This offers the simplest “neutral” colloquial mixture of “design” and “evolution” that I’ve seen in a long time. The site is no longer maintained, but the language persists.
“As a designer it is important to understand where design came from, how it developed, and who shaped its evolution. The more exposure you have to past, current and future design trends, styles and designers, the larger your problem-solving toolkit. The larger your toolkit, the more effective of a designer you can be.” http://www.designishistory.com/this-site/
Here, the term “evolution” as used just meant “history”. The author was not indicating “design theory evolution”, but rather instead the “history of designs” themselves, which have been already instantiated.
The topic “design is history” nevertheless enables an obvious point of contact between “evolution” and “design”. They both have histories that can be studied. Present in the above meaning of “design” are the origin, processes and agent(s) involved in the “designing”. This differs significantly from the Discovery Institute’s version of “design theory”, when it comes to history, aim, structure and agency, since the DI’s version flat out avoids discussion of design processes and agent(s). The primary purpose of the DI’s “design theory”, meanwhile, is USAmerican religious apologetics and “theistic science”.
The quotation above likely didn’t come from an IDist, and it isn’t referencing “Intelligent Design” theory as a supposed “scientific theory”. The “designer” in the quotation above is a (more or less intelligent) human designer, not a Divine Designer. This fact distinguishes it “in principle” from the Discovery Institute’s ID theory, which is supposed to be (depends on who you’re speaking with in the IDM) about first biology, then informatics, and statistics. The DI’s ID theory is not actually focused on “designing by real designers”, but rather on apologetics using “design” and informational probabilism.
The Discovery Institute’s failure to distinguish or even highlight the differences and similarities between human design and Divine Design, and instead their engagement in active distortion, equivocation, double-talking, and obfuscation between them, are marks of its eventual downward trend to collapse.
By all means start a thread. My own takeaway is that his broader thesis is supportive of my ‘Against Metaphor’ stance. The cell is not a machine, but nor is it a musical performance, etc. By dissecting all the properties that machines have and cells don’t, he is merely reaffirming the common feature of metaphors: they must differ in some way from the system being analogised. Otherwise they’d be the same thing.
I’d like to see a reference for the claim that Drosophila embryonic development continues in the absence of DNA. I don’t think mitosis without DNA makes any sense, but then I know next to nothing about Drosophila embryonic development; the ‘organisation’ may not involve cell division.
To be fair, as expressed it seems unexceptionable.
Allan Miller,
Ah, missed the “if”, reading as “Trilobites appeared from nowhere”.
@ CharlieM apologies, not nonsense. All organisms that leave fossil evidence had ancestors that didn’t. An inevitable consequence of common descent.
Considering a fossil as an object in its spacial aspect does not approach its reality. This is only its limited sense bound reality. Its fully supersensible reality can be gained by observing with the mind over and above the senses. This transforms it from its being in space to its becoming in time. We move from seeing it as an object in space to seeing it as a process in time. The former comes from outer vision, the senses, the latter from inner vision, the mind.
The fossil has no meaning apart from the organism of which it was part.
We recognise the fossil not because it has retained its material substance, we recognise it because its form has persisted.
Let’s say it was a fossilized bone. If the animal had died in an earlier period in its life, the bone may not have had time to become dense enough to fossilise. The material from which it formed was previously spread out over a wide area of the earth. The organism ingested this material which became the constituents of its body. Gas does not fossilise because compared to solids it has more energy and less material per unit volume.
As our bodies are constituted at this time our material bodies are basically composed of solid, liquid and gas. (Please make sure any jokes about this are funny 🙂 ) Although it’s all relative. What we experience as a liquid with low viscosity may be like thick treacle to a dinein complex making its way along a microtubule.
I would say that children should be consulted and listened to as soon as they are able to think for themselves. This doesn’t mean we should let them do what they want. They should gradually be allowed to take more personal responsibility and children mature at different rates.
Breeders traditionally select from what they observe and leave to the scientists and researchers arguments about the root causes of diversity.
Look at specific features, for example size. Dogs display a much broader range of sizes than say hamsters, mice or rabbits.
Steiner was at great pains to tell his followers not to do or believe anything just because he advised it. People should be allowed to think for themselves.
I’m not beating Darwinism with a stick. I am merely pointing out where blindly following an ideology can lead. And anthroposophy can, and no doubt has in some cases, become just as much an ideology as Darwinism.
I see that Gregory has started a thread on this very subject, although I haven’t had much time to look at it yet.
That’ll be me playing catch up yet again 🙂
An extra chromosome upsets the balance of gene expression. But despite their generic differences, people with Downs syndrome are still individuals with much to contribute to society.
Their bodies didn’t force them into restricted niches, their actions as a population did. As was the case with blind cave fish. If they had not been confined to these dark caves they would still have use of their eyes.
CharlieM,
Give it up, Charlie. Your physics is worse than your biology (and I’m no physicist!). Fossilisation is much likelier where calcium, magnesium or silicon compounds are incorporated into the living organism’s structure. This has next to nothing to do with matter-energy equivalence, still less obscurantist mysticism.
Right. Then you do understand why people consider it worthwhile to counter such harmful ideas like ID creationism in the scientific literature, and that this in no way implies such ideas have scientific merit?
Inconsistency alert! Previously you wrote:
and:
So what is restricting a group’s evolutionary fate? Is it their actions or their morphology? Can blind cave fish collectively decide to leave their caves and have eyes plopping up again by expressing them from their archetype?
There is a curious disconnect between the magical opportunities that organisms supposedly are granted by expressing aspects of their archetype and the restrictions by which groups are apparently locked into their current form. The fact that the balance between the two appears to depend on your interpretation of the inner life of “groups” makes for a nice source of fables, but does not bode well for empirical verification.
And why would this be a problem?
CharlieM: Me: Then why are random mutations a problem?
Among many other things.
The passions are not a threat but how we deal with them can be. Our passions can be used for selfish or selfless ends and any combination in between.
Because many bacteria are pathogens and some of them DO occasionaly result in a “layer of corpses”. Well-balanced symbiotic relationship my elbow.
Negative, ultimately ALL genetic variation is the result of genetic mutation. Both recombination and gene flow require some initial variation. I know of no other source of genetic variation. Do you?
This still is making no sense to me. How does the fact that we have a choice to pursue either selfish or selfless goals pose a threat to our freedom?
But surely not everything is ID Creationism. No matter, the thought police are ever vigilant! And you, and those like you, have handed over the decision of what is acceptable or not to people you probably don’t even know.
But as long a you agree with them I guess it’s ok. As long as you never disagree with them. What then?
Mung,
Not sure what your point is, mung. The majority of people who reject evolution go no further; no scientific alternatives are offered. The Creationist explanation hardly meets that criterion despite the efforts of Answers in Genesis, Creation Research etc. I’m happy to refer to those who reject evolution as antievolutionists. Will that do?
You are confusing a unity with an amorphous mass. An organism is a unity but it can consist of a multitude of organs and processes. A performing orchestra is a unity but it consists of various instruments each playing their part. We can distinguish between a violin and the sound emanating from it.
Heritability and genetics have a vital part to play, but to say that genes produce organisms is at best an extreme oversimplification. There are other factors to consider. For instance alternative splicing. From The Scientist
The same genes can produce a vast array of proteins depending on how they are arranged. The potential for novelty approaches infinity without the need to change the primal sequence of the DNA.
Prof Jannie Hofmeyr writes:
Here he highlights the difference between living and non-living entities. In the latter case cause and effect can be separated in linear fashion such as when one ball strikes another. Living systems are self organising in which causes are multiple and coordinated and cannot be reduced and separated as can be done in mechanics.
Well yes. I can distinguish myself from my desires and actions. I love all the food that I know is unhealthy for me. Recently I decided to eat more healthily, ate more fruit and veg and cut out things like biscuits and sweets. Now I am beginning to slip back into my old ways. Over this period I have experienced two opposing states, that of being a healthy eater and that of being an unhealthy eater, but I still recognise myself as being the same individual person and so does my wife.
I have inner experiences and I have outer experiences. I experience various psychological states, various states of consciousness, various colours, sounds and textures. I am the unity that experiences these things.
If you don’t like my use of the word, ‘force’,then substitute it for ‘influence’.
Would you say that alternative splicing is creative?
Organisms are masters of using stochastic and disruptive processes for their benefit. All around me at the moment rosebay willowherb seeds are being scattered far and wide. The seeds which not so long ago were arranged neatly within their pods. The wind has disrupted this neat organisation and each seed is destined to land in some random location. On this it will be determined whether or not the creative processes within the seed is unleashed.
The development of any single organism begins with the activity of protein complexes that originated outside of that organism, from the parent. The self activity or protein production by way of its own genome follows on from this.
And if we contemplate organisation at higher levels it is the same story. Organisms are supplied with nutrients from the parent until such time that they can fend for themselves. As above so below.
My mind.
I have direct experience of my thinking. Through my thinking I presume that I have a brain within my skull but I’ve never directly seen, felt or otherwise experienced it.
You think first person experience is the only way to attempt to understand how human consciousness works? If that was the only approach we wouldn’t learn a whole lot.
No better. What is doing the “influencing”?
And where are we being influenced “from” and “to”?
What’s the big man’s plan for you CharlieM?
But do you experience the unity that you suppose exists? Or you experience just a stream of “various psychological states, various states of consciousness, various colours, sounds and textures”?
Perhaps the Buddha was right, and it is the illusion of an enduring self that is the cause of misery!
I’m not sure what your point is either. Scientific discourse is rife with disagreement. That is not the issue. What disqualifies ID is that its goals are clearly not scientific.
We surely can, but that *is* a reductionist approach. Up til now, you always poo-poo’d such concepts. I will stand by my satisfyingly holist claim that the information and the carrier are useless without each other.
What a lovely coincidence. Just a few months ago I completed a mapping effort of polymorphisms for alternatively spliced transcripts in lung tissue. Do you want to hazard a guess where the heritable variants are encoded? I’ll give you a hint: It starts with a “D” and ends with “NA”.
If you had removed your tainted glasses before reading the article you cited, you’d have spotted phrasings like these:
and
Emphasis mine. You keep distracting yourself, so let me repeat again: What matters for our discussion is the stable inheritance of novel characters. We know the vast majority of heritable variants to be genetic variants. Therefore, the genes are the place to focus on for evolutionary changes.
The site you have quoted from is concerned with visual imagery and mainly static imagery at that. And the ‘evolution’ they are referring to is concerned with the way that this visual imagery has progressed over the years.
A comparison of human design with natural design would require a much broader study of human design than that which is the subject of the ‘designhistory’ site.
In my opinion human design has evolved in the reverse direction from natural ‘design’. From those artifacts that have been found it would appear that human design began with the fashioning of simple objects used as tools, decoration and such. This has evolved to the present where design includes intricate processes such as computer programming. But it remains extrinsic design.
Natural design is intrinsic and begins with intricate processes and natural objects are a product of these processes.
Human design has progressed from fashioning simple tools to producing entities such as Sophia. We do not yet have the capability to come anywhere near to imitating nature in producing even basic processes and forms required to instigate physical life.
First we must move past the study of objects located in space to the study of processes in time. To understand that processes in time have a greater reality than objects in space. Living organisms are not static objects, they are processes. And in the past both ID advocates and conventional evolutionists have been fixated on objects. This is a rut that needs to be climbed out of by all sides in the evolution debate.
Charlie, forgive me, I haven’t been paying close attention to your comments but I hadn’t realised you were an ID advocate.
Mind you, that can be a problem as there seem to be as many versions of ID as there are advocates. Perhaps the only consistent element is dislike of evolutionary theory.
So, would you mind just clarifying for me whether your ID advocacy is dislike of evolutionary theory or do you also advocate some alternative explanation. Seems odd to be asking now since you have been posting for a while but, so far, I haven’t noticed any coherent theme in your comments that indicates any particular view.
I agree that my consciousness depends on body-environment interactions, the brain being included in the body. But to locate the mind in the brain I would say is just an assumption. I regard the mind acting through the brain rather than in the brain.
Yes, the higher order emerges from the physical substance but its laws cannot be derived from the substance itself. Life uses the laws of physics and chemistry but it operates under further laws which transcend these laws.
I am talking theoretically about something which never occurs in practice. That is having isolated sense experiences. If am am looking at an oak tree I am having much more than just a sense experience. The process of gaining knowledge is directed from subjectivity towards objectivity.
Particles, waves and such can only be described and understood because we have experienced the perception of such phenomena.
I have just dropped a feather and a hammer from the same height and guess what? The hammer hit the ground first. Were my senses deceiving me? No. I definitely experienced the hammer landing first. I have never had the experience of doing this in a vacuum to experience the result for myself. But I have no need to distrust my experience. What I do need to distrust is my assumptions taken from the experience. For one thing I have learned that I cannot deduce the general case from individual cases. Also, have I considered all the factors?
I have learned through experience that with respect to moving bodies air resistance is a factor to be taken into account.
Alan Fox,
I think the only objection is in evolutionary “fairy tales” or “just so” stories. The current theory of “population genetics” is fine as it assumes the existence of populations and does not try to speculate on their origin.
Exactly, Bill. You confirm my point. Claiming evolutionary theory consists of fairy tales yet not being able to offer any alternative explanation beyond “Mind”.
Irony deficient Bill? Should I remind you that your entire belief system is based on fairy tales and just so stories?
Evolution has always started with life and its variety. The origin of life is a different field of research. The origin of life might have involved evolutionary phenomena, but it’s another field. How many times have we told you this? How many more will it take for you to understand something this simple?
What’s exactly wrong about speculating on the origin of life? Is speculation a sin according to your fairy tales and just so stories? I mean, according to your religion? If not then why? Furthermore, why should I consider speculation a sin or a problem myself or anybody else who doesn’t believe your fairy tales and just so stories?
It seems to be a party-linked characteristic, to accuse others of things the accuser is guilty of and the accused is not.
Good question! It tells me that it has meaning which is not dependent on any single medium. It is an artistic creation designed to stir the emotions and the composition can be recognisably reproduced. It has a permanence over and above the physical.
I think what you mean is that individual minds can only be experienced by the individual. You have direct experience of your own thinking and therefore you have empirical access to it.
Why do you think that internal thermal regulation is exclusive to humans?
Studying a major transition in vertebrate evolution, the origin of endothermy in birds and mammals. tells us that:
Yet another ‘striking’ example of convergence.
It is interesting to compare the way that plants and humans use light. The way that plants use light allows animal life in general to exist. Humans use light to gain individual knowledge of the universe. Plants use light to create material substance, and thereby allowing humans to use light to create a body of knowledge.
No, you are missing the point. It’s not a matter of aiming to feel content. It is a matter of equanimity no matter how you are feeling. You accept feeling shit and feeling elated with the same detachment, not in seeking contentment.
Maybe it’s because you do not understand what I am saying. And it’s entirely possible that you don’t understand because I am not making myself clear in the way I have written it. My thoughts don’t always come out the way I want them to when transferred to writing.
My point is that we are more comparable to processes in time than objects in space.
This is illustrated in Goethe’s thinking about unity and multiplicity. As Henri Bortoft wrote:
I am a unity but that unity includes existing as an embryo, a toddler, a teenager, an adult and a relatively old man. The unity includes multiplicity.
The common entity is the species. No matter how small a percentage difference, there is genetic diversity between individuals.
CharlieM, you really need to stop acting as if we need to read Steiner or Goethe in order to discover developmental systems theory. DST has been around since the 1980s. You’re not telling anyone here anything that they don’t already know.
Entropy,
There is nothing wrong with speculating as long as it is noted as speculation. When it is masked as tested science is when there is a credibility problem.
Ultimate origins of matter, life and populations is a proposition for theology where most of the evidence is documentation except for people with personal experience.
Speculation is part of the scientific process. Without thinking of possible solutions it’s simply impossible to come up with new hypotheses, or to figure out where to start. I have never seen anything that’s speculation, on the scientific side, being presented as anything else. I have never seen anything that’s a hypothesis in science, that’s presented as anything else either. You should be careful what you accuse others of doing.
Bullshit. Theology consists on fairy tales, no matter how many fairy tales have been written or when they were written.
Ultimate origins of whatever are a matter of science as long as we can figure out a pathway through the knowledge and the evidence to try and figure them out. If they were found to be unreachable for the time being, then they’d be unreachable for the time being. That’s it.
“Theology” being the elaborate fantasy that it is, cannot be considered seriously. Ignorance is ignorance, not an excuse to invite absurd fantasies into the arsenal for learning about origins, ultimate or not.
Entropy,
This is your opinion, it is a minority opinion in this country which you state with authority, but that does not make it true. There is lots of evidence that contradicts your opinion which you appear to be closed to investigating.
In order to support the claim that God is a “fairy tale” you need to establish a tested scientific hypothesis for the origin of a life sustaining universe without invoking an intelligent creator. This is probably never going to happen IMO at least in our lifetime.
The absurdity of the basic tenets makes it very clear that they’re fairy tales, but, even without that, the burden of proof is on the claimant. You already tried to present supposed evidence, and it was much worse than the usual “history has these very low standards, there’s this crappy “documentation,” therefore Jesus was the son of god, also god, in a single person, died for our sins, resurrected, etc.” Worse than that Bill.
This just comes to show how little you understood what I just explained to you above. No Bill. I do not need to establish anything. You have to prove that these fairy tales are real before we can even consider them as actual contenders. Otherwise, either we’re left not knowing, or with some hypotheses to work with, none of which has any need to include your fantasies. But not knowing, again, doesn’t mean that there’s magical beings doing all the originating. Your fantasies are not the default option. The default option is “we don’t know.”
You’re not paying much attention. A lot has either been very well explained, or there’s plenty of hypothesis in the plate. Either way, there’s answers from the most complete to the very tentative, but we do have avenues towards a lot of it. For those we don’t, we can shrug and say “we don’t know.” But not knowing and saying “a magical being did it” doesn’t make the slightest sense. See how simple that was?
P.S. It’s very telling that for the scientific side of things, you want us to present each and every piece of the puzzle, with details of time, circumstances, the specific selective pressures at each stage, all of the ancestors, and that most of us were right there watching while it was happening. For your fairy tales you’re willing to accept backwards philosophy, awe at the age of the fairy tales, all mixed with the imagined poor standards of a “historian.”
Yet the song always comes with a physical medium. You cannot go into a store and request the naked song, just like you cannot have a memory without a brain.
No, what I meant is that you are constantly trying to withdraw your explanations from scrutiny. You have declared minds to be outside Newtonian time and space and refuse to explain the mechanism by which they interface with the physical universe. That looks to me like a claim that is exquisitely crafted to evade close scrutiny.
I don’t. But internal thermal regulation clearly belongs to a more exclusive group than, say, sexual reproduction.
Did they get the grant?
Why would I seek equanimity? Why would I want detachment? Look, we can do this forever, but the point I am trying to make is that at the end of it all we are still fulfilling some need or desire (our passions, if you like). Those desires are part of us, whether you like it or not.
Good to see you finally give up on ID creationism.
Entropy,
Your committing logical fallacies of burden shift, labeling and circular reasoning. You made the claim that God was a “fairy tale” by labeling Him a fairy tale. This is by definition circular reasoning because you did not defend the claim other than your own opinion.
Your statement is simply your own personal incredulity. You make the statement that Gods a fairytale and I counter with God is the best explanation for a universe containing observers. Whats your argument beyond your assertion.
Corneel,
I never bought into your straw man version of it. The theory is limited but as this site demonstrates it is effective.
No I didn’t. The positive claim is that there’s magical beings originating stuff. Denying their existence is not burden shift, is proper stance when confronted with such extraordinary, though planly ridiculous, claims.
It’s not circular reasoning because I was not making an argument for it. I was just describing them for what they are. Arguing and describing are different activities.
No, it isn’t. Every time I explain any of the absurdities you deflect Bill. That you can live with the cognitive dissonance is entirely your problem. I cannot make the thinking for you. I cannot keep you from deflecting.
By absurdity I mean in the logic/philosophical sense of the word. The kind that cannot exist by definition. There’s plenty of those in the biblical and Christian narrative. Tons of ink have been wasted by “theologians” trying to explain them away. Yet, just realizing that they’re fantasies makes it all go away. Not my problem whatsoever!
That’s not what happened Bill. You did not counter with “God is the best explanation … blah blah blah”, you asserted that god was the default explanation until someone could come up with a different one, which is pretty irrational.