Life's biologic complexity: Automatic molecular actions (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, December 09, 2016, 17:33 (2906 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I don't know why you've suddenly switched from complexity to competition! Anyway, I don't follow your reasoning.
DAVID: I'll try again. Darwin thought assumes there is a struggle for survival with the environment and with other species leading to speciation. There is no proof of any of that as research has proceeded. Species don't survive without generally more complex adaptations.

Then I am even more baffled. We were discussing complexity, and out of the blue you switched to competition. Darwin’s theory was that random mutations gave some organisms an advantage over others in the competition for survival, and natural selection ensured the survival of anything advantageous. You and I do not believe in the randomness of mutations, though why you have left out mutations in your summary I don’t know. Successful mutations are what cause speciation, whether they are random, divinely preprogrammed or dabbled, or created by an autonomous, inventive mechanism (perhaps God-given). As for the rest, of course there is competition, and there is also cooperation, and extinctions are caused by environmental factors.

dhw:I suggest that evolution advances through the quest for improvement as well as survival. The increase in oxygen may have offered new opportunities. Not demand. Opportunity.
DAVID: Then the 'quest for improvement' must be inherent to existing DNA, and since evolution goes from relatively simple ( bacteria)to complex (human), it is really an inherent drive to complexity. I have no idea why you like the word improvement.

Because complexity for its own sake makes no sense to me. You always accuse me of avoiding purpose, but I am the one who believes in purpose. Adaptation has the purpose of survival. What is the purpose of innovation? Our human inventions are designed for improvement. All the examples you give of symbiosis clearly offer benefit (= improvement) to the partners. Complexity for the sake of producing humans leaves you with the impossible task of explaining why your God had to personally design millions of other unrelated complexities, 99% of which he discarded. Why is complexity for the sake of complexity a more convincing purpose that complexity for the sake of improvement?

DAVID: Punc Eq requires that species are isolated and in isolation decide to change, nothing more. It is thin specious thinking, an excuse for change that doesn't hold water.
dhw: If you accept common descent, innovations take place in individual organisms, so of course they take place locally – except where there is convergent evolution.
DAVID: Sorry, punc-eq requires isolation, more than a requirement of locality.

I’ve never seen “isolation” mentioned in any definition of p.e., but it really doesn’t matter. I will substitute my own hypothesis: namely, that long periods of stasis will be interrupted by environmental changes (mainly localized) that offer organisms new opportunities to improve their way of life, thereby triggering relatively swift changes in their genetic makeup. (But as you once indicated, survival is an improvement over non-survival!) Successful changes will be perpetuated by natural selection.

dhw: And what is “specious” about claiming that organisms exploit new opportunities? You believe that too – but you think they were preprogrammed to do so.
DAVID: And you are claiming that organism are programmed to improve, when the evidence is species stasis.

If you believe in common descent, speciation is the process that breaks species stasis, because each new species must be a departure from an existing species!

dhw: What are you suggesting? Pre-whales should have migrated, but God said: “No, thou shalt go into the water so that thou shalt become more complex for the sake of complexity.”
DAVID: No, what you suggest is the illogicality of the whale series as improvement, but it exists and it is highly complex.

Each transitional stage in the series was an organism in its own right. What makes you so sure that each stage was not an improvement, e.g. in the ability to swim, to breathe, to steer? And what in your view was the purpose of pre-whale complexity?

dhw: You say your separate theories are based on “known research findings”. The separate theory I'm challenging is that all innovations and natural wonders were preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago or were divinely dabbled. What known research findings support this theory?
DAVID: The ever increasing scientific findings of more and more complexity of life's genome layers demands a planning mind which set it up 3.8 billion years ago with a drive to complexity.

Back you go to the origin instead of the process of evolution. The complexity of life’s genome layers provides just as much evidence for my hypothesis of a possibly God-given autonomous inventive mechanism as it does for your hypothesis of a divine computer programme or dabble to produce every single innovation and natural wonder in the history of life, all for the sake of humans.