Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, November 03, 2013, 17:40 (3819 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: It is obvious that life has the ability to diversify into all sorts of wonderful animals and plants, and the migrating animals. [...] You and Ihave rejected chance. The only thing left is some type of planning. You want a committee of celll to do it. But it is hard for committees to reach the right conclusion every time, without some planning-The diversification of life through innovation can ONLY take place through cell communities undergoing changes and cooperating with one another, whether preprogrammed or not. But for all we know, each successful "committee" is counterbalanced by ten thousand unsuccessful committees. We know of the innovative successes, but not the failures. With regard to adaptation, however, we do know there have been successes and failures: dinosaurs failed to adapt and died out; bacteria adapted and lived on. Perfectly understandable in the case of ungodlike cell communities pursuing their own "agenda": you win some, you lose some. But if your almighty planner was behind it all, how come he had so many failures?-dhw; The problem is innovation, not some degree of variation. All the new organs and all the new ways of life: preprogrammed from the beginning, or specially created. Or, strangely, some biochemists have actually observed how cells and cell communities communicate and cooperate...but no, perish the thought that they could be anything more than automatons...-DAVID: Yes the problem is innnovation. The cells are programmed to coooperate automatically and so they are observed to do so.-They are observed to cooperate, but no-one has observed the original invention of the organs that led from eukaryotes to humans, and so no-one can say what enabled the cells to produce the innovations. That gives us both room to speculate.-DAVID: (under "Precambrian environment"): You have invented parlimentary cells that have committes, draw up complex plans to create kidneys. All to avoid a choice: chance or design. You have found Nagel's third way!! You must write a book. We can call it "The Intelligent Cell" And create the Wilsonian revolution in biology. At least my speculations have a basis in reality.-What basis? The only reality we know is that organs are composed of cooperating cells. It seems reasonable to assume, then, that cells/cell communities cooperated (whether programmed or not) to produce new organs. We are only just beginning to understand the mechanisms that enable cells to function, but I seem to remember one scientist saying that the cell is still, like the universe, 95% dark matter. That cells seem to work automatically in existing organs is true, because when they cease to do so, those organs tend to break down. But that tells us nothing about how they combined and cooperated in the first place to produce innovations. Please tell me which biology reference book provides scientific evidence that an unknown and unknowable power preprogrammed the first cells to pass on to their descendants all the programmes needed to produce countless innovations, that this same power also preprogrammed choices to create minor variations, and that this same power directed evolution so that it would end up with humans. Your speculations have no more basis in reality than mine. Still level pegging!