Cambrian Explosion: afterthought (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, October 07, 2013, 01:31 (4066 days ago) @ dhw

dhw:Unless your dog analyses concepts, formulates new theories, and does what we do with our brains, he is not intelligent according to your definition. Please explain what I have misinterpreted.-I was trying to define human intelligence in the material you cherry-picked. The dog has a small amount of intelligence. Even does a little deduction when I try to trick him.-> 
> dhw: I regard all three hypotheses (divine preprogramming, random mutations, intelligent cells) as unlikely but not impossible. I am an agnostic.-I know.
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> dhw: Please don't make out that professors who do not share your belief in divinely preprogrammed automation are only using metaphors. There's nothing metaphorical about Margulis's claim that bacteria are "conscious" (though not in the human sense). Albrecht-Buehler's book is based on the concept of cell intelligence, and he even refutes the idea of detailed preprogramming: "The cell as a whole is capable of immensely complex migration patterns for which their genome cannot contain a detailed program as they are responses to unforeseeable encounters." This is not a metaphor. Quevli, who coined the term "cell intelligence" wrote: "the cell is a conscious intelligent being, and, by reason thereof, plans and builds all plants and animals in the same manner that man constructs houses, railroads and other structures." This is not a metaphor.-All I can do is disagree with you, Margulis, A-B, and Quevli. I still view these as metaphorical statements. Venter agrees with me. See the last post.-> 
> dhw: Our current knowledge of cellular biochemistry has no explanation for evolutionary innovation, and of course it cannot provide any evidence of a "tooth fairy" preprogramming the first cells with lungs, legs and livers.-Some of us can make intelligent guesses, but in general you are correct. No one knows how species and new organs appear.
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> dhw: I've repeated ad nauseam that I do not accept gradualism, and that the "intelligent cell" explains the gaps in the fossil record on the grounds that there are no gaps. A new invention (organ) must work or it will not survive. ...I have suggested that the Cambrian Explosion may have come about because a dramatic change in the environment allowed existing cell communities to produce innovations that would not have been possible under earlier conditions.-Who showed the cells how to plan those complex specified organs so suddenly in rather shorrt geologic time terms?-> dhw: We both propose a form of Intelligent Design, but my hypothesis only explains the "punctuated equilibrium" of evolution. Yours goes beyond evolution to a possible designer of the (cellular) designer.-The problem is you want your intelligent cells to communicate at an intellectual level that does not exist. Cells communicate throught biochecical reactions as bbella's lecture shows. A appears, affects B, which initiates C, which starts up D, which reacts with the originator of A to complete the feedback loop. Intelligent planning for the loop, nothing invented by the cells