Proving common descent (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, November 05, 2012, 18:26 (4402 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: Here's a suggestion (you are allowed to yawn): that innovation is caused by experimentation between cells/cell communities, and once a combination turns out to be functional and advantageous, further experimentation follows ... not by random mutation but by intercellular cooperation.-DAVID: You cannot compartmentilize living organisms. Cells do not experiment among themselves. Change must be initiated in the genome perhaps using epigenetic signals from the somatic cells. Don't imagine eye cells telling each other what to do.-Thank you. As always, I rely on you to guide me in matters scientific. It would therefore be extremely helpful if you could clarify your own views on how the mechanism for INNOVATION works, but it would also be helpful if you would pinpoint the errors in my own thinking. I'll number each point to make it easier for you to respond.-1) Evolution as we know it could not have happened without the change from unicellularity to multicellularity (= cells combining, one way or another).
2) This set the pattern for all the combinations/communities of cells that make up all the different organs that make up all the different organisms. 
3) Every new organ must cooperate with existing organs within a single organism, which must involve communication.
4) Since all forms of life descended from earlier forms, every innovation must take place through an EXISTING organism, and so intelligence/inventiveness must lie within organisms themselves. 
5) The only alternatives to 4) are a) God designing each innovation separately and (b) Darwin's random mutations (instead of intelligence/inventiveness).-If you accept 4) and if it is not the cells within the living organism that experiment and innovate, what does?
 
NB The more we discuss this topic, the more convinced I become that the explanation for all the flaws you and I see in Darwin's theory (reliance on chance, gradualism, gaps in the fossil record, the Cambrian Explosion) lies in an inventive intelligence within the organisms themselves. That is why I am so eager to find out the terms YOU would use to describe how the mechanism works and where the intelligence lies.