Innovation (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, April 27, 2013, 11:16 (4229 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: My question, as ever, concerns how these organs were first formed ... i.e. INNOVATION. Cells combined in a new, meaningful, functional and INVENTIVE way, but we don't know how. Your own argument has been that they were preprogrammed to react automatically to environmental change, but unless your God kept intervening or they were preprogrammed right from the start to produce functioning organs that had never existed before, I'm arguing that there has to be an inventive intelligence at work within them.-I'm changing the heading of this thread, because innovation is the aspect of evolution which seems to me to give the clearest indication of "intelligence" within the cell. Let me repeat that once a functioning pattern is established, cells (like ants in a colony) will fit into their roles. This is important in view of the second example David has given below.
 
DAVID: Here is an 'inventive intelligence' hard at work and producing an innovation by altering the expression of a gene molecule. Who did the thinking here?-"To test their theory, the researchers investigated what would happen to fetal mouse brains if they interfered with Trnp1 expression using synthetic sequences of genetic material that silenced the gene, a technique called RNA interference. The tiny fetal mouse brains developed cortical folds, the authors report today in Cell. The "most exciting" part of the discovery was that "just by varying how much of this gene is expressed, we are able to have folds in the cortex," Borrell says."-DAVID: This can happen epigenetically by gene expression modification, no thinking by a cell required. All done at a molecular level.-Of course you may be right, but your scenario is like that of folk who believe that if scientists can produce life, it will prove that life produces itself (i.e. no need for your God). The thinking here was done by intelligent scientists intervening and changing the molecular structure. The question is how and why genes change themselves, without scientists (your God) intervening and without being preprogrammed, to produce something that never existed before. "Epigenetically by gene expression modification" doesn't help me to understand how cells can invent the liver.
 
DAVID: Here is an example of embryonic cell control at a molecular level. The molecule acts to control, no evidence of thinking. This scientist believes as I do that it is all under automatic molecular control:-"Movies of early development show that neural cells decide what fate to adopt while rapidly traveling from place to place, making it hard to see how the textbook model can be true. Megason and colleagues propose that instead of the location telling a cell what identity to adopt, the cell's identity is fixed first and then determines the location."-So the cells decide their identity (it is not decided for them), and they then determine where to go (they are not instructed). 
 
"The work provides insight into how embryos manage to develop the same complex structures despite a wide range of possible environmental and genetic conditions."-In this case, the object is to maintain the existing pattern, not to provide something new, but even here decisions must be taken.
 
"[...] when we tracked the cells back in time, they all got mixed up." [...] Over time, however, the cells sort themselves out into sharp stripes.-The molecular mechanism that governs the sorting of cells is not yet clear. One possibility is that as the cells assume their fates, they turn on different adhesion molecules that make them stick to one another in different ways."-The fact that the mechanism is not (yet) clear is hardly a ringing endorsement of automatism. The cells don't receive precise orders (= not automated), but they do sort themselves out (= not automated), and "assume their fate" (it is not thrust upon them).
 
""Once they have these differential affinities, they could self-assemble," said Megason.-Megason is delving deeper into the molecular biology to determine whether adhesion is directing self-assembly."
 
The expression used was: the cells "turn on different adhesion molecules", which suggests that it's the cells that do the directing. This is a clear example of cells cooperating to maintain an existing form. Conventional thinking, if you like. We might compare it to Tom, Dick and Harry sitting in their cars and performing all the actions necessary to start their cars and take them in the desired direction. No original thought required, but a degree of awareness, with certain decisions to be taken.-However, neither of your examples explains how a set of cells can spontaneously combine to form something new if there are no scientists (gods) intervening (as with the mouse brain), and if there is no established pattern to conform to. In this second example, it's the cells and not the location that "decide", and when it comes to innovation, the environment certainly can't "decide" that cells should produce livers, eyes, lungs, brains. So you still haven't explained what it is that comes up with the inventive decisions. We might compare this to Tom, Dick and Harry wanting to get from A to B. And so they invent the motor car.