Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 185

How axolotls regenerate their spinal cords and limbs

Isn’t this intelligent design?:

While scientists have known what happened after the first 4 days when an axolotl lost a tail and began to regrow its spinal cord, they haven’t known what happens in that first few days. To better understand this they created a computer model of what they thought was happening and then validated that by developing a tool to track individual stem cells in actual animals regrowing their spinal cords (see above). What they found was that a mystery messenger molecule (that they have yet to identify), synchronizes all of the neural stem cells into the same state of cell division. This is quite different as normally these cells divide randomly. These synchronized neural stem cells then divide rapidly in concert as the spinal cord regrows. The researchers have high hopes that using a similar molecule in a human spinal cord could help develop better treatments for spinal cord repair.

The upshot? We are closing in discovering all of the tricks of the trade that axolotls use to regrow limbs and other body parts. Once we know all of them, there could come a day that a drug is developed that we could sprinkle on an amputated limb or spinal cord and that regrows a new one!

Chris Centeno, “How Axolotls Repair a Spinal Cord” at Regenexx (June 23, 2021)

We need to learn how to do this stuff.

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If you are not a materialist, there is no problem with understanding consciousness

Psychiatrist Joseph LeDoux, author of The Deep History of Ourselves (2019), offers an extract, musing on the mystery of consciousness. In a way, his approach typifies what is wrong with the wholly materialist approach to the mind and the brain:

Like all living things, humans are organisms, biological entities that function as physiological aggregates whose constituent parts operate with a high degree of cooperation and a low degree of conflict. But unlike other organisms, humans possess a rogue component – a brain network that can, at will, choose to defect and undermine the survival mission and purpose of the rest of the body. This is the network that underlies human consciousness, and especially our capacity for autonoetic, or reflective, self-awareness, the basis of the conceptions that underlie our greatest achievements as a species – art, music, architecture, literature, science – and our ability to appreciate them.

Joseph LeDoux, “Can our self-conscious minds save us from our selfish selves?” at Aeon (September 4, 2019)

So what makes us explicitly human is merely a “rogue component”? Well, “rogue” according to whom? – News, “Consciousness is mainly a problem for materialists” at Mind Matters News

At some point, shouldn’t some of us help these people find their way to a picnic table? Why are human distinctives denied or treated dismissively?

Takehome: Consciousness is like eyesight. It is simply your awareness of the real, bigger world. But materialists have a hard problem with that.

You may also wish to read:

Science journalist: No hype. Consciousness is a HARD problem! Michael Hanson reflected on the many futile efforts to “solve” consciousness. Perhaps accepting the fact that the mind is immaterial may convert the problem from intractable to difficult but solvable in principle.

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John Horgan: Science should not try to absorb religion – and Jerry Coyne’s reply

John Horgan at Scientific American:

Ironically, Wilson himself questioned the desirability of final knowledge early in his career. At the end of his 1975 masterpiece Sociobiology, Wilson anticipates the themes of Consilience, predicting that evolutionary theory plus genetics will soon absorb the social sciences and humanities. But Wilson doesn’t exult at this prospect. When we can explain ourselves in “mechanistic terms,” he warns, “the result might be hard to accept”; we might find ourselves, as Camus put it, “divested of illusions.”

Wilson needn’t have worried. Scientific omniscience looks less likely than ever, and humans are far too diverse, creative and contrary to settle for a single worldview of any kind. Inspired by mysticism and the arts, as well as by science, we will keep arguing about who we are and reinventing ourselves forever. Is consilience a bad idea, which we’d be better off without? I wouldn’t go that far. Like utopia, another byproduct of our yearning for perfection, consilience, the dream of total knowledge, can serve as a useful goad to the imagination, as long as we see it as an unreachable ideal. Let’s just hope we never think we’ve reached it.

John Horgan, “Science Should Not Try to Absorb Religion and Other Ways of Knowing” at Scientific American (June 25, 2021)

And now Coyne:

Since my views on the ambit of science (construed broadly) have been set out in the exchange with Gopnik, I won’t repeat my arguments here, but I deny Horgan’s claim that there are “ways of knowing” about the cosmos that do not employ the empirical toolkit of science. (See also pp. 185-196 in my book Faith Versus Fact.).

But I do agree with Horgan that the Grand Project to subsume art, literature, philosophy and morality completely into the “harder” sciences is futile. The thing is, hardly any scientist I know agrees with Wilson or with Horgan’s characterization. Yes, Sam Harris does think that science can determine what is right and wrong to do, but few agree with him about that (I dissent as well). And even the most “scientistic” scholar I know, Steve Pinker, doesn’t entertain the notion that full consilience is feasible.

Jerry Coyne, “John Horgan makes a strawman argument against consilience” at Why Evolution Is True (June 27, 2021)

I (O’Leary for News) wouldn’t trust either of these people to run the transit system if I need to get to church on time.

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Günter Bechly’s remarkable journey

As told by David Klinghoffer:

Paleontologist Günter Bechly debated about intelligent design recently with computational biologist Joshua Swamidass — don’t miss that one — and now has a very interesting conversation with Marco Respinti of the Italian ID group, Centro Italiano per l’Intelligent Design. Dr. Bechly explains his change of mind about design in nature and what it cost him professionally as a curator at the State Museum for Natural History in Stuttgart.

As he says here, the evidence for ID, as he sees it, is “cumulative.” Meaning, I think, that there isn’t one single piece of evidence that clinched the case. Rather, the summation of evidence across a number of fields, including his own, is what persuaded him. Having opened his mind to the possibility of design, he saw it everywhere.

Bechly stresses that his view is motivated solely by scientific considerations. Yet colleagues at his institution tarred him as a “creationist,” made his work there impossible, and he ultimately resigned. He had thought that free speech still counted for something in Germany, even if it was threatened in the United States. Wikipedia sought to make him a nonperson, too, by erasing his entry.

David Klinghoffer, “To an Italian ID Group, Günter Bechly Explains His Remarkable Journey” at Evolution News and Science Today (June 28, 2021)

Basically, as the great American short story writer Flannery O’Connor put it, “Everything that rises must converge.”

See also: When You Disappear From Wikipedia Is When You Matter, Apparently

Here’s Bechly and Saamidass:

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When Woke invades science…

Don’t forget, Woke used to just be stupid Lit stuff. Now it is biting deep. Into medicine, for example:

A few clicks away from the homepage of Harvard’s prestigious medical school, one finds among their “anti-racism initiatives” the following: “We will develop new classes for master’s and PhD students to acknowledge the ways in which racism is embedded in science.” What in the world does it even mean to say that racism is “embedded” in science? It has been pursued, certainly, by flawed people—but science is the pursuit of universal truth. It cannot itself be racist. At best, such classes will simply be a waste of time. At worst, as the language above suggests, they will attempt to indoctrinate students by teaching them that they, and the medicine they practice, are inherently racist.

Christopher Sanfilippo, “Is Harvard Sacrificing Science for Wokeness?” at RealClearScience (June 30, 2021)

Sadly, cancer isn’t racist. Nor is Alzheimer syndrome. They can’t be fought by rallies or civil disobedience, which we could all just do. Not just anyone who cares can be a science researcher. A war on math, for example, as “white supremacy” will simply prevent progress.

Anyway, just to be clear, it is a war on numeracy as well as literacy.

Prediction: Science will pass into the hands of people where illiteracy and innumeracy are not happening. Try China.

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Experts are still skeptical of claims for Dragon Man

Put this way, it sounds like the opening of a novel:

The first paper describes the history and features of the skull, known as the Harbin cranium, which was donated to the Geoscience Museum at China’s Hebei GEO University in 2018. What happened before that is speculative, but Ni tells The Scientist that the leading story is that the cranium was first discovered in 1933 by a Chinese laborer under contract with occupying Japanese soldiers during the World War II. Japanese troops were overseeing the construction of a bridge over the Songhua River, part of a river system known as the Lóng Jiāng, or Dragon River, near Harbin City in northern China, when the worker discovered the skull. He secreted it away, hiding it in an abandoned well, where it remained for roughly 90 years. It was only shortly before his death in 2018 that he revealed the secret to his family, who recovered the fossil and offered it to the museum for study.

Almost none of this story can be independently verified, and the paucity of detail, especially where the skull was found, makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions on everything from the fossil’s age to its relationship to other specimens in China, according to Michael Petraglia, a professor of human evolution and prehistory at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, who wasn’t involved in the study. “Context is primary. It’s a big problem, actually, to find a fossil, any kind of fossil, without context,” he says, adding, “I do think that they’ve done the best they can given the circumstances that they have.”

Amanda Heidt, ““Dragon Man” May Replace Neanderthal as Our Closest Relative” at The Scientist (Jun 25, 2021)

Here’s a thought experiment: Suppose we never believed that there were any human “species” at all. Why would a guy with a big head matter so much?

Okay, Dragon Man: From the Smithsonian Magazine on newly unearthed Dragon Man (homo longi)

Much of the text is the usual interminable ingroup squabble among Darwinians about “human speciation” but we do learn things of interest: “The Dragon Man appears to be a 50-something male who was likely a very large and powerful individual. The authors suggest his small hunter-gatherer community settled on a forested floodplain in a Middle Pleistocene environment that could be harsh and quite cold.”

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Remember that Linnean Society conference, Teleonomy vs. Teleology?

It’s actually called “Evolution ‘on purpose’: Teleonomy in living systems”
Comments from the virtual meeting available here. Also.

Some friends, virtually attending, say that the real purpose is to assume the language of purpose in nature while denying any purpose.

What they cannot any longer deny, they will reprocess.

See also: At Oscillations: Information on the Linnean Society Virtual Meeting (June 28–29) Oscillations is science writer Suzan Mazur’s blog. Mazur draws attention to the Linnean Society’s virtual conference, Evolution ‘On Purpose’: Teleonomy in Living Systems: “Living systems exhibit an internal teleology, the full implications of which have not been explored. This meeting will address various aspects of this phenomenon, including its scope and meaning, and its many forms and facets.”

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National Academy of Sciences ejects evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala

Other ejections are pending but meanwhile:

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has expelled evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala from its ranks 3 years after he was found to have sexually harassed women colleagues. Ayala, who resigned from the University of California (UC), Irvine, in 2018 after a university investigation found him guilty of sexual harassment, is the second member NAS has ousted over sexual harassment allegations since the organization revised its bylaws 2 years ago to allow members to be removed if they violate its code of conduct…

Both Ayala and Verma have also been named as Fellows of AAAS (which publishes Science). But the organization stripped both scientists of that honor last year after adopting a new policy for ejecting harassers in 2018.

In April, Science learned that NAS had received a complaint of sexual harassment against a fifth NAS member, whose name was not disclosed. “I’m looking forward to hearing decisions on those cases,” Ipek says.

Rodrigo Pérez Ortega, “National Academy of Sciences ejects biologist Francisco Ayala in the wake of sexual harassment findings” at Science

Hmmm. From back in the day when ideas mattered (but the person sponsoring them, not so much):

Templeton Prize-Winning Darwinist Francisco Ayala Offers To Explain, “Am I A Monkey?” (2011)

But then much more recently:

Francisco Ayala Has Stepped Down In Sexual Harassment Controversy At University Of California Irvine (2018)

One wonders how Newton or Einstein would have fared.

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Bret Weinstein has been demonetized by “FaceTube”

No, not a typo: Facebook and Youtube are not much different, really.

Facebook dumped Bret Weinstein and now YouTube has demonetized him:

Weinstein, whatever you may think about his enthusiasm for… Darwinism, was serious as a biology teacher at Evergreen State. And here’s what happened when he confronted the Raging Woke about one of their pro-illiteracy demands:

Weinstein didn’t realize that atheism today means illiteracy, innumeracy, and total control by the biggest totalitarian power — with no appeal. 2 + 2 better make 5. Atheism has no values to defend. Literacy and numeracy is just an accident.

Maybe Weinstein wouldn’t be an atheist if he understood the stakes more clearly.

See also: Yes, there really is a war on math in our schools. Pundits differ as to the causes but here are some facts parents should know.

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At Oscillations: Information on the Linnean Society Virtual Meeting (June 28–29)

Oscillations is science writer Suzan Mazur’s blog. Mazur draws attention to the Linnean Society’s virtual conference, Evolution ‘On Purpose’: Teleonomy in Living Systems: “Living systems exhibit an internal teleology, the full implications of which have not been explored. This meeting will address various aspects of this phenomenon, including its scope and meaning, and its many forms and facets.”

Anthropologist Maurice Bloch has suggested that human imagination arose 40,000 to 50,000 years ago during the upper Paleolithic revolution, that humans largely live in their reflective imagination, and that human “pretend play” is now evident as early as age six. But Bloch—who says imagination in the brain is “separate from perceived stimulus”—has not assigned a numbers range for other animals or for plants, fungi, microbes, or viruses. Perhaps the experts gathering June 28-29 online under the banner of the Linnean Society to discuss living systems will.

Suzan Mazur, “Mechanobiology/Atomic Biology Nexus: Natural Selection “Dispose[d] Of”” at Oscillations

It will be most interesting if the Linnaean virtual attendees propose to discuss “animal mind.”

Imagination, as noted, is definitely a separate thing from perceived stimulus because it refers to the recall of stimuli not present. For example, we imagine a hot cup of coffee when it is not available — until we make it or go out to the coffee shop.

That’s not only a human thing. In the early morning, dogs surely imagine what chewing the newspaper to pieces feels like long before it has fallen through the slot in the door.

But here’s a question: Which life forms experience such triggers (or don’t)? Is there a hierarchy or is it more scattered? Are neural correlates the same or different if/when they do?

Exploration of this area might help us understand mental phenomena better. In turn, greater understanding could help us determine vexed questions like animal suffering. For example, the question — under what circumstances is an animal really “suffering” — is important in developing reasonable humane legislation.

Mazur is also the author of Darwin Overthrown: Hello Mechanobiology She offers other interesting stuff in the same post at Oscillations, including excerpts from her interview with Oak Ridge National Laboratories scientist John Katsaras.

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