Getting ready for the lecture
I was also interested in Morris’ brief excursion into
mysticism toward the end of his lecture when he referred to the mysteries of
traits like the love of music and the mythopoeic nature of human beings. (In
this connection see this post of mine on William Irwin
Thompson) Although Morris didn't explain the significance of these traits, in
some ways his was a classic response. If the world of scientific logos doesn't argue explicitly for the existence of God then one is very much thrown back on
the mood of mythos that the findings of sciences
invoke.
Scientific establishment figures like Conway Morris stand
for a mechanism of evolution that the homunculus IDers will claim does not
work. Whether or not the science behind homunculus ID is correct, this claim
appears to have an underlying motivation based on a misreading of evolution as a “blind and mindless process”, incapable of
creating anything. Under this assumption an intervening homunculus
is needed to make good the failure of evolutionary theory. The view of
evolution as a “blind and mindless process” is, ironically, also endorsed by
many an atheist: That the setting up a physical regime where evolution works is
in itself a task that is highly computationally complex appears not to be factored in by either party. Although I have lot of respect for the
opinions of some homunculus IDers and feel that their work is often under-appreciated,
polarization has spoilt their chances of making a worthwhile contribution to
the debate.
At the heart of the dispute between the evolutionists
of the academic establishment and the homunculus IDers is, I suspect, a humanly
insoluble problem. To illustrate let’s start
by taking a single organism. Are we able to enumerate and evaluate all the possible
heritable mutations it might undergo and determine what percentage of these
mutations on a per environment basis
will give rise to a stable population that has the mutant gene? Even if we were
able to do this for a single organism we still have to face the wild card of a
changing environment. Some otherwise viable mutations may not work in a changed
environment. Even with a single known organism the possible evolutionary increments
it could undergo are very difficult to catalogue and evaluate. So now imagine
trying to catalogue the huge open ended vistas of configuration space and
attempting to determine whether the juxtaposition of possible configurations
fall into relationship with one another in a way that facilitates evolution.*1
My own guess here is that exploring configuration space
is all but beyond our current computational technology with its use of linear computational
streams. In fact I suspect that the problems of exploring configuration space,
especially when we factor in possible environments, is computationally
irreducible*2 and therefore there is no quicker way of analyzing this space apart
from actually designing a simulacrum with the task of trying to get evolution
to work (or not work as the case may
be).*3. Until then we are very much dependent on the observational sciences of
molecular and paleo biology; in this sense the simulation has been done for us!
Thanks from the clergy at the end of a fascinating and stimulating evening.
Footnotes:
*1 There is also another question that considerably complicates this picture even further. This is what I can best describe as “informational cross fertilization”; almost a kind of “interspecies sex” if you like. In the above text I have imagined an organism undergoing an incremental change. However, if this organism exists in an environment of other organic innovations, it is conceivable that it could make a step change by somehow receiving information (via virus infection?) about these innovation, information that could be used to take its development forward by a quantum leap. This co-option process certainly happens in technological development but as I'm not a biologist I've no idea how important it is in biological evolution. If this kind of cross fertilization exists then we will have a non-linear system of change which may account for the jumps we see in evolution.
*2 The idea of computational irreducibility comes from Stephen Wolfram.
*3 Relevant to question of whether something can be rendered using analysis is the work of John Holland. See here
*1 There is also another question that considerably complicates this picture even further. This is what I can best describe as “informational cross fertilization”; almost a kind of “interspecies sex” if you like. In the above text I have imagined an organism undergoing an incremental change. However, if this organism exists in an environment of other organic innovations, it is conceivable that it could make a step change by somehow receiving information (via virus infection?) about these innovation, information that could be used to take its development forward by a quantum leap. This co-option process certainly happens in technological development but as I'm not a biologist I've no idea how important it is in biological evolution. If this kind of cross fertilization exists then we will have a non-linear system of change which may account for the jumps we see in evolution.
*2 The idea of computational irreducibility comes from Stephen Wolfram.
*3 Relevant to question of whether something can be rendered using analysis is the work of John Holland. See here
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