More about how evolution works: multicellularity (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, November 07, 2015, 15:49 (3302 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: “In fact, multicellularity is believed to have evolved as many as 25 different times among living species.”
> dhw: Regardless of Simon Conway Morris's beliefs, I'm sorry, but I still can't see how 25 separate evolutions can be taken as evidence for the planning of a single species.
> DAVID: You will have to read his book.
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> dhw: I thought you agreed with him. If you do, then please explain why YOU think 25 separate evolutions can be taken as evidence for the planning of a single species. Or do you agree with me that this is illogical and therefore 25 separate evolutions suggest that your theory is wrong?-His book explains his thesis. Of course I feel he makes a strong point: If life's evolution can invent an advance in necessary complexity 5-6 times, as in eye development, and he describes many other convergences, then the process of evolution is programmed to produce the necessary complexity to produce humans. 
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> dhw: You are constantly telling me that your all-knowing God is perfectly capable of endowing the first cells with a computer programme for every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder to be passed down over some 3,800,000,000 years, and to be switched on in individual organisms whenever the environment is right, even though he may not be in control of the environment.-In the past we have discussed a possible 'inventive mechanism'. Conway Morris' convergence is his attempt at that concept. Living organisms have invented the same thing many times over as hiss book illustrates. -> dhw:And yet, despite all the evidence of intelligent behaviour from humans right back to microbes, the idea that your God might have designed a form of intelligence to enable organisms to work out their own way to improvement is a “wild scheme”.-If the instructions are within the organism for inventions, then they invent. Remember I think the odds are 90% those instructions exist. Conway Morris agrees, and I believe he is Dept. head of palebiololgy at Cambridge:-"Convergence is, in my opinion, not only deeply fascinating but, curiously, it is as often overlooked. More importantly, it hints at the existence of a deeper structure to biology. It helps us to delineate a metaphorical map across which evolution must navigate. In this sense the Darwinian mechanisms and the organic substrate we call life are really a search engine to discover particular solutions, including intelligence and—risky thought—perhaps deeper realities?
Astronomy and Geophysics: Vol. 46, No. 4: "Aliens like us?" (From Wiki quotes)-> 
> dhw: And there you were, complaining that our author was guilty of mere suppositions without proof, and commenting: “I guess he was there watching as multicellularity developed.” Ah well, I guess it was you who were there watching.-I wish I had. It would answer lots of questions, like why it ever bothered to happen. It didn't need to, unless evolution was somehow pushed!