Revisiting convergence (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, June 26, 2015, 12:47 (3220 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: So do you think the complexity of the first single cells constitutes “all of life's most important innovations”? I thought you thought the purpose of evolution was to produce humans.-DAVID: My comment is quite clear. That first momentous invention of a stand-alone single cell is all he was inferring to. Multicellularity then built on it with conglomerations of automatic organs running without my help so I can live my life unrestrained by having to make decisions about my urine concentration.-The quote was from the review and not the book itself: “It is a work full of surprises, arguing for example that all of life's most important innovations were in existence by around 3.5 billion years ago.” We'd need to read the book to know what he was referring to.-As usual you like to plug “automaticity” (which you do again with the article describing responses to danger), and so as usual I must respond that once an innovation is in place, I agree that cell communities function automatically. The theory of the autonomous inventive mechanism, following on from that of the intelligent cell, is my suggestion to explain the unsolved mystery of innovation, which - if you believe in common descent - can only take place in existing organisms. Your counter-argument has been that your God preprogrammed your “automatic organs” into those first living cells, though in relation to this and most of Nature's Wonders, you have tried to modify the almost infinite programme capacity of those first cells with the nebulous concept of “guided evolution”.