An inventive mechanism (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, September 01, 2014, 13:20 (3734 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
edited by dhw, Monday, September 01, 2014, 13:37

DHW: ...if the cell communities contain a mechanism that can organize such minor changes, it may be possible that the same mechanism can organize major changes when the environment demands or allows it. That is why I suggested that perhaps (it's always “perhaps”) there have been no major environmental changes since the Cambrian to allow for further inventions (as opposed to adaptations).-TONY: Except that the historical/fossil record is against your argument. When there are drastic environmental changes such that they override the blueprints ability to cope, creatures go extinct, they do not adapt and overcome. If they did, the only cause for extinction would be over hunting by humans.-We simply don't know the full history of environmental changes, but since the planet was initially hostile to life, and since life forms proliferated, there must have been some major changes that were beneficial. In any case, changes that destroy one form of life may be beneficial to another. The fossil record shows that the Cambrian produced an explosion of new organisms. One theory is that there was an increase in oxygen. It's not unreasonable to suppose that something in the environment changed to allow for new inventions, but we can only speculate what. It's obvious, though, that these new forms could not have come into being if they hadn't been able to cope with the environment. God suddenly having a huge dabble? God's billions of computer programmes suddenly coming into operation? Or God's inventive mechanisms experimenting under new conditions?
 
TONY: To use your examples of the spider and the dragonfly, the differences between the two are too great to be covered by polymorphism in the code. [...] I would agree that the mechanism for change is there, but I disagree on the scope that the mechanism allows. [...] we will never see a canine be anything other than a canine, regardless of which variety of canine it polymorphs into. Polymorphism allows the change within kinds, not invention.-Then polymorphism is irrelevant to our discussion, which is about invention, although it would be the same “intelligence” that produced both micro and macroevolution. Your hypothesis presumably is separate creation of spider and dragonfly. Mine is that if all organisms descended from earlier organisms (= evolution), the spider and the dragonfly are products of different directions taken by the inventive mechanisms in earlier cells. As an analogy: Shakespeare's inventive mechanism produced King Lear, and Carl Benz's produced the motor car. Neither could have taken place if earlier generations had not invented language or the wheel. When individual cells linked up to create multicellular organisms, their inventive mechanisms were able progressively to create an ever wider range of combinations, as and when the environment demanded or allowed, with their respective inventive mechanisms giving instructions to the other parts of their cell community.
 
DAVID: I know programs can only do what they are set to do.But that does not exclude God from putting future plans into the genome for later action. This is what I meant by an inventive mechanism.-The mechanism you are describing is not inventive. You have gone back to preprogramming, as you make clear below.
 
TONY: I guess it is the word "inventive" that throws me. Inventive to me means creating something new, an increase in the available information.
DAVID: Your point is the fact dhw always misses. A new activity, a new ability, a new form in evolution always requires additional new information to support the change. I'm simply saying the information is already there to be tapped when needed. That gives me pre-planning, a concept I've always preferred over dabbling.-Do you really think I don't know the meaning of “inventive”? The information is knowledge accumulated from the experiences of earlier inventions all the way back to the first cells, and the inventiveness is the product of an intelligence that is cognitive, sentient, communicative etc. The combination enables SOME organisms to cope with or exploit new information emanating from a changed environment. On 17 August you wrote: “...dabbling has always bothered me. I like your self-inventing built into the mechanism.” On 20 August, I wrote: “So too would you be haunted by the extraordinary concept of the first few cells being programmed with every single wonder and innovation throughout the history of evolution.” To this you replied: “That does bother me. The idea of an inventive mechanism being present makes sense.”. Now, however, your God once more preplanned every innovation and wonder, and over billions of years, generations and organisms, the cell communities implemented God's vast variety of plans inherited from the first cells. And inventiveness means automatically obeying God's built-in instructions. Plenty here to be bothered about!