Bacterial Intelligence? making decisions chemically (General)

by dhw, Saturday, May 04, 2019, 13:52 (1817 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: But what you stated is pure Darwin, adaptation after adaptation leading to speciation, whether by intelligent action or not. Darwin never discussed intelligence as a driving force. That is your imagined process.

dhw: I have not stated that adaptation after adaptation leads to speciation, and Darwin himself proposed random mutations, not cellular intelligence, as key to innovation. I have suggested that the same mechanism (cellular intelligence) responsible for adaptation – a process we know takes place – may also be responsible for innovation.

DAVID: Confused answer. The second sentence refutes the first. Does adaptation following adaptation lead to innovation (speciation ) or not?

dhw: No refutation. Speciation results from major changes, but in the section of my post that you have omitted I explained that it is sometimes difficult to separate adaptation from innovation (as in the transformation of tree-dwelling apes to bipedal humans).

DAVID: Exactly my point. From tree dwelling to ground dwelling is speciation. Adaptation is the minor alteration of existing species.

But we do not know to what extent adaptation may lead to sufficient innovation to produce new species (broad sense). The evolution of the whale is a case in point. Do you regard the flipper as an innovation or an adaptation of the leg? Each change is an adaptation to life in the water, but the accumulation of changes results in a creature that is radically different from its ancestors, as is the big-brained bipedal H. sapiens from its ape ancestors. That is the history of evolution if you believe in common descent! One vast history of adaptations and innovations, with no clear borderline between the two processes.

dhw: My proposal is that the same mechanism (cellular intelligence) is responsible both for adaptation and innovation. Straightforward cases of the former will obviously not result in speciation, whereas the latter will, but I would not like to draw a strict borderline between the two processes.

DAVID: I fully understand your theory, which means cells have the capacity to plan for the future.

No it doesn’t. It means the capacity to make the necessary changes to cope with or exploit existing (not future) environmental conditions. I do not imagine pre-whale cells saying to themselves: some time in the future, we shall have to leave dry land, so let us change our legs into flippers before it happens.