The AP Model and Shannon Theory Show the Incompleteness of Darwin’s ToE

self | January 26, 2009 | Jean F. Drew

[betty boop]

The AP Model and Shannon Theory Show the Incompleteness of Darwin’s ToE

By Jean F. Drew

“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.”

So begins Alex Williams’ seminal article, Life’s Irreducible Structure — Autopoiesis, Part 1. In the article, Williams seeks to show that all living organisms are constituted by a five-level structured hierarchy that cannot be wholly accounted for in terms of naturalistic explanation. Rather, Williams’ model places primary emphasis on the successful transmission and communication of relevant biological information.

Note here that, so far, science has not identified any naturalistic source for “information” within the universe, biological or otherwise. And yet it appears that living organisms remain living only so long as they are “successfully communicating” information. When that process stops, the organism dies; i.e., becomes subject to the second law of thermodynamics — the consequences of which the now-deceased organism had managed to optimally distance itself from while alive.

Evidently Williams finds Michael Behe’s irreducible complexity arguments insufficiently general to explain biological complexity and organization, and so seeks a different explanation to generically characterize the living organism. Yet his proposed autopoietic model — of the “self-making,” i.e., self-maintaining or self-organizing and therefore living system — itself happens to be irreducibly complex. That is to say, on Williams’ model, any biological organism from microbe to man must be understood as a complete, functioning “whole,” transcending in the most profound way any definition of a particular organism as the “mere” sum of its constituting “material” parts.

Further, the idea of the “whole” must come prior to an understanding of the nature and function of the constituting parts. Williams terms this idea of the “whole” as inversely causal meta-information; as such, it is what determines the relations and organization of all the parts that constitute that “whole” of the living organism — a biological system in nature.

Just one further word before we turn to Williams’ autopoietic model. To begin with the supposition of “wholeness” flies in the face of methodological naturalism, the currently favored model of scientific investigation, and arguably the heart of Darwinist evolutionary theory. For methodological naturalism is classical and mechanistic (i.e., “Newtonian”) in its basic presuppositions: Among other things, it requires that all causation be “local.” Given this requirement, it makes sense to regard the “whole is merely the sum of its parts” as a valid statement — those parts being given to human understanding as the objects of direct observation of material events. The presumption here is that, given enough time, the piling up of the parts (i.e., of the “material events”) will eventually give you the description of the whole. Meanwhile, we all should just be patient. For centuries if need be, as a collaborator once suggested to me (in regard to abiogenesis. See more below).

Yet subsequent to classical physics came the astonishing revelations of relativity and quantum theory, both of which point to “non-local” causation. The transmission of information across widely spatially-separated regions (from the point of view of the biological organism as an extended body in time) so as to have causative effect in the emergence of biological life and its functions is decidedly a “non-local” phenomenon. Indeed, non-local causation seems ubiquitous, all-pervasive in the living state of biological organisms, as we shall see in what follows.

Williams’ Autopoietic Model
Williams lays out the five-level, autopoietic hierarchy specifying the living system this way (parenthetical notes added):

(i) components with perfectly pure composition (i.e., pure elements)
(ii) components with highly specific structure (i.e., molecules)
(iii) components that are functionally integrated (i.e., components work cooperatively toward achieving a purpose or goal)
(iv) comprehensively regulated information-driven processes (DNA, RNA)
(v) inversely-causal meta-informational strategies for individual and species survival (we’ll get to this in a minute)

Pictorially, the model lays out like this:

Figure 1 summarizes the five-level, hierarchical specification of any living organism, microbe to man. But how do we get a handle on what this hierarchy actually means?

An interesting way to look at the problem, it seems to me, is to look at the available potential “information content” of each of the five “levels” or “manifolds” of the hierarchy.

You’ll note that Figure 1 depicts an ascending arrow on the left labeled “complexity.” For our present purposes, we’ll define this as “algorithmic complexity,” understood as a function that maximally yields “information content.” If we can find complexity measures to plug into the model, we might gain additional insight thereby.

Fortunately, algorithmic complexity measures have been obtained for certain levels of the hierarchy; i.e., Level (i) and Levels (iv) and possibly Level (v). For the latter two, the measures were taken with respect to the living human being. Figure 1 can thus be expanded as follows:

Notes to Figure 2:

¹ Gregory Chaitin: “My paper on physics was never published, only as an IBM report. In it I took: Newton’s laws, Maxwell’s laws, the Schrödinger equation, and Einstein’s field equations for curved spacetime near a black hole, and solved them numerically, giving ‘motion-picture’ solutions. The programs, which were written in an obsolete computer programming language APL2 at roughly the level of Mathematica, were all about half a page long, which is amazingly simple.”

On this basis, Chaitin has pointed out that the complexity we observe in living systems cannot be accounted for on the basis of the chemical and physical laws alone, owing to the paucity of their information content.

² George Gilder: “In each of the some 300 trillion cells in every human body, the words of life churn almost flawlessly through our flesh and nervous system at a speed that utterly dwarfs the data rates of all the world’s supercomputers. For example, just to assemble some 500 amino-acid units into each of the trillions of complex hemoglobin molecules that transfer oxygen from the lungs to bodily tissues takes a total of some 250 peta operations per second. (The word “peta” refers to the number ten to the 15th power — so this tiny process requires 250 x 10¹⁵ operations.)

A Word about Abiogenesis
Darwin’s evolutionary theory does not deal with the origin of life. It takes life for granted, and then asks how it speciates. Moreover, the theory does not elaborate a description of the constitution of the individual living organism, such as Williams’ irreducibly complex/autopoietic (“IC/AP”) model proposes.

It’s important to recognize that neither Darwin’s theory, nor Williams’ model, deals with the origin of life. It seems to me that evolution theory and ID are not necessarily mutually-exclusive. One deals with the species level, the other the biological structure of living individuals, the “building blocks” of species, as it were.

Yet there is tremendous hostility towards intelligent design on the part of many orthodox evolutionary biologists, which has gotten so bad in recent times that the more doctrinaire Darwinists have run to the courts for “protection” of their cherished beliefs (and interests personal and institutional), insisting that ID “is not science.” Judges are not scientists; in general they are ill-equipped to make judgments “on the merits” of scientific controversies. Yet they render judgments all the same, with profound implications for how science is to be taught. I fail to see how this redounds to the benefit of scientific progress.

If science is defined as materialist and naturalist in its fundamental presuppositions — the currently-favored methodological naturalism — then ID does not meet the test of “what is science?” For it does not restrict itself to the material, the physical, but extends its model to information science, which is immaterial. The problem for Darwinists seems to be that there is no known source of biological information within Nature as classically understood (i.e., as fundamentally Newtonian — materialist and mechanistic in three dimensions).

The problem of abiogenesis goes straight to the heart of this issue. Abiogensis is a hypothesis holding that life spontaneously arises from inert, non-living matter under as-yet unknown conditions. Although evolution theory does not deal with the problem of the origin of life, many evolutionary biologists are intrigued by the problem, and want to deal with it in a manner consistent with Darwinian methods; i.e., the presuppositions of methodological naturalism, boosted by random mutation and natural selection. That is, to assume that life “emerges” from the “bottom-up” — from resources available at Levels (i) and (ii) of the IC/AP model.

There have been numerous experiments, most of which have taken the form of laboratory simulations of “lightning strikes” on a properly prepared chemical “soup” (e.g., Urey, Miller, et al.). At least one such experiment managed to produce amino acids — fundamental building blocks of life (at the (ii) level of Williams’ hierarchy). But amino acids are not life. On Williams’ model, to be “life,” they’d need to have achieved at least the threshold of Level (iii).

For it is the presence of “functionally-integrated components” that makes life possible, that sustains the living organism in its very first “duty”: That it will, along the entire extension of its complete biological make-up (whether simple or highly complex), globally organize its component systems in such a way as to maximally maintain the total organism’s “distance” from thermodynamic entropy. An “organism” that couldn’t do that wouldn’t last as an “organism” for very long.

And so in order for the materialist interpretation of abiogenesis to be true, the “chemical soup” experimental model would have to demonstrate how inorganic matter manages to “exempt” itself from one of the two most fundamental laws of Nature: the second law of thermodynamics.

From cells on up through species, all biological organisms — by virtue of their participation in Levels (i) and (ii) — are subject to the second law right from creation. Indeed, they are subject to it throughout their life spans. A friend points out that the second law is a big arguing point for Macroevolutionists, who try to argue that the second law is irrelevent, i.e., doesn’t apply to living systems, because “it only applies to closed systems and not to open ones.” Thus they say that living systems in nature are “open” systems. But what this line of reasoning does not tell us is what such systems are “open” to.

And yet we know that every cell is subject to the second law — simply by needing to fuel itself, it subjects itself to the effects of entropy, otherwise known as heat death. And although it can and does stave off such effects for a while, doing so requires the cell or species constantly to deal with maintaining distance from entropy in all its living functional components, organized globally. Entropy plays a big part in all life — from cells to completed species.

When the successful communication of meta-information begins to slow down and break down, cells and species then begin to succumb to the effects of entropy, to which they have been subjected all their entire life. This is because they can no longer combat, or stay ahead of the “entropy curve,” due to inefficient communication processes and, thus, degradation of the maintenance procedures communicated to the cells via the meta-information system that is specific to each particular biological entity and to each particular species. After all, any species description is necessarily an informed description.

Yet another origin-of-life approach — the Wimmer abiogenesis experiment — is highly instructive. He managed to “create” a polio virus. He did so by introducing RNA information into a “cell-free juice,” and the polio virus spontaneously resulted.

Wimmer used actual DNA to synthesize polio RNA based on information about the polio virus RNA which is widely available, even on the internet. The RNA information was truly “pulled” from the DNA, which “resides” at the next-higher level. He could not synthesize RNA directly; he first had to synthesize the DNA from the raw information and then synthesize the polio RNA from the synthetic DNA.

Yet RNA information, like all information, is immaterial. In terms of the Williams’ hierarchy, clearly Wimmer had obtained an organism functioning at about Level (iii) — because it had sufficient information to propel it to that level, as “pulled” by the information available at the next-higher level where DNA information “resides” — Level (iv).

Unlike biological organisms expressing all five levels of the Williams model, the polio virus, though fully autonomous as an information processor (leading to its “successful communication” in Wimmer’s laboratory), somehow still doesn’t have everything it needs to be fully “autonomous” as a living being. A virus, for instance, is dependent on a living host in order to execute its own life program. As such, it is a sort of “quasi-life.” Shannon Information Theory helps us to clarify such distinctions.

Before we turn to Shannon, it’s worth mentioning that, according to H. H. Pattee and Luis Rocha, the issue of autonomy (and semiosis — the language and the ability to encode/decode messages) is a huge stumbling block to abiogenesis theory. For that kind of complexity to emerge by self-organizing theory, in the RNA world, the organism would have to involuntarily toggle back and forth between non-autonomous and autonomous modes, first to gather, and then to make use of information content as an autonomous living entity. The question then becomes: What tells it how and when to “toggle?” Further, it appears the source of the information content that can toggle non-life into life remains undisclosed.

Shannon Information Theory
The DNA of any individual life form is exactly the same whether the organism is dead or alive. And we know this, for DNA is widely used and proved reliable in forensic tests of decedents in criminal courts of law. And so we propose:

Information is that which distinguishes life from non-life/death.

Information, paraphrased as “successful communication,” is the reduction of uncertainty (Shannon entropy) in a receiver or molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state. It is the action which facilitates any successfully completed communication. Thus Shannon’s model describes the universal “mechanism” of communication. That is, it distinguishes between the “content” of a message and its “conduit”: The model is indifferent to the actual message being communicated, which could be anything, from “Don’t forget to put your boots on today — it’s snowing,” to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The value or meaning of the message being transmitted has no bearing on the Shannon model, which is the same for all messages whatever. Pictorially, the Shannon communication conduit looks like this:

Information is further defined by its independence from physical determination:

“I came to see that the computer offers an insuperable obstacle to Darwinian materialism. In a computer, as information theory shows, the content is manifestly independent of its material substrate. No possible knowledge of a computer’s materials can yield any information whatsoever about the actual content of its computations. In the usual hierarchy of causation, they reflect the software or ‘source code’ used to program the device; and, like the design of the computer itself, the software is contrived by human intelligence.

“The failure of purely physical theories to describe or explain information reflects Shannon’s concept of entropy and his measure of ‘news.’ Information is defined by its independence from physical determination: If it is determined, it is predictable and thus by definition not information. Yet Darwinian science seemed to be reducing all nature to material causes.” — George Gilder, “Evolution and Me,” National Review, July 17, 2006, p. 29f.

Referring to the Shannon diagram above, we can interpret the various elements of the model in terms of biological utility, as follows:

Note the head, “noise.” Biologically speaking, with respect to the fully-integrated, five-leveled biological organism, “noise” in the channel might be introduced by certain biological “enigmas,” which broadly satisfy the requirements of Williams’ model and, thus, are living organisms. Shannon Information Theory describes such “enigmas” as follows:

Bacteria — typified by autonomous successful communication; bacteria are single-cell organisms. Because they are autonomous entities, communications follow the normal flow in Shannon theory — source, message, encoder/transmitter, channel, decoder/receiver. The bacteria’s messages are not “broadcast” to other nearby bacteria but are autonomous to the single-cell organism.

Bacterial Spores — typified by autonomous successful communication. Bacterial spores, such as anthrax, are like other bacteria except they can settle into a dormant state. Dormant bacterial spores begin regular successful communication under the Shannon model once an “interrupt” has occurred, for instance the presence of food. Anthrax, for instance, may lay dormant for years until breathed into a victim’s lungs, whereupon it actively begins its successful albeit destructive (to its host) communication, which often leads to the death of its host; i.e., the bacterium’s “food source.”

Mycoplasmas — typified as an autonomous bacterial model parasite successfully communicating. Mycoplasmas are akin to bacteria except they lack an outer membrane and so often attach to other cells, whereby they may cause such events as, for instance, the disease pneumonia. In the Shannon model, mycoplasmas are considered “autonomous” in that the communications are often restricted to the mycoplasma itself; e.g., self-reproduction. But because they also act like a parasite, they might alter the host’s properties and thus result in malfunctions in the autonomous communication of the host by, for instance, interfering with the channel.

Mimivirus — typified as an autonomous virus model parasite successfully communicating. Mimiviruses are gigantic viruses. They are viruses because they are parasites to their host, relying on the host for protein engineering. But the mimiviruses (unlike regular viruses) apparently do not need to be a parasite, and thus they are “autonomous” with regard to the Shannon model. But like the mycoplasmas, the presence of mimiviruses can alter properties of the host and thereby result in malfunctions in the autonomous communications of the host by, for instance, interfering with the channel.

Viroids — typified as non-autonomous virus-like noise/mutation contributing to successful/failed communication. Viroids have no protein coat. They are single strands of RNA that lack the protein coat of regular viruses. They are noise in the channel under the Shannon model; i.e., messages only that are not communicated autonomously within the viroids themselves. They can also be seen as “broadcast” messages, because viroids may cause their own message (RNA) to be introduced into the host.

Viruses — typified as non-autonomous virus noise/mutation contributing to successful/failed communication. Viruses feed genetic data to the host. They are strands of DNA or RNA that have a protein coat. Viruses are parasites to the host, relying on the host for communication; e.g., reproduction. In the Shannon model, viruses are either noise or broadcasts that are not autonomous in the virus and appear as noise messages to the host. It is possible that, unlike the polio virus which is destructive, there may be some viruses (and viroids) whose messages cause a beneficial adaptation in the host.

Prions — typified as non-autonomous protein noise/mutation contributing to successful/failed communication (protein crystallization). Prions are protein molecules that have neither DNA nor RNA. Currently, prions are the suspected cause of bovine spongiform encephalopathy — Mad Cow Disease. In the Shannon model, prions would be incoherent in the channel because they have no discernable message; that is, neither DNA nor RNA. Thus the prion would lead to channel or decoding malfunctions.

So far there is no known origin for information (successful communication) in space/time. This should be visualized as activity represented by the arrows on the above illustration. Possible origins include a universal vacuum field, harmonics, geometry.

Shannon’s mathematical theory of communications applied to molecular biology shows genuine promise of having some significant implications for the theory of natural selection in explaining the rise of information (successful communication), autonomy, and semiosis (language, encoding/decoding). — S. Venable, J. Drew, “Shannon Information and Complex Systems Theory,” Don’t Let Science Get You Down, Timothy, Lulu Press, 2006, p. 207f.

It seems worthwhile to note here that, under Shannon’s model, the thermodynamic “tab” is paid when the “molecular machine” goes from the before state to the after state. At that moment, it dissipates heat into the surroundings. Level (v) meta-information successfully communicated to the organism provides it with strategies to counter and compensate for local thermodynamic effects. Ultimately, when the organism reaches a state in which it is no longer successfully communicating, the entropy tab must be paid by ordinary means. And so eventually, the living organism dies.

Putting Williams’ IC/AP Model into Context
So far, the autopoietic model — though it provides an excellent description of the information flows necessary to establish and maintain an organism in a “living state” — seems to be a bit of an abstraction. Indeed, in order to be fully understood, the model needs to be placed into the context in which it occurs — that is, in Nature.

Each living entity as described by the model is a part and participant in a far greater “whole.” Niels Bohr put it this way: “A scientific analysis of parts cannot disclose the actual character of a living organism because that organism exists only in relation to the whole of biological life.” Including the species-specific meta-information unique to any particular species, which also controls and dictates how the entire biological system works as a “whole”; i.e., at the global level. And arguably, not only in relation to the entirety of biological life, but to the physical forces of nature, to inorganic entities, and to other biological beings, including the “enigmas” described above, which appear to be a sort of “quasi-life.” For even though they may be autonomous communicators, some of these “quasi-life” examples suggest an organic state that is somehow not “sufficiently informed” to stand on its own; i.e., they exemplify a state that needs to latch onto a fully-functioning biological entity in order to complete their own “program” for life — the very definition of a parasite.

The single most telling point that Williams’ model makes is that information is vital to the living state; that it flows “downward” from the “top” of his model — Level (v), meta-information — and not from the “bottom” of the model flowing “upwards” by the incremental means characterizing Levels (i) and (ii) — not to mention orthodox Darwinist expectation. On this model, Levels (i) and (ii) “do not know how to fit themselves” into the “biological picture.” For that, they need the information available at Levels (iii) to (v).

Many questions relevant to our exploration of the fundaments of biology have not been touched on in this article — e.g., what is the meaning of “emergence?” What is the manner in which “complexification” takes place in nature? What do we mean by “open” and “closed” systems? What do we mean by “self-ordered” or “self-organizing” systems in nature? (And what does the prefix “self” mean with respect to such questions?)

But since we’re out of time, we won’t be dealing with such problems here and now, though I hope we may return to them later. Instead, I’ll leave you, dear reader, with yet another depiction of Figure 1, this time elaborated to show the total context in which the irreducibly complex, autopoietic model is embedded:

Note the model now sits, not only with respect to its natural environment, but also with respect to the quantum domain of pure potentiality, and also with respect to a (proposed) extra-mundane source of biological information.

I think for the biological sciences to actually progress, a model such as Williams’ IC/AP model is worthy of serious consideration. Remember, Darwin’s theory is wholly classical, meaning dimensionally limited to 3-space, to local, mechanical, largely force-field-driven material causation. Relativity and quantum theory have both moved well beyond those precincts. It’s time for the Darwinian theory of evolution to “catch up” with the current state of scientific knowledge — and especially with the implications of information science.

©2009 Jean F. Drew

[Alamo-Girl]

LOLOLOL!

[betty boop]

Ooooppps! Just a little update on Father Coyne. He "stepped down" from the Vatican Observatory in August 2006. No reason formally given; but he and Christophe Cardinal Schoenborn had been crossing swords re: ID and Neo-Darwinism. Schoenborn is an evolutionist, but he believes that evolution is intelligently "directed"; Father Coyne is a strong promoter of the Darwinian "paradigm." Details here: Redesigning the Vatican (Third story down)

Anyhoot, there is a good deal of intellectual ferment in the Church right at the moment.

RE: Coyne's criticism of Schoenborn's position, William Dembski had this to say:

According to George V. Coyne: “In the third paragraph of his op ed article in the NY Times, 7 July 2005, Card. Schoenborn mistakenly defines neo-Darwinian evolution as ‘an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection’ and then condemns it. If you arbitrarily define something in a condemning way and then condemn it, you make dialogue pretty difficult.” [From circulated email.]

In neo-Darwinism, the raw material for innovation derives from changes in genetic material. According to the theory, those changes are NOT correlated with future benefit. Hence they are random, unguided, unplanned. Likewise, natural selection has no plan — it does not anticipate future functions that are not currently available. It can only take advantage of present function. That being the case — and it is the case — how can Coyne say that Cardinal Schoenborn was mistaken?

Coyne's complaint seems weak to me. For Schoenborn's understanding of neo-Darwinism as propounding ‘an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection’ as the driver of evolution is certainly correct, based on Darwin's own statements. So I don't see that Schoenborn "arbitrarily" defined it. That he "condemned it" — well that's understandable!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the update!

Coyne's complaint seems weak to me. For Schoenborn's understanding of neo-Darwinism as propounding ‘an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection’ as the driver of evolution is certainly correct, based on Darwin's own statements. So I don't see that Schoenborn "arbitrarily" defined it. That he "condemned it" — well that's understandable!

I agree!!!

[GodGunsGuts]

==So truly, I appreciate your frustration that science cannot, in principle, deliver all the answers of most vital concern to human beings.

I think Alex Williams gets right to the heart of the matter when he points out where materialist, reductionist science misses the boat:

“Shannon information theory deliberately ignores the meaning of the information and only deals with the statistics of the code. It is thus more than useless in biology (where meaning is central) because it diverts attention away from meaning.”

To my mind, trying to pretend science is not fundamentally about meaning is what gets the Evos in so much trouble when they try to explain what they call “natural” phenomena. God has created a Universe that communicates to us. It doesn’t matter whether you are a plumber or a cosmologist—all our interactions with the Universe depend on meaning (albeit different levels of meaning). For instance, if the light photons being sent from the sun have no meaning, then how is it that we can interpret the same? How is it that we can tell the difference between the light being sent to us by the sun and the light being sent by a planet or a light-bulb? In each case, the light source is sending us a message that must be interpreted. If the message being sent is meaningless, then calling one a planet and the other the sun is nothing more than an illusion created by the biochemistry of our own brains. Thus, science is all about detecting and interpreting meaningful messages that are the product of intelligent design.

[spirited irish]

Neither the arrogant Lenin, nor for that matter any Darwinian Humanists, can actually live according to the reductionism of the animistic-determinism they publicly profess. For if in fact they are nothing more than a soulless, mindless aggregate of matter (materialism) or a soulless body accompanied by an impersonal intelligence hovering somewhere in the unseen realm (postmodern pantheism), then there is no ‘chooser,’ no ‘me, myself, and I.’ This means that though there be a body, there is no one home, so to speak.

One more point: though proud Darwinians deny possession, they are in reality unwittingly confessing to their own ‘possession’ by unseen forces or energies within the unseen realm. Pride goes before a fall.

[betty boop]

Arguing from a purely naturalistic viewpoint in such matters renders the arguement, in the face of overwhelming evidnece to the contrary, unscientific. It makes such arguemtns pure apologetics.

Indeed, CottShop. The epistemelogical foundation of the purely naturalistic view point is indistinguishable from the one that asserts the creationist view. In both cases, we start with a presupposition that controls the identification and qualification of evidence. If we seek only natural causes, only evidence conforming with that expectation will be selected. Same thing for the creationist presupposition. It seems both start with a conclusion, and then seek support from evidence after the fact. "Non-conforming" evidence is disregarded. Given this procedure, the presupposition infallibly ends up being the conclusion. Under the circumstances, one wonders why anyone bothers to justify either exercise as a legitimate mode of inquiry in the first place.

I'm with you, CottShop: Let the evidence speak for itself, and then follow the trail wherever it leads. Don't "torture" selective evidence into saying whatever it is we want it to say. For as you note, then we've left the precincts of science and are doing apologetics instead.

I think a little humility is called for on both sides of this debate. Etienne Gilson's insight strikes me as a sound way to put these matters into a proper perspective:

If the scientist refuses to include final causality [e.g., inversely-causal meta-information] in his interpretation of nature, all is in order; his interpretation of nature will be incomplete, not false. On the contrary, if he denies that there is final causality in nature, he is being arbitrary. To hold final causality to be beyond science is one thing; to put it beyond nature is something completely different. ... Explanations which rely on final causality have often been ridiculed, but mechanistic explanations have often been ridiculed also, and this does not disqualify the legitimacy of either point of view. — From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again, John Lyon, tr., Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984, p. 26.

Sounds about right to me!

Thank you so very much for your excellent essay/post CottShop!

[GodGunsGuts]

LOL!...Excellent point! Darwinists are possessed ping :o)

[betty boop]

Quoth Szostak: "Since the first cells had no biochemical machinery to mediate the growth and division of their membrane boundaries, there must be purely physical and chemical processes that allow membrane vesicles to grow and divide. Our goal is to find out what those processes could be."

Cannot we see that here Szostak is "begging the question?" If the natural world conducted itself according to Szostak's own personal will, then surely his statement would be correct. The point is, the statement is incorrect, because the natural world is not subject to Szostak's personal will. It is what it is, independently of Szostak's desires for it. He wants the universe to be intelligible on his terms. Evidently he has yet to consider that it may not be intelligible on his terms. In which case, he has a choice: He can be either a scientist or an ideologue.

You wrote: "Szostak's model will eventually have to come to terms with this need to gather (non-autonomous) messages while not losing the ability to toggle back to being autonomous." You can't rely on "smart chemistry" forever. But if you could, you'd first have to explain how the chemistry "got smart" in the first place.

Thank you so very much, dearest sister in Christ, for your excellent essay/post!

[Alamo-Girl]

I think Alex Williams gets right to the heart of the matter when he points out where materialist, reductionist science misses the boat:

“Shannon information theory deliberately ignores the meaning of the information and only deals with the statistics of the code. It is thus more than useless in biology (where meaning is central) because it diverts attention away from meaning.”

Actually, I think Alex Williams misses the boat when he speaks this way about Claud Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communications.

It is true that the meaning of the message is completely irrelevant to Shannon's theory. The theory is applicable whether the message is DNA, Hamlet, video, a key depressed on your keyboard, a mouse click, data in your data base, an image to print - or whatever.

Universality is the elegance of mathematics. The presence of a variable in a formula (e.g. circumference to pi) testifies to its universality. Indeed, to me the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is like God's copyright notice on the cosmos.

The 'statistics' of the code - or the measure of a received message is a bit (which has evolved to mean binary, but it can also be a real number btw.) And it certainly is not the only thing Shannon's theory deals with.

The message itself, the encoding and decoding, the channel, the noise, the sender and receiver are elements of the model.

The model is about communications!

And it is hardly useless in biology. It has been effectively used in cancer and pharmaceutical research. And we can see the relevance to researchers in Wimmer's experiment - the successful communication of the message (polio RNA.) And we see it center stage in Szostak's abiogenesis experiments as well as he tries to prod communications in non-life.

Of course Alex William's interest - and ours on this thread - is in the meaning of the message! But we should not consider Shannon to be a diversion but rather the mathematical model for communicating the message which has meaning in the AP model.

In any dimensionality of space/time which contains only one dimension of time - there is no conceivable local unaware and non-intelligent origin for a message which anticipates that which has not yet occurred, e.g. the need for maintenance or repair.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize this "inversely causal" - or "temporally non-local" - information content suggests an intelligent cause. The lower level in the AP Model hierarchy has no awareness at all to anticipate anything - no intelligence as sender or receiver.

Let's not throw this baby out with the bathwater. After all, it’s the Shannon model of communications that underscores the receiver must be prepared to receive the message and that there must be a sender for every message. And in this case, the model itself suggests the send must either not be bound to an arrow of time (God) or else the sender must be intelligent enough to create a receiver, anticipate and inform (panspermia.)

Either way, it is not an undirected process.

To Christians, Alex Williams' model can be exhilarating. We know – Spiritually – that God spoke everything into being:

By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. – Psalms 33:6

So let’s not throw out the math because it happens to be universal. After all, the root Greek word for Word (Jesus Christ) is Logos, the same root word for logic.

In the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. – John 1:1-4

To God be the glory!

[js1138]

Perhaps his writing could be more precise, but his question (or assertion) will be settled by experiment.

[betty boop]

To my mind, trying to pretend science is not fundamentally about meaning is what gets the Evos in so much trouble when they try to explain what they call “natural” phenomena. God has created a Universe that communicates to us.

Oh, I so agree — "God has created a Universe that communicates to us." This is so because God created an intelligible universe, and us as intelligent beings capable of receiving the "communication."

Where you and I disagree is concerning the question of where "meaning" ultimately resides. Evidently, you want the world itself to be "meaningful."

And it is — to the rational mind. That is to say, "meaning" resides, not in the world directly, but in the human mind only.

To me, to say that meaning is "in" the world is tantamount to saying that God is "in" the world. The latter gets you some species of pantheism every time.

To my way of thinking, meaning always involves acts of judgment. The primary data of nature are not "judgments"; they are simply data. In this sense, we cannot say that the world is "meaningful." It takes a human observer to make statements about meaning.

Meanwhile, biological entities, which except for man are incapable (presumably) of the self-reflection necessary to the making of rational judgments, still have to go along and "process information" relevant to their own survival, thriving, and reproduction. They don't need "meaning"; they just need good, clear instructions.

And the Shannon model provides an excellent way of understanding successful communications at this level of biological necessity. And so I was very disappointed to see Alex Williams dismiss Shannon with a hand-wave....

Thank you so very much for writing, GGG!

[betty boop]

In any dimensionality of space/time which contains only one dimension of time - there is no conceivable local unaware and non-intelligent origin for a message which anticipates that which has not yet occurred, e.g. the need for maintenance or repair.

Great observation, dearest sister in Christ! Which is why I'm so open to Wesson's proposal of a fifth "time-like" dimension to constitute a three-space, two-time model....

Moreover, it seems to me that Feynmann''s path integral formalism — widely used in physics, and now in biology — would need a fifth temporal dimension to account for all the "instantaneous" — i.e., superluminal — virtual particle histories that are summed to give a precise result regarding the current state of the real particle....

Inadequate conceptions of time seem to be a major problem for the natural sciences nowadays.

Thank you so very much for this excellent essay/post!

[betty boop]

Perhaps his writing could be more precise, but his question (or assertion) will be settled by experiment.

Meanwhile, we will continue to patiently wait...for Godot....

[GodGunsGuts]

==Let’s not throw this baby out with the bathwater. After all, it’s the Shannon model of communications that underscores the receiver must be prepared to receive the message and that there must be a sender for every message.

My intent was not to draw attention to Shannon. My intent was to draw attention to the fact that science is fundamentally about discovering meaning. For instance, while the statistics of information flow is important with respect to telecommunications, it is not nearly as important as the meaningful messages being communicated between senders and receivers that telecommunications facilitates. My point is that every aspect of the Universe is sending intelligable messages. The main job of science is to decipher the meaning of those messages. The statistics of the message is interesting, but the meaning of those messages is crucial. For scientists to pretend that the they are not engaged in the business of deciphering meaning reminds me of the people who duped a certain king into believing he was fully clothed.

[GodGunsGuts]

==Where you and I disagree is concerning the question of where “meaning” ultimately resides. Evidently, you want the world itself to be “meaningful.”

To my mind, the world is meaningful in the same way a website is meaningful. Websites are constructed by intelligent designers. The message is communicated via the World Wide Web (also intelligently designed). We received the message on our computer (also intelligently designed) and decipher its meaning (also intelligently designed). There is no need for the sender to actively perpetuate the message. The meaning of the message continues to be sent long after the intelligent designer has left the keyboard.

[betty boop]

...Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas explain that ancient Egyptians, “believed that matter had always existed; to them it was illogical to think of a god making something out of absolutely nothing. Their view was that the world began when order came out of chaos, and that ever since there has been a battle between the forces of organization and disorder. (There was) a creative force within (chaos) that commanded order to begin. This latent power which was within the substance of the chaos did not know it existed; it was a probability...within the randomness of disorder.”

What on earth could a "creative," yet "latent" "power" existing within the "substance of chaos" — a chaos that doesn't even "know" it has this power (indeed, if it's chaos, how could it?), but wields it nonetheless, as the "origin" of subsistent entities — possibly be???

This is just a bunch of unintelligible gobbledy-gook. None of these terms has even been defined. Such statements don't even make for a plausible myth, let alone justify any pretension of having anything to do with science.

One key term that has not been defined is randomness. To me, a person who uses the term "randomness" is simply making a confession that there's something going on that he doesn't understand. For as Alamo-Girl has pointed out on several occasions, we cannot say whether something is random unless we know what the "system is" in which it participates. To say that such and such is "random" is tantamount to saying we don't know what the "system is."

Here I'm restating A-G, hopefully accurately.

I mean really, are we really supposed to allow ourselves to be suckered into "performances" like this?

Thank you ever so much for your trenchant and insightful analysis, spirited irish!

[betty boop]

In regards to information and messages, it is interesting how the scholastic doctrine of "substance" suddenly reappears. A message of pure gibberish with high informational entropy has no "substance" to it. A compressed message that does have decodable meaning may be indistinguishable from gibberish formally or materially, but it has "substance" to it. The substance is real, though only the mind can detect it. And that is exactly the scholastic doctrine on substance (and probably Aristotle's too.)

Excellent insight, ECO! Some "substantial" food for thought there....

Thank you so much for your excellent essay/post!

[betty boop]

Although I keep stereo and metallurgical microscopes ready at hand, my next planned project with the girls is to build a simple microscope (as I did at 10) and introduce them to the wonders of a hay infusion culture.

Oh, that sounds like such a wonderful thing to do, TXnMA! Your grandkids have a lot to be grateful for.

[betty boop]

Let me try this, GGG: The created world is meaningful to God; it is meaningful to man; but it is not meaningful at the level of "lesser denizens" of the world. That is the idea I'm trying to capture and communicate here.

[TXnMA]

"Thus, science is all about detecting and interpreting meaningful messages that are the product of intelligent design."

For once, this scientist who is also a creationist agrees with you...