Logic and evolution; an addendum (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, July 27, 2016, 17:39 (3039 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: If loss of information ACCOMPANIES adaptation and this allows you to theorize that loss of information CAUSES innovation, I can certainly theorize that whatever mechanism enables cell communities to adapt to new information might also enable them to exploit that information in order to innovate.-True innovation requires advanced planning to coordinate call the new parts, as in the new Cambrian organisms. IMHO, your cell committees cannot do that. What is your answer for the Cambrian? Even Darwin was afraid of it unless intermediates were found, and they are not there.
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> dhw: As always, you focus on systems that are already functional and established. You and I are full of functional, established systems that work automatically. Only when something goes wrong or when there is a change in conditions is there the possibility that what works automatically will have to change.-But this is the evidence living organisms present us, how they work, and how hey respond to stimuli. And we know they can adapt by influencing the gene functionality. We don't how they might be able to invent totally new structures as in the Cambrian.-> dhw: Nobody as far as I know claims that all cells are constantly thinking about what they do! There are two approaches here. Firstly, scientists set problems which take organisms out of their known environment, to see if they have the “intelligence” to solve those problems. You accept such tests when they are carried out with our fellow animals and birds, but the lower down the scale we go (e.g. to ants to bacteria to plants), the less prepared you are to acknowledge the results.-But what you want is single cells to be equivalent to complex organisms. No way. ?They are automatic. 
 
> dhw: This is not a matter of WHAT the genes do, but a matter of what makes them do it, i.e. what guides the physical mechanisms to create the new organ. Your theory is that God has preprogrammed the mechanism or operates it through personal intervention. Mine is that they operate the mechanism themselves. An analysis of all the chemical processes will not give you a clue as to how cell communities (organisms) are able to solve new problems and to create new structures.-I know that! Which is why my current proposals are as you outline. I can go no further because we don't understand speciation, and if we can never find a mechanism, God must be the agent.