This may be a major paradigm shift to a Darwinist. But like Darwin's original theory, the Modern Synthesis evidently continues to presuppose that fundamentally natural processes that operate randomly are the drivers of biological evolution. Darwin's theory says that speciation occurs as the result of random mutation plus Natural Selection — where one must regard the "nature" doing the "selecting" as itself a random process that is co-evolving with the organisms it selectively modifies. (Wait, if selectivity is involved, then how can we say the process is "random?" If Nature is an exclusively material system, then how did Nature get "smart enuf" to make a selection? Selection involves making a choice.)
My question for the Modern Synthesist/Neo-Darwinist is: How does the interaction of two random systems evolve into highly organized and stable DNA, which is the antithesis of "random?"
Your article states that the Modern Synthesist/Neo-Darwinist postulates that "speciation is (usually) due to the gradual accumulation of small genetic changes. This is equivalent to saying that macroevolution is simply a lot of microevolution."
Genetics has been smuggled in through the back door here without a word being said about how it could arise in a random process.
I don't have much of a problem with microevolution. We can observe examples of this in Nature. But macroevolution is a completely different story. To say that macroevolution is effectively the simple sum of all the microevolutions going on is, to me, completely senseless. Plus, as ever, neither Darwinist nor Neo-Darwinist theory can give any account of how the first, common ancestor came to be a living being in the first place.
So as biological science, how complete. how exhaustive is Neo-Darwinist theory?
FWIW, I continue to believe the "common ancestor" is a pipe dream....
Thanks so much for writing, Ha Ha Thats Very Logical!
you left out time...... lots and lots of incomprehensable time
This is an animated GIF of the changes in a Peruvian river's course between 1984-2012. How did Nature get "smart enuf" to know where the new course should be? Nature "selected" a new course for the river based on "random" environmental factors (not really random, of course, if we thoroughly understood all the processes). The river is like the relentless flow of reproduction; nature "selects" its direction, but in no more conscious or goal-oriented a manner than it does the river's path.
How does the interaction of two random systems evolve into highly organized and stable DNA, which is the antithesis of "random?"
Well, first, I don't think you need the second system--natural selection--to get to DNA. That just determines which DNA keeps getting passed on. Second, I think an answer might be "we don't fully know yet." But of course, people are hard at work trying to figure it out, and in any case "we don't know yet" isn't the same as "it can't."
Thanks for your response.
Abstract: The classical view of information flow within a cell, encoded by the famous central dogma of molecular biology, states that the instructions for producing amino acid chains are read from specific segments of DNA, just as computer instructions are read from a tape, transcribed to informationally equivalent RNA molecules, and finally executed by the cellular machinery responsible for synthesizing proteins. While this has always been an oversimplified model that did not account for a multitude of other processes occurring inside the cell, its limitations are today more dramatically apparent than ever. Ironically, in the same years in which researchers accomplished the unprecedented feat of decoding the complete genomes of higher-level organisms, it has become clear that the information stored in DNA is only a small portion of the total, and that the overall picture is much more complex than the one outlined by the dogma.DNA has the following:The cell is, at its core, an information processing machine based on molecular technology, but the variety of types of information it handles, the ways in which they are represented, and the mechanisms that operate on them go far beyond the simple model provided by the dogma. In this chapter we provide an overview of the most important aspects of information processing that can be found in a cell, describing their specific characteristics, their role, and their interconnections. Our goal is to outline, in an intuitive and nontechnical way, several different views of the cell using the language of information theory.
Information Processing at the Cellular Level: Beyond the Dogma by Alberto Riva
1. Functional InformationHow could such a system form randomly without any intelligence, and totally unguided?
2. Encoder
3. Error Correction
4. Decoder
What would come first - the encoder, error correction, or the decoder? How and where did the functional information originate?
…it is increasingly clear that the long-reigning neo-Darwinian paradigm is collapsing – and despite many efforts to deny what is obvious – clearly “the emperor has no clothes.” The extremely sophisticated hardware and software systems that enable life simply cannot be built by any trial and error system. In particular – it is very clear that software can never be developed one binary bit at a time. Apart from a fully functional pre-existing hardware/software system, a single bit has absolutely no meaning. I feel that if we are to preserve our scientific integrity, we must acknowledge that we have a major explanatory problem, and we need to go back to the drawing board in terms of understanding the origin of biological information.
- John Sanford
There is no known origin for the rise of information (successful communication, Shannon) in nature. Without that, the theory of a common ancestor is another 'just so' story.
Any simple life form is obviously far more complicated than a book. For the analogy to be more realistic though the DNA would be similar to CAD software in a CPU which is connected to a 3D printer that is physically creating other components (AKA proteins). The 'proteins' would create more CPUs with software and 3D printers to replicate ‘itself’ – also knowing when to turn parts of the program on and off to create all the components in the proper sequence. Oh, and they would also be self sustaining - able to generate their own power. For a new form of life to be created, an error in the CAD software or a 3D printer error would need to happen that did not adversely affect the sequence and outcome. Quite a feat for sheer dumb luck and a series of errors to pull off…
To be more precise, a simple prokaryote has hundreds of complex proteins including those needed for; DNA replication, transcription and translation, and all metabolic actions. If a typical protein is 300 amino acids long, you would be looking at coding 900 bits of information to simply specify its sequence for a ribosome assembly task. Multiply by hundreds - to thousands - to millions in order to see the awesome amount of information required to sustain this part of life. Even the simplest form of life according to neo-darwinism, the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), suggests that about half protein super-families (about 1000 out of 2000) were already present. This is just part of the hurdles for origin of life (OOL) research to overcome.
Molecular biologists have recently estimated that a minimally complex single-celled organism would require between 318 and 562 kilobase pairs of DNA to produce the proteins necessary to maintain life (Koonin 2000). More complex single cells might require upward of a million base pairs. Yet to build the proteins necessary to sustain a complex arthropod such as a trilobite would require orders of magnitude more coding instructions. The genome size of a modern arthropod, the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster, is approximately 180 million base pairs (Gerhart & Kirschner 1997:121, Adams et al. 2000).
- . Steven Meyers
