Biological complexity: protozoa sans mitochondria (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, May 26, 2016, 17:17 (3103 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I think a drive to complexity is quite apparent, for that is what we see, ending in humans. Your explanation for giraffes and whales as it pertains to food is a real stretch. Some giraffe types graze and don't bother with trees. But the maasai giraffes chose poisonous leaves; what? In desperation because there was nothing else around? And whale precursors jumped into the water because the fish looked so delicious. Sorry, both evolutions require vast physiologic and anatomic phenotypical changes. Complexity!!!-Yes of course there is complexity, but we are talking about WHY pre-giraffes first grew long necks and pre-whales first entered the water, i.e. why the new complexity may have been necessary in the first place. You suggest that either the pre-giraffes/whales or God said: “Let there be complexity for the sake of complexity.” I suggest: “Not much food here. Better try higher up/the sea.” Once the new species was established, conditions may have changed, or it may subsequently have moved to different environments, but if it has been successful, it will survive. No need to shorten the neck again, or go back to living on land! In other words, the new complexities resulted from the drive for survival/improvement and were not an end in themselves.-dhw: …in terms of how evolution works, an autonomous inventive mechanism provides a convincing explanation for the higgledy-piggledy bush of evolution.
DAVID: You autonomous inventive mechanism (aim) is really equivalent to my drive to complexity mechanism (dcm). In both cases new forms and lifestyles are created, the bush grows, but in my approach God is always guiding, perhaps after seeing what has developed. This is one way dabbling can happen. I'm also still open to full guidance by God.-“Always guiding” is misleading. If “the bush is allowed to spread as it wishes” (which can only mean autonomy) and then God sees what has developed, guidance will only begin AFTER the autonomous inventive mechanism has done its work. If he approves, there is nothing for him to guide, so he can't be “always” guiding. The mechanism is autonomous until he dabbles. Of course you have every right to remain open to your own hypothesis of “full guidance”, which I take to mean a 3.8-billion-year computer programme for every innovation and natural wonder in the history of evolution, along with personal dabbling. My plea has always been that you should consider my alternative as feasible.-dhw: If your God allowed the bush to spread of its own accord, apart from when he dabbled, there has to be an autonomous mechanism. That is why the “intelligent cell” (possibly designed by God) may well be the key to our understanding of evolutionary innovation. But of course it's still only a hypothesis.
DAVID: You are correct and I'm toying with my dcm idea which closely approaches yours.-Thank you. If your dcm is autonomous, it is exactly the same as mine, except that you give it a different motivation: it wants to be more complex for the sake of complexity, whereas mine becomes more complex because it wants to survive and/or improve.