The Intelligent Cell (Origins)

by dhw, Thursday, December 22, 2011, 14:46 (4502 days ago) @ dhw

Dhw (under Evolution..., 20 Dec. at 12.56): However, if we believe in common ancestry, it seems to me that given the choice between random mutation and response to a changing environment, the latter wins hands down in terms of likelihood. Of course we shall still be left asking whether the actual mechanism for adaptation could or could not have created itself by chance, and if not, whether the creative force guided its progress or let it follow its own random course. But at least we shall have a more coherent picture of how evolution could have led from earlier forms to ourselves: epigenetics rather than random mutations.

David has now alerted us to a very important article (under Life as Evolving Software):

http://iose-gen.blogspot.com/2010/06/origin-of-body-plan-level-biodiversity.html#gold

which launches a powerful attack on the two weak points of Darwin’s theory that we’ve discussed repeatedly: gradualism and random mutations. What is not clear, though, is the alternatives we’re expected to believe in. This is not a matter of chance v. design, but of how evolution actually progressed. The article does not propose God’s separate creation of species (unless I’ve missed something), so do we or don’t we believe that living creatures – apart from the very first form(s) of life – must descend from other living creatures? If we do, then we HAVE to adhere to Darwin’s theory of common descent.

The idea we’ve been contemplating recently is that of a mechanism which responds to changes in the environment by adapting and possibly innovating. The more drastic the environmental change, the more urgent the need to adapt. Then why not bite the bullet and accept the possibility that adaptations/innovations may have occurred not over thousands of years but over one or very few generations? These would be the leaps which Darwin thought impossible, but is it not equally impossible that species should take thousands of years to adapt to a sudden environmental change that has killed off vast numbers of their fellow creatures? There would be no fossil record of transitional forms because there aren’t any. An adaptation under urgent circumstances must function at once – you survive or you perish – and so must an innovation, or it will be of no use.

This links up with Lynn Margulis’s observation summed up in the Guardian obituary: “...tiny membrane bound organelles that inhabit in their hundreds each of the trillions of cells that make up every organ of our bodies, were once free living creatures, before being incorporated into the symbiotic life forms which were our distant ancestors.”

Once we accept the concept of a physical mechanism (the “intelligent cell”?) that creates its own symbiotic combinations, takes its own decisions, adapts to changing conditions – anything becomes possible. This concept – with the degree of intelligence varying just as it does in individual creatures – would answer all the questions raised by anti-evolutionists, bearing in mind that Darwin’s theory does not preclude design.

As far as chance v. design is concerned, intelligence would be contained within all forms of life, but would not necessarily be independent of living organisms (as is the conventional God). That might be acceptable even to an atheist. (George, where are you?) David and also BBella, I think, take this one step further and attribute “intelligence” to the universe as a whole. An atheist might call this “the laws of Nature”. Thus the barriers between theism and atheism become increasingly blurred, so long as this form of “intelligence” is not endowed with personal attributes. (David’s pet concept, though his little "secrets" keep breaking through his arguments!) Ultimately, it comes down to how we define intelligence, and that in turn entails the all-important phenomenon of consciousness. Perhaps this is as far as we can go in our speculations, but are these ideas any more fantastic than the various scenarios our theists, atheists and scientists bombard us with on an almost daily basis?