The Dawkinci Code: Revelations Book III

Sorry to return to this so quickly but whilst my mind is 'turning and churning' I must take advantage of it before ossification takes over.

I would like to begin with the last (as I write) comment to 'Book II' below which in its way sums up the causes of much of the dispute.  It comes from a lady called Ion and if it appears that I am personalising the debate that is not so because I do not know Ion, except via the medium of her blog and her comments here in which she appears to be a very bright and sharply intelligent woman and, more-over, a trained biologist or botanist.  There-in lies the problem - " a trained biologist or botanist"!  In other words she is the proof, if ever I needed it, to convince me that I had a lucky escape in not attending university and becoming, like Ion in her speciality, imbued with the orthodoxy.  Biological orthodoxy, of course, has the magic ingredient 'X' to add real vim and vigour to its disciples because traditionally one of its main theories, proposed by Charles Darwin, is supposed to have confirmed Nietzsche in his opinion that "God is dead!"  Thus, any attack on Darwinism is instantly interpreted by the faithful (I use the word advisedly) as an attack on atheism and is met with the sort of verbal GBH with which Dr. Dawkins is famed the length and breadth of any TV studio that will have him.  One has only to read the comments here and on other sites to see quite clearly that the science is of no interest to the neo-Darwinists, only the maintenance of the anti-theistic line which they rush to defend like the Guards closing the north gate at Hougemont Farm.  To be fair, the theists, in turn, seek any hole in Darwin's theory (and God knows [irony intended], there are enough of them) to rush forward the soldiers of the Lord, or at least, of the Intelligent Designer.  "A plague o' both your houses", I say, because you are both missing the new science which, apart from being infinitely more persuasive than Darwin and Dawkins's incremental gradations and which wouldn't have worked if the universe was three times as old, is spectacularly and speculatively exciting and fascinating in its implications.

"I wasted Time and now doth Time waste me", complained Richard II and that might be the epitaph for the neo-Darwinist paradigm.  (Incidentally, I excuse Darwin, himself, an honourable man who I just know would have dropped his theory like a hot-cake if he had known what we know.)   I began this assault on the neo-Darwinists by pointing out that long before the eye evolved in any way similar to what we know now, a huge and devilishly complicated evolution at the micro-bio-chemical level would need to have taken place first.  Now let us go back even further and contemplate the difficulties of producing "a given protein from the 20 (*) amino acids - the building blocks from which they are made. [...] The total time taken to construct a protein depends on its size and what is assumed to be the unit of time needed to place an amino acid in its appropriate position in the sequence.  Consider a protein requiring about 1,000 amino acids and suppose that it take a second to place one of them.  The correct one out of the twenty has to be selected and placed in a given position in the sequence, so if it took one unit of time to place one amino acid, it would take 20 times as long to place two, 400 times as long to place 3, and 20 to the power of 1,000 times as long to place all of them.  At this rate it would take over a thousand billion years to create this one protein, unless some other process was at work.  And this is only one of the many thousands of proteins required to constitute an organism.  The proteins themselves [as we saw in my last post concerning the re-actions to a photon hitting the eye] would have to be capable of working together in the organism,and the resulting organism would have to reproduce in a way permitting natural selection to operate.  Unless some organizational principle is applied, changes would have to occur and be passed on by reproductive success incredibly often over a sustained period to arrive at the results we see today. (1)  Sorry, people, but the sums just don't add up.  Something else is going on here and it is not 'gradual incrementations', as per the good Dr. Dawkins!

Our friend, Ion, suggests that I am 'polarising' Dawkins and Gould when I point out that the first is a 'gradual incrementalist' and the latter a saltationist (a believer in sudden bursts of evolutionary creation that produces new species).  I would humbly suggest that they, and their respective followers, not me, polarised each other in the furious, bitchy, academic warfare that ensued!  Anyway, Ion, says that it doesn't matter (!) because they were "in agreement on the primary generator (successful reproduction) and mechanism (natural selection)", and then accused me of "hairsplitting".  Actually,of course, she forgot to mention the third and most important element, constant and inheritable, mutational, genetic change without which nothing happens.  But let us concentrate on the mechanism of natural selection which goes to the very heart of Darwin's theory.  Is the environment (in the widest sense of the word) really the anvil upon which life forms are created?  Well, of course not, because natural selection creates nothing, in fact, the opposite, it destroys!  But that is, I admit, to play with words.  Does the action of the environment, then, in hammering organisms with the life and death test of natural selection lead inexorably to new species?  Unlikely according to J.C.Willis in his books Age and Area (2) and The Course of Evolution (3) in which he reports on his investigations into the distribution of species over land areas.  He found that the distribution was uneven with old species occupying most of the area nd smaller, newer species crammed into smaller areas.  In addition, the areas over-lapped so that precursor and descendant lived alongside each other which makes one ask what the pressure is that would bring a new species into existence if the old one is doing quite nicely thank you?  Also, Willis noted that there were many more smaller species, that is, species with few numbers than there were of the older, bigger species.  This seems to argue against natural selection since if it was operating at the Darwinian level of harshness you would expect fewer small species on the grounds that they are either not fit and dying out, or just emerged.  There is a final indication of the inherent weakness of the neo-Darwinian paradigm.  When the first 'mutants' appeared with the very slight advantages so beloved of the good Dr. Dawkins there is no reason why they wouldn't continue to mate with their confreres, thus watering down the inheritable differences.  That would make the time scale for the appearance of new species even longer than it is now.

It is indisputable that the environment will lead to changes in the morphology of organisms.  Darwin's (in)famous finches are proof positive, but short beaks or long, coloured or dun, they remain finches.  The question remains, what is the mechanism that can produce entirely new species, very fast, so fast that the precursors will not mate with it?  I don't know but I have to say that the mathematical theory of very simple but non-linear equations iterated zillions of times and which have been demonstrated to produce sudden, huge leaps completely at variance to the established pattern seems to me to be a very exciting prospect for scientists to explore, particularly when you understand that the constant 'twinning' of separate strands of DNA that takes place in reproduction is the equivalent of a Turing machine operation.  The answer, my son, lies not in the soil, or even in the fertile imagination of Dr. Dawkins and his little green globs, but in mathematics. 

I am not surprised at this conclusion and if I may, with due modesty, finish with my own contribution, let me tell you that my description of the big bang goes as follows: at the instant of the bang, four things were created; hydrogen, helium, energy - and mathematics!

(*) There are now 21 amino acids

(1) Richard J. Bird, Chaos and Life, Columbia University Press

(2) J. C. Willis, Age and Area: A Study in Geographical Distribution and Origin of Species, Cambridge University Press, 1922

(3) J. C. Willis, The Course of Evolution by Differentiation or Divergent Mutation Rather Than by Selection Cambridge University Press, 1940

Comments

[Larry Teabag]

David, do you or do you not believe that mutation and natural selection can explain the development of all life on earth?

It's just that with your approving citations of such diverse figures as Gould, Lantham, Bird, and so on, you give the distinct impression of being prepared to cite anyone who's ever said anything you can turn against the hated Dawkins.

As for your assertions of how "infinitely more persuasive" this chaos theory stuff is - allow me to politely guffaw. I know very little about it, but the one thing which is abundantly clear is that you don't understand a single word of it.

I have no objection to chaos theory being used to enrich and explain various aspects of evolution, but the suggestion that it might provide an *alternative* to evolution is not credible. The reason is that life on earth is not merely complex, it is, more importantly, well-adapted to its environment.

On your final point about the centrality of mathematics to science, you are of course spot on.

[David Duff]

"David, do you or do you not believe that mutation and natural selection can explain the development of all life on earth?"

Yes and no, respectively - but the cause of the mutation is critical.

"[You are] prepared to cite anyone who's ever said anything you can turn against the hated Dawkins".

I don't "hate" Dawkins although I find his public personna dislikeable. I also think he's a poor, though alas, typical, scientist in that he refuses to keep an open mind and thus behaves like the Chuch Elders he so despises.

"allow me to politely guffaw"

Be my guest.

"the one thing which is abundantly clear is that you don't understand a single word of it [the mathematics of chaos theory].

You mean, Dr. 'Teabag', that if you iterate a non-linear equation enough times you do *not* see sudden, astounding, 'chaotic' jumps in the results? And if you had been following "Book II", below, you would have seen my very clear confession to being a maths, physics and chemistry failure at 'O'-level.

"The reason is that life on earth is not merely complex, it is, more importantly, well-adapted to its environment."

Really? In which case where is the pressure coming from that brings about natural selection?

[Larry Teabag]

"Really?"

Yes, really. The eye is not merely a complex structure but a very functional one. I said "well-adapted" not "perfectly-adapted". The pressure comes from small differences which, for instance, give some bats better sonar than others. This trait may then be passed on to their off-spring, and so on. However in general it is still true to sway that bat-sonar is very well-adapted for the bats' environment.

"You mean, Dr. 'Teabag', that if you iterate a non-linear equation enough times you do *not* see sudden, astounding, 'chaotic' jumps in the results?"

And where did I say that?

I did read book II, and noticed you claiming that Bird's theory "...seems to offer a very much more convincing explanation for the diversity of forms than Darwin/Dawkins's effort..." immediately after you'd admitted "I truly am out of my depth".

You must see that the fact that you don't understand it, must be taken into account when assessing your enthusiasm for Bird's thoery.

"the cause of the mutation is critical"

So this is the central issue then: what causes genetic mutation.

Well it's certainly an interesting one, though you should be aware that the best you'll be able to say about that Dawkin's theory is that its a bit too gradual and too incremental. By appealing to chaos theory or whatever, you'll prove to us that the steps are actually a bit bigger and/or more frequent than he believes. In other words the solution you're proposing is a thoroughly Darwinian one. Well good luck with that, I look forward to reading the remaining books in the series.

However I don't think your splenetic attacks on "Neo-Darwinism" are likely help you make your case, in particular you should avoid lies like this: "...the science is of no interest to the neo-Darwinists,..."

I'd also caution that extensively and approvingly quoting from Biblical-literalists like Anthony Latham cannot possibly help you to be taken seriously.

[N.I.B.]

"my description of the big bang goes as follows: at the instant of the bang, four things were created; hydrogen, helium, energy - and mathematics!"

Hydrogen and helium?

Would it be safest to assume you mean 'at the instant of the bang' in a completely hand-waving I-can't-be-bothered-to-look-this-up sort of way?

[David Duff]

'NIB' the Nit picker strikes again:

"Hydrogen and helium?
Would it be safest to assume you mean 'at the instant of the bang' in a completely hand-waving I-can't-be-bothered-to-look-this-up sort of way?"

Yes, 'NIB', because I didn't want to bore my long-suffering readers with this sort of thing:
"It was at this epoch, during the fourth minute after time zero that the re-actions outlined by Gramow and his colleagues in the 1940s, and refined by Fred Hoyle and others in the 1960s, took place, locking up the remaining neutrons in heliem nuclei. The proportion of the total mass of nucleons converted into helium is twice the abundance of neutrons at the time because each nucleus of helium (helium-4) contains two protons as well as two neutrons. Four minutes after time zero, the process was complete, with just under 25% of the nuclear material converted into helieum, and the rest left behind as lone protons - hydrogen nuclei"

John Gribbin, "Companion to the Cosmos", Orion Books 1997, p66.

Satisfied?

I shall return to Larry later.

[Larry Teabag]

One other thing I forgot to say. I *loved* the way in Book II that you put algebraic symbols in quote marks thus: 'x'%. If I'd adopted this approach to "correct grammar" my PhD thesis would have instantly doubled in length and looked as if an inky spider had run riot over every page.

[N.I.B.]

"Yes" would have sufficed!

If you can't be bothered to be accurate about the *start of everything*, why get worked up about what some doctor or other thinks about evolution?

[David Duff]

You touch a nerve there, Larry. I have a sort of phobia about 'correct' English mostly because I am all too conscious of my own weakness in that area - though it isn't half as weak as my knowledge of maths! Hovering over my shoulder as I type is the stern, thin-lipped shade of Miss Wood, Eng. Lang. & Lit., c.1950-55. Mind you, I was jolly proud to have remembered the '^' sign for 'to the power of' which you taught me in one of our earlier exchanges even if I had to double check it with 'SoD' first.

[David Duff]

Larry:
1: "The pressure comes from small differences"

But that's the point biologists disagree about with each other! Dawkins says small differences, Gould said saltation. I *tend* to saltation but not for the reasons that Gould would agree with.

2: "And where did I say that?"

I don't think I *was* accusing you of denying the results of iterated non-linear equations, I was merely trying to elucidate why, if you know that such leaps and bounds result, do you seem so reluctant to apply it to reproduction which is simply iterationof a chemical kind. (I'm not digging at you here, I am actually very interested if, with your knowledge of mathematics, there is some flaw in Bird's theory. And I recognise that your speciality is in another field but perhaps you could give an informed critique - hopefully in terms that a dimwit like me can understand!)

3: "Dawkin's theory is that its a bit too gradual and too incremental. By appealing to chaos theory or whatever, you'll prove to us that the steps are actually a bit bigger and/or more frequent than he believes. In other words the solution you're proposing is a thoroughly Darwinian one."

Sorry, but this is a dig! You are 'truly out of *your* depth' if you think that "a bit bigger and/or more frequent" is neither here nor there in biological circles. Let me tell you there is blood on the floor in common-rooms and labs all over the world as the 'experts' get stuck into each other. Darwin, himself, would and did, reject saltation. His entire theory rests on gradual incrementation of tiny changes constantly under the natural selection pressure of the 'environment'. If the "tiny changes" go, and if "natural selection" is not the anvil upon which new species evolve, then what's left of Darwinian theory, except the trivial truth that we all appear to have evolved from the original living matter.

4: "you should avoid lies like this: "...the science is of no interest to the neo-Darwinists,..."

All the history of science that I have read about is filled with scientists fighting tooth and nail to protect this or that theory to which is attached a very large part of their reputation. Why should neo-Darwinists be any different? Indeed, in their splenetic re-action to any criticism of their 'Truth' they are running true to form!

5: "I'd also caution that [...] quoting from Biblical-literalists like Anthony Latham cannot possibly help you to be taken seriously."

Larry, I'm shocked! Are you dismissing a man's scientific propositions because of his religion? Well, there goes Newton, the silly, old fool, because he was a fundamentalist.

Now come along, Larry, make yourself useful and turn your mathematical brain to the mathematics of this puzzle and try to explain it to us if we, or Bird, Latham, 'et al', have it wrong.

[Larry Teabag]

3. I certainly don't think that "a bit bigger and/or more frequent" is "neither here nor there in biological circles". But you now seem to be taking sides within a biological debate of fairly narrow parameters, rather than blowing the whole thing out of the water. Given your previous numerous hyperbolic attacks on "the land of Hobbits and Harry Potter and Darwinian fairy tales" this is something of an anticlimax.

But of course it all depends what you mean by "saltation". As I understand it, this means "bigger jumps". But how big is "bigger"? If you're attributing a belief in *really* big jumps ("macromutational saltation") to Gould, then you're absolutely wrong to do so. Here's Dawkins:

"As I have stressed, the theory of punctuated equilibrium, by Eldredge and Gould's own account, is not a saltationist theory. The jumps that it postulates are not real, singlegeneration jumps. They are spread out over large numbers of generations over periods of, by Gould's own estimation, perhaps tens of thousands of years. The theory of punctuated equilibrium is a gradualist theory, albeit it emphasizes long periods of stasis intervening between relatively short bursts of gradualistic evolution."

So if you want really big jumps, you simply don't have Gould on your side. Your stuck with just the creationists and - possibly - Bird, whose work I can't comment on 'cos I haven't read it. However I will repeat that chaos theory or no chaos theory, natural selection is crucial if we're to explain not just the complexity, but the well-adaptedness, of life on earth.

5. > Are you dismissing a man's scientific propositions because of his religion?

Not at all. I'm simply dismissing the glib sophistry of someone who's clearly peddling a creationist agenda. It persuades no-one and damages your case.

[David Duff]

Larry, you write: "Given your previous numerous hyperbolic attacks on "the land of Hobbits and Harry Potter and Darwinian fairy tales" this is something of an anticlimax."

I think if you search back you will find that my hyperbole, or my witty, incisive imagery, as I like to think of it, was confined to the dafter propositions of Dr. Dawkins in respect of 'little green globules controlling us human robots'! I have never disputed that we are probably all descended from the same original living organisms. My argument has always been that Darwin's theory, whilst it explains what every horse-breeder has known for centuries, that micro-evolution takes place *within* species, fails to offer a convincing explanation for the creation of completely new species.

So far I have deliberately avoided going into detail on exactly what is meant by "natural selection". Darwin refused to publish for years because he could not think of the mechanism by which natural selection could operate. Then he stumbled over Malthus and his theory on populations expanding beyond the available food supply. Bingo! That was the clincher for Darwin. Unfortunately, Malthus's theories have been proved wrong so Darwin's theory is left bereft.

I would remind you of Willis's findings in which large, old species live side by side with new, small species. So what brought about the new species if the old one is doing just fine, thank you very much? And if the changes are tiny, then surely they will continue to mate with each other which does not favour the new change.

'There are more things in heaven and earth, Larry,/ Than are dreamt of in your philosophy' - or Dr. Dawkins's either, come to that!

[Hilary Wade]

You could draw a figurative comparison here with the ongoing debate among investors, as to whether the daily prices on the stock market are subject to change in small, random, independent shifts to give a sort of classical Brownian motion, or whether it is better to talk about models involving fractals and "fat tails" that throw up more frequent crashes and booms.

The question isn't settled yet. But nobody is disputing that changes in price are fundamentally driven by changes in environment, according to mindless algorithms.

Surely this, this dependence on algorithm (and not the specifics of the mechanism of change)is Darwin's great insight.

[David Duff]

I'm struggling a bit here, Hilary, but if I understand you right your use of the word 'algorithm' in the biological sense means the constant reproduction that goes on. If so, I'm not sure that Darwin can claim a great insight in stating that it was a key factor in the variety of life forms.

Also, I'm not sure that stock prices are a useful analogy here, either. They are very definitely subject to 'environmental' pressures like legal systems, central Banks, governments, etc. However, when two strands of DNA entwine at the microscopic level I'm not sure that they are too influenced by their 'environment' - except possibly radiation - as they exchange their reams of information.

What I *think* Bird is suggesting is that there is a pattern in mathematics to which the DNA is irrevocably subject. I would recommend another book with a similar theme, "Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another" by Philip Ball, Random House, 2003. This is an attempt to deduce the laws of physics and mathematics that apply to the behaviour of humans 'en masse'. Heavy going for me but I can sort of see where he's heading.

[Hilary Wade]

There's a much better definition of "algorithm" than anything I can do in "Darwin's Dangerous Idea," (Daniel Dennett, can't remember the publisher). Dennett's a philosopher with an interest in artificial intelligence. He's also an educated American which gives him something of an aversion to God generally, thanks to the rabid anti-evolutionists they get over there, but if you can make allowances for that, he's a very lucid writer indeed.

Haven't read the book you recommend. I'll keep an eye open, but am quite relaxed anyhow about the idea that some biological designs should be more resilient to mutation than others. After all the crocodile and the shark are still with us, they've never needed to change.

...They're the biological equivalent of brewery shares.

[David Duff]

Again, I am using this conversation to try and clarify my own confused thoughts but it seems to me that this theory of iteration of non-linear equations means, in plain English, that the results are stable and even forcastable for enormously long runs but eventually they will suddenly go off the rails, the problem being that no-one can forecast exactly when or in which direction. This proves that, as in sex, drumming and stock markets, timing is everything - as I know to my cost in two out of those three!

[ion]

David Duff flatters me, for I'm but an amateur evolutionist and not necessarily hidebound. In fact, for ideological reasons I resisted for many years the force of sexual selection in evolution. DD is still making an argument from incredulity, perhaps finding it difficult to get his head around geological and cosmological time or to understand that for most of evolutionary time inter-generational periods have been much shorter than ours (humans'). I do appreciate the injection of maths however- think you're getting at stochastic processes. And if we could but name and quantify all the relevant variables... These would not include G*d's intervention but might include some of the interplay between genes and developmental form.

[David Duff]

No, Ion, I'm not making an argument from incredulity although I confess that that is where I first began to doubt, but I am repeating Bird's (and others') argument from mathematics. *They* say the sums just do not add up, there simply wasn't enough time, something else was at work. Look again (above) at the time needed just to get amino acids in the right order to make a protein.

[ion]

Oh dear- you're shifting ground. So now replicative proteins are unthinkable except by divine provenance. And I thought you were getting it. I don't waste my time reading the likes of Graham Hancock except for amusement, and I haven't read the references you cite. What is truly mind-blowing is that life could have come about by random processes operating under natural laws. Imagine that!

[David Duff]

Ion, I'm surprised at you! I'm *not* saying "replicative proteins are unthinkable except by divine provenance", or anything like it. I am repeating Bird's (and others) opinion that they could not have come about by tiny, step-by-step incrementals because there simply isn't enough time. However, if you think of the constant twinning of the seperate strands of DNA that takes place in reproduction as an iteration of a non-linear equation then, according to 'chaos theory', very sudden, fast and strange effects will arise, 'apparently' (but only 'apparently' to those who are not mathematicians!) out of the blue. This is their explanation for the diversity of phyla and it has nothing to do with the micro-evolution *within* species, nor does it suppose a God - unless you think of God as a supra-natural mathematician, rather like our very own Dr. Teabag!

[Larry Teabag]

"...unless you think of God as a supra-natural mathematician, rather like our very own Dr. Teabag!"

Thank you David. God is indeed made in my image, despite rumours to the converse.