Denis noble debunks neo-Darwinism (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, April 12, 2014, 12:26 (3879 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: "The fact is that among scientists there is still no consensus as to HOW the evolutionary mechanism works or HOW it originated"-AGNOSTIC: You are right that we don't know the origin of evolutionary mechanisms, but we certainly know what these mechanisms are and how they work. We have yet to learn how cells control and direct these mechanisms in the course of evolution. I recommend the following review paper by James Shapiro —> http://goo.gl/oYhLsc-David: Thank you for the reference. If you poke through our many past discussions, James Shapiro has played a prominent role in demonstrating epigenetic mechanisms. He is far in advance of the average Darwinist scientist.-I also thank you for the reference and for joining us. We have discussed Shapiro's views many times and in the post to which you have responded, I have actually mentioned him: "We have agreed a thousand times over that Darwin's own "somehow" (the gradual accumulation of random mutations) is highly suspect, and we have even agreed ... in the company of Margulis and Shapiro and Noble ... that there is some kind of intelligence or consciousness at work." I would say we think we know what the mechanisms are, but when you say "we have yet to learn how cells control and direct these mechanisms", that to me means we don't know HOW the evolutionary mechanism works. You cannot separate the mechanism from the cell, and the above reference is linked to a very long discussion we had on "The Intelligent Cell", in which I took up the argument that there is individual and inventive intelligence at work within cells and cell communities. If this is so (the subject of much debate), our next question, of course, is how the intelligence got there in the first place, and that means the origin of the evolutionary mechanism.