Cambrian Explosion: afterthought (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, September 27, 2013, 19:25 (4054 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: since I doubt very much whether Guenter Albrecht-Buehler's experiments have produced any new organs, but his philosophical neutrality can only mean that HE considers the hypothesis feasible. Incidentally, I'm relieved to hear that it dates back nearly 100 years. I found it difficult to imagine that I was entirely alone! -> 
> dhw: 1) Three times you have rightly pointed out that our views depend on definition. The attributes that I consider essential to my own concept of "intelligence" include: perception of the environment, the ability to process, exchange, accumulate and use information,to communicate with other organisms, and to take decisions. I do not include self-awareness as essential to intelligence. I don't recall you ever offering a definition, -I agree with you about a general definition of intelligence. However at the cellular level it must be split into two parts. First is the intelligence as defined by M1 or CIA: incoming information in the form of data to be acted upon. Second is the response which involves planning and decision making. At the cellular level I am of a firm belief that this is automatically decided by information pre-existing in the genome. The individual cell or one-celled animal cannot think of responses or plan them.-> 
> dhw: 2) 90% of physical scientists and approx. 50% of medical doctors disagree with you. How does this indicate that I am clutching at straws? (Please note yet again that I offer the hypothesis as a feasible alternative, not as a firm belief.-Medical doctors are biologists at heart. They have studied biochemistry and understand cell and organ responsiveness. My feeling is that they will think like I do and reject your hypothesis as not feasible, based on a cell's ability to respond.-
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> dhw; 3) The intelligent cell hypothesis does not focus on the "senses" of the cell but on the "brain" of the cell, or the "Construction Planner", which coordinates all the work of the "senses".-The brain of the cell is in the genome with sets up automatic responses, contains the informaation to react, but as I have indicated there is probably a gradation of response, based on the strength of the stress or signal.
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> dhw:4) "The more complex life is shown to be at the molecular level, the less likely that the Darwin theory of evolution is valid."
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> dhw: Which Darwinian theory? Common descent? Natural Selection? It is the validity of random mutations and gradualism that is in question here, i.e. not evolution itself but the way it works.-No argument-> dhw:The more complex life is shown to be at the molecular level, the more likely it is that we shall find cellular mechanisms of which scientists never dreamed. Who knows, they might even find the zillions of programmes your God inserted at the start to cover the next few billion years of evolutionary innovations. -No argument:
" Conclusion. Six decades ago, Watson and Crick put forward a model of DNA double helix structure to elucidate how genetic information is faithfully copied and propagated during cell division (Watson and Crick, 1953). Several years later, Crick famously proposed the "central dogma" to describe how information in the DNA sequence is relayed to other biomolecules such as RNA and proteins to sustain a cell's biological activities (Crick, 1970). Now, with the human genome completely mapped, we face the daunting task to decipher the information contained in this genetic blueprint. Twelve years ago, when the human genome was first sequenced, only 1.5% of the genome could be annotated as protein coding, whereas the rest of the genome was thought to be mostly "junk" (Lander et al., 2001; Venter et al., 2001). Now, with the help of many epigenome maps, nearly half of the genome is predicted to carry specific biochemical activities and potential regulatory functions (ENCODE Project Consortium, et al., 2012). It is conceivable that in the near future the human genome will be completely annotated, with the catalog of transcription units and their transcriptional regulatory sequences fully mapped."-http://www.cell.com/retrieve/pii/S0092867413011483-> dhw: Or they might find that these mechanisms include an independent intelligence without preprogramming.-Not likely in my opinion. Unless you want to implant God into every cell. I think His plans are there. Or is your proposed intelligence something else and can you tell me of its origin?