Genome complexity: how do genes exert control (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, August 17, 2016, 12:08 (2802 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Whole Cambrian organisms are very complex with several organ systems that have to invented and coordinated in function. You want existing simple organisms in the pre-Cambrian to invent these giant steps without trial and error. That requires a planning mind. Your proposal is impossible unless God has implanted a perfect inventive mechanism, a possibility I accept. But that makes God primary to the control of evolution.-“Primary” in the sense that he started it all, but absolutely not in the sense of control. My hypothesis (theistic version) specifically entails his handing control to the organisms themselves, except when he dabbles. “Perfect” is also misleading. We must always remember that if common descent is true (and I think it is), then every change has to take place in existing individual organisms. When the environment changes, many organisms go extinct. That means failure on a massive scale. But what I am proposing is that some individual organisms - probably very few initially - have the intelligence to work out new designs, and of course this means that all the cell communities within those organisms must cooperate (or "coordinate their function"). With today's postings alone, you have given us one example after another of how this process works for adaptation and therefore might work for innovation:
 
DAVID: (Under “Fruiting bodies”) Some unicellular organisms under stress will form fruiting bodies, an early form of multicellularity, and if the stress is severe enough some of the cells become spores to insure survival…
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/46673/title/First-Micrographs-of-...
Your comment: Some amoeba also can do this. It is obvious that stress in the environment causes developments of this kind. That is the 'why' part. It is the 'how' part that puzzles me. If the stress is severe and they don't get to the spore phase quickly they don't survive. This is a protective process that had to be developed over time. Non-survivors don't develop anything. Did it appear magically all at once?-Many of them will not have survived. But some very bright ones did. They worked out a way to do it. No magic is required if you acknowledge that they are sentient, cognitive, decision-making beings.-DAVID: (under “How cells fight infection”:) Since infections kill, I wonder how these cells develop their capacity to fight infection with potential fatal infections all around. It doesn't seem to be possible step by step.-No, it doesn't. And of course many infections do kill. But some cells are bright enough to work out how to fight infection.
 
DAVID: (under “New oxygen research”) Note the oxygen cycle system keeps oxygen at the same steady level. Again, the theory is that this level was necessary for evolution to progress, although it didn't have to progress. Bacteria are still here and very successful just as they were.-The intelligence demonstrated in the earlier examples is what leads to the next step: once conditions offer new opportunities, some organisms (probably a small minority) are intelligent enough to find new ways of exploiting them. That is where the mechanism for adaptation (i.e. intelligence plus the ability to alter their own structure) becomes a mechanism for innovation. Once again, if only you would acknowledge that cells/cell communities may be intelligent, sentient cognitive beings in their own right, you would accept this is as a feasible hypothesis. -DAVID: As described above, I accept this.-As described above, you will then have to accept that(theistic version)God created a mechanism that ceded control of evolution to the organisms themselves - except for the occasional dabble. And if your God gave organisms the intelligence to invent new organs, I hope you will also accept that organisms will also have the intelligence to work out all the natural wonders which you have hitherto insisted were also specially and directly designed by your God.-David's comment: (under “Early mammal primate”) What I find fascinating is how alike those bones are to current anatomy. Looks like pre-planning. 
dhw:Looks like common descent to me. Organisms providing new structures within the framework of old structures. But for you every difference and every similarity looks like pre-planning!
DAVID: Of course common descent. Dinosaurs had similar femurs, but I was looking just at the tiny mammals that succeeded them. One can look at femurs back before the dinosaurs. Pattern pre-planning.-Why do you tack on “pre-planning”? Common descent simply means that the patterns were inherited. If innovations are successful, they will be passed on, and later organisms will invent their own variations.-DAVID: the discovery of HAR's offers a new road to study. I suggest they are God's tool.
dhw: Even if they are God's tool, they can still be part of an autonomous mechanism which is capable of innovation as well as adaptation. But of course nothing has been proven yet. That is why we can only hypothesize.
DAVID: I've been theorizing there is a drive to complexity. HAR's may be a sign of it.-I've been theorizing that there is a drive to survival and/or improvement. HARS may be a sign of it.