Biological complexity: more cell pore complexity (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, May 10, 2016, 16:45 (3119 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Have you offered a 'purpose' for reality: yes, just start things up and have fun watching what happens. Light-hearted, but not a serious approach.-It's simply a variation on Deism, the essence of which is that God started life off and then allowed it to pursue its own course. Why would he would start it off but not intervene? Relief from eternal boredom is a possible answer, that's all. The fact that you don't like it does not mean it is not to be taken seriously. On the other hand, I find your own proposed ‘purpose' - a relationship in which one partner says and does nothing but chooses to remain hidden - difficult to take seriously. -dhw: Meanwhile, the human-related purpose of the weaverbird's nest plus the other billions of organisms, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct is apparently not to be questioned, but is somehow connected with the “balance of nature”. 
DAVID: Yes, 'balanced' is my reasonable answer. Everyone has to eat.-Of course they do, and some survive and some don't. It is your anthropocentric interpretation of the history of evolution that I am questioning, not the need for organisms to eat. You play the same game in the post on “Carnivorous plant robbed” (thank you), in which bugs and plants form a symbiotic relationship:-QUOTE: "For example, the capsid bug feeds on the insects caught by the pitcher plant, and the plant absorbs the capsids' faeces to derive nutrition in return."
Your comment: Life is as inventive as ever. Again note this is an example of the balance of nature, which is everywhere.-Yes, the balance of nature is everywhere, and it keeps changing as conditions change, some species flourish and others disappear. Nature takes its own course. But according to you, God has had to “guide” all these coming-and-going natural wonders - since the organisms are incapable of organizing themselves - so that humans could appear and eat. THAT is the disconnection I keep pointing out.
 
dhw: The other driver of evolution, I keep suggesting, is improvement…
DAVID: Improvement is another way of saying increased complexity, which may not necessarily be an improvement. Dinosaurs didn't last but bacteria have. Note, not improvement, just complexity. […] You are still following Darwin and his thoughts about survival by improvement. Structuralism is the other early thought, development by an increase in structural complexity. Which is what our brain happens to be!-We should distinguish between improvement, innovation, variation and complexity. Every surviving innovation will be an improvement and will entail an increase in complexity, but increased complexity does not necessarily mean innovation; variations may increase complexity; I don't know where exactly one draws the line between innovative improvements and variations, but I would regard the human brain as a variation of increased complexity, and an improvement, but not an innovation. As regards bacteria and dinosaurs, firstly every improvement and every innovation must take place in INDIVIDUAL organisms. When Billy Bacterium swallowed a what's-it and they became the first eukaryote, it didn't mean that every bacterium should then have changed into a eukaryote! BOTH forms survived and eukaryotes cooperated to create more and more innovative improvements while bacteria remained the same, though with variations. As the environment changed, new cell communities formed and many old ones died, but the improvements with their variations did not die: dinosaurs had sexual reproduction, vision, hearing, brains, kidneys, which were all innovative improvements once, and you and I and all our existing fellow animals have them now. This has nothing to do with Darwin's random mutations, but it does have everything to do with his theory of common descent, which you say you accept, and with his natural selection, which decides what will survive. And so if you also accept that brains, wings, the senses, limbs etc. represent some sort of improvement over bacterial life, I really don't see how you can deny that evolution has proceeded through a drive for improvement. I would also suggest that from the beginnings of multicellularity, increased complexity has been the result of the drive for improvement rather than a drive for complexity resulting in improvement.