Every camp in the ‘biological origins debate’ has its own explanation(s) as to where the complexity and diversity of life comes from. Some of these explanations would seem to be driven by prior commitments and ideologies (on both sides) and in some cases (notably from the DI and over at UD) they are part of a bigger assault on the opposing viewpoints perceived commitments themselves.
So what makes for a good explanation? Here’s a couple of resources I found interesting:
http://www.culturallogic.com/research-links/
http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2009/12/explanations-gentle-introduction_28.html
http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2010/05/what-good-is-explanation-part-1.html
http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2010/06/what-good-is-explanation-part-2.html
Perhaps we could have a discussion on what makes for a good explanation and look at the various available explanations for biological origins in this framework?
[Multiple edits]
Sorry if I misunderstood your points.
I understood you to say that “descriptions” and “mechanism” were part of scientific explanation but “stories” were not.
I was trying to understand better how you defined those terms and to question the point of view that scientific explanation is solely about deduction from natural regularities expressed as mathematics. I also wanted to point out that teleology and function can be accepted parts of scientific explanation in the life sciences.
I was not trying to define what does or does not count as an explanation. I was just talking about the limits of explanation, and whether they really explain.
To get back to your example of dinosaurs, I would be inclined to call that description with embellishment.
I gave an examples from physics. Most physicists are not confused by what I called “stories”, but the non-technical public doesn’t understand them. If I wanted to give an example from biology, I would call “natural selection” a story. Biologists are not confused — they understand “natural selection” and “differential survival” to be different names for the same thing. But the non-scientific public is more easily confused.
I’m not sure where that came from. I’m a critic of the idea of science as deduction from natural regularities. I see science is highly inventive. However, what scientists invent is boring to the general public (in the sense of “my eyes glaze over”). What I am calling stories amounts to added elaboration and embellishment to make it more appealing.
I have to admit that I don’t follow how an explanation cannot explain. I take your earlier point about “turtles all the way down” to mean that explanations always involve unexplained terms or assumptions to avoid endless why’s. Is that what you think stops them from explaining? If so, it seems a revisit of the earlier thread on whether self-evident truths exist or are needed.
I was thinking that “story” was possibly an informal version of a scientific explanation, simplified for non-experts. But in the above, I would have called “natural selection” a process resulting in “differential survival” of genes in a population (another such process would be drift). So, given that understanding of “story”, I would not have called “natural selection” a story simplifying “differential survival”. But is my understanding of how you used “story” correct?
I misinterpreted your emphasis on prediction and control in science to imply that you saw explanation as about deduction in order to predict.
And what science invents (and tests) are explanations, right?
I’m not trying to be argumentative here. You clearly have spent a lot of time thinking through your position, but I find it peculiar (not meant negatively) and I am trying to understand it better.
Making the comparison between ID and “explanations” seems a bit strained because one is comparing a socio/political movement’s attempt at political persuasion with scientific attempts to understand the universe around us.
ID/creationism does not provide explanations of anything; it is simply sectarian apologetics gussied up to look like science, with the intent of attempting to draw on the prestige of successful science. It is a socio/political movement’s attempt to persuade rather than to explain; and it has never been otherwise.
ID/creationism doesn’t attempt to construct theories that replicate in our minds and in our computer simulations what actually occurs in the real world; but science does. Insofar as science gets the models correct, those models constitute an explanation of the interrelationships – often multiple interrelationships – of concepts out to the number of decimal places to which the model agrees with actual physical events.
Even the probabilistic models of science constitute explanations where specified events can only be given a probability of occurring. Those probabilities can be verified by repetitions of experiments that count the distributions of outcomes. This tells us that we understand and have explained the probability distributions.
When a pseudoscience – such as ID/creationism – does “calculations,” those calculations have nothing to do with the real world. They are calculations done on caricatures of the real world in order to justify preconceived misconceptions and misrepresentations of the real world. ID/creationist CSI, for example, doesn’t refer to anything in the real world; it is mumbo-jumbo meant to confuse the general public and to demonize real science. ID/creationist “thermodynamics” has nothing to do with the real world; it is instead meant to justify sectarian preconceptions and demonize real science; that is how it started out, that is how it continues.
Perhaps one should make the distinction between rationalizations and explanations when comparing ID with science – if that was the implication in Richard’s OP.
The difference is significant. It is not an emotional commitment to some preconceived world view to say that planets orbit the Sun; but it takes an emotional commitment to deny this because it conflicts with sectarian beliefs. Evolution is not an emotional commitment to “materialism,” yet to brand it as such requires an emotional commitment to a set of sectarian preconceptions that already demonizes science as well as those outside certain sectarian circles.
Explanations – at least those in science – are meant to replicate the behavior of the real world as accurately and as precisely as data allow. Rationalizations are meant to reinforce preconceptions that do not necessarily – and often do not – match up with reality.
What science most importantly invents, are new ways of getting data, and perhaps new kinds of data.
Huh?
And just when I thought I may be starting to understand your points.
But thanks for trying, anyway.
I would say that explanations are the most valuable and influential product of the scientific endeavor. Otherwise, is it anything more than – in Rutherford’s withering dismissal – “stamp-collecting”? I don’t know how many remember the parable of the Westminster Project from Carl Sagan’s Demon-haunted World but, to me, that was one of the takeaway lessons, although not Sagan’s main one.
Darwin letter, September 18, 1861
I’m with Mike here. First observe.
Preconceptions (and political agendas) don’t assist understanding.
PS @ KN
Having moved house a couple of years ago, my wife and I today were trying to clear a bit of clutter and going through boxes of books and I found Aristotle’s “Ethics” (Penguin 1958- translation by J. A. K. Thomson). In the preface, I find Aristiotle quoted as saying “Man is a social animal.”
To make sure it wasn’t a quote-mine, I googled and find it is in “Politics” which I also have somewhere.
Not sure about society preceding the individual.
🙂
petrushka
I guess for Darwin’s “view” we should normally now substitute “hypothesis”.
Perhaps we should consider not what makes a good scientific explanation, but rather what makes a good criticism of scientific explanations.
ID seems to accept many scientific explanations: examples would be how blood clots, the nature and purpose of the bacterial flagellum, the inner workings of the cell, and the age and nature of the creatures in the Cambrian explosion.
But then it questions the scientific explanation of how these things arose.
Now critisizing a scientific explanation is an important part of science. So what are the characteristics of a good criticism of a scientific explanation? They would include:
– driven by scientific motivations, not those from outside science like politics or religion (Mike points out why some ID criticisms fail this test)
– use valid science as part of forming the criticism, eg make sure any probability statements are consistent with the relevant science, and make sure any concepts used in the criticism have been vetted and accepted by science (unlike CSI, as Mike points out)
– when quoting other scientific work in the criticism, ensure that work is fairly and completed presented (no quote mining)
– understand the explanation being criticized, and be open to corrections to that understanding
Agreed. I’d go on to say that understanding of the real world (eg via models or mechanisms) is the main motivation of scientists, not prediction. Of course the ability to predict and to predict accurately are both important components of good explanations.
Even in physics, the “shut up and calculate” school (of QM) seems to be out of favor.
But I’ve come to the conclusion that my thought processes on this are incommensurable with NR’s.
I like Mike’s distinction between “explanations” and “rationalizations”. Another way of putting it would be to distinguish between theories and stories. The key difference is that theories include a causal dimension about how the entities postulated by the theory are related to observable entities, and this causal dimension is “reflected” in the technology of the experimental set-up.
Torley has a very long post just up at Uncommon Descent about why science only makes sense if God exists. By my lights, he goes awry right at the beginning, where he regards the “knowing that” account of science, with the emphasis on statements, distinct from the “knowing how” that we see in trial-and-error learning in humans and other intelligent animals. On my view, there is no such distinction — science is practical, and it is practical because of causal relations are built into the experimental set-up. So we can think of technology as augmenting our “natural” sensory powers and bodily competencies. And when we see science as practical from the get-go — unlike metaphysics, which does arise from myths and stories — then we will see that a presupposition of theism is no more necessary for explaining our knowledge of muon decay that it is for chimpanzees to know how to smash open a nut with rocks.
I think there’s a subtle problem that afflicts instrumentalism about philosophy of science — that it doesn’t think carefully enough about technology as augmented embodiment, and the role of technology in theory-production (and not just confirmation). Why should a pattern of muon decay or a prehistoric ecosystem be any less real than a potted plant sitting on my window-sill? If we want to say that the former are “mere posits”, on a par with fictions, then why isn’t the latter? There’s a slippery slope from instrumentalism to phenomenalism, and on the converse side, direct realism about perceptual objects and scientific realism about posits actually go hand-in-hand, if we think about the relation between embodiment and technology.
Stories, on the other hand, don’t include an account of the causal relations between the story-tellers and the entities mentioned in the stories — which is to say that all stories rely on some degree of magic.
My distinction between theories and stories here, and my willingness to put metaphysics on the story-side of that distinction, does not mean that I’m entirely suspicious of metaphysics. It does mean that, on my view, metaphysics itself ought to be scientific, which is to say, grounded in practical experience. There is a speculative dimension to metaphysics that is essential to it, but a scientific metaphysics would strike just the right balance between the practical and the speculative.
It is hard to overstate the role of experience with the phenomena. Every working scientist who is able to make progress, either experimentally or in developing theories, is intimately familiar with the data, with the instruments, with the work of others, with the history, and with the larger context in which data are viewed. Research is always data driven. Armchair “philosophers” are laughable in these contexts; and they are simply ignored.
In the course of any experiment, one is constantly debugging and upgrading equipment in order to understand every aspect of the effect of instrumentation on data. There is almost always a very large context surrounding any experiments and developing theories that draw on previous experience. To repeat, the role of experience cannot be overstated.
Community is usually extremely important in any experiment and theoretical work. One rarely works in isolation without knowledge of the history and of what others have achieved.
“Metaphysics” is something that usually is pasted on in telling stories about one’s scientific adventures. It is often an attempt to tell others colloquially how you did what you did. Much of the philosophy of science is theorizing about science and how it is done; and, unfortunately, it is often done without the benefit of direct experience with any real data but, instead, is done in only a sort of “scholastic” environment that resembles armchair quarterbacking about an incompletely remembered past and an incompletely understood experimental experience.
Often a scientist’s own memories of events are incomplete or skewed by subsequent events; so their recitations and conclusions about the processes that led up to a discovery may be somewhat mythical in their portrayal of what specific events triggered what insights. It is very difficult to construct a philosophy of science without a thorough and accurate history of science. Data and experience are keys to generating a philosophy of science just as they are to actually doing science.
Furthermore, as technology and the surrounding culture evolve, the progressions from data to theory evolve as well. There are hierarchies of explanation. Phenomenology has its place in science as a place-holder for incompletely understood data. It is used in the calibration of instrumentation (via curve fitting, for example) to generating the curves that summarize the data and experience to date.
If there is anything good that can be said about the pseudoscience of ID/creationism, it would be that it is a classic example of how NOT to do science (not that any ID/creationist actually does any science; it is a socio/political movement against evolution). ID/creationist pseudoscience is a somewhat unique pseudoscience in that it implicitly bends and breaks concepts in science to rationalize an underlying set of sectarian beliefs. It then takes those bent and broken concepts and uses them to argue that “science” (their science – but they don’t admit that) doesn’t explain evolution and life; therefore design, i.e., the preconception that was always in the background. CSI is then brought to bear to “prove” that a specified molecular assembly, for example, is impossible (according to ID/creationist bent and broken concepts – but they don’t admit that).
There is some value – although not much value – in studying pseudoscience, including ID/creationism. The promoters of pseudoscience are often immersed in some kind of “metaphysical” milieu which they project onto the scientific world. So one can learn what science is NOT by studying such pseudoscience. However, I am not sure I would recommend this approach to learning science if one is not already intimately familiar with at least one branch of science. Too many misconceptions can be acquired this way; and those can be quite difficult to dislodge.
I don’t take issue with any of the characterizations of science there, Mike.
I would certainly want to distinguish the ‘good’ metaphysics I am trying to do — a metaphysics that takes the natural and social sciences seriously — and the ‘bad’ metaphysics of the ID/creationists that imposes a priori (and theological) commitments on the sciences.
Right. There’s perfectly clear instance of this going on right now over on Uncommon Descent where StephenB and Kairosfocus are arguing with Mark Frank and Alan Fox. StephenB has pretty much indicated that he needs natural law theory to be true in order to rationalize his homophobia, and Darwinism undermines natural law theory. (Put otherwise, it offers a “bottom-up” explanation of teleology rather than a “top-down” explanation.) So Darwinism can’t be true!
Maybe another way of putting my position is that we should have our metaphysics and our science reciprocally influence each other, rather than having our metaphysics determine what we will permit to count as science or rule out metaphysics altogether.
What makes for a good explanation is simplicity.
That is why darwinian evolution is a bad explanation. It has too many caveats, too many exceptions.
As well, a good explanation goes to the heart of the matter. Evolution is an esoteric, superficial explanation. It attempts to explain life in terms of historical relationships, but does not explain the origin of life’s processes.
Contrast this to the Big Bang theory. It is simple, easy to grasp conceptually, and explains both the origins and relationships of celestial bodies.
Steve,
Firstly, I’m really not sure if the sudden emergence of the entire physical cosmos from a quantum singularity is easier to grasp conceptually than the emergence of new species through differential survival. Personally, I find the latter very easy to grasp, whereas the former befuddles me right down to my toes.
Secondly, even if physical explanations are in general simpler than the theory of evolution, the more plausible interpretation is that physical explanations are simpler than biological explanations because they deal with simpler systems.
It has been a historical accident of sorts that has led scientists, probably especially physicists, to think that a “theory of everything” will be simple at its core.
That may or may not turn out to be the case, but one thing is certain from what we have learned so far; complex systems are very messy things to understand because there are so many contingencies to account for. It is true that broad theories, such as thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, account for much of the behavior of these systems. Living systems are sensitive to temperature, and that fact gives considerable insight into the processes that take place within them.
Biological systems are simply more complicated versions of systems of lesser complexity that we already understand. We see the emergence of new properties in complex systems all the time; and we see evolution in these systems as well.
Some of the difficulty that some people have in accepting the emergence of new properties and complexities out of evolution in the presence of selection is that they apparently are not aware of these processes in much simpler systems. But it is a fact that evolution and natural selection are routine parts of the development of the universe and everything that is in it, and these processes take place at all levels. They are so common that physicists, chemists, and engineers use these notions in industrial processes routinely.
The rejection of evolution and natural selection in biological systems appears to be primarily motivated by sectarian dogmas that cannot accept that humans and everything else in the universe evolve. This preconception is also reinforced by strong emotional revulsions that come from a mistaken belief that evolution takes meaning out of life.
But one does not need deities and sectarian religion in order to appreciate life. If anything, some of these sectarian dogmas promote the demonizing of non-believers while at the same time projecting nihilism and hopelessness onto them; attempting to make them appear evil and without humanity or without a “moral compass.” Yet it is the fragmentation of jealous sectarianism that robs life of meaning and leads to sectarian warfare over who are the favored ones.
Understanding the evolution of billions of living organisms and their interconnectedness makes life far more interesting and enjoyable. As near as I can tell from the sectarians who vehemently oppose the very notions of evolution, their sectarianism is full of angst, fear, and loathing over who might receive favoritism in some imagined afterlife; and they are horrified at the possibility that “evolutionists” might actually be mature, happy people who are fascinated by and actually enjoy life and living.
How can you get simpler than differential reproductive success?
For example? If there are so many caveats, exceptions it won’t trouble you to reel off a dozen or two?
Bet you don’t.
It’s a bit like saying bacteria can’t cause disease because the theory is too complicated and there are too many caveats and exceptions.
Steve,
“What makes for a good explanation is simplicity.”
To someone who thinks that way, I can see how ‘goddidit’ is the very essence of a good explanation. On the other hand, change in lines of descent, with and without bias and horizontal transfer, is not all that complicated to grasp.
The devil is in the details. Apparently.
It strikes me that some confuse explanations with narrative. An explanation compresses a multitude of facts into a sort of recipe that allows us to reconstruct those facts from basic ingredients. For instance, Newtonian laws of motion and gravitation allow us to reconstruct countless individual observations of moving bodies using just a few equations (the same ones in each case) and boundary conditions. The Big Bang theory is far more involved than Newtonian mechanics, but it still serves the same function: from a fixed and finite set of mathematical structures and measurements, it allows us to reconstruct a large and potentially unlimited number of observations.
A narrative, on the other hand, is just a story that subjectively “makes sense.” It may be in the form of an actual explanation, or it may not. It doesn’t have to answer any objective standards. A narrative such as “God did it” does not actually explain anything, because it doesn’t let us reconstruct what it is that God supposedly did. For this narrative to serve as an explanation, it has to be complemented with the very facts that we want explained on an ad hoc basis. It doesn’t compress facts: on the contrary, it adds more complication.
There are no ID Lenskis.
Would it not be fair to split philosophy of science roughly into two sub disciplines each with different data needs:
1. studying the way scientists work together to create and test scientific explanations. This would be a sociology/historical approach to understanding science, and would require the types of data and data-gathering disciplines as these fields do when applied elsewhere.
2. studying the explanations themselves and whether/how they relate to the world. This would require understanding of the models and math in the explanation, but not of the experiments or history leading to the explanation. It would be the one most relevant to this thread.
Of course, you are right that ignorance of the relevant data would lead to poor philosophy.
How simple are weather and ecology explanations? How simple are (thorough) physiological explanations?
Complex phenomena generally have complex explanations, as it happens. And intelligent explanations are far more complex than are most “natural phenomena,” mainly because intelligence is rather complex. Not to most IDists, those who use “intelligence” as an incantation, but to anyone who actually cares about the evolution and operation of intelligence. Yet we explain actual arrowheads as being made by intelligent organisms, even if broken rocks that look like arrowheads have much more simple explanations.
That most IDists want simple explanations is apparent. Actually, they more want stories and aitia, which humans generally do prefer to the causal explanations of science. In fact it isn’t at all clear that humans typically want real explanations, which appear rather to be generally a requirement of scientific-technical societies, and are desired merely because they do work, plus they can be used to understand phenomena and to build upon to explain what hasn’t been explained previously.
IDists mostly are content to stop with “knowing” who is responsible, which appears to be the more typical evolved human interest (at least in general, while making specific tools, etc., does require a specificity that is not generalized), not liking the complexity and questions existing in real explanatory processes. Wanting real explanation is a more learned response, while desiring to know who or what is responsible more typifies human nature.
Glen Davidson
Well, geez O’Magain maybe just shy of a ‘dozen or two’. Just consider the number of definitions of species.
Second, nothing falslifies evolution because it is taken as a given and when a discovery is made that is not in line with the current dogma, the dogma coopts its, adopts it, shapes it, waters it, until it becomes a part of evolutionary theory. I keep hearing about how parsimony is a hallmark of good scientific reasoning.
Yet, we see that evolution is now this gargantuan beast reeling under the weight of its own hedge bets. Not a result of parsimony but of evasive measures.
No one dares stop to think that possibly, just possibly replication, acting on heritable variation is not where the money is.
O’Magain sez: For example? If there are so many caveats, exceptions it won’t trouble you to reel off a dozen or two?
Bet you don’t.
Why? That “species” wouldn’t be a very exact category is fully what would be expected from evolution, while it very well could be exact under design assumptions (but we’d need to know something about the design process to truly know if it were expected–and we get nothing in the way of explanation from IDists).
Do you realize that you need actual reasons, not regurgitations of pseudoscientific attacks on science?
If the geologic record didn’t support evolution, moving from only relatively simple organisms to those plus increasingly complex organisms, that would falsify evolution. And IDists and other creationists would be pointing that out–if only after any number of scientists did.
If organisms that don’t, or only rarely, exchange genetic material across species nonetheless had copious copies of genetic material of other species (which a designer could easily effect), that would falsify evolution. It’s simply not so, for instance, vertebrates branch into clades, as do their genes.
Hint: A falsifiable theory isn’t necessarily one that has been falsified. The fact that evolutionary theory hasn’t been falsified is a very good reason to believe that it reflects reality.
We know that ID doesn’t change. Real science does. If you knew the science you wouldn’t misrepresent it as you do–so I hope, anyway.
Not when the evidence is only for that, no. Not the people who actually deal with explanation, at least.
O’Magain sez: For example? If there are so many caveats, exceptions it won’t trouble you to reel off a dozen or two?
Bet you don’t.
You most certainly did not.
Glen Davidson
The complicated part is in trying to line up all the different lines of evidence into a coherent whole.
Evolution is a behemoth precisely because all discoveries are force fit into a darwinian evolutionary interpretation.
A simple example is bacteria. On the one hand we see that bacteria are capable of intelligent activity in their ability to quorum sense. They communicate with each other and act as a composite organism. They can ‘decide’ when their numbers are large enough to mount a successful invasion.
Yet, with the Lenski experiment, we never see the scientists involved wondering that just maybe since they know what bacteria are capable of, that the cause of their ability to land upon a mutation that will allow them to digest citrate is in fact due the bacteria actually triggered a genetic algorithm in order to start the search for a mutation that would work. What they will say is that mutation is random in respect to need. They will never admit that in fact bacteria can sense a lack of nutrition in the environment and take action to solve the problem.
So what happens is compartmentalization of contrary findings. They will tell themselves that one has nothing to do with the other. And on and on it goes.
Steve:
“A simple example is bacteria. On the one hand we see that bacteria are capable of intelligent activity in their ability to quorum sense. They communicate with each other and act as a composite organism. They can ‘decide’ when their numbers are large enough to mount a successful invasion.”
Sources, please? I think you might be a bit ….wrong.
It’s true enough.
It’s a long way from working through algorithms, however. Also, why should an algorithm take so much time, and fail in so many colonies, reminiscent of the times needed for mutation and natural selection to take place?
Glen Davidson
Its a big oversell:
“The phenomenon of quorum sensing, or cell-to-cell communication, relies on the principle that when a single bacterium releases autoinducers (AIs) into the environment, their concentration is too low to be detected. However, when sufficient bacteria are present, autoinducer concentrations reach a threshold level that allows the bacteria to sense a critical cell mass and, in response, to activate or repress target genes.”
Oh imagine the “language” the sun and flowers must share! O_o
Well, for the very reason that it takes that many tries to hit upon the right mutation.
What’s even more astounding is that bacteria when faced with a threat, say from an anti-biotic, will increase their replication rate in order to increase the probability of it finding the right mutation in time to stave off elimination. And if/when it succeeds, the potency of its renewed attach is that much more ferocious.
A beautiful example of what I’m talking about.
Say what! Come on! An oversell!!!, I say. They communicate? Gettouttahere. They do no such thing!!! Its chemicals all the way down, baby!!!
Having said all that, the Hughes of this world utter a collective sigh of relief and in a flash of light, the observation/experience is filed in a box marked X, hopefully hidden well enough that no ‘Moulder’ will discover its contents.
.
Is that it? Really?
For your information, discoveries that are made that are not in line with current “dogma” are supposed to change the theory.
The theory explains the observations…..
But go on, give an example of a discovery that in your opinion should have falsified evolution but instead was incorporated into it?
Just as I won my last bet, I suspect I’ll also win this one.
And anyway, where “is the money”? What you probably don’t realise (not knowing how science works and all that) is that if you had a better, more productive, better predictive idea then scientists all over the world would start to use it – why not, if it produces better results?
But, Joe, IOW it’s the perennial problem of ID. You never understand that you can’t support one thing by breaking another. ID is not supported even if evolution was falsified. It has to stand on it’s own, with it’s own positive evidence.
One minor criticism in your description, Steve. I don’t approve of your use of f-words: finding and ferocious as they are somewhat anthropomorphic. But it is not surprising that bacteria have evolved to react to chemical stimuli. I have already mentioned the “run and tumble” strategy in E. coli.
Plants are a whole kingdom that also have built-in reactions to various stimuli.. It is advantageous that members of a species of plant flower synchronously to maximize cross pollination. How, say, the much-studied pineapple does this is quite fascinating (and without a nervous system!).
Steve,
If this were indeed a relevant fact in this context, you might be able to detect evidence in support of it. Absent that evidence, it’s just handwaving ‘maybes’. Since Lenski has preserved history, he can see the unrolling of the mutations that led to citrate-digesting capacity. They occurred in bacteria that were not nutritionally deprived. Seemingly, to preserve your apparent determination to believe that evolution does not happen ANYWHERE EVER, not even in a few jars of bacteria, they must not only communicate between jars, but can see into the future. Which would certainly be interesting if true.
The Lenski experiment confirms the hypothesis that evolution tries every possible variation and keep those that are neutral or beneficial. Most interesting is the fact that neutral mutations are kept long enough to team up with each other and produce irreducible functionality.
Lenski notes, in hiis response to Schlafly, that there are enough E Coli around to hit every double point mutation every day. The mutations in his citrate lines were more complex than that, but repeatedly populations of citrate-users can be generated from early-stage replicates, but not their unmutated brethren.
Amazing how reluctant Steve is to explain where the money actually is.
If you want people to consider your position it helps to actually detail it.
Events must be in principle be explicable. Why?
Given Atheism. Given Darwinism. Why must any event be explicable?
Mike Elzinga:
You’ve been around long enough to know that science itself is socio/political. It seems you’ve been around long enough to forget that fact as well. Pity.
Petrushka/Allen,
If you would substitute the word bacteria for evolution in the sentence below, you would be describing the actual observation.
I was reminded by Allan not to use the word find as it was too anthropomorphic is describing what bacteria are doing, yet you ascribe anthropomorphic characterics to a process.
It would seem that anthropomorphising bacterial activity is more acceptable than anthropomorphising an abstract concept. After all, bacteria DO exhibit intelligent activity so bacteria ‘finding’ a mutation is a credible description of what is actually taking place.
Mung, you’re perhaps thinking “why?” when we’re thinking “how?” ?
Im with James Shapiro in calling it like it is: ‘if it quacks like a duck, then it is a duck’.
That duck is: Organisms actively re-engineer their genomes in tandem with the given environmental circumstances they face.
How is what 21st century science will tackle.
Allan,
I have not stated that evolution does not occur. I object to the characterization of evolution as a mindless, goalless process. It is far from it. Observation confirms it.
As to bacteria communicating through jars, its is not more far fetched then say humans communicating by iphone. My old man was reminiscingearlier about when he was a kid and they looked at the moon and said there’s not F#$%in’ way Man’s goin’ to the Moon.
Bacteria communicating through jars? Well, WTFN!!! I mean they’ve got bacterial versions of iphones now, don’t they?? Probably get better reception. And apps. Well, let’s start the ball rolling on researching how many other apps they’ve achieved.
I see green already!
Steve,
I assume you’re referring to Alan (one-l) Fox?
Steve,
“Active engineering” happens. Demonstrating this is a problem for the future. Heh heh 🙂