An inventive mechanism; Read this essay (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, October 06, 2014, 12:25 (3483 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by dhw, Tuesday, October 07, 2014, 16:20

DAVID: The supplemental box at the end is also long but an exact description of the inventive mechanism that is beginning to appear in our research of the genetic mechanisms of organisms. Simply, non-life does not make life, life brings life, life manages most genetic changes, fitness cannot be defined or described, and purpose is everywhere.-http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/evolution-and-the-illusion-of-randomness-Once again, thank you for recommending an illuminating article, especially since it supports so many ideas you disagree with. I am going to reshuffle some of your quotes and a few others in order to show a clear line of argument. First the autonomy of the organism (all bold lettering is mine):
 
“[We must overlook, first of all,] the fact that organisms are masterful participants in, and revisers of, their own genomes, taking a leading position in the most intricate, subtle, and intentional genomic “dance” one could possibly imagine. And then we must overlook the way the organism responds intelligently, and in accord with its own purposes, to whatever it encounters in its environment, including the environment of its own body, and including what we may prefer to view as “accidents.”-" Genetic sequences get rewritten, reshuffled, duplicated, turned backward, “invented” from scratch, and otherwise revised in a way that prominently advertises the organism's accomplished skill in matters of genomic change. The illustrations of this skill are so extensive in the contemporary literature that there is no way to review it adequately here.”-“The organism pursues its own genomic alterations with remarkable insistence and subtlety.” -Next, the cooperation between individual organisms:-“There is a consensus today that entire organelles of the cell originated in evolutionary history through a kind of cooperative fusion of distinct microorganisms, a process requiring an almost unimaginable degree of intricate coordination among previously independent life processes.” [This is precisely how I envisage innovation coming about through cooperation between cells/cell communities.]-Third, and a truly devastating rebuttal of your opposition to the concept of the intelligent cell:
 
In her 1983 Nobel address, geneticist Barbara McClintock cited various ways an organism responds to stress by, among other things, altering its own genome. “Some sensing mechanism must be present in these instances to alert the cell to imminent danger,” she said, adding that “a goal for the future would be to determine the extent of knowledge the cell has of itself, and how it utilizes this knowledge in a ‘thoughtful' manner when challenged.” Subsequent research has shown how far-seeing she was.-Fourth, an observation which will teach me not to be too dependent on my dear friend's superior knowledge of science. You have persuaded me that any inventive mechanism has to be located in the genome, which controls and is not controlled by the rest of the cell. Not according to Talbott:-“Crucially, genetic change is almost always the result of cellular action on the genome.”-“Recent studies have revealed novel cellular mechanisms and environmental cues that influence genomic rearrangements.”-Fifth, a shattering dismissal of your own divine hypotheses, which you have quoted without seeming to relate it to your theories:-“...you will not find me speaking of design, simply because — as I've made abundantly clear in previous articles — organisms cannot be understood as having been designed, machine-like, whether by an engineer-God or a Blind Watchmaker elevated to god-like status.”-Instead, the following:-“If organisms participate in a higher life, it is a participation that works from within — at a deep level the ancients recognized as that of the logos informing all things. It is a sharing of the springs of life and being, not a mere receptivity to some sort of external mechanical tinkering modeled anthropocentrically on human engineering.”-No divine preprogramming, and no dabbling/tinkering, but something working from within. He calls it the “logos informing all things”. The panpsychist hypothesis asserts that all things have a mental or inner aspect, with varying degrees of subjectivity and quasi-consciousness. Of course it still depends on an “if”, and none of this means that Talbott knows more than you, but you have recommended his article. And so perhaps you will find my own less dogmatic but not dissimilar musings a little more convincing in the light of the above.