Simon Conway Morris at Norwich Cathedral. Part 2

Getting ready for the lecture

In spite of its billing Conway Morris’ lecture didn’t contain a great deal about the Christian implications of his content. However, I myself was very interested to hear his remarks on convergent evolution and the high optimization of functionality. These two facts alone suggest that whatever the engine driving evolution may be it has a startlingly high probability of generating an extremely unrepresentative class of structures. Perhaps Morris was using extraordinary facts like this to quietly argue for themselves.

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

Simon Conway Morris at Norwich Cathedral. Part 1

Prof David Andrews introducing Simon Conway Morris at Norwich Cathedral

The following are notes I made during a lecture at Norwich Cathedral on the evening of 16^th October by Simon Conway Morris Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at Cambridge University. The lecture was entitled “The Evolution of Intelligence – Christian Implications?” and organized by the Norfolk Science and Faith Group. (For comparison see my blog post on John Polkinghorne’s visit to Norwich Cathedral)

Prof Morris is a member of the Faraday Institute. The bill advertising the event told us that “He is best known for his work on the Burgess Shale Fossils and on evolutionary convergence. He frequently appears in public debate, arguing for evolution but against atheistic materialism”. The notes below must be treated with caution as they represent how I personally heard Morris.

Conway Morris in full flow.

David Andrews, professor of quantum chemistry at the University of East Anglia, introduced Simon Conway Morris. Morris Started his lecture by saying that he is not interested in Intelligent Design because ID is not science.

My Comment: Bad start in my opinion. I suspect that The Faraday Institute, like Biologos in America, wants to distance itself from the poor image that “ID” has amongst scientists. There seems to be a bit of playing to the gallery here as this sort of statement puts the scientific establishment at ease, something that Morris, as an establishment figure, is destined to do. My own opinion, as I have said before in this blog, is that ID is science (after a fashion) but it is not hard science. Many of the challenges to standard evolutionary theory coming from the homunculus ID community need careful consideration and should not be treated in an offhand way; but then I'm not part of the establishment so this is easy for me to say! But having said that I'm not happy with the way the de-facto ID community are handling the subject of ID; they seem to be working from a 'God did it' vs. 'Evolution did it' dichotomy. American ID seems to be motivated by an eagerness to promote a kind of 2001 Space Odyssey theory of evolutionary change. Moreover, there are times when it appears to be uncomfortably close to the crank science of the fundamentalists.

Darwin became centre stage in the science vs. evolution debate. Huxley (and others) seized on these ideas to bash the church, although Darwin himself was more cautious. Metaphysical interpretations were made of evolution e.g. that life is one big accident. Some thought evolutionary randomness implies that re-running the tape of evolution again would produce a completely different end result.

Morris said that he thinks the generation of life has a relatively high probability and therefore with the discovery of many new planets we are in for a major surprise within the next 30 years. (Presumably he means the discovery of alien life forms!)

My Comment: If he wants to stick his neck out this far it’s up to him!

Morris is optimistic about the likely evolution of intelligence because evolutionary convergent demonstrates that the independent evolution of “life’s solutions” can happen many times. However, Morris does concede we may be alone in the universe thus indicating that he actually doesn’t know, and that the foregoing is really just a gut feeling of his. The basic building blocks of life are a product of a fairly unremarkable chemistry and therefore they are likely to be universal. “Self-organization” may be a factor – consider for example the mathematical shell of the ammonite.

My Comment: Dodgy! The basic building blocks of life may not be a problem, but the apparent combinatorial explosion in the configuration space of these building blocks could be a huge problem for the evolutionary search engine unless somehow physics constrains this space considerably.

Convergence example: Dinosaur feathers have evolved at least three times on different branches of the evolutionary tree. For example; Archaeopteryx, microraptor and another dinosaur whose name I didn’t pick up all evolved feathers but all are on very diverse branches of the "tree of life".

My Comment: This is where Morris’ knowledge comes into its own: He knows the accepted evolutionary tree and what’s on it. If bog standard evolutionary processes have done as Morris suggests (i.e. produced the same solution several times) then this would require a configuration space that is highly constrained and appropriately organized.

One might expect that evolution would work well enough if organic functions were just good enough to get by, but examination shows that organic adaptations are highly optimized and not “just good enough”. They are finely tuned to “perfection”. However, in some cases the opposite seems to be true. A particular protein enzyme used in photosynthesis is very inefficient: The oxygen that the enzyme helps produce poisons the enzyme! There may be limits to evolution.

My Comment: If evolution is happening we might expect some functions to be on the road to perfection, and not yet at their optimum. However, perhaps evolution quickly finds the optimum solution and then stasis reigns from there on. This scenario is not unlike technological change where  one reaches a point of diminishing returns with the development of a particular technology as its room for improvement "maxes out"; an extrema is then reached and stasis is assumed.

Other examples of convergence: The bacterial flagellum (the ID icon) has evolved twice. The sabre tooth cat  parallels the marsupial sabre toothed “cat”. The camera eye has evolved separately in octopus and man. There are 40 different types of eyes. The camera eye has evolved 7 times. The compound eye has also evolved more than once.  The compound eye would have to be proportionally too large for a man sized animal and therefore the conclusion is that it is likely that man sized aliens would have camera eyes.

Ears and eyes have reached physical limits and therefore have reached optimum. The eye can detect one photon and ears are as sensitive as the noises created by thermal molecular motions allow.

On Intelligence: The part of the bird’s brain that deals with bird song has similarities with the part of our brain that deals with language – convergent evolution again! Dolphins and Man have similar neurological set ups but these have evolved on different parts of the evolutionary tree. Birds and apes use sticks as tools – once again a mental adaptation that has evolved in entirely different parts of the evolutionary tree.

When did we become human? When and why did we start liking pets, poetry and music?

Is there directionality in evolution? Consider mushroom genes: 30% of the genes that the nervous system uses can be found in mushrooms. Mushrooms are organisms that evolved long before the nervous system.

My Comment: How does this last comment by Morris differ from the following: One could argue that 50% (or whatever the figure is) of the elements in the periodic table can be found in the human body and these elements existed long before there were any living things. If one is to think of evolution as a case of constructing using a set of components then of course a large proportion of those parts must pre-exist prior to the structure's existence. Perhaps Morris is using this argument to hint at some kind of predestination. A retrospective view often gives one the subjective feeling of predestination; antecedents, in retrospect, somehow feel as though they are being put in to place for what the future is known to bring.

The question of consciousness – this has not been sorted. Materialism doesn’t work.

My Comment: On consciousness see here, for example. Consciousness is not just another observable object; it has an entirely different logical character in being the observer rather than the observed. Materialism is in one sense a department of conscious cognition in as much as materialism is a construct made within conscious cognition.

The humpback whale uses “music” – another convergent trait. There is a universal music. We discover music and mathematics rather than invent them.  Evolution discovers things.

My Comment: With this I would very much agree: Our world uncovers and reifies the potential objects taken from the platonic realm of possibility.

The imagination: Barfield and Tolkien talked about a mythopoeic humanity. We use Christianity to make sense of life.  We look at beauty and it somehow resonates with our emotions.

During the question and answer session Morris talked about the landscape of evolution and the fact that stable structures are few and far between. But he was reminded of the organization of the periodic table where the rules of physics imply a set of stable atoms. He also responded to one questioner by saying he had no idea where evolution is taking us.

My Comment: Morris response during Q&A was the nearest he came to talking about one of the themes of this blog. Viz: the question of the arrangement of viable organic structures in configuration space and the critical dependence of this arrangement on the given physical regime.

***

What was Morris trying to say and what are those Christian implications? One got the feeling he was trying to tell us something important but he was doing it implicitly rather than explicitly, perhaps hoping that his audience would draw out these implications. Consequently, there are issues with the above that I want to take a bit further and I hope to do so in my next post.

Through the Portal of Death and Beyond?

Did academic neurosurgeon, Eben Alexander get a quick demo of life beyond the grave?

In a blog post entitled “Newsweek-panders to the deluded again” we find atheist PZ Myers foaming at the mouth over a reported case of Near Death Experience. What may have particularly annoyed PZ in this case is that the person who is using his NDE to make claims about a heavenly realm is academic neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander, a lecturer at Harvard’s medical school. Now, you don’t get much more academic establishment than that and yet here is Alexander leading us “astray” with his scientific authority – or at least PZ Myers thinks so!

One might expect that of all people Alexander would at least have a modicum of neuro-psychological theory, and therefore something to say about the functioning of the brain (or lack of it) near death. So instead of giving us a first person account of the truly incredible why isn’t Alexander explaining his NDE in third person neuro-psychological terms, terms that PZ is predisposed to prefer? Instead Alexander stresses the reality of his experience and this clearly riles Myers.

But first let me concede this: From the perspective of Myers and myself Alexander’s affirmation of a world beyond the grave is hardly logically binding; it is certainly evidence relevant to the question of life after death, but it is not strong evidence, no stronger than the evidence we get about alien abductions. From a third person perspective there are likely to be a thousand and one explanations that can concocted and which are consistent with this perspective, but which make no recourse to life after death, starting, for example, with the explanation that conceivably the whole story is bogus (although some checking with sources might at least quickly eliminate that one from the inquiry)

Myers himself attempts to explain Alexander’s account in terms of confabulation:

These were stories that he built later, as he was coming to grips with that past trauma, and they were a means of coping with a huge painful gap in his memory. We know that this is what our brains do; it fills gaps in our knowledge with imaginary events to maintain continuity, a process called confabulation.

Here Myers requires the highly intelligent and critical Alexander to sit on a huge empty hole in his experience as it slowly gets filled in over a period of time and yet be unaware that it’s happening; is Alexander likely to be any less intellectually aware of this possibility than Myers? Rather than positing that Alexander had no experience while he was under, (As Myers suggests) more likely, I feel,  is that Alexander had some initial fragmentary experiences thrown up, perhaps, by a sensory deprived brain (not unlike Charles Bonnet syndrome). These fragments were then given some kind of continuity through further confabulation. Perhaps....

But in any case there is, I feel, something unsatisfactory about these attempts to explain away Alexander’s experience: Why hasn’t Alexander thought of this kind of thing himself? In fact, it is likely he has thought of it, but may be his first person “epiphany” was far more compelling and coherent than any explanation coming from third party observers like Myers or myself. As the saying goes: The man with an experience is never at the mercy of man with an argument! . Science depends on a dialogue that brings theoretical narratives and experience into a contention that seeks ultimate synthesis but allows neither theory nor experience complete dominance.  Therefore I'm prepared to at least give Alexander the credence of a doubt.

The big gripe I have with people like Myers is that one gets the impression they are unable to entertain a measure of self-doubt in their explanations. They live in the service of a particular, exclusive and ulterior ontological outlook, an outlook that is so thoroughgoing as to exclude even a small degree of reasonable doubt. Whilst an explanation of Alexander’s narrative in terms of confabulation built on fragmentary experience may be the best shot explanation from third parties such as myself there seems to be no accompanying leeway in Myers epistemology which allows him to simultaneously host alternative explanations; anyone who so much as courts a contradiction of Myers' ulterior metaphysical ontology is regarded by him as a mental cripple.

How PZ Myers habitually sees those who are less than enthusiastic about his ulterior ontology. (Dr Eben Alexander is pictured on the  right)

EbenAlexander's neurosurgeon mates are queuing up to operate on PZ Myers' brain. 

Meaningless Conflict

Boudry and Plantinga argue about the bit that God did or didn’t do.

(Picture from http://www.faradayschools.com/re-topics/re-year-10-11/god-of-the-gaps/  )

My favourite atheist, Larry Moran, has once again alerted me to some very interesting material that warrants a blog post. In a post entitled Boundry vs. Plantinga and dated September 20^th Larry gives us news of a review by Maarten Boudry of Alvin Plantinga’s book Where the Conflict Really Lies. This review can be found in the IHPST newsletter here. (Just search for “Boudry”). Needless to say atheist Boudry pretty much rubbishes Plantinga who is Christian. For myself, however, I find I am unable to support either side of this debate because both parties seem to be deploying some very dubious concepts and arguments. To be fair I haven’t read Plantinga and I am only going on Boudry’s representations, so it could be all Boudry’s fault. Below I have reproduced the section of the review I’m going to consider here:

In Part I, Plantinga argues that theism is not in conflict with evolutionary science, only with unguided evolution, which is a metaphysical add-on, not a part of evolutionary theory proper. But what about the thesis that the source of mutations is random, an assumption that is part and parcel of evolutionary theory? “Random” in this context does not mean pure chance, but rather without foresight, or not necessarily concordant with the organism’s adaptive needs. According to Plantinga, random mutation is compatible with God orchestrating the whole process. It is just God’s way of creating novelty. But there is no wedge to drive between “random” and “unguided”. If God is steering evolution in the right direction, making sure that suitable mutations arise, the mutations cannot be “random” in the technical sense, for then they would occur for the benefit of the organism (or whichever plan is on God’s mind). This becomes clear when Plantinga, strangely enough, endorses creationist Michael Behe’s argument from “irreducible complexity” (IC, see further), a pseudoscientific concept that has been completely rejected by the biological community. Behe’s argument is that the evolution of IC systems requires the simultaneous occurrence of different beneficial mutations, which is exceedingly unlikely. Therefore, some intelligent designer must have monitored the development of IC systems, if not by miraculous creation, then at least by causing the requisite mutations for natural selection to work on. But then, obviously, the mutations arise to meet the organism’s adaptive needs, and are no longer “random”. That is exactly the point of Behe’s argument. Besides, why doesn’t God skip the cruel selection part and create a whole population of well-adapted organisms without further ado? (See below for Plantinga’s answer to the problem of evil.)

The thesis that mutations are random (i.e., unguided), rather than being a metaphysical afterthought, has been amply demonstrated and is accepted as the null hypothesis by evolutionary biologists. Experiment after experiment has shown that there is no evidence of nonrandom mutations arising because an organism “needs” them. Further, if some intelligent agent is triggering mutations after all, it seems that he/she/it is causing precisely the kind and rate of mutations that one would expect if the process were entirely undirected. Plantinga’s effort to stave off the conflict between theism and evolution is a failure. Either he is buying into creationist fantasies that have been put to rest long ago, or he is hammering on the excessively weak claim that it is logically and metaphysically possible that, all evidence to the contrary, evolution unfolds under supernatural guidance. But if the bar for rational belief is lowered to mere logical possibility, and the demand for positive evidence dropped, then no holds are barred. Evolution (or gravity, plate tectonics, lightning, for that matter) could as well be directed by space aliens, Zeus or the flying spaghetti monster. (I was going to  include the devil in the list, but then it turns out that, on page 59, Plantinga has no qualms at all about treating the horned one as a serious explanation. There goes my reductio.)

In the above I see no cognizance of the single most important factor which makes or breaks standard evolutionary theory*, namely the critical importance of the physical regime in making the evolution of organic configurations possible. It is this regime which determines the size and shape of the space of permissible configurations in which random thermodynamic shufflings are taking place. If this space is wrongly shaped or too large then the thermodynamic agitations which effectively constitute the computational activity which “seeks out” stable organic configurations, is easily overwhelmed. But if our physical regime actually returns a sufficiently constrained shape and size to configuration space then the evolution of organic forms may have a realistic probability.

If for the sake of argument we assume that the latter is the case then no further “guidance” (whatever that means) is needed for evolution; there is then sufficient mathematical providence for evolution to proceed. For if the configuration space set up by our physical regime is sufficiently constricted then the random thermodynamic shufflings become the computational searching by which the configurations of life are located and locked into place by the evolutionary ratchet.

The “shuffling” patterns of randomness (constituting the natural engine of computation) are no more and no less than that; namely, a particular class of mathematical patterning. How then are we to distinguish between patterns that are guided (Plantinga) and patterns that are unguided (Boudry)? What criterion do we use to distinguish between guided and unguided patterns? To me the dispute between Boudry and Plantinga about the nature of evolution seems to be Unintelligible. Unless, of course, it is claimed that our physical regime is insufficiently constrained to impose the right shape and size on configuration space – in which case the evolution of life would require something extra – perhaps some unknown physics or even the enigmatic “tinkerings” of a homunculus intelligence working behind the scenes, not unlike Maxwell’s demon! If so then Boudry and Plantinga would have a meaningful dispute. Otherwise I see little content in their argument.

However, if the mechanisms of evolution (and OOL) are as the evolutionists think they are then I agree with Boudry that the random shufflings of the computational engine are going to be statistically independent of an organism’s need to survive: Unlike Maxwell’s demon those shufflings don’t have any information about the direction in which they should take; in fact that’s precisely why a search needs to be conducted! But I disagree with Boudry when he says that Irreducible Complexity is a pseudoscientific concept. You see, if Boudry accepts the established view of evolutionary mechanisms then he is implicitly accepting that configuration space has been arranged with the right shape and size needed to confer upon those mechanisms a realistic probability of generating organic forms. This shape requires stable organic structures to be close enough together in configuration space to form a linked set so that evolutionary drift can proceed in a series of incremental steps; where each step is a small jump to the next relatively stable organic form. This condition whereby organic structures form a linked set in configuration space is what may be termed “Reducible Complexity”. But in positing this concept we beg the question of whether or not it is in fact the case: What if organic configurations do not form this connected set? What if organic forms are isolated islands of stability in a huge sea of unstable configurations? Irreducible Complexity as a concept is simply the negation of reducible complexity and as such it is both a meaningful idea and the subject of legitimate scientific inquiry. Should irreducible complexity actually be the case then needless to say the established view of evolutionary mechanisms would simply not work and the posited engine of natural history would have to be fundamentally revised. Perhaps this may explain why Boudry shrugs off IC in an offhand way, rather than face the uncharted intellectual vista it brings into view. He is using the word “pseudoscience” as the establishment once used the cry of “heresy”.

If engines of evolution and OOL are as the scientific establishment would very likely prefer them, then this entails  the supply of some very particular mathematical conditions: These conditions must be constantly maintained as the status quo of our physical constitution and therefore these conditions are arguably an ongoing form of guidance, although guidance that is rather different from the default “interventional” theology that envisages some kind of homunculus or "demon"; a model that is affirmed by many theists and vehemently attacked by atheists like Boudry.

Boudry’s review naturally runs into other issues like the logical possibility of miracles, the problem of suffering and the destructive self-referencing of naturalism. I may look at these in a later post.

Footnote

*In this context I’m bundling organic evolution and OOL into one package and calling it “evolution”.

.

Hard and Soft Science in the Junk DNA Debate

....and sociology, history and theology books are even more comfortable!

(Picture from: http://www.dipity.com/sciencegoddess/LolCats-in-Science/ )

Atheist Biochemist Larry Moran will no doubt think of me as a nincompoop for entertaining theism. Nevertheless, although he is a very dogmatic atheist I have found him generally polite in dealing with theists like myself. I may disagree with Larry’s vision of science and find him a bit of a curmudgeon, but on balance I would describe him as a gentleman and scholar and by and large fair in his comments (If you are on the right side of him!). In any case I’d far rather leave comments on his blog than the blog of PZ Myers, a blog which is populated by some very rough customers indeed, not to mention Myers himself who lumps together all theists for his uncompromising contempt. His blog is more like a piranha invested river and when the fish there are not ripping to shreds hapless Godbots they start tearing at one another. In comparison Larry’s blog seems a much more civilised environment.

Perhaps the foregoing explains why I surprised myself in feeling a bit sorry for Larry when I found him heart aching over the latest news from the ENCODE project which is being touted (or “spun” according to Larry) as evidence that most (~ 80% ?)  of the human genome has some kind of function after all. Larry has put a huge intellectual stake in the possibility that the genome carries a lot of redundant information – that is, information that has little or no function. This probably follows from his view that evolution is primarily a random trial and error process, a process that is likely to leave in its wake an untidy backwash of redundant configurations. To Larry, cosmic disorder is a sure sign of a lack of design and therefore absence of evidence of God, or for that matter any other kind of intelligent designer. Larry atheism’s is bound up with questions over the nature of randomness; in particular the philosophical question of whether or not we should consider it unremarkable and attribute to it a null computational complexity.

Now I’ll admit that I’m not much of a biologist or a sociologist (two subjects I consider to be related in a broad inter-disciplinary spectrum). My background is in physics and programming and this has probably  left me with an intellectual impediment; it means that when I hear the term “prediction” I think of it in very mechanical terms: I imagine a theoretical mathematical/algorithmic system that is tentatively put forward as isomorphic in some way with the ontology of our world. One then cranks the handle of this mechanical system and it churns out fairly clear cut “predictions” (Although sometimes with a probability attached). If the predictions fail then because the theoretical narratives of the “hard” sciences are relatively simple affairs with few adjustable variables then theoreticians don’t have much maneuver room to “get out of that!”.

Needless to say in the soft sciences this is much less the case. The soft sciences deal with highly complex objects that may comprise of an open ended set of impinging variables. Consequently “predictions”, so called, are far less unequivocal: A failed prediction need not necessarily be fatal as it may be possible to propose not just a variable adjustment, but perhaps hitherto unknown variables in order to accommodate an unexpected result.*

On balance evolutionary theory is, to my mind, a soft(ish) science, and this is particularly clear with evolutionary psychology, a “discipline” that generates great contention; a sure sign that people’s retrospectively applied imaginations are hard at work here, untrammeled by the dispassionate tester and arbiter of actual involuntary experience. Similarly, I can’t see how the absence or presence of junk DNA is a hard prediction of evolutionary theory. In fact Larry quotes another non-biologist who is now trying to make evolutionary sense, post-hoc, of the claimed absence of Junk DNA:

So they assumed it [Junk DNA] was left over from evolution, had no current function, and was, literally, junk. As Francis Crick, one of the Nobel Prize winners for helping discover the structure of DNA, put it, non-coding DNA has “little specificity and conveys little or no selective advantage to the organism”. Right. As though nature would waste that much energy.

Here we have a evidence that evolutionary theory can very readily assume a retrospective sense making role; it’s not that there’s anything wrong with that because in the absence of a capability to arrive at hard predictions embedding post-facto data in an imaginative theoretical narrative may be the only way we can make (controversial) progress.

I don’t think anyone is going to be surprised to hear that just at the moment the Homunculus ID community are making hay while the sun is shining. They have long maintained that their version of ID “predicts” (Haha!) that most of the genome is functional. To them the “spin” surrounding the ENCODE project is a great vindication.  But the irony is that to my mind the absence of Junk DNA is hardly a hard prediction of even Homunculus ID, as I shall now explain....

Evolutionary theory may be a softish science, but in my view Intelligent Design theory is a lot softer. As I made clear in my series on ID predictions it is difficult to get any hard predictions out of ID at all. Intelligence is in fact synonymous with personality and personality is a blend of emotion (another word for motivation) and the ability to solve computational problems. Necessarily intelligence carries with it a large measure of inscrutability about its motives and methods. Because, then, personality is by definition a highly complex object with many hidden variables the only way I can see of getting predictions out of ID is to start making assumptions about the nature of the intelligence one is dealing with; in particular one might assume that the intelligence which designed life has similarities with a human molecular engineer and one can then apply a whole array of observations on technological (wo)man to anticipate how an alien molecular engineer (or “Homunculus”) might design life. The upshot was that I could by and large agree, after a fashion, with most of the predictions that appeared on the Uncommon Descent post that was the subject of my ID predictions series. But the irony here is that the absence of Junk DNA was one of the few predictions I just couldn’t confirm as an outcome of Homunculus ID. It seemed to me that it was a toss-up as to whether an alien molecular engineer may or may not leave “commented out” information in the genome about his essays in biology.

Summarising: It seems that the junk DNA debate is in a position where the respective sides are investing themselves in conclusions that as far as I can see are not unequivocal predictions of their respective logic. The trouble is the entrenchment is now too far gone for the two sides to easily back out..

It is clear that the homunculus assumption is by no means sound: After all if we are ultimately dealing with the kind of God envisaged by Christianity then we are dealing with something of an entirely different genus to a tinkering alien or quasi-human intelligence. God is an immersive totalizing reality, the entity all things find themselves to be immersed “in”. (Acts 17:27-29 ). As a fellow Christian once said to me: It is as if we are a thought in the mind of God and as such need constant attention and maintenance as thoughts do or else conceivably they could be snuffed out at any time. That idea has not just stayed with me but was reinforced when I started probing the nature of intelligence and found it to be an exploratory searching process: In fact the cosmos is shot through with the “search-test-reject-and-select” paradigm. As has been remarked before, the universe does look more like a giant thought than a giant piece of hardware tinkered with by an alien intelligence.

The pervasive nature of God in most conventional theologies is echoed in our cosmos, a cosmos necessarily pervaded by a grand logical hiatus. That hiatus is everywhere and everywhen. This pervading hiatus invites imaginative post-hoc theologies in order to make sense of it. But pervasive facts of life, like the peculiarity of there being something rather than nothing, are easily taken for granted as somehow intrinsically necessary in and of themselves: To a creature like (wo)man "programmed" to take note of changes in the status quo total immersion phenomena may be filtered out as not interesting.  Consequently theologies are always going to be controversial.

Footnote

* We are really talking about a spectrum of objects here – there is no is sharp demarcation between the objects of the soft sciences and those of the hard sciences.  Hard science imperceptibly merges into soft science. 

Clear Conscience Atheism.

It is with great sadness that I record the recent death of my brother-in-law Jonathan Benison. His obituary can be found here.

Jonathan had a busy career in teaching but nevertheless had the time to be a caring, sacrificial and successful family man. His commitment to family life extended beyond his nuclear family: I was very impressed when as late as May of this year he made the tedious journey from Paris with his Italian wife Daniela to my son’s wedding in London even though at that stage his health was clearly being impacted by the ravages of cancer.

Jon’s many pupils no doubt benefited from his literary erudition. In fact I myself was inspired by some of his work. I have in my possession three treasured books which would not have been possible without Jon’s input. These books can be seen in the photo below:

These books are:

Imago Mundi:. [1995 Biblos] This is a quality production on the history of cosmology by Francesco Bertola. Jonathan provided the section of this book that contains the English translation from the Italian. It is a good read for those who want a scholarly overview of the history of human perspectives on cosmology. (While we are on the subject of translations from the Italian, see the following blog entries where I provide some of Jon’s translations of the songs of Franscesco Guccini: See below and here  and here. He did these translations in the last two years of his life)

Brave New World: [1991 Cideb Editrice] This book contains Jon’s editorial commentary for English literature students.

The Time Machine: [1994 Cideb Editrice] This is another book containing Jon’s editorial expositions.

As I’m not a literary man I greatly benefited from Jon’s learning. In particular I found his found his exposition of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine extremely illuminating. This was a book that had fascinated me from my youth when I first read it (in 1967). In fact I found Jon’s commentary so inspiring that it prompted to I write a two part essay called “The Riddle of the Sphinx”. I may make those essays available on this blog at some stage, although they are not really recommended reading: Unlike Jon I’m not a fluent writer and I really only write as means of using it to crystalize my thinking and to ward off boredom. (It’s a kind of therapy for me)

Jon was an atheist and knowing him to be a deep and fair thinker he would undoubtedly have had good reasons to be so: I do not accept the common evangelical view that somehow all atheists are knowingly rebelling against God and have bad consciences (Fundamentalists may use their reading of Romans 1 to impeach the consciences of atheists). Amongst other reasons for rejecting religion I know that Jon had seen more than enough of the institutionalized nastiness of authoritarian religion and the conceits and deceits of the fundamentalists; such religion has the finger prints of flawed humanity all over it. In fact I’ve been all but put off Christianity by such people myself, so I’m sure Jon was justified in being repulsed by it all.

Although I'm seriously courting theism I never really had the chance to talk about theism & atheism with Jon. But a few months before his death (and after he had read some of my blog material) he emailed me about the subject and I had the opportunity to put my position before him.

As a theist what can I say about Jon’s atheism? For me a Biblical writer expresses it well:

For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) This will take place on the day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares. Romans 2:13-16

If there is a next world and given that the gospel of Christ is about love, justice, sacrifice, mercy and above all grace, then in my opinion someone like Jonathan Benison ought to be well received in that world.

"Letter" by Franscesco Guccini:

Translation:

The cherry-tree in the garden has come into bloom with the new sunshine

The neighbourhood is soon filled with snow from the poplars and with words.

At one o’clock on the dot the clatter of plates reaches the ears

The TVs’ thunderous rumble meets the unfazed indifference of the cats;

As you can see, everything’s normal in this pointless sarabande

But blowing through this unchanging pattern of life is the whiff of a question,

The prickly presence of an eternal doubt, what’s past seething like an ants’ nest,

Troubling those who leave it till winter to wish it were summer again.

The streets are coming back to life, a perfect finishing touch to the world,

Mother and daughter brazenly parade the same face and round bottom,

Identical in the head, no history, challenging everything, no limits,

Their strutting briefly outdone by the wailing of swallows and children;

As you can see, nothing out of the ordinary in this cumulus of life and death,

But, sobering thought, I’m not unhappy stuck in this rut of wishes and fate,

This over-shiny net, these goals we dream up for ourselves,

This unquenchable thirst, of those who hold back, unwilling to fly.

Slowly the roses wither, clusters of fruit appear on the apple-trees,

High up, clouds pass silently through the strips of cobalt-blue sky;

I lie stretched out on the fantastic green-grass plane of my past

But just-like-that age dispels all I believed and have not been;

As you can tell, everything’s just fine in this world free of worries,

As life skimmed past me, I correctly discussed the set topics,

My enthusiasms never lasted long, lots of philosophising stances,

A life of amusing encounters turned tragic, some too close for comfort, some not close enough.

But the times gone by, who will return them to me? Who’ll give me back the seasons

Of glass and sand, who can bring back rage and gestures, women and songs,

The lost friends, books I devoured, the simple enjoyment of appetites,

The healthy thirst of the parched, the blind faith in poor myths?

As you can see, everything’s as usual, just that time is pressing and the suspicion arises

That it’s not a big deal to be weary and breathless at the end of a race,

To be anxious as people are the day after, or sad at the end of a match,

No big deal the slow aimless unfolding of this thing that you call life.

Translated by Jonathan Benison

It’s Science Larry, But Not As You Know It

Real Science is far more precipitous than the test tube precipitating and spring extending view of science cares to admit. 

Biochemist professor Larry Moran often tells us that “Science is way of knowing”. Most philosophically literate people, however, understand the probationary status of all claimed human “knowing”. For this reason I myself would much prefer to opt for the quip: Science is way of reaching an understanding; an understanding that doesn’t necessarily entail authentic knowledge.

But Larry goes much further than just asserting that science is way of knowing; to him there are no other authentic ways of knowing. It is therefore no surprise to see him in this post taking exception to psychologist’s Maria Konnikova’s suggestion that the humanities aren’t science. My view own on Konnikova’s statement is that in a very generalised sense the humanities are science, but they are a far cry from the test tube precipitating and spring extending experiments of the physical sciences, sciences where we deal with relatively simple elemental stuff. In short we are talking here of the difference between hard and soft science. The fact is not all ontologies with which we have to grapple are on an equal level in terms of their amenability to scientific probing. Objects vary on a sliding scale according to their accessibility, repeatability, testability and complexity and this impacts the level of formalism, clarity, equivocality, and rigour with which conclusions can be drawn. In turn this reflects the amount of guess work and imagination that is brought to bear in arriving at an understanding (as opposed to a knowing) of less tractable phenomena. In fact, I suspect that the linear progression of data acquisition is swamped by the exponentiating complexity of some higher level objects (especially in psychology and sociology) and thus it is likely that science, when up against some ontologies, ultimately faces fundamental barriers to progress.

Biochemist Larry Moran may yearn for the level of unequivocation reached in the physical sciences but I think he is out of kilter when it comes to subjects like politics, sociology, history, psychology, and even evolution. Of course, people can refrain from stating anything at all in these domains until they have attained the standard of “proof” that is on a level with the relatively amenable material of the test tube precipitating and spring extending sciences. But given the hardness of the objects dealt with by the soft sciences this is likely to result in very little being said with any rigour; the choice is between saying nothing at all, or taking one's best shot. The fall back situation is the expedient of using the imagination to elaborate upon a paucity of agreed facts. The procedure in the soft sciences is less that of setting up predictive tests than it is retrospectively embedding a consensus of facts into a plausible theoretical framework, a framework that acts as a sense making structure for those facts. Hard predictions are hard to come by and the lack of the impartial arbitrator of reality stepping in to confirm predictions means that in the soft sciences (which includes large tracts of evolutionary theory in my opinion), arriving at a consensus of conclusions is a contentious business: Just what constitutes a “best fit” narrative is not dictated by any clear cut mathematical criterion; we are not simply trying to fit curves to dots.

The other issue some physical scientists are likely to stumble on is the question of testability. It is truism in my opinion that ultimately all claimed knowledge is empirical in the sense that it must meet the challenge of our experiences – see the short article on my side bar entitled “The Ideas-Experience Contention”. I would even go as far as to say that religion is thoroughly empirical in as much as it attempts to make retrospective sense of experience (although one has to admit religion is big on the imagination and small on the consensus facts it tries to integrate into a world view). With post-hoc sense making narratives the “test” of experience exists only in as far as one attempts to evaluate how well these narratives successfully integrate post-hoc experience. Unfortunately the objects this kind of science deals with are complex, and difficult to access and control; therefore experimental testing at will may not be an option. There is one other thing that adds a further complication: “Experience”, so called, often turns out to be the words of other texts and narratives that are set beside the theoretical narrative under test. This means that the divide between theory and experience is in fact blurred. Text is tested against text rather than direct laboratory observations and the upshot is that social reputation, kudos and a gamut of sociological factors figure prominently even in the hard sciences; not good news for Larry!

Using test tube precipitating and spring extending science as the definitive paradigm of scientific epistemology results in a view of science that fails to make sense of science in its broadest meaning, especially as it is practiced in the necessarily informal atmosphere of the humanities. In fact even physical scientists experience some of the ambiguity one finds in the humanities when it comes to evolution, a theoretical structure which posits a complex history of change and shares a boundary with sociology. Except in the most elementary of cases there is seldom a straightforward one-to-one mapping between our experience and our theoretical objects. Leaps of the imagination have to be employed (cautiously and with fear and trembling) in order to make progress. The upshot is that although science can’t, with any surety, claim to be a way of knowing, it can claim to be a way of understanding, and a successful way at that. And yes, I’m prepared to echo something of Larry Moran in saying that science is the only way of understanding, but then my vision of science may be just a little more inclusive than his version of scientific fundamentalism.

***

Posts that are relevant to the above subject matter can be found here:

1. Homunculus ID as a case study in the difficulties of making prediction with the naturally postdictive science of Intelligent Design: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/does-intelligent-design-make-testable.html

2. The following title speaks for itself: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/science-and-imagination.html

3. Grappling with Larry Moran's views again here: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/on-epistemology.html