Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 197

New! Speakers/topics for the Linnean Society’s meeting on teleonomy vs. teleology, May 28 and 29 online

Program and abstracts here:

Evolution ‘On Purpose’:
Teleonomy in Living Systems
Monday 28th and Tuesday 29th June 2021
2 Day Online International Meeting Organised by
The Linnean Society of London

Register here.

Although it is now widely accepted that living systems exhibit an evolved purposiveness, or teleonomy, the theoretical implications of this distinctive biological property have yet to be fully explored. Here I will briefly discuss the origins and history of the concept, along with its scope and meaning and some of its many forms and facets. I will also attempt to clarify the often-misunderstood concept of natural selection. However, I will focus especially on the causal role of purposeful behaviors in shaping natural selection, and on how teleonomy and functional synergy (combined or co-operative effects of various kinds) have together influenced the rise of biological complexity in the natural world. An important example is the evolution of humankind, which the zoologist Jonathan Kingdon, in his book-length treatment of the subject, characterized as the “Self-Made Man.”

The lineup includes faves like Eva Jablonka, Stuart A Kauffman, Eugene Koonin, James Shapiro, and others we should doubtless know better.

This sounds like the best thing since that 2016 meet, the Royal Society: Public Evolution Summit.

How about this, for example: Denis Walsh on Teleophobia:

ABSTRACT: Teleology—the explanation of phenomena by appeal to the goals that they subserve— is widely thought to have been expunged from biology. The reasons generally offered for the putative banishment of teleology are numerous and varied—historical, conceptual, theoretical, metaphysical—and they are all wrong. There is no defensible reason for the teleophobia that holds contemporary biology in its grip. Furthermore, teleophobia has had a demonstratively deleterious effect on the development of evolutionary theory. It has aided and abetted the marginalisation of organisms from evolutionary thinking. Organisms, I argue, are natural purposes. The pursuit of organismal purposes makes a difference to the dynamics of evolution that can only be fully explained teleologically. Teleology must thus form an indispensable part of the evolutionary biologist’s methodological toolkit.

Come to think of it, how come every life form avoids or flees predators but life as a whole is not supposed to show any sense of purpose?

Um… Can we TALK about this?

See also: Linnean Society is sponsoring a meeting on teleonomy in living systems 28th – 29th June 2021. Linneans: “Although it is now widely accepted that living systems exhibit an internal teleology, or teleonomy, the full implications of this distinctive biological property have yet to be explored.” Are the Linneans trying to come to grips with design in nature within a framework they can handle?

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At Mind Matters News: Clarity about life that some demented people experience just before dying

The phenomenon of terminal lucidity first attracted attention when it appeared among people who were cognitively challenged or demented (because otherwise, it might not have been noticed):

There is no current medical explanation for the phenomenon:

In essence, terminal lucidity is a mysterious flash of life and vitality that occurs in people just before they die. It’s most remarkable in people who have dementia, Alzheimer’s, meningitis, brain damage, strokes or were in a coma. There’s no known medical explanation for where this sudden surge of vitality and functionality comes from. In large part because as suddenly as it comes, within a few hours or even a day or two, it fades and the person dies, taking any answers with them.

ZARON BURNETT, “TERMINAL LUCIDITY: THE RESEARCHERS ATTEMPTING TO PROVE YOUR MIND LIVES ON EVEN AFTER YOU DIE” AT MEDIUM/MEL MAGAZINE (SEPTEMBER 26, 2018)

One researcher of such experiences, University of Vienna cognitive scientist professor Alexander Batthyány, holds the Viktor Frankl Chair of Philosophy, Psychology, at the University of Liechtenstein. He became interested in near-death phenomena through his contact with Frankl, a mid-twentieth century psychiatrist and Auschwitz survivor who stressed the importance of meaning in life, via a clinical approach called logotherapy. Batthyány finds it hard to account for terminal lucidity in terms of the “adaptation for survival” of a human animal:

“What we observe with near-death experiences is that they’re enormously ordered, structured, clear thinking and very elaborate experiences. Which, evolutionarily speaking, they’re not very adaptive, yeah? Quite on the contrary. A near-death experience keeps a person much more peaceful than perhaps they should be when they’re defending against an aggressor like death.”

ZARON BURNETT, “TERMINAL LUCIDITY: THE RESEARCHERS ATTEMPTING TO PROVE YOUR MIND LIVES ON EVEN AFTER YOU DIE” AT MEDIUM/MEL MAGAZINE (SEPTEMBER 26, 2018)

Takehome:

While no medical cause is currently known, understanding how dementia can suddenly reverse itself may help us treat it when it first begins to appear.

News, “Do people suddenly gain clarity about life just before dying?” at Mind Matters News

See also: Your mind vs. your brain: Ten things to know

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Cornelius Hunter responds to Sabine Hossenfelder’s claim that there is no free will

Readers may remember Sabine Hossenfelder’s essay and blog against free will:

Here’s Cornelius Hunter’s video response:

Hossenfelder and Why Determinism is Important: Determinists such as theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder claim that “the whole story of the universe in every single detail was determined already at the big bang. We are just watching if play out.” While that may seem unlikely, what is important is that they claim this is an undeniable truth. This is no scientific hypothesis and this video shows why this claim is false.

Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

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We’re NOT claiming that the collapse of Darwin’s Arch in the Galapagos is some kind of a’ symbol

We just say that life imitates art imitating life. Anyway:

The famous rock formation off the Galapagos Islands known as Darwin’s Arch has collapsed due to “natural erosion,” the Ecuadoran Ministry of Environment has announced.

“The collapse of Darwin’s Arch, the attractive natural bridge found less than a kilometre from the main area of Darwin Island, was reported,” the ministry said in a statement.

“Darwin’s Arch rock formation off Galapagos collapses” at Radio Television Ireland (May 18, 2021)

This one shows what it looked like earlier:

Hat tip: Ken Francis, co-author with Theodore Dalrymple of The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd

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Tigers, lions, ligers … what’s the future? From the hybridization files

The future is probably more of the same. In reply to the reader who wondered the other day if ligers (lion plus tiger) can breed and produce offspring, the answer is yes. The results give rise to big kitties with a horde of odd names to describe the crosses: ti-tigon, ti-liger (tig-liger), li-tigon, li-liger

From Messy Beast:

Female tigons and ligers are often fertile and can mate with a lion, tiger or in theory with another species such as leopard or jaguar. Tigers and ligers have been mated together to produce ti-ligers (tig-ligers). Tigers and tigons have been mated to produce ti-tigons (below). Ti-ligers and ti-tigons are more tigerlike (75% tiger). Ti-tigons resemble golden tigers but with less contrast in their markings. Lions and ligers have been mated together to produce li-ligers. Lions and tigons have been mated to produce li-tigons. These hybrids are more lion-like (75% lion). (See also Backcrossing for information.)

Male hybrids are rarely, if ever, fertile even if they do display sexual behaviour. To date, all male ligers, tigons, ti-tigons and li-tigons investigated have apparently proven sterile. There are no authenticated liger x tigon, liger x liger or tigon x tigon hybrids. Theoretical offspring could be lion-like, tiger-like, liger-like or tigon-like, depending on what combination of genes they inherited. It is more likely that anecdotally reported offspring from supposed hybrid-to-hybrid matings actually resulted from unobserved additional matings of a hybrid female with a pure-bred lion or tiger.”

So it’s the girls keeping the thing going.

See also: Hybridization is much more common and normal among animals than once thought

and

The “sturdlefish” is the offspring of sturgeon and paddlefish—separated by 184 million years’ evolution

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This California story shows what a mess the whole concept of speciation is in

Reading it is most instructive so here goes: A small grey songbird, the coastal California gnatcatcher has been “ the epicenter of a legal brawl for nearly 28 years” since it was listed under the Endangered Species Act in the U.S.:

Some relevant facts:

Found along the Baja California coast, from down south in El Rosario, Mexico to Long Beach, Calif., its natural habitat is the rapidly declining coastal sagebrush that occupies prime, pristine real estate along the West Coast. When this particular gnatcatcher, Polioptila californica, was granted protection, the region’s real estate developers went to court to get it delisted.

Central to their argument, which was dismissed in a federal court, was whether it was an independent species or just another population of a more widely found gnatcatcher. This distinction would dictate its threatened status. Evolutionary biologists have developed a new approach to genomic species delineation that improves upon current methods and could impact similar policy in the future.

This approach is based on the fact that in many groups of organisms it can be problematic to decide where one species begins and another ends.

“In the past, when it was challenging to distinguish species based on external characters, scientists relied on approaches that diagnosed signatures in the genome to identify ‘breaks’ or ‘structure’ in gene flow indicative of population separation. The problem is this method doesn’t distinguish between two populations separated geographically versus two populations being two different species,” said Jeet Sukumaran, computational evolutionary biologist at San Diego State University and lead author of a study published May 13 in PlOS Computational Biology.

“Our method, DELINEATE, introduces a way to distinguish between these two factors, which is important because most of the natural resources management policy and legislature in our society rests on clearly defined and named species units.”

San Diego State University, “A new approach to identify genetic boundaries of species could also impact policy” at ScienceDaily

Many issues are worth raising, including whether “species” is a clear enough concept to warrant being a measure, as opposed to, say, role in an ecology. When is it wise to intervene to preserve something? Goals driven by passions are often misguided and wasteful.

The main point to glean from all this is that “speciation” may be — at best — a fluid concept and at worst, a talking point intended to drive Darwinism home. Reasonable conservation causes are not well served by this stuff. They may — understandably — alienate the public.

The paper is open access.

See also: A physicist looks at biology’s problem of “speciation” in humans

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Weird science news you need for sanity

The world is too crazy for the bad guys to figure it all out:

Mammals can breath through their intenstines:

Researchers show that both mice and pigs are capable of oxygenating their blood via the colon—a capacity that, if shared by humans, could be leveraged in the clinic to minimize the need for mechanical ventilation …

In a study published today (May 14) in Med, researchers present an alternative oxygenation route: through the anus. They introduced oxygen in either gas or liquid form to the intestines of both mice and pigs that had experienced asphyxia or low-oxygen conditions and showed that the animals survived much longer than did those without the treatment.

Abby Olena, “Mammals Can Use Their Intestines to Breathe” at The Scientist

So the discovery could even be useful in the fight against COVID-19.

The paper is open access.

Severed sea squirt can regrow as three new animals:

“This is a novel result, and it opens new areas . . . for people to look at a number of different ascidians going forward,” says William Jeffery, a developmental biologist at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the current study. Jeffery has spent many years using Ciona to study regeneration, and after so long, he adds, “it was surprising to see that a solitary [species] would regenerate in the way it did.”

Amanda Heidt, “When Severed, This Solitary Tunicate Regrows as Three New Animals” at The Scientist

The paper is open access.

The researchers theorize that squirt Ciona is evolving into a colonial organism, hence the lack of individuality. We shall see. Maybe our classification systems re too rigid for these types of life forms.

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Stephen Hawking was actually overdue for a critical look

It would have been more constructive, had it happened in Stephen Hawking’s lifetime (1942–2018). Here’s an interview by physicist Brian Keating with journo prof Charles Seife, the author of Hawking Hawking: The Selling of a Scientific Celebrity (2021):

Seife, at his site, says,

When Stephen Hawking died, he was widely recognized as the world’s best physicist, and even its smartest person.

He was neither.

In Hawking Hawking, science journalist Charles Seife explores how Stephen Hawking came to be thought of as humanity’s greatest genius. Hawking spent his career grappling with deep questions in physics, but his renown didn’t rest on his science. He was a master of self-promotion, hosting parties for time travelers, declaring victory over problems he had not solved, and wooing billionaires. In a wheelchair and physically dependent on a cadre of devotees, Hawking still managed to captivate the people around him—and use them for his own purposes.

David Klinghoffer reasonably notes,

As Keating and Seife discuss, much of his fame, too, stemmed from efforts to disprove that God was needed either to account for the Big Bang that brought the universe into existence or to account for the physical laws that govern the cosmos.

David Klinghoffer, ““Anti-Hagiography”: A Critical Look at Stephen Hawking” at Evolution News and Science Today (May 8, 2021)

Hawking’s celebrity made it really difficult to discuss those issues in a forum where both sides were fairly represented.

There’s also the question (yes, it must be raised) of how much of it all was really Hawking’s work anyway: See: String Theory Skeptic Peter Woit Reflects On Stephen Hawking

Anyway, that era is over, it now seems.

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Jordan Peterson on consciousness – the hard problem on which materialism is wrecking itself

In interview with Ian McGilchrist:

(Starts at 31:51)

Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, author, thinker, and lecturer. He is maybe best known for his book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

Dr. Iain McGilchrist and I discussed a variety of topics relating to the bifurcated brain, how we process reality as human beings, and the downfalls of the views that have shaped western culture according to McGilchrist.

As for Jordan Peterson, the Woke crybullies have not silenced him.

Hat tip: Karsten Pultz

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Weirder: Dinoflagellate genes all point the same way

Turns out, they are even less like other eukaryote genomes:

A striking finding was that the genes in the genome tended to be organized in alternating unidirectional blocks. “That’s really, really different to what you see in other organisms,” says Octavio Salazar, a postdoc in Manuel Aranda’s group at KAUST and one of the lead authors of the study. The orientation of genes on a chromosome is usually random. In this case, however, genes were consistently oriented one way and then the other, with the boundaries between blocks showing up clearly in the chromatin interaction data.

This organization is also reflected in the three-dimensional structure of the genome, which the team inferred comprises rod-shaped chromosomes that fold into structural domains at the boundaries where gene blocks converge. Even more intriguingly, this structure appears to be dependent on transcriptional activity. When the researchers treated cells with a chemical that blocks gene transcription, the structural domains disappeared.

This unusual link is consistent with another strange fact about dinoflagellates — they have very few transcription factors in their genome and do not seem to respond to environmental changes by altering gene expression. They may use gene dosage to control expression and adapt to the environment by losing or gaining chromosomes or perhaps via epigenetic structural modifications. The researchers plan to explore all of these questions.

Octavio Salazar, “Coral symbionts have a genome like no other” at KAUST Discovery (April 29, 2021)

The paper is open access.

So how did all this originate randomly, different from what all the other life forms do — and still work?

See also: Dinoflagellate genome structure is unique. So, in other words, these plankton evolved (randomly, so we are told) a highly successful genome that’s entirely different from the type that most life forms have. Well, if you are skeptical of Darwinian claims that it all happened randomly but just once, how about (at least) twice?

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