Cambrian Explosion: afterthought (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, October 05, 2013, 14:27 (4046 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw (as quoted by David): I have pointed out that single cells exchange information, communicate and cooperate (more manifestations of intelligence) to form communities.... all organisms are automatons except humans -DAVID: You know full well that many animals communicate with a degree of intelligence. My dog often communicates with me and I understand what he wants and he understands me. Single cells, no way.-A strange piece of editing! The bit you have left out is: "According to your definition all organisms are automatons except humans." Let me remind you that your definition involved the ability to analyse concepts, "formulate new theories from those concepts. In other words what we humans do with our brains and consciousness." Since your dog is unable to do these things, it is not intelligent according to your definition, which therefore does not even stand up to your own criteria. Do please revise it and let me know your new version. -We are not talking about single cells being able to do what multicellular organisms are able to do. That may well be why multicellularity evolved in the first place ... because cells found they could accomplish more by cooperating with one another and forming communities. There are degrees of intelligence, as you have acknowledged by introducing us to your dog, and my hypothesis suggests that intelligence evolved from the simple to the ever more complex as cells cooperated to form new communities.-DAVID: Cells do communicate and I have agreed to that. It is the method of communication that you have shut your mind to. Look again at the famous lecture. The cells send each other biochemical moleculer signals in a series. The signals are responded to molecularly. The molecules do not think. -All communication involves some kind of biochemical process. Scientists have succeeded in identifying which areas of the human brain are involved in absorbing and processing different kinds of information, and they can trace signals as they go from the brain cells through and to other cell communities ... but they cannot tell you what actually controls the assessing, selecting, decision-making process that precedes the sending of the signals: the phenomenon we call consciousness or intelligence. I am suggesting (as does Guenter Albrecht-Buehler, Professor of Cell Biology) that even individual cells have an intelligent control centre: he calls it the centrosome. You keep focusing on the method of communication, and "you shut your mind to" what composes the particular message in the first place.-dhw: Some scientists, however, inform us that cells communicate, cooperate, take decisions, combine etc., and I'm suggesting that the cell communities themselves invented new combinations as and when conditions either demanded or allowed them. No "goal", no "plan" of any kind, other than survival and continuation, leading to the higgledy-piggledy course of evolution, from one invention and historical phase to another, just like the course of human inventions and human history.-DAVID: You have taken scientists' philosophizing out of context. Talk to any biochemist and you will find that I am correct in my descriptions of how it all works. Your proposition reminds me of my childhood tooth fairy fantasy.-The majority of scientists would say you are still indulging in your childhood tooth fairy fantasy. Your theory is that there is an unknown power (the tooth fairy) that preprogrammed the earliest forms of life to automatically produce every new organ that would lead from eukaryotes to humans, and humans were his ultimate goal. I have offered an alternative: that there is no ultimate goal, but only constant adaptation and invention to fit in with the demands and opportunities presented by changing environmental conditions. This is indeed "philosophizing", but no more so than your God hypothesis.-dhw: Let me repeat, this leaves wide open the question of where the "intelligence" came from. It is an attempt to explain the course of evolution, and as more and more discoveries are made about the complex nature of the cell, I still don't see it as any more unbelievable than your divine preprogramming of all innovations, or Darwin's random mutations.-DAVID: I'm glad you picket fence is so comfortable. Things will become much more complex asd resaerch advances. The formula applies: more complexity =s less possibilty for chance. The unbelievable becomes possible.-The "unbelievable", of course, must be the hypothesis that cells have an intelligent control centre. I doubt very much whether research into the cell will actually reveal your God.
 
*****-I will have to leave the article on Biological Information till later.