Brain complexity: circadian controls (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, October 03, 2015, 12:16 (3340 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your problem is not recognizing that research into the biochemistry of bacteria finds that all the various ways a bacteria can respond, are a series of biochemical molecular reactions in a chain reaction. As for molecules acting as if alive, read closely the articles I present which describe molecules twisting into different shapes as part of their function (snake-like writhing in appearance). Molecules walking along actin fibers to transport other molecules are fully described. The molecules look alive, but they part of live-action real life! This is what is so amazing: all of these tens of thousands of biochemical complicated molecules in one cell functioning together in a complex dance of life. We can watch it but we have no idea how to create it so it works as life. This is all guided by information in the genome code and its various control layers. -My post plus all the quotes was a response to your insistence that these molecules are machines and are not possessed of any kind of “intelligence”. You are now describing what we see when we study the molecules at work. They are material, and so of course what we see are the materials in operation. That is precisely what scientists see when they study the brain at work. But you are the first to complain that studying the biochemicals will not explain thought. Indeed, it is amazing, and we have no idea how to create it. But “research into the biochemistry of bacteria” has gone beyond studying the biochemistry. That is the point that you refuse to recognize. Of course you have every right to your own interpretation of the evidence, but when eminent biologists such as Margulis, McClintock, Shapiro et al say otherwise, you can hardly expect me to toe your line. It is their research that underlies such statements as (my bold): -QUOTE: “We discover that our highest capacities — our thinking, our formulation of goals and plans, our strivings and passions, our sense of well-being and illness — are objectively imaged in our own biological organism right down to the molecular activity of our cells, as also in the cells of every other living creature.”-QUOTE: “The upshot is that organisms are not machines and it is a mistake to think of them as if they were."
 
QUOTE: “each of the parts must have the ability to entertain an idea, i.e. mind." -DAVID: If not invented by chance, how did this happen? Intelligence is the only viable answer.-The disagreement between us here is not over chance versus design but over the question whether bacteria and other cells/cell communities are machines or intelligent beings.