Front end loading (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, August 29, 2009, 18:31 (5563 days ago) @ George Jelliss

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/reduciblecomplexity/
 
> It occurred to me that the concept of "neutral evolution" is very similar to "front end loading", but requiring no divine input. - 
Uncommen Descent has an answer for this: - Wired.com has a new article about why ID isn't science because it's been falsified. Usually the tactic against ID is that it isn't a science because it isn't falsifiable. I reckon use whatever club is closest at hand when you're interested only in beating ID instead of being consistent. The article states: - "You look at cellular machines and say, why on earth would biology do anything like this? It's too bizarre," he said. "But when you think about it in a neutral evolutionary fashion, in which these machineries emerge before there's a need for them, then it makes sense." - "In which these machineries emerge before there's a need" for the machineries. I don't see how that makes any sense. Evolution is supposed to be a stepwise mechanism of solving problems, now they get solved before there is a problem. The article basically makes the assertion that if parts of a whole mechanism are found somewhere else, operating or not operating in any other capacity whatsoever, then the whole mechanism in question is explained by virtue of finding some component parts. If I found an engine foreign to me, I would not be overjoyed to explain it, as a whole, by finding bolts and cylinders and iron lying about, and noticing that the engine uses all three. My first inclination would not be "It was simply a matter of time before they came together into a more complex entity." But that is exactly the argument being made: - But new research comparing mitochondria, which provide energy to animal cells, with their bacterial relatives, shows that the necessary pieces for one particular cellular machine — exactly the sort of structure that's supposed to prove intelligent design — were lying around long ago. It was simply a matter of time before they came together into a more complex entity. - The pieces "were involved in some other, different function. They were recruited and acquired a new function..." - It was just a matter of time before they came together into more complexity? Really? That's a belief system showing it's cards. And how this follows, without seeing the "coming together" itself, is fanciful, to use a kind word. - According to evolutionary theory, however, cellular complexity is reducible. It requires only that existing components be repurposed, with inevitable mutations providing extra ingredients as needed. - Repurposed, recruited, with a dash of mutation for the bread to rise. Did we witness this recruitment, or must it be so for an evolutionary explanation? It must be so, and it has not been witnessed. And what was the purpose before that purpose? Do you have an infinite regress of purposes and recruitments until you get to single molecules that had no purpose? It seems so: - The process by which parts accumulate until they're ready to snap together is called preadaptation. It's a form of "neutral evolution," in which the buildup of the parts provides no immediate advantage or disadvantage. Neutral evolution falls outside the descriptions of Charles Darwin. But once the pieces gather, mutation and natural selection can take care of the rest, ultimately resulting in the now-complex form of TIM23. - How does one even begin to sort through the assumptions? That peices gather together somehow, none falling off the wagon, snap together, fit, that somehow even if they did gather together it wouldn't be a total wreckage, but rather become a cohesive and intricately connected and symbiotic whole beginning to operate as a machine at 3:00 pm on a Thursday, with mutation and natural selection thrown in to supervise the whole endeavor and "take care of the rest", whatever that means. - Well, you get the idea. And it is an idea, if nothing else. Not an evidentially discerned causal explanation, only, rather, the only possible explanation that a Darwinist has. Find the parts, add natural selection and mutation, and you get the whole. What about actual observation, you ask? Apparently, not necessary, because we are, after all, only trying to satisfy a philosophical presupposition of explanation that must turn from simple to complex, and finding some scattered parts is good enough. Actually seeing the increase in the complexity is not necessary for this kind of "science."