Epigenetics, revisited (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, September 20, 2011, 19:45 (4792 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: The study seems to suggest that mutations can take place in plants, and possibly in the animal kingdom as well, independently of environmental pressures. Previously, we've talked of epigenetic changes in terms of adaptation ... i.e. the species remains basically the same. But if the changes are spontaneous and can change both form and function, doesn't this fit in perfectly well with Darwin's concept of innovation caused by mutations (of course he didn't know about DNA or epigenetics)? It's true that if these changes can be relatively quick and dramatic, they would knock his gradualism on the head, but I have never understood why he regarded gradualism as so central to the theory anyway. Are the Scripps researchers on the way to solving the innovation problem?-DAVID: Previously we have considered Darwin's approach as passive: random chance mutations and then a choice thru natural selection. Here we see active mutation not necessarily as an adaptation to environmental pressures. Scripps has shown a little more of the unravelling of the mystery of the epigenetic mechanisms, and again raises my contention that evolution is pre-planned by the UI. If organisms can partially or completely plan their own futures, then evolution is not passive!-Thank you for your answer. It appears to confirm Darwin's contention that innovation comes about through random mutations, but not necessarily in the tiny incremental stages that were essential to his gradualism. Many of the scientific articles you have drawn our attention to seem to suggest that even the tiniest particles have some form of "intelligence" (for want of a better word) that can result in new combinations. In other words, modern research into genetics and epigenetics supports the theory of evolution by innovation, adaptation and natural selection. You take this as back-up for the idea that "evolution is pre-planned by the UI". I agree, as usual, that it requires inordinate faith to believe that a mechanism capable of such astonishing creativity could fashion itself out of nothing. Exactly the same objection, however, applies to a UI. As for evolution, once that initial mechanism was in place, it could simply have gone its own random way, followed a course laid down for it at the beginning by a designer, or developed randomly with interventions by a designer. Personally I don't see how the apparently higgledy-piggledy history of life, with all its comings and goings, can be squared with pre-planning, but we have been over that objection many times, and I have far too much respect for you to dismiss the idea! What is exciting for me here is the fact that this latest research really does appear to open the way to our understanding of the innovations without which evolution could not happen. I see this as a massive vindication of Darwinism, which ... let me repeat for the umpteenth time ... offers no explanation for the origin of the "epigenetic mechanisms", and in that respect argues neither for nor against design.