From: Chris Taylor (chris.taylor@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Fri 28 Oct 2005 - 09:25:59 GMT
Hiya.
>>God? Intelligence? What's all this about then?
>
> Intelligence is integral to evolution. While many adaptations may very well
> result from spontaneous mutation, in general if a species alters its
> behavior and ultimately its form to better fit a given environmental niche,
> this results from the will and the intelligence of individual organisms
> making decisions that will improve their lives.
>
> evolution becomes a purely mechanical process involving mutation and natural
> selection, leaving no room for will and intelligence, the hallmarks of life.
> Reductionism substitutes life with organic machinery and tries to explain
> that instead.
I just don't see the problem tbh. What is it that cannot
currently be explained? What requires more than the standard
model of the generation of novelty (mostly by recombination with
a tiny, geological-timescale contribution from changes in
methylation, and mutation) and selection acting on that?
> How does the cell know which types of glycoproteins to produce? How does it
> avoid making the wrong types? How much information would have to be encoded
> in its genes in order to ensure that it makes the right decision? Given the
> vast number of possible mistakes, wouldn't the cell's genome have to store
> vast amounts of information? Could all that information really fit in
> there? Keep in mind the cell has to do a lot of other things besides
> combining sugars and proteins.
Okay, I'm sure you know this but anyway... Enzymes work almost
exclusively on shape. Often they'll have two stable
conformations, corresponding in a sense to the before and after
of the reaction they catalyse (i.e. the active site changes from
the 'impression' or counter-shape or anti-shape or complement or
whatever of the before shape in the acted-on molecule(s) to the
'impression' of the after shape. Therefore they are _very_
specific in the reaction they can catalyse and this is what
massively reduces the range of available glycoproteins. To
access that huge potential variety, you would need an
equivalently heee-uge set of enzymes.
Basically there is one small set of genes that encode enzymes
that produce a basic glyco complex (this is evolutionarily
extremely ancient) and this is then ornamented in one of a small
set of very specific ways (for example the blood types). The
vast array of 'possible' glyco structures is just plain
inaccessible to us. It is a little like navigating through a
city by street names when you only know a handful of them and
you always start from the same place. There is only a limited
number of places you can get to, regardless of the number of
places that there are.
> The only reason to assume genetic reductionism is the belief that no other
> options are conceivable within a scientific framework. This is where
> memetics enters the picture. We might call it the transubstantiation meme,
> wherein one substance-- a chromosome-- substitutes for the man, much as a
> wafer substitutes for the Son of Man. To deny genetic transubstantiation is
> as unthinkable for a reductionist as the denial of communion would be for a
> Catholic.
Nope. Just Occam again... We are not in awe of genetics. It is
though demonstrably key to a whole load of stuff -- there is no
future for the denucleated cell! If there was a clear-cut case
where the available biology just could not conceivably explain
what is there, then any sensible scientist would put the razor
away and go into open-minded mode.
> Indeed, there are numerous parallels between the Christian meme and the
> reductionist-science meme. Determinism, which originally held a theological
> connotation, is essentially another word for creationism. Instead of God
> creating species, a combination of mutation and selection determines it.
> Part of the allure of genetic engineering is that it provides us with the
> godlike power of making new species. Instead of the millenium we have "the
> future," a magical time that never quite arrives in which all reductionist
> assumptions are at last bolstered with the kind of hard evidence so
> conspicuously lacking at the present.
I just don't see the world this way! I take the point about
_some_ folks being of a mindset that causes them to latch on to
the most significant thing in the scientific canon and trying to
explain everything with it, but that is just short-sighted. For
example, maternal effects are not explained by gene _sequence_;
they are though adequately explained by a combination of
methylation and the internal environment of the egg cell. Again
I have to say that I don't see what it is that (in biology) we
can't (at least partially) explain at present (with no 'fear' of
the gaps). The lack of all the pieces for a jigsaw does not mean
that one is wrong to think that it is a jigsaw in the first
place, just that one needs to have a more intensive root down
the back of the sofa.
>>The point being that genes were never in blueprint form. They
>>are the brain of the cell, not the bauplan.
>
> Clearly, a blueprint requires a brain to interpret it. This is part of the
> problem of genetic reductionism. Genome is both information and the program
> that manipulates it. What you really mean to say is that the genome is a
> computer. Yet a computer is a human artifact. Again, we're theorizing life
> not according to nature but according to our own artifice, which we project
> onto the organism, casting it in our own image as God molds us in His.
Nah I'm afraid you are taking this in the wrong direction. The
fundamental misconception here (and this relates to the Hoyle's
fallacy thing also) is that there is a moment of creation. The
genome clearly does take part in computation, literally, not
just figuratively, but as an inseparable part of the cell, just
as the brain is an inseperable part of the body. There is never
a 'make the cell from scratch' step the way there is for a human
artefact; cells divide and that is all, they never _create_
other cells. Organisms are classical Von Neumann machines, but
for that system to work you have to have one to start with! This
is why the genome (and the rest of the cell) being both
performer and subject of calculation is not a problem; there is
no 'start' to the process to contend with.
And at the risk of provoking you back into the 'no matter what
you say I just don't believe you' absolutism of a few months
ago, I still fail to see what it is that requires that we invoke
additional mechanisms? All of life could be a simulation in some
alien ubercomputer, but there is no utility in supposing that,
because nothing requires it and it adds nothing.
Cheers, Chris.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
chris.taylor@ebi.ac.uk
http://psidev.sf.net/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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