DILEMMAS: A Response to DHW (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, November 21, 2014, 01:34 (3654 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Step-wise evolution from basic patterns makes perfect sense, as do variations on basic patterns, but your scenario leaves out the environment.-I understand about environment. Of course it an other factors are involved.-> dhw: Are you now prepared to reconsider the statement quoted above, and accept the possibility that initially the creative mechanism of the monarch enabled it - unpreprogrammed and undabbled with - to create its own ”complex lifestyle”, to be passed on to succeeding generations?-I think it is best to state that a pattern of migration was established in the beginning of patterns for birds and butterflies. Each species then made its own adaptations of the exact routes, etc.
> 
> DAVID: And it is interesting that both come from very fundamentalist religious backgrounds. And they solve my issue of how complex the IM might be. Again it revolves around how much information is implanted in the beginning of life, and perhaps in early stages. And I think probably most of the information is implanted early, since latter developments (mutations) reduce information, while causing adaptation.
> 
> dhw: I don't think they have solved the issue at all, though you can try to gloss it over by focusing on the word “information”. If evolution proceeds through the interaction between organisms and their changing environments, the inventive mechanism will need to work out ways of dealing with new information from outside itself. -My focus on information is a key issue. Of course the organisms receive information about the environment. They respond using information in the genome.
 
> dhw: Yes, some type of balance is returned to or developed, but it may be a DIFFERENT balance, according to the conditions offered by the new environment, and when these conditions change again, you will again have disruption followed by a new balance, and so on till the end of life. What does all this prove? That if you don't have conditions conducive to certain forms of life, you won't have those forms of life. I'm afraid that won't get us to Stockholm-Nothing I read gets anyone to Stockholm. Wagner very briefly alludes to the fact that the code carries information, has no suggestion as to where it comes from. I'm about 1/3 through his book and gritting my teeth. He admits a 100 amino acid protein has 10^130 possibilities, in a search for new protein function but proceeds to show that there are patterns in the DNA which allow for the appearance of new protein function with simple DNA change. It is a masterful setup according to him, all arriving by chance of course. I'll give a review of what he glosses over in a few days. I don't speed read. My view so far is that he has found that a masterful amount of planning went into the genome.