Life's Irreducible Structure (DEBATE THREAD)

CMI ^ | Alex Williams

[GodGunsGuts]

DEBATE THREAD

This INFORMAL debate will focus on Part 1 and 2 of Alex Williams' paper "Life's irreducible structure." Williams' paper will serve as the affirmative, namely:

(A) All aspects of life (not just bacterial flagellums and blood clotting cascades) lie beyond the reach of naturalistic explanations, and (B) only intelligent design meets the criterion of an acceptable historical inference according to the Law of Cause and Effect.

Part 1 of Alex Williams' paper follows. A link to Part 2 can be found in reply #1. It is strongly suggested that both papers be read before participating in the discussion/debate.

One final note: please refrain from making rude comments, please try to ignore those who do, and please try to stay on topic. All the best--GGG

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Life’s irreducible structure—Part 1: autopoiesis

by Alex Williams

The commonly cited case for intelligent design appeals to: (a) the irreducible complexity of (b) some aspects of life. But complex arguments invite complex refutations (valid or otherwise), and the claim that only some aspects of life are irreducibly complex implies that others are not, and so the average person remains unconvinced. Here I use another principle—autopoiesis (self-making)—to show that all aspects of life lie beyond the reach of naturalistic explanations. Autopoiesis provides a compelling case for intelligent design in three stages: (i) autopoiesis is universal in all living things, which makes it a pre-requisite for life, not an end product of natural selection; (ii) the inversely-causal, information-driven, structured hierarchy of autopoiesis is not reducible to the laws of physics and chemistry; and (iii) there is an unbridgeable abyss between the dirty, mass-action chemistry of the natural environmental and the perfectly-pure, single-molecule precision of biochemistry. Naturalistic objections to these propositions are considered in Part II of this article.

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Snowflake photos by Kenneth G. Libbrecht.

Figure 1. Reducible structure. Snowflakes (left) occur in hexagonal shapes because water crystallizes into ice in a hexagonal pattern (right). Snowflake structure can therefore be reduced to (explained in terms of) ice crystal structure. Crystal formation is spontaneous in a cooling environment. The energetic vapour molecules are locked into solid bonds with the release of heat to the environment, thus increasing overall entropy in accord with the second law of thermodynamics.

The commonly cited case for intelligent design (ID) goes as follows: ‘some biological systems are so complex that they can only function when all of their components are present, so that the system could not have evolved from a simpler assemblage that did not contain the full machinery.’1 This definition is what biochemist Michael Behe called irreducible complexity in his popular book Darwin’s Black Box2 where he pointed to examples such as the blood-clotting cascade and the proton-driven molecular motor in the bacterial flagellum. However, because Behe appealed to complexity, many equally complex rebuttals have been put forward,3 and because he claimed that only some of the aspects of life were irreducibly complex, he thereby implied that the majority of living structure was open to naturalistic explanation. As a result of these two factors, the concept of intelligent design remains controversial and unproven in popular understanding.

In this article, I shall argue that all aspects of life point to intelligent design, based on what European polymath Professor Michael Polanyi FRS, in his 1968 article in Science called ‘Life’s Irreducible Structure.’4 Polanyi argued that living organisms have a machine-like structure that cannot be explained by (or reduced to) the physics and chemistry of the molecules of which they consist. This concept is simpler, and broader in its application, than Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity, and it applies to all of life, not just to some of it.

The nature and origin of biological design

Biologists universally admire the wonder of the beautiful ‘designs’ evident in living organisms, and they often recoil in revulsion at the horrible ‘designs’ exhibited by parasites and predators in ensuring the survival of themselves and their species. But to a Darwinist, these are only ‘apparent designs’—the end result of millions of years of tinkering by mutation and fine tuning by natural selection. They do not point to a cosmic Designer, only to a long and ‘blind’ process of survival of the fittest.5 For a Darwinist, the same must also apply to the origin of life—it must be an emergent property of matter. An emergent property of a system is some special arrangement that is not usually observed, but may arise through natural causes under the right environmental conditions. For example, the vortex of a tornado is an emergent property of atmospheric movements and temperature gradients. Accordingly, evolutionists seek endlessly for those special environmental conditions that may have launched the first round of carbon-based macromolecules6 on their long journey towards life. Should they ever find those unique environmental conditions, they would then be able to explain life in terms of physics and chemistry. That is, life could then be reduced to the known laws of physics, chemistry and environmental conditions.

However, Polanyi argued that the form and function of the various parts of living organisms cannot be reduced to (or explained in terms of) the laws of physics and chemistry, and so life exhibits irreducible structure. He did not speculate on the origin of life, arguing only that scientists should be willing to recognize the impossible when they see it:

‘The recognition of certain basic impossibilities has laid the foundations of some major principles of physics and chemistry; similarly, recognition of the impossibility of understanding living things in terms of physics and chemistry, far from setting limits to our understanding of life, will guide it in the right direction.’7

Reducible and irreducible structures

To understand Polanyi’s concept of irreducible structure, we must first look at reducible structure. The snowflakes in figure 1 illustrate reducible structure.

Meteorologists have recognized about eighty different basic snowflake shapes, and subtle variations on these themes add to the mix to produce a virtually infinite variety of actual shapes. Yet they all arise from just one kind of molecule—water. How is this possible?

 

Figure 2. Irreducible structure. The silver coins (left) have properties of flatness, roundness and impressions on faces and rims, that cannot be explained in terms of the crystalline state of silver (close packed cubes) or its natural occurrence as native silver (right).

When water freezes, its crystals take the form of a hexagonal prism. Crystals then grow by joining prism to prism. The elaborate branching patterns of snowflakes arise from the statistical fact that a molecule of water vapour in the air is most likely to join up to its nearest surface. Any protruding bump will thus tend to grow more quickly than the surrounding crystal area because it will be the nearest surface to the most vapour molecules.8 There are six ‘bumps’ (corners) on a hexagonal prism, so growth will occur most rapidly from these, producing the observed six-armed pattern.

Snowflakes have a reducible structure because you can produce them with a little bit of vapour or with a lot. They can be large or small. Any one water molecule is as good as any other water molecule in forming them. Nothing goes wrong if you add or subtract one or more water molecules from them. You can build them up one step at a time, using any and every available water molecule. The patterns can thus all be explained by (reduced to) the physics and chemistry of water and the atmospheric conditions.

 

Figure 3. Common irreducibly structured machine components: lever (A), cogwheel (B) and coiled spring (C). All are made of metal, but their detailed structure and function cannot be reduced to (explained by) the properties of the metal they are made of.

To now understand irreducible structure, consider a silver coin.

Silver is found naturally in copper, lead, zinc, nickel and gold ores—and rarely, in an almost pure form called ‘native silver’. Figure 2 shows the back and front of two vintage silver coins, together with a nugget of the rare native form of silver. The crystal structure of solid silver consists of closely packed cubes. The main body of the native silver nugget has the familiar lustre of the pure metal, and it has taken on a shape that reflects the available space when it was precipitated from groundwater solution. The black encrustations are very fine crystals of silver that continued to grow when the rate of deposition diminished after the main load of silver had been deposited out of solution.

Unlike the case of the beautifully structured snowflakes, there is no natural process here that could turn the closely packed cubes of solid silver into round, flat discs with images of men, animals and writing on them. Adding more or less silver cannot produce the roundness, flatness and image-bearing properties of the coins, and looking for special environmental conditions would be futile because we recognize that the patterns are man-made. The coin structure is therefore irreducible to the physics and chemistry of silver, and was clearly imposed upon the silver by some intelligent external agent (in this case, humans).

Whatever the explanation, however, the irreducibility of the coin structure to the properties of its component silver constitutes what I shall call a ‘Polanyi impossibility’. That is, Polanyi identified this kind of irreducibility as a naturalistic impossibility, and argued that it should be recognized as such by the scientific community, so I am simply attaching his name to the principle.

Polanyi pointed to the machine-like structures that exist in living organisms. Figure 3 gives three examples of common machine components: a lever, a cogwheel and a coiled spring. Just as the structure and function of these common machine components cannot be explained in terms of the metal they are made of, so the structure and function of the parallel components in life cannot be reduced to the properties of the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur and trace elements that they are made of. There are endless examples of such irreducible structures in living systems, but they all work under a unifying principle called ‘autopoiesis’.

Autopoiesis defined

Autopoiesis literally means ‘self-making’ (from the Greek auto for self, and the verb poiéō meaning ‘I make’ or ‘I do’) and it refers to the unique ability of a living organism to continually repair and maintain itself—ultimately to the point of reproducing itself—using energy and raw materials from its environment. In contrast, an allopoietic system (from the Greek allo for other) such as a car factory, uses energy and raw materials to produce an organized structure (a car) which is something other than itself (a factory).9

Autopoiesis is a unique and amazing property of life—there is nothing else like it in the known universe. It is made up of a hierarchy of irreducibly structured levels. These include: (i) components with perfectly pure composition, (ii) components with highly specific structure, (iii) components that are functionally integrated, (iv) comprehensively regulated information-driven processes, and (v) inversely-causal meta-informational strategies for individual and species survival (these terms will be explained shortly). Each level is built upon, but cannot be explained in terms of, the level below it. And between the base level (perfectly pure composition) and the natural environment, there is an unbridgeable abyss. The enormously complex details are still beyond our current knowledge and understanding, but I will illustrate the main points using an analogy with a vacuum cleaner.

A vacuum cleaner analogy

My mother was excited when my father bought our first electric vacuum cleaner in 1953. It consisted of a motor and housing, exhaust fan, dust bag, and a flexible hose with various end pieces. Our current machine uses a cyclone filter and follows me around on two wheels rather than on sliders as did my mother’s original one. My next version might be the small robotic machine that runs around the room all by itself until its battery runs out. If I could afford it, perhaps I might buy the more expensive version that automatically senses battery run-down and returns to its induction housing for battery recharge.

Notice the hierarchy of control systems here. The original machine required an operator and some physical effort to pull the machine in the required direction. The transition to two wheels allows the machine to trail behind the operator with little effort, and the cyclone filter eliminates the messy dust bag. The next transition to on-board robotic control requires no effort at all by the operator, except to initiate the action to begin with and to take the machine back to the power source for recharge when it has run down. And the next transition to automatic sensing of power run-down and return-to-base control mechanism requires no effort at all by the operator once the initial program is set up to tell the machine when to do its work.

If we now continue this analogy to reach the living condition of autopoiesis, the next step would be to install an on-board power generation system that could use various organic, chemical or light sources from the environment as raw material. Next, install a sensory and information processing system that could determine the state of both the external and internal environments (the dirtiness of the floor and the condition of the vacuum cleaner) and make decisions about where to expend effort and how to avoid hazards, but within the operating range of the available resources. Then, finally, the pièce de résistance, to install a meta-information (information about information) facility with the ability to automatically maintain and repair the life system, including the almost miraculous ability to reproduce itself—autopoiesis.

Notice that each level of structure within the autopoietic hierarchy depends upon the level below it, but it cannot be explained in terms of that lower level. For example, the transition from out-sourced to on-board power generation depends upon their being an electric motor to run. An electric vacuum cleaner could sit in the cupboard forever without being able to rid itself of its dependence upon an outside source of power—it must be imposed from the level above, for it cannot come from the level below. Likewise, autopoiesis is useless if there is no vacuum cleaner to repair, maintain and reproduce. A vacuum cleaner without autopoietic capability could sit in the cupboard forever without ever attaining to the autopoietic stage—it must be imposed from the level above, as it cannot come from the level below.

The autopoietic hierarchy is therefore structured in such a way that any kind of naturalistic transition from one level to a higher level would constitute a Polanyi impossibility. That is, the structure at level i is dependent upon the structure at level i-1 but cannot be explained by the structure at that level. So the structure at level i must have been imposed from level i or above.

The naturalistic abyss

Most origin-of-life researchers agree (at least in the more revealing parts of their writings)10 that there is no naturalistic experimental evidence directly demonstrating a pathway from non-life to life. They continue their research, however, believing that it is just a matter of time before we discover that pathway. But by using the vacuum cleaner analogy, we can give a solid demonstration that the problem is a Polanyi impossibility right at the foundation—life is separated from non-life by an unbridgeable abyss.

Dirty, mass-action environmental chemistry

The ‘simple’ structure of the early vacuum cleaner is not simple at all. It is made of high-purity materials (aluminium, plastic, fabric, copper wire, steel plates etc) that are specifically structured for the job in hand and functionally integrated to achieve the designed task of sucking up dirt from the floor. Surprisingly, the dirt that it sucks up contains largely the same materials that the vacuum cleaner itself is made of—aluminium, iron and copper in the mineral grains of dirt, fabric fibres in the dust, and organic compounds in the varied debris of everyday home life. However, it is the difference in form and function of these otherwise similar materials that distinguishes the vacuum cleaner from the dirt on the floor. In the same way, it is the amazing form and function of life in a cell that separates it from the non-life in its environment.

Naturalistic chemistry is invariably ‘dirty chemistry’ while life uses only ‘perfectly-pure chemistry’. I have chosen the word ‘dirty chemistry’ not in order to denigrate origin-of-life research, but because it is the term used by Nobel Prize winner Professor Christian de Duve, a leading atheist researcher in this field.11 Raw materials in the environment, such as air, water and soil, are invariably mixtures of many different chemicals. In ‘dirty chemistry’ experiments, contaminants are always present and cause annoying side reactions that spoil the hoped-for outcomes. As a result, researchers often tend to fudge the outcome by using artificially purified reagents. But even when given pure reagents to start with, naturalistic experiments typically produce what a recent evolutionist reviewer variously called ‘muck’, ‘goo’ and ‘gunk’12—which is actually toxic sludge. Even our best industrial chemical processes can only produce reagent purities in the order of 99.99%. To produce 100% purity in the laboratory requires very highly specialized equipment that can sort out single molecules from one another.

Another crucial difference between environmental chemistry and life is that chemical reactions in a test tube follow the Law of Mass Action.13 Large numbers of molecules are involved, and the rate of a reaction, together with its final outcome, can be predicted by assuming that each molecule behaves independently and each of the reactants has the same probability of interacting. In contrast, cells metabolize their reactants with single-molecule precision, and they control the rate and outcome of reactions, using enzymes and nano-scale-structured pathways, so that the result of a biochemical reaction can be totally different to that predicted by the Law of Mass Action.

The autopoietic hierarchy

Perfectly-pure, single-molecule-specific bio-chemistry

The vacuum cleaner analogy breaks down before we get anywhere near life because the chemical composition of its components is nowhere near pure enough for life. The materials suitable for use in a vacuum cleaner can tolerate several percent of impurities and still produce adequate performance, but nothing less than 100% purity will work in the molecular machinery of the cell.

One of the most famous examples is homochirality. Many carbon-based molecules have a property called ‘chirality’—they can exist in two forms that are mirror images of each other (like our left and right hands) called ‘enantiomers’. Living organisms generally use only one of these enantiomers (e.g. left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars). In contrast, naturalistic experiments that produce amino acids and sugars always produce an approximately 50:50 mixture (called a ‘racemic’ mixture) of the left-and right-handed forms. The horrors of the thalidomide drug disaster resulted from this problem of chirality. The homochiral form of one kind had therapeutic benefits for pregnant women, but the other form caused shocking fetal abnormalities.

The property of life that allows it to create such perfectly pure chemical components is its ability to manipulate single molecules one at a time. The assembly of proteins in ribosomes illustrates this single-molecule precision. The recipe for the protein structure is coded onto the DNA molecule. This is transcribed onto a messenger-RNA molecule which then takes it to a ribosome where a procession of transfer-RNA molecules each bring a single molecule of the next required amino acid for the ribosome to add on to the growing chain. The protein is built up one molecule at a time, and so the composition can be monitored and corrected if even a single error is made.

Specially structured molecules

Life contains such a vast new world of molecular amazement that no one has yet plumbed the depths of it. We cannot hope to cover even a fraction of its wonders in a short article, so I will choose just one example. Proteins consist of long chains of amino acids linked together. There are 20 amino acids coded for in DNA, and proteins commonly contain hundreds or even thousands of amino acids. Cyclin B is an averaged-size protein, with 433 amino acids. It belongs to the ‘hedgehog’ group of signalling pathways which are essential for development in all metazoans. Now there are 20433 (20 multiplied by itself 433 times) = 10563 (10 multiplied by itself 563 times) possible proteins that could be made from an arbitrary arrangement of 20 different kinds of amino acids in a chain of 433 units. The human body—the most complex known organism—contains somewhere between 105 (= 100,000) and 106 (=1,000,000) different proteins. So the probability (p) that an average-sized biologically useful protein could arise by a chance combination of 20 different amino acids is about p = 106 /10563 = 1/10557 . And this assumes that only L-amino acids are being used—i.e. perfect enantiomer purity.14

For comparison, the chance of winning the lottery is about 1/106 per trial, and the chance of finding a needle in a haystack is about 1/1011 per trial. Even the whole universe only contains about 1080 atoms, so there are not even enough atoms to ensure the chance assembly of even a single average-sized biologically useful molecule. Out of all possible proteins, those we see in life are very highly specialized—they can do things that are naturally not possible. For example, some enzymes can do in one second what natural processes would take a billion years to do.15 Just like the needle in the haystack. Out of all the infinite possible arrangements of iron alloy (steel) particles, only those with a long narrow shape, pointed at one end and with an eye-loop at the other end, will function as a needle. This structure does not arise from the properties of steel, but is imposed from outside.

Water, water, everywhere

There is an amazing paradox at the heart of biology. Water is essential to life,16 but also toxic—it splits up polymers by a process called hydrolysis, and that is why we use it to wash with. Hydrolysis is a constant hazard to origin-of-life experiments, but it is never a problem in cells, even though cells are mostly water (typically 60–90%). In fact, special enzymes called hydrolases are required in order to get hydrolysis to occur at all in a cell.17 Why the difference? Water in a test tube is free and active, but water in cells is highly structured, via a process called ‘hydrogen bonding’, and this water-structure is comprehensively integrated with both the structure and function of all the cell’s macromolecules:

‘The hydrogen-bonding properties of water are crucial to [its] versatility, as they allow water to execute an intricate three-dimensional “ballet”, exchanging partners while retaining complex order and enduring effects. Water can generate small active clusters and macroscopic assemblies, which can both transmit and receive information on different scales.’18

Water should actually be first on the list of molecules that need to be specially configured for life to function. Both the vast variety of specially structured macromolecules and their complementary hydrogen-bonded water structures are required at the same time. No origin-of-life experiment has ever addressed this problem.

Functionally integrated molecular machines

Figure 4. ATP synthase, a proton-powered molecular motor. Protons (+) from inside the cell (below) move through the stator mechanism embedded in the cell membrane and turn the rotor (top part) which adds inorganic phosphate (iP) to ADP to convert it to the high-energy state ATP.

It is not enough to have specifically structured, ultra-pure molecules, they must also be integrated together into useful machinery. A can of stewed fruit is fully of chemically pure and biologically useful molecules but it will never produce a living organism19 because the molecules have been disorganized in the cooking process. Cells contain an enormous array of useful molecular machinery. The average machine in a yeast cell contains 5 component proteins,20 and the most complex—the spliceosome, that orchestrates the reading of separated sections of genes—consists of about 300 proteins and several nucleic acids.21

One of the more spectacular machines is the tiny proton-powered motor that produces the universal energy molecule ATP (adenosine tri-phosphate) illustrated in Figure 4. When the motor spins one way, it takes energy from digested food and converts it into the high-energy ATP, and when the motor spins the other way, it breaks down the ATP in such a way that its energy is available for use by other metabolic processes.22

Comprehensively regulated, information-driven metabolic functions

It is still not enough to have spectacular molecular machinery—the various machines must be linked up into metabolic pathways and cycles that work towards an overall purpose. What purpose? This question is potentially far deeper than science can take us, but science certainly can ascertain that the immediate practical purpose of the amazing array of life structures is the survival of the individual and perpetuation of its species.23 Although we are still unravelling the way cells work, a good idea of the multiplicity of metabolic pathways and cycles can be found in the BioCyc collection. The majority of organisms so far examined, from microbes to humans, have between 1,000 and 10,000 different metabolic pathways.24 Nothing ever happens on its own in a cell—something else always causes it, links with it or benefits or is affected by it. And all of these links are multi-step processes.

All of these links are also ‘choreographed’ by information—a phenomenon that never occurs in the natural environment. At the bottom of the information hierarchy is the storage molecule—DNA. The double-helix of DNA is ‘just right’ for genetic information storage, and this ‘just right’ structure is beautifully matched by the elegance and efficiency of the code in which the cell’s information is written there.25 But it is not enough even to have an elegant ‘just right’ information storage system—it must also contain information. And not just biologically relevant information, but brilliantly inventive strategies and tactics to guide living things through the extraordinary challenges they face in their seemingly miraculous achievements of metabolism and reproduction. Yet even ingenious strategies and tactics are not enough. Choreography requires an intricate and harmonious regulation of every aspect of life to make sure that the right things happen at the right time, and in the right sequence, otherwise chaos and death soon follow.

Recent discoveries show that biochemical molecules are constantly moving, and much of their amazing achievements are the result of choreographing all this constant and complex movement to accomplish things that static molecules could never achieve. Yet there is no spacious ‘dance floor’ on which to choreograph the intense and lightning-fast (up to a million events per second for a single reaction26) activity of metabolism. A cell is more like a crowded dressing room than a dance floor, and in a show with a cast of millions!

Inversely causal meta-information

The Law of Cause and Effect is one of the most fundamental in all of science. Every scientific experiment is based upon the assumption that the end result of the experiment will be caused by something that happens during the experiment. If the experimenter is clever enough, then he/she might be able to identify that cause and describe how it produced that particular result or effect.

Causality always happens in a very specific order—the cause always comes before the effect.27 That is, event A must always precede event B if A is to be considered as a possible cause of B. If we happened to observe that A occurred after B, then this would rule out A as a possible cause of B.

In living systems however, we see the universal occurrence of inverse causality. That is, an event A is the cause of event B, but A exists or occurs after B. It is easier to understand the biological situation if we refer to examples from human affairs. In economics, for example, it occurs when behaviour now, such as an investment decision, is influenced by some future event, such as an anticipated profit or loss. In psychology, a condition that exists now, such as anxiety or paranoia, may be caused by some anticipated future event, such as harm to one’s person. In the field of occupational health and safety, workplace and environmental hazards can exert direct toxic effects upon workers (normal causality), but the anticipation or fear of potential future harm can also have an independently toxic effect (inverse causality).

Darwinian philosopher of science Michael Ruse recently noted that inverse causality is a universal feature of life,28 and his example was that stegosaur plates begin forming in the embryo but only have a function in the adult—supposedly for temperature control. However most biologists avoid admitting such things because it suggests that life might have purpose (a future goal), and this is strictly forbidden to materialists.

The most important example of inverse causality in living organisms is, of course, autopoiesis. We still do not fully understand it, but we do understand the most important aspects. Fundamentally, it is meta-information—it is information about information. It is the information that you need to have in order to keep the information you want to have to stay alive, and to ensure the survival of your descendants and the perpetuation of your species.

This last statement is the crux of this whole paper, so to illustrate its validity lets go back to the vacuum cleaner analogy. Let’s imagine that one lineage of vacuum cleaners managed to reach the robotic, energy-independent stage, but lacked autopoiesis, while a second makes it all the way to autopoiesis. What is the difference between these vacuum cleaners? Both will function very well for a time. But as the Second Law of Thermodynamics begins to take its toll, components will begin to wear out, vibrations will loosen connections, dust will gather and short circuit the electronics, blockages in the suction passage will reduce cleaning efficiency, wheel axles will go rusty and make movement difficult, and so on. The former will eventually die and leave no descendants. The latter will repair itself, keep its components running smoothly and reproduce itself to ensure the perpetuation of its species.

But what happens if the environment changes and endangers the often-delicate metabolic cycles that real organisms depend upon? Differential reproduction is the solution. Evolutionists from Darwin to Dawkins have taken this amazing ability for granted, but it cannot be overlooked. There are elaborate systems in place—for example, the diploid to haploid transition in meiosis, the often extraordinary embellishments and rituals of sexual encounters, the huge number of permutations and combinations provided for in recombination mechanisms—to provide offspring with variations from their parents that might prove of survival value. To complement these potentially dangerous deviations from the tried-and-true there are also firm conservation measures in place to protect the essential processes of life (e.g. the ability to read the DNA code and to translate it into metabolic action). None of this should ever be taken for granted.

In summary, autopoiesis is the information—and associated abilities—that you need to have (repair, maintenance and differential reproduction) in order to keep the information that you want to have (e.g. vacuum cleaner functionality) alive and in good condition to ensure both your survival and that of your descendants. In a parallel way, my humanity is what I personally value, so my autopoietic capability is the repair, maintenance and differential reproductive capacity that I have to maintain my humanity and to share it with my descendants. The egg and sperm that produced me knew nothing of this, but the information was encoded there and only reached fruition six decades later as I sit here writing this—the inverse causality of autopoiesis.

Summary

There are three lines of reasoning pointing to the conclusion that autopoiesis provides a compelling case for the intelligent design of life.

• If life began in some stepwise manner from a non-autopoietic beginning, then autopoiesis will be the end product of some long and blind process of accidents and natural selection. Such a result would mean that autopoiesis is not essential to life, so some organisms should exist that never attained it, and some organisms should have lost it by natural selection because they do not need it. However, autopoiesis is universal in all forms of life, so it must be essential. The argument from the Second Law of Thermodynamics as applied to the vacuum cleaner analogy also points to the same conclusion. Both arguments demonstrate that autopoiesis is required at the beginning for life to even exist and perpetuate itself, and could not have turned up at the end of some long naturalistic process. This conclusion is consistent with the experimental finding that origin-of-life projects which begin without autopoiesis as a pre-requisite have proved universally futile in achieving even the first step towards life.

• Each level of the autopoietic hierarchy is dependent upon the one below it, but is causally separated from it by a Polanyi impossibility. Autopoiesis therefore cannot be reduced to any sequence of naturalistic causes.

• There is an unbridgeable abyss below the autopoietic hierarchy, between the dirty, mass-action chemistry of the natural environment and the perfect purity, the single-molecule precision, the structural specificity, and the inversely causal integration, regulation, repair, maintenance and differential reproduction of life.

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

However, there isn't much doubt that most of it is derived from an evolutionary past, and much of it was directly useful -- coding --in former times.

And isn't some of it evolutionary leftovers that no longer does what it was originally useful for but has been commandeered by the genome to do something else? I.e., repurposed junk? Or am I confusing two different things?

[CottShop]

Yup- but let’s not gloss over the fact of metainfo and hte fact that bacteria- nature’s waste disposal units, can very rapidly deal with changing environments, and this suggests more metainfo allowing changed info (info that has been changed all within species specific parameters) to deal with changes in environment.

I think you’re tryign to take htis issue to a point of claiming it shows ‘new information’ has arisen, as I’ve seen your remarks on this issue before, but I think, when examined more carefully, that these bacteria stil lremain bacterai, and these changes happen very very rapidly, and indicate designed allowances via species pseific changed info-

FR seems to be havign trouble- very slow- so I’;; probably be back later tonight- I’ve lost a coupel of posts already, so I’ll wait till they get straightened out before tryign to post more- plus I need nap anyways-

[js1138]

“Junk,” by definition, must be non-coding, non-regulating and non-conserved. That still covers a lot of DNA.

If it has been repurposed, it can’t be considered junk.

[js1138]

I think you’re tryign to take htis issue to a point of claiming it shows ‘new information’ has arisen...

The information would be in the environment, not in the DNA. The environment supplies the yes or no answer to whether a change is useful or not. That's the source of information.

[CottShop]

[[The information would be in the environment, not in the DNA.]]

The info could very well be stored in the metainfo- Metainfo is the grand info which responds to info in the species that gets change or pressured to change rather- the environment is merely the catalyst the moves the species to change- Does that sound more reasonable?

[[The environment supplies the yes or no answer to whether a change is useful or not.]]

Not sure I can agree with that- the body of a species determines whether the change were useful to it in the presence of the changed environment- not the environment itself.

[count-your-change]

Well, yes, as a person believing evolution to be fact you see these genes as consistent with an evolutionary past just as a creationist would say, ‘This is evidence of God’s work’,
I lean toward the idea that’s nothing’s useless on the human body. Like all the parts of a well engineered machine,
some parts may be removed without stopping the machine but every part contributes to it’s functioning at the highest level possible.
I look forward to what might be learned.

[betty boop]

I was very pleased with Alex Williams’ approach to the issue. My chief complaint over the previous argument of “irreducible complexity” was that it was backwards looking much like evolution theory itself and therefore baited various counter arguments, e.g. cellular automata and self-organizing complexity.

I, too, was very pleased with Williams’ general approach to the elucidation of irreducible complexity (“IC”) in autopoeitic (i.e., living) systems (“AP”). [Thank you so much, GGG!]

You point to an interesting problem, that IC can be understood as either “backward-looking” or “forward-looking.” The “linear arrow of time” is the context, which provides a “past” and a “future,” relative to the observer’s “present.” In a sense, it seems that the “backward-looking view” states that irreducible complexity is somehow the product of a build-up of past biological events being “selected for” by Nature.

And yet a model like that would have no way to deal with the idea of information (or intelligence), nor could it explain purposeful, goal-directed behavior — something that is universally observed in animal life.

So I think the “backward-looking” approach will not do. So what does the “forward-looking” approach look like?

To boil it down, in a certain sense it would mean being “pulled” from the future. [But we won’t go into eschatological considerations here.] I gather this is what Williams was trying to get at with his term “inverse causality,” which pops up at level (v) of the AP hierarchy. But if you lay out “inverse-causality” on the “arrow of time,” past–present–future, it doesn’t make any intuitive sense.

Actually, I think Williams gets the problem right if we understand that it’s the “top” of the hierarchy — level (v) — that “pulls” the rest. In the “top-down” direction, none of the five levels is “reducible” to the next level “down,” not singly, nor in any combination of lower levels. Which suggests that each of the five levels possesses information not completely derivable from any or all of the lower levels.

In short, the AP model is "irreducibly complex" in two ways: (1) in terms of the totality of the hierarchical, five-leveled model itself; and (2) in terms of the recognition that no "explanation" of any given level of the hierarchy can be given by any lower level, singly or in any combination (in the range (v) "high" and (i) "low").

To draw an analogy from mathematics, given the origin point 0 (i.e., the "observer"), the “backward looking” view of IC is such that the “arrow of time” represents the “real” line of the complex plane, the x-axis, which deals with the distribution of real numbers. With respect to 0, “past” would be defined on the real line in terms of negative numbers….

So along the real axis, 0 defines the point in time where “future” (i.e, expressed as positive reals) and past (i.e., expressed as negative reals) each “begins”; i.e., are “split apart” into two distinct temporal entities. In order for a future cause to be found, 0 must translate (i.e., "move") along the real line in the positive direction. But the paradox seems to be that, when 0 “finds it,” it must be expressed as a negative real.

The “forward-looking” view, on the other hand, seems to go along the “imaginary” line of the complex plane, the y-axis, which deals with complex numbers. And they really are complex, because a complex number consists of a “real” and an “imaginary part.” There’s a “boost” to complexity over the real numbers right there. Not only that, but the two parts are separable; and each has its own proper form of arithmetic operation: the real part is multiplicative; the imaginary part, additive. So, here we have yet another instance of the complexity boost of complex numbers as compared to the reals. Plus almost unimaginable “flexibility” of the ways in which these concepts can function in “real” contexts.

All of which is simply to indicate that, on my view, the “forward-looking” view would appear to be the more “informed” view, which is what we’re looking for at level (v) of the IC/AP hierarchy: For level (v) “pulls from the top” — and may itself be “pulled” from a source lying outside conventional spacetime….

And this leads me back to “the Platonic world of mathematical forms,” as Penrose puts it. Which still manages to "pull" me forward, in space and time....

Then again, maybe I just have too much time on my hands these days, to be investing it and energy in such problems (which I happen to find delightful)....

Thank you so very much for writing, dearest sister in Christ — and for your very kind words of support. I’ve missed you lately. I hope you’re feeling better!

[metmom]

Why don’t you stay on topic and contribute to the thread?

And grow up.

[tacticalogic]

The information would be in the environment, not in the DNA. The environment supplies the yes or no answer to whether a change is useful or not. That's the source of information.

I think the environment would be the feedback mechanism. The metainfo provides information about what the possible options are. The environment provides information about whether a particular option is useful under current conditions. What's useful right now might not be useful later, and then it's time to start looking for better options.

[metmom]

Gene reactivation has been observed, so it's not impossible.

So evolution is just hanging onto those genes just in case they're needed again some day?

"But hey, if the need arises, the Designer has foreseen it." ???

[count-your-change]

The definition of inactive in this case, I believe, was that these genes don't code for proteins, not that they have no function or are useless.

I think our past experience shows we don't understand all the Creator has designed into the human frame.

Genes in cells are often turned on and off. The “inactive genes” may just need the right switch to be reactivated.

[LeGrande]

Of course, because it's not your statement - it's something any freshman science major hears in their one-credit hour philosophy of science seminar course.

I never claimed it was my statement. Does my use of the equation F=MA imply to you that I dreamed it up? LOL It seems to be the simple stuff that trips you ID'ers up.

Same issue here - your assuming that these necessarily destroy causality when that is only one of many possible interpretations. With the ToR, the issue isn't so much causality being messed with, but time itself, IIRC.

Events happening in different orders depending on the observers frame of reference falsifies the Law of Cause and Effect (not that there ever was a law of Cause and Effect). Sadly for you ID'ers your hypothesis seems to depend on it.

Anywise, if I press the button to summon the lift, and the lift comes to my floor, that is causality. If I press the button to summon the lift, and the lift doesn't come to my floor, this isn't necessarily proof that "causality has broken down". It's merely indicative of a deeper, nested causality that I may currently be unaware of. So also with the "breakdowns of causality" which you suppose are shown by QM - that intepretation is unlikely, and certainly doesn't even begin to address the causality issue of the creation of the universe (a macroscopic event to which QM doesn't apply). This is true whether one posits the creation of the universe by an intelligent Creator, or whether one posits its creation through random, materialistic forces.

First, there are clearly causes and effects. Secondarily, there are events (effects) with no cause, spontaneous particle - anti particle creation pops to mind. Thirdly QM does apply to macroscopic events, all of your senses especially sight depend on QM and the wavefunction collapsing, etc. etc.

The problem of first cause - what we've been discussing already, under a different name.

There doesn't have to be a first cause : ) The Universe may be infinite.

[LeGrande]

Consider the "null path." For a photon traveling at the speed of light, no time elapses.

That is a perfect example of a frame of reference that illustrates that there is no universal now : )

Also, some Jewish mystics have proposed that the firmament of Genesis is the speed of light and not geometric, i.e. no "here" and "there" division between physical and spiritual reality.

My Sunday School teacher was a Rabbi and big into Aleph Null and Kabbalism : ) Loved his classes.

Moreover, no particles are at rest, space/time continually expands. For that reason, a photon sent by a star which was a billion light years away may not reach us for ten billion light years, long after the star is gone. The photon did not slow down, time did not elapse for the photon - but because space/time expands, it took longer to reach us.

Particles can be at rest in our frame of reference. Light can be slowed down too : )

Or to put it another way, rest frames in space/time are time relative - they only occur at a moment. For the observer "in" space/time, the rest frame is a mathematical construct.

They can have an infinite amount of moments : ) Those moments are not universal.

Only the observer outside of space and time - God - sees every where and every when, all at once.

If you are going to reference the Kabbalah use it properly, "Aleph-null is the primordal one that contains all numbers, everything in the Universe. Every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping or confusion. Kaballa mysticism." According to the Jews God is everything, God is not outside space/time.

[LeGrande]

How can something be "universal" if it's something "relative to us?" This doesn't make sense to me: You can't put man "outside" of a system and then say the system is universal.

That is just it. It isn't Universal, it is Relative.

It seems what we're looking for is a higher frame of reference. If indeed it is true that the universe is one single, integrated, dynamic, "informed" system — as modern theory suggests — then that frame of reference would need to extend to the whole; as such it would be universal.

That is the point. There is no universal (higher) frame of reference.

You wrote this puzzling line: "Not everything, simply everything that is not identical." No explanation given. Is it reasonable for me to infer that here you are making a case for some kind of novel, spontaneous emergence? Or do you really believe in "special creation" for "non-identical" entities? If the latter, how would that work?

If ID and IC are correct, then there had to be distinct and separate creations complete and fully formed. Evolution from simpler to more complex organisms is ruled out. The Design had to be in place at the beginning, IC rules out modifications.

You're asking me how it would work? I have no idea, other than the story of creation and we know that that story doesn't hold water : )

I'm sorry you did not appreciate the way I "imagined" the structure of the IC/AP system. It could be imagined differently. But I thought this might be a good way to tackle the issue, especially because it makes explicit work done in the assessment of the algorithmic complexity of living systems, and suggests how unimaginably vast is the "available potential information" of Nature.

Did you take into account the Sum of all paths, as posited by Feynman and Penrose as information? Potentially that would be an infinite amount of information right there. Like I said, guesses dressed up in an equation : )

[LeGrande]

If, by devolution, you mean that formerly coding genes get turned off, I suppose it happens.

More like machines wearing out and breaking down. Remember their view is that life is created it cannot evolve.

But that's an observable, quantifiable phenomenon. Genetic entropy makes no sense in any frame of reference.

They don't think the genes control the cell.

[js1138]

I think the environment would be the feedback mechanism. The metainfo provides information about what the possible options are. The environment provides information about whether a particular option is useful under current conditions.

I think the information metaphor is more harmful than helpful for discussing what happens in evolution. But for those who insist on using it, the information flows from the environment to the genome, as you say by supplying the answer to whether a change is helpful, neutral or harmful.

This flow isn't really contested any more by ID proponents. Dembski has even written a paper on it.

ID proponents are now discussing the laws of nature as the ultimate repository of information.

[tacticalogic]

ID proponents are now discussing the laws of nature as the ultimate repository of information.

Is there a theory on how many layers of abstraction you can stack on top of each other before you lose track of what it is you're looking at?

[CottShop]

[[But for those who insist on using it, the information flows from the environment to the genome, as you say by supplying the answer to whether a change is helpful, neutral or harmful.]]

Again- the info doesn’t come from nature- Environment can’t introduce info into the species- If you have an example of ‘information flowing fro mthe environment into the geentic info of a species,’ I’d certainly liek to see this. you make it sound as though the environment is endowed with some kind of metainfo that was intelligently designed, and when secies run into problems, the environment jumps into action with corrective information which it somehow inserts into the genetic info of species.

Demski wrote a paper on htis? Hmm- then that settles it apparently. Got a link?

[CottShop]

ID doesn’t contest it anymore? Says who? You? Demski’s hypothesis is I’m afraid far fetched, and has no support- He is simply assuming information is stored in nature, or hte universe, and quite frankly, His hypothesis is detached from the reality of Biology:

“Biologists don’t know all the details of the solution of the first question: the origin of life. The simplest free-living organism, Mycoplasma genitalium, has 468 genes. This would exceed Dembski’s boundary of 500 bits, I guess. Could this evolve gradually? We need data and experiments.
Now the second question. Although Dembski tries to escape a positive answer to the second question, he finds himself saying: “selection introduces new information” (p177). Dembski also seems to accept that information can flow from the environment to an organism, thereby increasing the organism’s information content. Both statements contradict his main thesis that natural processes cannot generate CSI. On other pages he is so attached to the Law of Conservation of Information (’Only Information begets Information’, p183) and the belief that CSI cannot be generated by natural processes, that he is forced to believe that CSI existed before the origin of life: CSI could be ‘abundant in the universe’ and ‘CSI is inherent in a lifeless universe’. This amounts to free-floating ghostly information in space, which is too far removed from down-to-earth biological science. The whole idea that information in DNA has any meaning outside living organisms is caused by pushing the information metaphor too far. The information in DNA is meaningless outside the cell. Just like the instructions in software do not have any meaning outside the very specific hardware environment in which they are executed. Further Dembski believes in ‘discrete insertions of CSI over time in organisms’ (p171). In that case I prefer Fred Hoyle’s panspermia theory, which is as unearthly but closer to observational science.”

http://home.planet.nl/~gkorthof/kortho44.htm

The only thing I can find is that Demski thinks info flows from a ‘creator’ to ‘the created’ (Think of a mother and fetus- the fetus gains info from the mother, the egg gains info from the father etc) and that he thinks CSI is ‘out there somewhere’ but doesn’t state where. IF then Info flows from creator to created, then this just supports metaifno concepts being discussed in this paper in htis htread, as metainfo has to be present first in order for info to flow to each level for hte development of each level.

[Coyoteman]

I lean toward the idea that’s nothing’s useless on the human body.

Hmmmmmm.