This is another post which Chris sent direct to me, but which I assume
was intended for the Reflector.
On Tue, 7 Dec 1999 12:51:34 -0800, Chris Cogan wrote:
>SJ>Here is an extract from a review of what promises to be a *sensational*
>>book. Astronomer Fred Hoyle's "Mathematics of Evolution", in which he examines
>>Neo-Darwinism and finds it wanting and as a by-product establishes Irreducible
>>Complexity....
>>"Next it is a small step for Hoyle to claim that the protein histone-4 could
>>never be produced in small steps. Why? Histone-4 has a chain of 102 amino
>>acids and the structure is extremely conserved in all eukaryote species.
>>Bovine histone-4 differs in only 2 positions with peas! And that means
>>extreme functional constraints must exist. Histones are necessary for
>>chromosome condensation during cell division. The traditional
>>neoDarwinian step-by-step method must fail claims Hoyle, because it
>>implies 100 non-functional steps. The alternative: a jump of 100 mutations
>>of exactly the right kind would be highly improbable [20^100 or 10^130
>>SJ]. The histone-4 case is in fact a case of Michael Behe's Irreducible
>>Complexity long before Behe published his Darwin's Black Box, since the
>>hand-written version of Mathematics of Evolution was 'published' in 1987."
>>
>>Chris has been calling for some evidence for ID, and now he's got it!
>>If Histone-4 is too complex to have arisen by chance and too invariant
>>to have arisen step-by-step, then the *only* possibility left is Intelligent
>>Design.
CC>If only this were true.
Chris' reply below indirectly confirms that it is! He offers no *real*
alternative, just an imaginary world where cells don't need histone-4.
If Chris proposes this hypothesis, he would have to explain how this world
of cells which did not need histone-4 was replace by the present world of
eukaryote cells which *all* use histone-4.
CC>I can see several areas of probable problems already, just from the review
>highlights above (assuming that it accurately represents the book). The
>irreducible complexity argument for histone-4 is pretty shaky because it
>assumes that if it *did* evolve, it did so in some straightforward manner to
>serve its present functions, in cells that need it for what they *now* need
>it for, etc. This is a long string of assumptions that *often* don't hold in
>evolution, so I don't see any reason to assume that histone-4 would be
>required to evolve that way, either. This is a major weakness in the whole
>"irreducible complexity" *type* of argument, whether it's applied to
>individual proteins or to entire organ-complexes.
It is not a "weakness in the whole `irreducible complexity' *type* of
argument". It shows how Darwinism cannot be falsified *in the minds of its
adherents*!
Darwin claimed his theory could be falsified by a biological system which
was too complex to arise in a stepwise fashion:
"Darwin knew that his theory of gradual evolution by natural selection
carried a heavy burden: `If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous,
successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.'
It is safe to say that most of the scientific skepticism about Darwinism in
the past century has centered on this requirement. From Mivart's concern
over the incipient stages of new structures to Margulis's dismissal of
gradual evolution, critics of Darwin have suspected that his criterion of
failure had been met. But how can we be confident? What type of
biological system could not be formed by "numerous, successive, slight
modifications"? Well, for starters, a system that is irreducibly complex. By
irreducible complexity I mean a single system composed of several well-
matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the
removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease
functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly
(that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to
work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a
precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system
that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. An irreducibly complex
biological system, if there is such a thing, would be a powerful challenge to
Darwinian evolution. Since natural selection can only choose systems that
are already working then if a biological system cannot be produced
gradually it would have to arise as an integrated unit, in one fell swoop, for
natural selection to have anything to act on." (Behe M.J., "Darwin's Black
Box", 1996, p38)
But when faced with such an example, Darwinists just conjure up an
imaginary world of "cells" which don't need histone-4, despite the fact that
it is *universal* in all known eukaryotic cells.
CC>In short, while I reserve the right to change my mind upon seeing the book,
>it certainly does not seem, from the above review highlights, that it really
>has the evidence that Stephen is already claiming for it (apparently without
>having read the book himself, at that).
This is an important admission by Chris that there is at least "evidence" for
irreducible complexity, and hence intelligent design. We *are* making progress!
CC>Again, I may be premature in saying
>this, but it appears that Hoyle should stick with astronomy (or writing
>rule-books for card games! :-) ).
I note the :-). But Hoyle was no mere astronomer. As the bio below at
Amazon.com states, Hoyle is by training "a theoretical physicist" and "At
the University of Cambridge, he was a lecturer in mathematics for eleven
years" before he became a professor of astronomy at Cambridge:
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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0966993403/qid=944629925/sr=1-1/104-4777345-4488460
Editorial Reviews
Hoyle to write this book. Carson was a biologist who thought that neo-
Darwinian evolution needed to be mathematically analyzed, and he knew
that Hoyle was capable of doing the job. But Hoyle was preoccupied with
cosmology and astronomy at the time. Only later he did turn his attention
to biology. In collaboration with his former student, astronomer Chandra
Wickramasinghe, he studied evidence for organic compounds in space.
This work beginning in the early 1970s, and his correspondence with J.B.S.
Haldane reopened Hoyle's interest in biology. In 1986, Hoyle finally did the
mathematical study that Carson had urged him to do. He dedicated the
book to Carson's memory. But, except for a few facsimile copies of Hoyle's
manuscript, the book was not published. Now Hoyle has updated the text
and written a Foreword for the publication on January 1st, 1999.
Fred Hoyle has made a good living by writing about science in a simple and
comprehensible style. He retains this style in Mathematics of Evolution.
The interested reader will be rewarded with a new perspective on neo-
Darwinian evolution.
About the Author Professor Hoyle has had a distinguished career as a
theoretical physicist, writer and researcher. At the University of
Cambridge, he was a lecturer in mathematics for eleven years before he
was made Plumian professor of astronomy and experimental philosophy in
1958. He founded and was the first director of the Cambridge Institute of
Theoretical Astronomy in 1967, was named an associate member of the
American National Academy of Sciences in 1969, and has been an
honorary professorial fellow at University College, Cardiff since 1976. He
has been awarded many honors and was knighted in 1972.
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[...]
On Tue, 7 Dec 1999 13:51:25 -0800, Chris Cogan wrote:
>CC>Hoyle is definitely not ignored in the evolution literature. The following
>>stories circulate in the literature: Panspermia, Hoyle's famous Boeing-747
>>story, his cosmological design argument and the Archaeopteryx forgery.
>>The last three are not present in the current book. The Boeing-story in
>>Hoyle's own words:
>>
>>A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered
>>and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the
>>chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be
>>found standing there? ["The Intelligent Universe",1983, page 19.]
>>
>>Essentially zero.
>
>However, the point of the story is only remotely related to evolutionary
>theory, since evolutionary theory contains *nothing* analogous to this
>situation. Evolution'
In the context Hoyle is talking about the origin of life:
"The popular idea that life could have arisen spontaneously on Earth dates
back to experiments that caught the public imagination earlier this century.
If you stir up simple nonorganic molecules like water, ammonia, methane,
carbon dioxide and hydrogen cyanide with almost any form of intense
energy, ultraviolet light for instance, some of the molecules reassemble
themselves into amino acids, a result demonstrated about thirty years ago
by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey. The amino acids, the individual building
blocks of proteins can therefore be produced by natural means. But this is
far from proving that life could have evolved in this way. No one has
shown that the correct arrangements of amino acids, like the orderings in
enzymes, can be produced by this method. No evidence for this huge jump
in complexity has ever been found, nor in my opinion will it be.
Nevertheless, many scientists have made this leap-from the formation of
individual amino acids to the random formation of whole chains of amino
acids like enzymes-in spite of the obviously huge odds against such an
event having ever taken place on the Earth, and this quite unjustified
conclusion has stuck. In a popular lecture I once unflatteringly described
the thinking of these scientists as a "junkyard mentality". As this reference
became widely and not quite accurately quoted I will repeat it here. A
junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and
in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the
chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be
found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were
to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe." (Hoyle F.,
"The Intelligent Universe", Michael Joseph: London, 1983, pp18-19)
>CC>Unless, of course, Hoyle *can* prove irreducible complexity where
>Behe has failed. Does anyone want to bet that no fewer than three possible
>ways for building histone-4 have already been proposed (I'm going to do a
>little checking before accepting any such bets, but I'd guess I'd be on good
>grounds).
Note the switch from "evidence" to *proof"! No one, certainly not
"Behe", is claiming to *prove* irreducible complexity. All Behe is
claiming is that IC is the best *inference* from the evidence,
because the only alternatives, chance and law are inadequate.
But Behe concedes in Darwin's Black Box that it is always possible
for materialist-naturalists to invent other explanations, including
multiple universes, anthropic principles, aliens and time-travellers:
"For our present purposes, the interesting part of Crick's idea is the role of
the aliens, whom he has speculated sent space bacteria to earth. But he
could with as much evidence say that the aliens actually designed the
irreducibly complex biochemical systems of the life they sent here, and also
designed the irreducibly complex systems that developed later. The only
difference is a switch to the postulate that aliens constructed life, whereas
Crick originally speculated that they just sent it here. It is not a very big
leap, though, to say that a civilization capable of sending rocket ships to
other planets is also likely to be capable of designing life-especially if the
civilization has never been observed. Designing life, it could be pointed out,
does not necessarily require supernatural abilities; rather, it requires a lot of
intelligence. If a graduate student in an earthbound lab today can plan and
make an artificial protein that can bind oxygen, then there is no logical
barrier to thinking that an advanced civilization on another world might
design an artificial cell from scratch. This scenario still leaves open the
question of who designed the designer-how did life originally originate? Is
a philosophical naturalist now trapped? Again, no. The question of the
design of the designer can be put off in several ways. It could be deflected
by invoking unobserved entities: perhaps the original life is totally unlike
ourselves, consisting of fluctuating electrical fields or gases; perhaps it does
not require irreducibly complex structures to sustain it. Another possibility
is time travel, which has been seriously proposed by professional physicists
in recent years. Scientific American informed the readers of its March 1994
issue that: `far from being a logical absurdity...the theoretical possibility of
taking such an excursion into one's earlier life is an inescapable
consequence of fundamental physical principles.' Perhaps, then, biochemists
in the future will send back cells to the early earth that contain the
information for the irreducibly complex structures we observe today. In
this scenario humans can be their own aliens, their own advanced
civilization. Of course, time travel leads to apparent paradoxes (things like
grandsons shooting grandfathers before their offspring are born), but at
least some physicists are ready to accept them. Most people, like me, will
find these scenarios entirely unsatisfactory, but they are available for those
who wish to avoid unpleasant theological implications." (Behe M.J.,
"Darwin's Black Box" , 1996, p248)
>CC>One problem with critics of evolutionary theory is that they don't realize
>that Nature is smarter than *they* are. The mere fact that *they* cannot
>figure out a way for something to happen does not mean that it *can't*
>happen. It means only that they (and perhaps the rest of us as well) are
>*ignorant* of how it happened.
Again Chris shows why Darwinism is unfalsifiable in the minds of its
adherents. When faced with real world evidence that something can't
happen, they retreat to imaginary worlds where it can happen but we don't
know how. But this is nothing new. Darwin himself pioneered this
"argument from ignorance" line of defence:
"As possibilities were promoted into probabilities, and probabilities into
certainties, so ignorance itself was raised to a position only once removed
from certain knowledge. When imagination exhausted itself and Darwin
could devise no hypothesis to explain away a difficulty, he resorted to the
blanket assurance that we were too ignorant of the ways of nature to know
why one event occulted rather than another, and hence ignorant of the
explanation that would reconcile the facts to his theory. When one botanist
argued that his theory was contradicted by the fact that some forms
remained unaltered through long periods of time and wide expanse of
space, Darwin admitted the objection to be "formidable in appearance, and
to a certain extent in reality." But this did not deter him:
`Does not the difficulty rest much on our silently assuming that we know
more than we do? I have literally found nothing so difficult as to try and
always remember our ignorance. I am never weary, when walking in any
new adjoining district or country, of reflecting how absolutely ignorant we
are why certain old plants are not there present, and other new ones are,
and others in different proportions.... Certainly a priori we might have
anticipated that all the plants anciently introduced into Australia would
have undergone some modification; but the fact that they have not been
modified does not seem to me a difficulty of weight enough to shake a
belief grounded on other arguments.'
Somehow the fact that no adequate explanation suggested itself today
seemed a warrant for the belief that such an explanation would suggest
itself in the future, and that the explanation, moreover, would be bound to
vindicate his theory. Thus the argument from ignorance was made the
prelude to a confident affirmation:
`We are far too ignorant, in almost every case, to be enabled to assert that
any part or organ is so unimportant for the welfare of a species that
modifications in its structure could not have been slowly accumulated by
means of natural selection. But we may confidently believe...'
It may be objected, however, that in the logic of science, as in the logic of
grammar, three negatives do not normally constitute a positive."
(Himmelfarb G., "Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution", 1996, pp335-336)
If Darwinism, when faced with a difficulty, can always retreat to this
argument from ignorance, how could Darwinism ever be falsified?
Or to put it another way, if Darwinism was false, how would Chris
ever know it?
>CC>Hoyle's argument appears to be the usual: An
>argument from this very ignorance.
The boot is on the other foot. It is *Hoyle* who is producing the evidence.
It is *Chris* who is using the "argument from...ignorance"!
>CC>Now, if he could *prove* that histone-4
>is irreducible, that would be a different matter.
Again how Chris has raised the bar from "evidence" to "prove". But once
the challenge to Chris' atheistic worldview is over, he will revert back to
"ID has no evidence". Then when ID provides evidence, Chris will again
raise the bar and say "ID has no proof"!
If IC (and therefore ID) were true, how would Chris, with his panoply of
defence mechanisms, ever know it?
Steve
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"I do not know when the technical and popular prose of science became
separated, although I accept the inevitability of such a division as
knowledge became increasingly more precise, detailed, and specialized. We
have now reached the point where most technical literature not only falls
outside the possibility of public comprehension but also (as we would all
admit in honest moments) outside our own competence in scientific
disciplines far removed from our personal expertise. I trust that we all
regard this situation as saddening, even though we accept its necessity."
(Gould S.J., "Take Another Look", Science, Vol. 286, 29 October 1999,
p899)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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