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Thanks for writing, Patrick – even though in so doing you have stood everything I have ever argued at Free Republic on its head.

I really didn't miss the mark, BB. I said:

"You are assuming, incorrectly I think, that the whole is nothing more than a collection of its parts, and cannot naturally have properties which are different from them separately." [Emphasis in my original post.]

The emergent properties of large-scale entities can be greater than, and unpredicted by, their component parts, and this is the case whether we're discussing cells versus their individual molecules, or a jellyfish versus its individual cells, or a human brain versus its component neurons. Emergent properties are -- according to Gould -- natural consequences of the complex structure.

I skipped a step or two when I assumed you didn't accept this, and that you were commiting a category error by asserting that such properties couldn't exist unless they had some source other than the natural world. I may have leaped to unwarranted conclusions about your argument; and at the very least I didn't leave many clues about my thought processes.

My whole objection to your earlier posts was that you claimed that complex structures contained "information" which somehow demonstrated that more than chemistry was going on. What I was clumsily saying is that "information" is no more than an emergent property, and thus doesn't indicate any non-natural activity. So my last post wasn't all that off-point. At least in my mind it's very much related.

I did a Google on "emergent properties" and I discovered that there are wild debates raging among philosophers on this topic. That's not surprising, because it's really the same old stuff, but very nicely packaged in scientific terms. And frankly, the precise means by which emergent properties actually emerge is an open question, and the fact that such properties are largely unpredictable is also intriguing.

I understand "emergent properties" from my perspective, which is perhaps an oversimplified one. I know when I add a component to achieve a certain purpose, I may suddenly discover that other things are now possible that I hadn't originally intended. Serendipity is an important part of the process, as is the step by step; each step making the next one possible.

I don't get too wrapped up in the debates about evolution for that reason. In my world, evolution is an important part of the design process. And the "holy grail" would be to develop a system that could itself adapt to changing circumstances. There are people working on those kinds of systems; if they manage to do it, that would be a clever piece of design, I don't think anyone would say that, now that the system can adapt itself, that there is no evidence of intelligence. Really, the more adaptable, the more clever a design it is in my world.

I can't get past the firmware at the heart of every cell. And I can't simply dismiss a brain and a nervous system as a computer made of meat. I know it is that, but a computer has an operating system and an internal control system that allows it to function; without that its just meat. So I can't help but look at a brain and see something much more cleverly put together than anything I can do, although we are getting there. We are starting to figure it out, mind you, we are figuring out which parts handle which functions and where to intervene if we want to modify it. But as we learn these things about it, as the mystery yields, my admiration for its ingenuity increases.