even if it exists-in
some cases next to impossible." (Wilcox D.,1994, p173)
The third problem is that there are impossible trajectories through GPS that the
Blind Watchaker cannot traverse:
"Third, the viability of variants in Biomorph Land is completely unlike reality.
No Biomorph necessarily dies without offspring, since it may be chosen by the
intelligent "selector"* who is using the program. Thus, in the Biomorph
probability space, no trajectory is impossible. But most mutant organisms die,
thus GPS does have impossible trajectories. However, the acceptance of
nonintelligent formal causes for biological morphologies depends on the
existence and the likelihood of viable trajectories across GPS, reasonably
probable trajectories that depend on the accumulation of minor sequence
changes. But, isolated viable spots in GPS may exist, sequences that would
involve so many simultaneous specific point mutations to reach, that an
intelligent formal cause would be the simplest explanation. How can we know
whether some existing creatures are or are not of that sort? Do we always have
evidence for intermediate forms and gradual change?" (Wilcox D.,1994, p173)
Wilcox concludes that because we don't know the topography of GPS, our
assumptions about its origin reflect our personal metaphysics, what he calls our
"field of dreams":
"If we knew the contours of GPS, we could state which morphogenetic
trajectories would be likely in fossil history, and thus deduce the likelihood of
intelligent guidance. But, we do not know if viable locations in GPS are
uniformly distributed, contiguous networks, or clumped and isolated. In our
ignorance, we assume a structure for GPS. We project back onto the vast and
misty canvas a map of the structure of reality that will support our view of
cosmic formal cause. If we reject intelligent cause, we assume GPS is rich in
linked viable probabilities. If we hold to intelligent cause, we realize that the
GPS might be much poorer. The statement that GPS must have a structure that
would allow gradual and undirected emergence is based on worldview
assumptions, not on observations. The GPS becomes our "field of dreams," its
contours a projection of our metaphysics." (Wilcox D., 1994, p175)
So Glenn's assumption that the"The information is pumped into the genome by
natural selection telling each generation which sequences are viable and which
are not" reflects Glenn's Theistic Naturalistic philosophy, rather than any actual
empirical evidence.
Even if it could be demonstrated that unaided natural selection can produce
*some* information build-up in a genome, that would not establish that it has
produced *all* information build up in *all* genomes, unless one makes the
naturalistic metaphysical assumption that it must have because there was
nothing else that could have done it. But if one is a theist, then there *is*
something else which could have done it:
"If God exists He could certainly work through mutation and selection if that is
what He wanted to do, but He could also create by some means totally outside
the ken of our science. Once we put God into the picture, however, there is no
good reason to attribute the creation of biological complexity to random
mutation and natural selection. Direct evidence that these mechanisms have
substantial creative power is not to be found in nature, the laboratory, or the
fossil record. An essential step in the reasoning that establishes that Darwinian
selection created the wonders of biology, therefore, is that nothing else was
available. Theism is by definition the doctrine that something else was
available." (Johnson P.E., "What is Darwinism?", Symposium at Hillsdale
College, in November 1992. http://www.mrccos.com/arn/johnson/wid.htm)
Steve
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen E (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ sejones@ibm.net
3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ senojes@hotmail.com
Warwick 6024 ->*_,--\_/ Phone +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, West Australia v "Test everything." (1Thess 5:21)
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Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Donald
On Sun, 19 Jul 1998 21:23:10 -0500, Glenn R. Morton wrote to Donald
Howes:
>DH>Sorry, what I was trying to say was that after reading all that you guys
>>wrote about this I have no idea what to think. I didn't understand half the
>>stuff you wrote! So my plan was to say, I don't know if it is possible or
>>not.
GM>...The issue revolves around the animal getting
>the information from the environment. The information is pumped into the
>genome by natural selection telling each generation which sequences are
>viable and which are not.
First, Glenn uses active voice wording that implies that natural selection has a
positive action, but as the atheist Darwinist philosopher Antony Flew points
out, this is false:
"...Darwin draws too positive an inference. Natural selection does not
positively produce anything. It only eliminates, or tends to eliminate, whatever
is not competitive." (Flew A., "Darwinian Evolution," Paladin: London, 1984,
p25)
Second, the *evidence* does not support the Neo-Darwinian theory that
evolution has proceeded by the gradual accumulation of micromutations
guided by natural selection:
"Here we review this evidence. We conclude-unexpectedly-that there is little
evidence for the neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the
experimental evidence supporting it are weak, and there is no doubt that
mutations of large effect are sometimes important in adaptation." (Orr H.A., &
Coyne J.A., "The Genetics of Adaptation: A Reassessment," The American
Naturalist, Vol. 140, No. 5, November 1992, p726).
Third, even if it can be shown that natural selection can cause *some*
information build up in *some* genomes does not mean it can or did cause
*all* information build up in *all* genomes. As Christian philosopher Peter
Van Inwagen (who incidentally is a friend of ultra-Darwinist Daniel Dennett and
fully aware of all such Darwinist arguments), points out, this is equivalent to
"someone who, having observed that tugboats sometimes maneuver ocean
liners in tight places by directing high-pressure streams of water at them,
concludes that he has discovered the method by which the liners cross the
Atlantic."
"...It looks to me as if natural selection is not a complete explanation of the
diversity of life. I am inclined to think that its primary "function," if I may use
that word, is to insure that species possess sufficient diachronic flexibility that
they aren't just automatically wiped out by the first environmental change that
comes along. And, of course, natural selection is a very efficient fine-tuning
mechanism: once a species has found an ecological niche for itself, natural
selection tends to optimize its "fit" into that niche. And I am willing to allow a
little more to natural selection than this. I am inclined to think that "unaided"
natural selection can produce new species; I have a very hard time believing
that it can produce, say, new classes. There are...mechanisms involved in
biological diversification that are as unknown, and probably as unguessable,
today as the release of surplus binding energy in nuclear fusion was in the year
1900....It looks to me as if Darwinians are like someone who, having observed
that tugboats sometimes maneuver ocean liners in tight places by directing high-
pressure streams of water at them, concludes that he has discovered the
method by which the liners cross the Atlantic." (Van Inwagen P., "Doubts
About Darwinism", in Buell J. & Hearn V., eds., "Darwinism: Science or
Philosophy?" 1994, p186)
GM>If this is true, then the animal doesn't have to invent the information by itself,
>it is available from the environment.
Third, there is no way that Glenn or anyone else *knows* (or *can* know)
how *all* the information got into *all* genomes. But what we do know is
that for Neo-Darwinism to be true, all points in Genetic Phase Space (GPS)
must be contiguous in order to be reachable by the Blind Watchmaker's
random search process:
"On the basis of the neo-Darwinian concept of accumulative selection, Richard
Dawkins argues that such an intelligence is not needed. In brief, all living
things are the products of specific genomes, which are blueprints written in the
same language (describing protein structure) upon the same medium (DNA).
This means that any genome could be turned into any other by just changing
(mutating) the right DNA bases (letters) (as cog becomes dog if the c is
"mutated" to d). So, all possible genetic messages (genomes) are points in a
single multidimensional probability space, which has been called genetic phase
space, "GPS." Since random change or movement can be used to search such a
probability space, all that is needed to move (evolve) from worm to Einstein is
to chance upon, and then accumulate, the right base changes. Neo-Darwinism
states that mutation randomly throws up new sequences and environmentally
based selection accumulates those that are useful. In this way, the cosmos itself
can act as a "blind watchmaker," and no exterior blueprint is needed as formal
cause." (Wilcox D., in Templeton J.M, ed., "Evidence of Purpose," 1994,
p173)
But as Wilcox points out, there are several problems with this. The first is the
sheer size of GPS:
"....First, the size of the matrix: GPS, the probability space of all possible
genomes, has an information content of 2n bits where n is the number of bases.
Biomorphs, on the other hand, are described by a sixteen-digit number. Thus
Biomorph Land has a probability space of only 10^15, whereas the GPS of
genomes of mammalian size, (2. 5 billion bases), contains around
10^1,000,000,000 binary bits of information." (Wilcox D.,1994, p173)
The second is the limited search capacity of the Blind Watchmaker:
"Second, the fraction of the probability space made available to selection each
generation is much smaller in genetic systems. No matter how many offspring
are generated, they clearly represent (search) a much smaller fraction of the
GPS than the equivalent set of Biomorph "probes." Further, Biomorph
"probes" show all possible offspring each time, whereas mutation reveals only
a vanishingly small fraction of possible mutants This means that finding the
next step in a possible trajectory in GPS will be far harder, even if it exists-in
some cases next to impossible." (Wilcox D.,1994, p173)
The third problem is that there are impossible trajectories through GPS that the
Blind Watchaker cannot traverse:
"Third, the viability of variants in Biomorph Land is completely unlike reality.
No Biomorph necessarily dies without offspring, since it may be chosen by the
intelligent "selector"* who is using the program. Thus, in the Biomorph
probability space, no trajectory is impossible. But most mutant organisms die,
thus GPS does have impossible trajectories. However, the acceptance of
nonintelligent formal causes for biological morphologies depends on the
existence and the likelihood of viable trajectories across GPS, reasonably
probable trajectories that depend on the accumulation of minor sequence
changes. But, isolated viable spots in GPS may exist, sequences that would
involve so many simultaneous specific point mutations to reach, that an
intelligent formal cause would be the simplest explanation. How can we know
whether some existing creatures are or are not of that sort? Do we always have
evidence for intermediate forms and gradual change?" (Wilcox D.,1994, p173)
Wilcox concludes that because we don't know the topography of GPS, our
assumptions about its origin reflect our personal metaphysics, what he calls our
"field of dreams":
"If we knew the contours of GPS, we could state which morphogenetic
trajectories would be likely in fossil history, and thus deduce the likelihood of
intelligent guidance. But, we do not know if viable locations in GPS are
uniformly distributed, contiguous networks, or clumped and isolated. In our
ignorance, we assume a structure for GPS. We project back onto the vast and
misty canvas a map of the structure of reality that will support our view of
cosmic formal cause. If we reject intelligent cause, we assume GPS is rich in
linked viable probabilities. If we hold to intelligent cause, we realize that the
GPS might be much poorer. The statement that GPS must have a structure that
would allow gradual and undirected emergence is based on worldview
assumptions, not on observations. The GPS becomes our "field of dreams," its
contours a projection of our metaphysics." (Wilcox D., 1994, p175)
So Glenn's assumption that the"The information is pumped into the genome by
natural selection telling each generation which sequences are viable and which
are not" reflects Glenn's Theistic Naturalistic philosophy, rather than any actual
empirical evidence.
Even if it could be demonstrated that unaided natural selection can produce
*some* information build-up in a genome, that would not establish that it has
produced *all* information build up in *all* genomes, unless one makes the
naturalistic metaphysical assumption that it must have because there was
nothing else that could have done it. But if one is a theist, then there *is*
something else which could have done it:
"If God exists He could certainly work through mutation and selection if that is
what He wanted to do, but He could also create by some means totally outside
the ken of our science. Once we put God into the picture, however, there is no
good reason to attribute the creation of biological complexity to random
mutation and natural selection. Direct evidence that these mechanisms have
substantial creative power is not to be found in nature, the laboratory, or the
fossil record. An essential step in the reasoning that establishes that Darwinian
selection created the wonders of biology, therefore, is that nothing else was
available. Theism is by definition the doctrine that something else was
available." (Johnson P.E., "What is Darwinism?", Symposium at Hillsdale
College, in November 1992. http://www.mrccos.com/arn/johnson/wid.htm)
Steve
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen E (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ sejones@ibm.net
3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ senojes@hotmail.com
Warwick 6024 ->*_,--\_/ Phone +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, West Australia v "Test everything." (1Thess 5:21)
----------------------------------------------------------------------_=_=_=IMA.BOUNDARY.HTML_4820800=_=_=_--