(Picture from
http://www.faradayschools.com/re-topics/re-year-10-11/god-of-the-gaps/ )
Established evolutionary theory may be a good theory,
but I wouldn't say I'm 100% convinced and I’ll continue to read with interest
the views of the de-facto Intelligent Design community. But in spite that I certainly don’t share what
appears to the de-facto IDist’s well-motivated anti-evolutionary complex. On
occasion this underlying complex manifests itself in a strenuous drive to find in principle refutations that short cut
the work of debunking evolution. An example of this is Granville Sewell who is thoroughly
beguiled by a belief that the 2nd law of thermodynamics provides in principle
refutation of evolution.
Before I go any
further with a critical look at a particular post on the IDist web site Uncommon
Descent let me make it clear that I at least agree with the de-facto IDists
on this: One can’t do natural history without assuming as a starting point a
world with an initially high burden of information. That is, our world could
not be as it is without being resourced by some very rare conditions, whether
of actual up and running configurations or the appropriate algorithmic
generators of those configurations. If from either of these starting points we
use the principle of equal a-priori probabilities to convert rarity of case
into high improbability, we infer that our cosmos contains an irreducible
burden of information; in a nutshell this is William Dembski’s result. If one is so
inclined this inevitable logical hiatus readily takes us into
theology, but I won’t touch that subject here. Suffice to say that I agree with
Dembski’s core thesis that the cosmos’s burden of information is irreducible.
In fact it even applies to multiverse scenarios.
The recent Uncommon Descent post I am considering
here, however, deals with less fundamental questions and serves to highlight
where I would be depart from UD thinking.
Below I quote this post in its entirety and interleave it with my own
commentary.
March 23, 2013 Posted by kairosfocus under Intelligent Design:-
EA nails it in a response to an insightful remark by
KN (and one by Box): “the ability of a medium to store information is inversely
proportional to the self-ordering tendency of the medium”
6 Comments
Here at UD,
comment exchanges can be very enlightening. In this case, in the recent Quote
of the Day thread, two of the best commenters at UD — and yes, I count KN as
one of the best, never mind that we often differ — have gone at it (and, Box,
your own thoughts — e.g. here — were quite good too ).
My Comment: The reason why Kairosfocus favours the two commenters he is about
to quote is because he has very much backed the law and disorder vs. design
dichotomy and he is quite sure that law and disorder have not generated life.
He’s of the school of thought that once you have eliminated law and disorder
from the enquiry that leaves intelligent design as the explanation for living
structures. The trouble with this view is that it can give the false impression
that law and disorder vs. design are mutually excluding categories. I have expressed doubts about this dichotomy
on this blog several times. However, to be fair to Kairosfocus I’m
sure he understands that if our cosmic law and disorder regime has generated living configurations then
there still remains the irrefutable work of Dembski, work that, as Dembski admits, doesn’t in and of
itself contradict evolution.
But if Kairosfocus is right and the cosmic law and
disorder regime is inadequate to generate life then this means that “design
theory” becomes a very accessible and compelling argument; it is easy to
picture some kind of homunculus molecular designer piecing
together the configurations of life much like a human engineer. The OOL/evolutionary
alternative requires one to grasp some rather difficult to understand notions employing
information theory, fundamental physics and algorithmics.
Anyway, continuing with the UD post:
Let’s lead with
Box:
Box, 49: [KN,]
your deep and important question *how do parts become integrated wholes?* need
to be answered. And when the parts are excluded from the answer, we are forced
to except the reality of a ‘form’ that is not a part and that does account for
the integration of the parts. And indeed, if DNA, proteins or any other part of
the cell are excluded from the answer, than this phenomenon is non-material.
My Comment: This, I think, is an allusion to one of the de-facto ID community’s
better ideas; namely irreducible complexity. In non-mathematical terms
irreducible complexity can be expressed as follows: Organic components can only
exist if they are part of an organic whole that maintains their existence. But
conversely the survival of the organic whole is dependent on the individual
components surviving. In other words we have mutual dependence between the
parts and the whole. So, since organic wholes depend on parts and parts depend
on organic wholes it appears that this mutual dependence prevents an
evolutionary piecemeal assembly of an organism from its parts. The conclusion
is that each organic form came into existence as a fait accompli. However, this logic has a loop hole that evolutionists
can exploit. The kind of incremental changes that can be conceived are not
stuck at the discrete level of mutually dependent parts. It hardly needs to be
said that organic components are composed of much more elementary components
than organic parts, namely fundamental particles. Therefore the question
naturally arises as to whether the organic parts themselves can be
incrementally morphed at the particulate level and yet still leave us with a
viable stable organic whole. This, of course, takes us into the fundamental
question of whether configurations space with respect to these incremental changes is reducibly complex, a
concept defined in the post here. But as I mention in that latter
post there is an issue with reducible complexity: Given that the number of
viable organisms is likely to be an all but negligible fraction of all the
total possible configurations of atomic parts, it is certainly not obvious to
me that a practical reducible complexity is a feature of our physical regime.
But conversely I can’t prove that it isn’t a feature!
The point I am making here is that because the UD
comments above remain at the discrete “part” level rather than the more
fundamental particulate level they don’t scratch the surface of the deep theoretical
vistas opened up by the reducible complexity question. But there is, I’ll
concede, a prima facie case for the de-facto ID community’s skepticism of
evolution, a case that particularly revolves round the idea of irreducible
complexity; although this skepticism appears to be motivated by a narrowness of
perspective, namely, the perspective that “Design” and “Naturalism” so called
(i.e. OOL and evolution) are at odds with one another.
Now, it may well be that evolutionary theory as the
scientific establishment conceives it is wrong, perhaps because irreducibility
complexity blocks the incremental changes evolutionary theory demands. But one
feels that if evidence came to light that unequivocally contradicted the
defacto-ID community’s anti-evolutionism (if such is possible) it would mean a
very drastic revision of their “design vs. nature” paradigm. The kind of
argument above regarding the apparently all-or-nothing existence of organic
structures, although in some ways compelling, is certainly not absolutely
obliging. The UD argument I have quoted regarding the holistic nature of
organisms does not classify as a killer “in principle” argument against
evolution. The de-facto ID community is very enamored of the metaphor of the
intelligent homunculus who works like a human engineer in contradistinction to
the so-called “naturalistic” evolutionary mechanisms. But there is a great
irony here: If physical regimes implying reducible complexity have a
mathematical existence then the computational resources needed to find and implement
such a regime could be put down to an intelligent agent. Ironically then, using
the very principles the de-facto ID community espouse, a workable evolution can
hardly be classified as “natural” but rather very “unnatural” and moreover
evidence of a designer! If the de-facto IDists are prepared to espouse an all
but divine designer, such a designer could be the very means of solving the
problems of selecting a physical regime where OOL and evolution work!
KN, 52: the right question to ask, in my estimation,
is, “are there self-organizing processes in nature?” For if there aren’t, or if
there are, but they can’t account for life, then design theory looks like the
only game in town. But, if there are self-organizing processes that could
(probably) account for life, then there’s a genuine tertium quid between the
Epicurean conjunct of chance and necessity and the Platonic insistence on
design-from-above.
My Comment: Self-organization, so-called, is not of necessity a tertium quid;
it could yet be the outcome of a carefully selected Law and Disorder dynamic.
In fact if evolution and the necessary OOL processes that must go with it are
sufficient to generate at least an elementary form of life this would classify
as “self-organization”. Richard Johns, who is an IDist, would agree on this
point. In a published paper Johns probes the
subject of self-organization using a cellular automata model. Cellular automata
are based on a law and disorder paradigm and make use of no tertium quid. Of
course, as a de-facto IDist Johns is somewhat committed to the notion that this form of
self-organization cannot generate life, but his paper does not succeed in
proving the case either way. In fact in order to support his prior commitment
to the inadequacy of self-organization he hamstrings law and disorder as a
means of self-organization with a habitual mode of thinking that has become
fixed in people’s mind ever since Richard Dawkins coined the phrase “The Blind Watch Maker”. In Johns’ case
he applies the general idea behind the Blind Watch Maker by taking it for
granted that the law and disorder algorithms controlling his cellular system
are selected blindly. Since it is a likely conjecture that life generating law and disorder systems
are extremely rare cases amongst the class of all possible algorithmic systems
(if indeed they have mathematical existence at all) then clearly blind
selection of the cellular algorithms is unlikely to give us a system that generates
living configurations! But if Johns believes in an omni-intelligent agent of
open ended powers then that agent could just as well express itself through the
selection of just the right life generating regime (assuming it has a
mathematical existence) as contrive living configurations directly. Given the ID culture Johns has identified
with, he is likely to think of self-organization as a “naturalistic” method of
generating life and so he hamstrings this notion by simply not allowing it to
be set up via intelligent agency. Of course, if you disallow intelligence to
express itself in this way and insist on the selection of physical regimes on a
blind random basis then you are not likely end up with a life generator!
Notice that in the quote from KN he too is inclined to
see self-organization and design theory as two competing scenarios whereby
elimination of one leaves the other as the “only game in town”. In fact self-organization is mysterious enough
to KN that it classifies as neither law-disorder nor design, but a tertium
quid. The naturalism vs. intelligence
dichotomy is so fixed in his mind that it has never occurred to him that self-organization
of the law and disorder variety leaves us with similar issues of logical haitus
and computational complexity as does the idea that living configurations are simply
a fait accompli. He just doesn’t make a connection between the large measure of computational complexity implicit in the selection of the right physical algorithms
and a design decision! I see this as yet another manifestation of the false
dichotomy of God did it vs. Naturalism
did it.
Self-organization is, in fact, a very bad term. The
elementary parts of the cosmos could never self-organize but only do so because
an imposed and carefully selected physical regime controls them. The term “self”
is yet another subliminal signal of the “naturalistic” view that somehow the elementary
parts of the cosmos possess some power of organization in and of themselves. But think
about it: That’s not unlike claiming that the bits in say a Mandelbrot set have
the innate power to organize themselves into intricate patterns!
EA, 61: . .
. the evidence clearly shows that there
are not self-organizing processes in nature that can account for life.
This is
particularly evident when we look at an information-rich medium like DNA. As to
self-organization of something like DNA, it is critical to keep in mind that
the ability of a medium to store information is inversely proportional to the
self-ordering tendency of the medium. By definition, therefore, you simply cannot
have a self-ordering molecule like DNA that also stores large amounts of
information.
The only game
left, as you say, is design.
Unless, of
course, we want to appeal to blind chance . . .
My Comment: EA is probably right about
there being no evidence for self-organization; but only as an extra tertium quid factor. There is of course
evidence for evolution as a form of self-organization arising from a cellular automata
system, but just how obliging this evidence is and just how successfully the
theory joins the dots of the data samples is what the debate is about!
EA’s point about
the conflict between information storage and self-organization is I think this:
Self organization, at least as it is conceived by Richard Johns and myself, is a
highly constrained process; though it may generate complex forms it nevertheless
has low redundancy in as much as it is not possible to arbitrarily twiddle the
bits of a self-organized configuration without the likelihood of violating the
algorithmic rules of this process. In contrast arbitrary information storage
allows, by definition, arbitrary bit twiddling and therefore one can’t use a
self-organized system to store any old information. Self-organization only
stores the information relevant to the form it expresses. For example I couldn’t
arbitrarily twiddle the bits of a Mandelbrot set without violating the rules of
the algorithm that generated it.
However, I believe EA has misapplied this lesson with some
hand waving. If OOL and evolution have generated life using the algorithms of a
cellular system it would classify as self-organization (albeit with “self”
being a complete misnomer). OOL and evolution would work by virtue of the selection
of what is likely to be a very rare algorithmic case and this rarity would
imply a corresponding high level of information. Self-organized systems are
algorithmic ways of storing the information found in the complex patterns they
generate. Ergo, EA’s point about self-ordering systems and their lack of
ability to store information is misleading; true they can’t store information
about systems other than the forms they define, but they nevertheless do store
information of a special kind. What I
think EA really means is that self-ordering systems can’t store arbitrary
information.
The type of “think” that EA displays here is reminiscent
of an argument I once saw on UD
(although I’ve lost the exact chapter and verse). It went along these lines:
Self-organization requires “necessity”. Necessity implies a probability of 1
which in turn implies an information of zero. Therefore self-organization can’t
store information. This argument is false and appears to be based on the misleading connotations of
the word “necessity”. What these IDists refer to as “necessity” is simply
algorithmic constraint. Since the set of all algorithmic constraints is very large
then the selection of a particular suite of constraining algorithms is highly
contingent and is hardly a “necessity”. Conversely, a book of random numbers to the observer who first comes to it is very "contingent" and thus stores lots of "information". However, once the observer has used the book and committed it to memory, it's information value is lost. "Information" is observer dependent. In fact depending on the state of the observer's knowledge so-called "necessity" can be packed with information whereas so-called "contingency" may have a zero information content.
EA, in thinking that he has chased self-organization
out of the town, invokes the habit of mind which automatically separates
out self-organization and design as two very distinct processes. He consequently
concludes that design is the only game left in town. EA expresses no cognizance
of the fact that, using William Dembski’s principles, he has also chased away
what itself could classify as a form of design: For high improbability is also
likely to found in the selection of the rare algorithmic cases needed to make
self-organization work.
Kairosfocus finishes with this:
So — noting that
self-ordering is a species of mechanical necessity and thus leads to low
contingency — we see the significance of the trichotomy necessity, chance, design,
and where it points in light of the evidence in hand regarding FSCO/I in DNA
etc. END
My Comment: This statement identifies mechanical necessity with low
contingency; I think that’s intended to suggest that mechanical necessity cannot
be the information bearer required for life; a conclusion that as far as I’m concerned
may or may not be true.
***
Let me stress that I have no vested interest in evolution
as a theory and will continue to follow the views of the de-facto IDists with
great interest. But I certainly would not argue against evolution along the
above lines.
