Posted on 01/28/2005 4:28:41 PM PST by metacognative
Panicked Evolutionists: The Stephen Meyer Controversy
The theory of evolution is a tottering house of ideological cards that is more about cherished mythology than honest intellectual endeavor. Evolutionists treat their cherished theory like a fragile object of veneration and worship--and so it is. Panic is a sure sign of intellectual insecurity, and evolutionists have every reason to be insecure, for their theory is falling apart.
The latest evidence of this panic comes in a controversy that followed a highly specialized article published in an even more specialized scientific journal. Stephen C. Meyer, Director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, wrote an article accepted for publication in Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. The article, entitled "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories," was published after three independent judges deemed it worthy and ready for publication. The use of such judges is standard operating procedure among "peer-reviewed" academic journals, and is considered the gold standard for academic publication.
The readership for such a journal is incredibly small, and the Biological Society of Washington does not commonly come to the attention of the nation's journalists and the general public. Nevertheless, soon after Dr. Meyer's article appeared, the self-appointed protectors of Darwinism went into full apoplexy. Internet websites and scientific newsletters came alive with outrage and embarrassment, for Dr. Meyer's article suggested that evolution just might not be the best explanation for the development of life forms. The ensuing controversy was greater than might be expected if Dr. Meyer had argued that the world is flat or that hot is cold.
Eugenie C. Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, told The Scientist that Dr. Meyer's article came to her attention when members of the Biological Society of Washington contacted her office. "Many members of the society were stunned about the article," she told The Scientist, and she described the article as "recycled material quite common in the intelligent design community." Dr. Scott, a well known and ardent defender of evolutionary theory, called Dr. Meyer's article "substandard science" and argued that the article should never have been published in any scientific journal.
Within days, the Biological Society of Washington, intimidated by the response of the evolutionary defenders, released a statement apologizing for the publication of the article. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the society's governing council claimed that the article "was published without the prior knowledge of the council." The statement went on to declare: "We have met and determined that all of us would have deemed this paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings." The society's president, Roy W. McDiarmid, a scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey, blamed the article's publication on the journal's previous editor, Richard Sternberg, who now serves as a fellow at the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Institute of Health. "My conclusion on this," McDiarmid said, "was that it was a really bad judgment call on the editor's part."
What is it about Dr. Stephen Meyer's paper that has caused such an uproar? Meyer, who holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, argued in his paper that the contemporary form of evolutionary theory now dominant in the academy, known as "Neo-Darwinism," fails to account for the development of higher life forms and the complexity of living organisms. Pointing to what evolutionists identify as the "Cambrian explosion," Meyer argued that "the geologically sudden appearance of many new animal body plans" cannot be accounted for by Darwinian theory, "neo" or otherwise.
Accepting the scientific claim that the Cambrian explosion took place "about 530 million years ago," Meyer went on to explain that the "remarkable jump in the specified complexity or 'complex specified information' [CSI] of the biological world" cannot be explained by evolutionary theory.
The heart of Dr. Meyer's argument is found in this scientifically-loaded passage: "Neo-Darwinism seeks to explain the origin of new information, form, and structure as a result of selection acting on randomly arising variation at a very low level within the biological hierarchy, mainly, within the genetic text. Yet the major morphological innovations depend on a specificity of arrangement at a much higher level of the organizational hierarchy, a level that DNA alone does not determine. Yet if DNA is not wholly responsible for body plan morphogenesis, then DNA sequences can mutate indefinitely, without regard to realistic probabilistic limits, and still not produce a new body plan. Thus, the mechanism of natural selection acting on random mutations in DNA cannot in principle generate novel body plans, including those that first arose in the Cambrian explosion."
In simpler terms, the mechanism of natural selection, central to evolutionary theory, cannot possibly account for the development of so many varied and complex life forms simply by mutations in DNA. Rather, some conscious design--thus requiring a Designer--is necessary to explain the emergence of these life forms.
In the remainder of his paper, Meyer attacks the intellectual inadequacies of evolutionary theory and argues for what is now known as the "design Hypothesis." As he argued, "Conscious and rational agents have, as a part of their powers of purposive intelligence, the capacity to design information-rich parts and to organize those parts into functional information-rich systems and hierarchies." As he went on to assert, "We know of no other causal entity or process that has this capacity." In other words, the development of the multitude of higher life forms found on the planet can be explained only by the guidance of a rational agent--a Designer--whose plan is evident in the design.
Meyer's article was enough to cause hysteria in the evolutionists' camp. Knowing that their theory lacks intellectual credibility, the evolutionists respond by raising the volume, offering the equivalent of scientific shrieks and screams whenever their cherished theory is criticized--much less in one of their own cherished journals. As Dr. John West, Associate Director of the Discovery Institute explained, "Instead of addressing the paper's argument or inviting counterarguments or rebuttal, the society has resorted to affirming what amounts to a doctrinal statement in an effort to stifle scientific debate. They're trying to stop scientific discussion before it even starts."
When the Biological Society of Washington issued its embarrassing apology for publishing the paper, the organization pledged that arguments for Intelligent Design "will not be addressed in future issues of the Proceedings," regardless of whether the paper passes peer review.
From the perspective of panicked evolutionists, the Intelligent Design movement represents a formidable adversary and a constant irritant. The defenders of Intelligent Design are undermining evolutionary theory at multiple levels, and they refuse to go away. The panicked evolutionists respond with name-calling, labeling Intelligent Design proponents as "creationists," thereby hoping to prevent any scientific debate before it starts.
Intelligent Design is not tantamount to the biblical doctrine of creation. Theologically, Intelligent Design falls far short of requiring any affirmation of the doctrine of creation as revealed in the Bible. Nevertheless, it is a useful and important intellectual tool, and a scientific movement with great promise. The real significance of Intelligent Design theory and its related movement is the success with which it undermines the materialistic and naturalistic worldview central to the theory of evolution.
For the Christian believer, the Bible presents the compelling and authoritative case for God's creation of the cosmos. Specifically, the Bible provides us with the ultimate truth concerning human origins and the special creation of human beings as the creatures made in God's own image. Thus, though we believe in more than Intelligent Design, we certainly do not believe in less. We should celebrate the confusion and consternation now so evident among the evolutionists. Dr. Stephen Meyer's article--and the controversy it has spawned--has caught evolutionary scientists with their intellectual pants down.
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R. Albert Mohler, Jr
Why do we care? Because evolution has primed us to be the most intelligent and inquisitive of animals. Death is the ultimate mystery; one that we are frightened and fascinated by. We fear that ultimately we have no more meaning than that of a cooling corpse and we reject and rebel against that idea, because our ego, developed over the eons to ensure our survival and reproductive success, was designed by evolution to reject it.
Man's very being infers nothing more than man exists now, and is the product of countless years of evolution.
This neither proves nor disproves nothing of the supernatural. For that, you must ask, "What does my faith tell me?"
But as you say. Just as probable as anyother sequence of life.
Which makes life much more probable than your "zilch". Thank you!
RWP: You have again confused the second law with one of Newton's laws, in this case the law of universal gravitation. The second law says nothing about the direction of motion of the albatross.
The reason the "creationist appeal to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics to refute evolution" keeps resurfacing around here is because those of you on the evolution side only answer half the question - the thermodynamic part.
Of course, nothing violates a physical law. But that is only half the answer, it does not satisfy and that is what the whole albatross thought experiment brings to the table.
On a previous sidebar nasamn777 used the refrigerator metaphor - I just transmuted it to the biological realm using betty boop's thought experiment.
If you want to put the issue to "bed" you need to answer the whole question, to wit:
Living organisms emerge and survive despite the surrounding thermodynamic entropy of non-life – they act willfully (i.e. the will to live, want to live or struggle to survive).
What is it about the living organism - which does not exist in a dead organism or in non-life - that causes it to translate the will to live to the molecular machinery which then obeys the thermodynamic (and all other) physical laws?
It's quite obvious in the living albatross flying away while the dead bird drops along with the 12 lb cannonball. But the will to live is also evident in bacteria, amoeba and so on.
Looking even deeper into the subject is the autonomy and semiosis that arises in biological life – which tends to increase, functionalize, complexify (by whichever flavor your prefer) and actualize to the purpose of satisfying “the will to live”.
As long as the evolutionists only answer half of the question, the whole argument will continue to resurface.
For Lurkers:
The Second Law of Thermodynamics
Even so, the theory cannot suggest an origin (abiogenesis or biogenesis) for information (successful communication) much less the "will to live". But that is outside the domain of the "theory of evolution".
But at least these information theories - if only you would accept them - would get us past that particular argument by answering the whole question.
The reason I don't get excited about information theories is that I don't see the need for them in evolution. Regardless of what causes variation in genomes, the information about what is needed to survive and reproduce is contained in the transaction that comprises selection.
Your discussion of the complexities reminds me of all the psychobabble surrounding gambling addiction. It is true that people differ in their innate susceptability to addiction, but the actual process is the same in humans, rats, pigeons and other mammals. The design of gambling games and machines is a science, and a very simple one.
Biological evolution changes the frequency of alleles by the mechanism of natural selection. Behavioral reinforcement changes the frequency of associative responses. Same mathematics; different physical implementation; different time frame.
Evolution is no longer bound by the study of fossils, or even by the study of living things. It can be modeled in software, and it can be demonstrated that mutation and selection can produce complex structures. It is pretty clear that we do not understand it well enough to model the complexity of life, but we are beginners at this.
It may be that the universe is tuned to produce evolving systems. That would be cool, but selection is not a predictable phenomenon from our perspective, and it is not possible to anticipate how allele changes will be greeted by the world at large.
Very well put, Alamo-Girl! Living systems must "go against the grain," must counter the natural pull towards equilibrium. This is not a random process, rather it gives every indication of being an informed, or information-based process. And as Paul Davies has pointed out, "The laws of physics…are algorithmically very simple; they contain relatively little information. Consequently they cannot on their own be responsible for creating informational macromolecules…life cannot be ‘written into’ the laws of physics….Life works its magic not by bowing to the directionality of chemistry, but by circumventing what is chemically and thermodynamically ‘natural’. Of course, organisms must comply with the laws of physics and chemistry, but these laws are only incidental to biology.” [Bolds added]
I don't know why it is, but it seems many people have difficulty recognizing this.
Thank you so much for your excellent post!
Living systems are those which utilize energy to maintain themselves, grow, reproduce, move, respirate, feed, ect. Gibbs free energy is what drives these processes. dS isn't an important focus, because the reactions themselves are taking that Gibbs free energy. They are the most probable sink for the energy. They are the accessible states.
The use of Shannon entropy is for looking at the processes utilizing Gibbs free energy for productive purposes, those that are unique to life. There are also nonproductive channels, but they must consume less energy overall for life to continue. The accessible states for Shannon entropy are all possible states beforehand. Once energy has been expended, the result defines the state and is used to calculate the entropy. In the simplest case the before entropy is log(2)(a reaction might occur, or it might not), after the reaction it is log(1). As long as Gibbs energy flows though the Shannon "channels", this entropy is reduced.
Unlike energy release in bulk mixes, release in living cells occurs at collections of objects configured to capture that energy. The creation of each of those objects, their assembly and the function they serve, are all considered Shannon information. The information is ultimately coded in RNA and DNA. Once the Gibbs flow fails in key channels of information, the organism reverts to a bulk mix and Shannon entropy no longer applies. The organism is dead.
" The objection to evolution based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics will not be complete until we have thoroughly explained the thought experiment raised by betty boop on another thread:
Take a live albatross, a dead albatross and a 12 lb cannonball to the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and toss them over the side.
What happens next, i.e. the live albatross flying away, is what must be addressed before anyone can put the appeal to the Second Law of Thermodynamics in the "out" basket."
Bird's flap their wings and fly, or try to, when they sense the acceleration. The immune system is an unconscious reaction to life threats also. The organism begins shortly after birth to distinguish self from other, in terms of proteins and other antigens. Both reactions are coded in the DNA and involve feedback. The feedback and triggers are switches, rather than equilibrium. That is not common in chemical mixes.
It's the properties of RNA and DNA itself, the transcription reactions and their creation of catalytic machines that overcame the second law. If it can happen, it will.
Not really. Euclidean geometry is catagorical. All theorems are provable. The same is true for Pressberger arithmetic (ordinary arithmetic without multiplication; repeated addition up to any number is allowed.)
I don't know what your term "level of specificity" is supposed to mean, it does not appear in any of the works I have read on Gödel's theorem. I do know what the hypotheses of Gödel's theorem actually is though.
It does not then obey thermodynamic laws. At all times, in all stages of development, it obeys thermodynamic laws.
It's quite obvious in the living albatross flying away while the dead bird drops along with the 12 lb cannonball. But the will to live is also evident in bacteria, amoeba and so on.
The hypothetical 'will to live' sounds quite Nietzschean. So where in the bacterium is the 'will to live' located?
By the way, the 'panspermia' link which you continually post is quite confused. Boltzmann's constant is not mysterious at all, it's just the constant that relates our scale of temperature to our scale of energy.
The Gibbs free energy is just -T times the entropy change, at constant pressure. It's just a proxy for the total entropy.
To the issue at hand, a statement of faith is not responsive to the "creationist appeal to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics to refute evolution".
Since I mentioned reactions I thought it was clear, but...
delG = delH -T*delS
The enthalpy, or heat of reaction is larger than T*delS and what drives "the signal".
Sufficient delH also can reduce S...
The one thing I would like for Lurkers to keep in mind is that Shannon's is the Mathematical Theory of Communication. The content of the message being transmitted (which most people think of as "information") is completely beside the point to the theory - hence Shannon is applicable across the board to many disciplines.
Under Shannon, information is the reduction of uncertainty (entropy) in the receiver (or molecular machine) in going from a before state to an after state. It is the action, not the message. DNA, for instance, is a message.
For a graphic and more information, Lurkers might want to scan post 1791.
S in that equation is the system entropy. There is also the entropy of the surroundings. The entropy change in the surroundings is -qrev/T, and since the reversible heat at constant pressure equals the enthalpy change Delta H, DeltaH = -T DeltaSsurr. So DeltaG = -T(Ssurr+Ssys)
Yours is a statement of faith (anthropic principle applied to evolution).
It looks to me like Occam's razor.
ping
Oh, no, you dragged Mr. 'Creationist Concentration Camps ' here? Why?
Here you focus on Shannon information as if it were physical:
Again, I assert that Shannon information is the successful communication itself, the reduction of uncertainty (entropy) in the receiver.
It does not become "physical" in biological systems until that communication has occurred, the state changing in the receiver. That is why the reduction of uncertainty must (and does) obey the physical laws, including the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Whereas the sender is the inception of a particular communication it does not factor in the calculation of Shannon information at all!
Before the reduction of uncertainty in the receiver occurs, the communication is unmeasurable (intangible) and thus the thermodynamic entropy does not apply to the will to live which translates to the communication process in biological systems.
When this feature of information theory is added to the usual response that nothing can disobey a physical law, it more fully answers the "creationist appeal to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics to refute evolution" by isolating the origin of "the will to live" and information (communications) in biological systems to the abiogenesis v. biogenesis debate - well outside the "theory of evolution".
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