Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 511

March 12, 2019

A first: Solitary bees serve as stepdads

Male solitary bees (Ceratina nigrolabiata) who babysit larva are often not their dads: They act as a living door, letting only the female in, not ants:

When mom buzzes back with food, she scratches against the male’s rump, and he moves to allow her into the nest. Then he goes back to being a dad door, or rather, a stepdad door. In 265 nests sampled, only 29 percent of the babysitting males had fathered even one offspring that they were guarding, Mikát and colleagues report the week of March 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Susan Milius, “The first male bees spotted babysitting are mostly stepdads” at Science News

Those bees don’t sound like selfish gene-iuses. The explanation offered is that these stepdads are hanging around to mate with female offspring:

In terms of evolution, care for the offspring arises as a “side effect” of males looking to mate with a female while guarding her against rivals, Mikát says. Susan Milius, “The first male bees spotted babysitting are mostly stepdads” at Science News

Paper.

Sure, but note how the story has changed and gotten more complex. We are told, “This babysitting report is a first for bees,” by a researcher not involved in the study.

If this report is a first, we might want to go a bit light on the traditional Darwinism while more bees are researched. If people used to think males wouldn’t do this, they will realize that one can be mistaken; those who rush in with an easy traditional answer might be too.

One question comes to mind: For the males, competing for females who are present is cognitively easy. But how do they know about the females who are still larvae? Can they smell them? If not, the behavior seems to require a foresight that is beyond the known cognitive powers of the bee.

Follow UD News at Twitter!

See also: Replication failures of Darwinian sexual selection openly discussed at The Scientist

New book challenges sexual selection theory in evolution

and

Can sex explain evolution?

Copyright © 2019 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on March 12, 2019 14:52

Uses and misuses of the Anthropic Principle

This image represents the evolution of the Universe, starting with the Big Bang. The red arrow marks the flow of time.

Big Bang/NASA

Roughly, the Anthropic Principle means that any qualities we attribute to the universe must be consistent with the facts of our existence. Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel offers some examples of how the Principle has been fruitfully used but cautions,

Unfortunately, the Anthropic Principle has been grossly misinterpreted, and is often misapplied. Claims are common in the scientific literature today that the Anthropic Principle:

– supports a multiverse,

– provides evidence for the string landscape,

– demands that we have a large gas giant to protect us from asteroids,

– and explains why we’re located at the distance we are from the galactic center.

In other words, people argue that the Universe must be exactly as it is because we exist the way we do in this Universe, which exists with its presently observed properties.Ethan Siegel, “The Anthropic Principle Is What Scientists Use When They’ve Given Up On Science” at Forbes

He goes on to say that universes with quite different properties might have produced observers too. Maybe so but that’s science fiction.

He is surely mistaken in thinking that the Anthropic Principle motivates people to believe in a multiverse or a string landscape. Such beliefs exist comfortably without evidence; the evidence points to a coherently designed universe.

Theories multiply because the facts favor fine-tuning of the universe.

Any abyss will seem preferable to many theorists and many have been proposed. To the extent that evidence rears its ugly head, it sometimes triggers private wars on falsifiability as well. A fully naturalist universe will be one in which no one does or can do science.

Follow UD News at Twitter!

See also: Ethan Siegel tackles fine-tuning at Forbes

How naturalism rots science from the head down

and

What becomes of science when the evidence does not matter?

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on March 12, 2019 05:31

March 11, 2019

Should we look for patterns of life, not chemical signatures, on Mars?

A photo of one full lit side of Mars, showing the reddish brown color of its surface and a white spot on the southern side.

Mars/NASA

A science writer suggests that the search for life on Mars might include a search for evidence of processes associated with life, such as homochirality, “clustering” of molecular structures and masses, repeating molecular subunits, and differences between which isotope is preferred. A Martian life form might rely on a quite different metabolism from the ones found on Earth. All that said,

If life still exists, it’s most likely retreated far enough underground to be invisible to the type of orbiting instruments and rovers we’ve used to date. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Nor does the fact that so far we’ve not found any true signatures of ancient life provide much evidence that it didn’t exist. Even on Earth, traces of ancient life are rare and scattered.

If we someday find such traces, one of the mantras of science is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In the case of life on Mars, JPL’s Allwood says that this means that “every single biological hypothesis you can come up with” is going to have to be ruled out before it is accepted. No ifs, buts, or maybes. Evidence of life on Mars will need absolute proof. Richard A. Lovett, “Is there life on Mars? Let’s assess the evidence” at Cosmos Magazine

Was it Hugh Ross who said that if we find fossilized life on Mars, chances are, it’ll have come from Earth? That’s at least possible if life started very early when the planets were not as firm. But how frustrating for those looking for genuine non-Earth life…

Follow UD News at Twitter!

See also: Still another take on They’re Out There In one suggested version, they might be Out There but we are not smart enough to recognize them.

They’ll always be out there as long as people have imaginations

National Geographic announces: We Are Not Alone

Okay but now one question: If none of those 47 planets has life, does that count as evidence against the proposition that “We Are Not Alone”? Does anything count as evidence against the proposition?

and

Tales of an invented god

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on March 11, 2019 16:15

Still another take on They’re Out There

An illustration of a number of the different kinds of planets found by Kepler all lined up in a row.

types of planets Kepler found/NAA

They’re Out There seems really big just now. What’s another theory about why we never hear from them? How about, it wouldn’t really take that long to cross the galaxy. They could if they wanted to:

“The sun has been around the center of the Milky Way 50 times,” Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback, an astronomer at the University of Rochester and lead author of the study, said to Nautilus. “Stellar motions alone would get you the spread of life on time scales much shorter than the age of the galaxy.”Georgina Torbet, “Is the truth out there? New paper proposes solution to the Fermi paradox” at Digital Trends

In one suggested version, they might be Out There but we are not smart enough to recognize them:

“The click beetles in my backyard don’t notice that they’re surrounded by intelligent beings — namely my neighbors and me,” Fermi paradox expert Seth Shostak told Nautilus, “but we’re here, nonetheless.” Georgina Torbet, “Is the truth out there? New paper proposes solution to the Fermi paradox” at Digital Trends

Can’t argue with a proposition like that. Paper. (open access)

Follow UD News at Twitter!

See also: They’ll always be out there as long as people have imaginations

National Geographic announces: We Are Not Alone

and

Tales of an invented god

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on March 11, 2019 15:38

National Geographic announces: We Are Not Alone

When you click on the link from their promotional e-mail, the next page announces “IT’S ALMOST CERTAIN WE’RE NOT ALONE.”

Wait, we have gone from a definitive “We are not alone” to a waffling “It’s almost certain we’re not alone” in one simple click?

Alien tripod by Alvim Corréa, 1906 French edition of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds”

The question is no longer, is there life beyond Earth? It’s a pretty sure bet there is. The question now is, how do we find it? Earth supports life in part because its terrain is rocky, and it doesn’t receive too much solar radiation. Its distance from the sun allows water to be in a liquid state. So far, 47 exoplanets have been found that fit that profile. “We Are Not Alone” at National Geographic

Follow UD News at Twitter!

See also: They’ll always be out there as long as people have imaginations

How do we grapple with the idea that ET might not be out there?

and

Tales of an invented god

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on March 11, 2019 14:28

Viruses Devolve

The main thesis of Behe’s new book, Darwin Devolves, surrounds what Behe calls “poison-pill” mutations, which gives an organism a quick fix, but which can run the risk of being rendered incapable of utilizing future needed adaptations. IOW, breaking and blunting genes to adapt to new environments become changes that get locked in due to NS’ tendency to root out anything but what is the ‘fittest’ in any environment–and this can include even beneficial mutations being rooted out due to beneficial mutations being so rare and showing up way too late to modify the adapted organism.

So, today at Phys.Org there is a PR (press release) about a study involving viruses. It turns out that even at the level of viruses, the First Rule of Adaptative Evolution applies: a broken gene ends up being beneficial to the virus, allowing it to replicate itself when it has been rendered almost unable to do so by the host’s immune system.

From the PR:

But the researchers continued to culture the B1-free strain for multiple generations in the lab, then sequenced its entire genetic code to gauge how it evolved. They found that, over just a few days, the B1-free strain responded by deleting a single base pair – a fundamental component of DNA – while leaving nearly 200,000 others untouched. The seemingly miniscule loss corresponded with a 10-fold increase in the strain’s otherwise stunted replication.

As usual, the experimenters are “surprised”:

“We were expecting that the virus may adapt another gene to compensate,” said Wiebe, associate professor of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences. “What we found instead is that the virus adapted by inactivating another gene. It was as if, upon cutting one wire, the best way to fix the problem was to cut another wire.

Just think, if they had read Behe’s new book, they would not have been surprised at all.

Update:

In his book, Behe uses evidence showing that “devolution” occurs in bacteria and in eukaryotes. Now we can add viruses to the lot. I think this only adds to and strengthens his argument for his First Rule.

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on March 11, 2019 10:43

Researchers: Helpful gut microbes send messages to their hosts’ immune systems

structure of an animal cell/royroydeb (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Not to attack. The intestines are full of immune system cells but the helpful microbes manage to avoid the attacks:

Microscopic 3-D images of holdfasts from more than 200 individual bacteria cells revealed small bubbles, or vesicles, emerging from the hook’s sides and tips and budding off within the intestinal wall.

“This was something nobody had noticed before,” though researchers have studied segmented bacteria since the 1960s, Ivanov says. Chemical tests revealed that the vesicles, like delivery packages, contained the bacteria’s antigens — proteins that immune cells use to recognize a foreign body. Usually, antigens stimulate immune cells to attack and kill an invader. But in this case, although T cells were activated, they didn’t go after the bacteria.

“We’re maybe looking at some new biology,” perhaps a new way of communicating, Ivanov says. “I was not expecting to identify a new type of interaction,” … Jeremy Rehm, “How helpful gut microbes send signals that they are friends, not foes” at ScienceNews

Not expecting to identify “a new type of interaction?” But, doubtless, there are many others as well.

So much complex and specified information and yet we are expected to believe it all just happens due to natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism). That makes it difficult to anticipate information-based systems.

If the bacterial strategy is clearly identified, they should look for non-helpful microbes that have found a way to copy it (horizontal gene transfer?)

See also: Cells and proteins use sugars to talk to one another Cells are like Neanderthal man. They get smarter every time we run into them. And just think, it all just tumbled into existence by natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism) too…

Researchers: First animal cell was not simple; it could “transdifferentiate” From the paper: “… these analyses offer no support for the homology of sponge choanocytes and choanoflagellates, nor for the view that the first multicellular animals were simple balls of cells with limited capacity to differentiate.”

Follow UD News at Twitter!

“Interspecies communication” strategy between gut bacteria and mammalian hosts’ genes described

Researchers: Cells Have A Repair Crew That Fixes Local Leaks

Researchers: How The Immune System “Thinks”

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Researcher: Mathematics Sheds Light On “Unfathomably Complex” Cellular Thinking

How do cells in the body know where they are supposed to be?

Researchers A Kill Cancer Code Is Embedded in Every Cell

How Do Cells Interpret The “Dizzying” Communications Pathways In Multicellular Life Forms?

and

Cell atlases reveal extreme complexity at biology’s frontiers

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on March 11, 2019 05:08

March 10, 2019

Insects in decline? Science writer says it’s myth

But the story is really in how the story got started:

Take the story on 10 February that ‘insects could vanish within a century’, as the Guardian’s Damian Carrington put it, echoed by the BBC. The claim is, as even several science journalists and conservationists have now reported, bunk. The authors of the study, Francisco Sánchez-Bayo and Kris Wyckhuys, claimed to have reviewed 73 different studies to reach their conclusion that precisely 41 per cent of insect species are declining and ‘unless we change our way of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades’. In fact the pair had started by putting the words ‘insect’ and ‘decline’ into a database, thereby ignoring any papers finding increases in insects, or no change in numbers. Matt Ridley, “Lying with science: a guide to myth debunking” at Spectator (UK)

Ridley discusses several other scare claims that did not survive scrutiny and notes that the best estimate is that insect species are dying out at rates similar to mammals and birds (1 to 5 per cent per century): “A problem, but not Armageddon.”

Of course, a lot depends on how we define a “species ” too.

Note: The article deals with a number of other science claims in popular media that Ridley classes as myths as well.

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

and

Would you know if a robot was writing the news about ID? How?

Follow UD News at Twitter!

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

1 like · Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on March 10, 2019 13:40

Logic & First Principles, 14: Are beauty, truth, knowledge, goodness and justice merely matters of subjective opinions? (Preliminary thoughts.)

We live in a Kant-haunted age, where the “ugly gulch” between our inner world of appearances and judgements and the world of things in themselves is often seen as unbridgeable. Of course, there are many other streams of thought that lead to widespread relativism and subjectivism, but the ugly gulch concept is in some ways emblematic. Such trends influence many commonly encountered views, most notably our tendency to hold that being a matter of taste, beauty lies solely in the eye of the beholder.

And yet, we find the world-famous bust of Nefertiti:

The famous bust of Nefertiti, found in Thutmose’s workshop

Compare, 3800 years later; notice the symmetry and focal power of key features for Guinean model, Sira Kante :

Sira Kante

And then, ponder the highly formal architecture of the Taj Mahal:

The Taj Mahal

Yet again, the similarly strongly patterned South Rose Window at Notre Dame (with its obvious focal point, as well as how the many portraits give delightful detail and variety amidst the symmetry) :

Notre Dame, South Rose Window

Compare, patterning, variety and focus with subtle asymmetry in part of “Seahorse Valley” for the Mandelbrot set:

Seahorse Valley zoom, Mandelbrot set

Contrast the striking abstract forms (echoing and evoking human or animal figures), asymmetric patterning, colour balances, contrasts and fractal-rich cloudy details in the Eagle Nebula:

The Eagle Nebula

Also, the fractal patterning and highlighted focus shown by a partially sunlit Grand Canyon:

Grand Canyon

And then, with refreshed eyes, ponder Mona Lisa, noticing how da Vinci’s composition draws together all the above elements:

Mona Lisa — the most famous portrait

These classics (old and new alike) serve to show how stable a settled judgement of beauty can be. Which raises a question: what is beauty? Like unto that: are there principles of aesthetic judgement that give a rational framework, setting up objective knowledge of beauty? And, how do beauty, goodness, justice and truth align?

These are notoriously hard questions, probing aesthetics and ethics, the two main branches of axiology, the philosophical study of the valuable.

Where, yes, beauty is recognised to be valuable, even as ethics is clearly tied to moral value and goodness and truth are also valuable, worthy to be prized. It is unsurprising that the Taj Mahal was built as a mausoleum by a King to honour his beautiful, deeply loved wife (who had died in childbirth).

AmHD is a good place to start: beauty is “[a] quality or combination of qualities that gives pleasure to the mind or senses and is often associated with properties such as harmony of form or color, proportion, authenticity, and originality. “

Wikipedia first suggests that beauty is:

a property or characteristic of an animal, idea, object, person or place that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, culture, social psychology, philosophy and sociology. An “ideal beauty” is an entity which is admired, or possesses features widely attributed to beauty in a particular culture, for perfection. Ugliness is the opposite of beauty.

The experience of “beauty” often involves an interpretation of some entity as being in balance and harmony with nature, which may lead to feelings of attraction and emotional well-being. Because this can be a subjective experience, it is often said that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” However, given the empirical observations of things that are considered beautiful often aligning with the aforementioned nature and health thereof, beauty has been stated to have levels of objectivity as well

It then continues (unsurprisingly) that ” [t]here is also evidence that perceptions of beauty are determined by natural selection; that things, aspects of people and landscapes considered beautiful are typically found in situations likely to give enhanced survival of the perceiving human’s genes.” Thus we find the concepts of unconscious programming and perception driven by blind evolutionary forces. The shadow of the ugly gulch lurks just beneath the surface.

Can these differences be resolved?

At one level, at least since Plato’s dialogue Hippias Major, it has been well known that beauty is notoriously hard to define or specify in terms of readily agreed principles. There definitely is subjectivity, but is there also objectivity? If one says no, why then are there classics?

Further, if no, then why could we lay out a cumulative pattern across time, art-form, nature and theme above that then appears exquisitely fused together in a portrait that just happens to be the most famous, classic portrait in the world?

If so, what are such and can they constitute a coherent framework that could justify the claim to objective knowledge of aesthetic value?

Hard questions, hard as there are no easy, simple readily agreed answers. And yet, the process of addressing a hard puzzle where our intuitions tell us something but it seems to be forever just beyond our grasp, is itself highly instructive. For, we know in part.

Dewitt H. Parker, in opening his 1920 textbook, Principles of Aesthetics, aptly captures the paradox:

Although some feeling for beauty is perhaps universal among men, the
same cannot be said of the understanding of beauty. The average man,
who may exercise considerable taste in personal adornment, in the
decoration of the home, or in the choice of poetry and painting, is
at a loss when called upon to tell what art is or to explain why he
calls one thing “beautiful” and another “ugly.” Even the artist and
the connoisseur, skilled to produce or accurate in judgment, are often
wanting in clear and consistent ideas about their own works or
appreciations. Here, as elsewhere, we meet the contrast between feeling
and doing, on the one hand, and knowing, on the other.

Of course, as we saw above, reflective (and perhaps, aided) observation of case studies can support an inductive process that tries to identify principles and design patterns of effective artistic or natural composition that reliably excite the beauty response. That can be quite suggestive, as we already saw:

symmetry, balance, subtle asymmetry, focus or vision or theme, unity or harmony (with tension and resolution), highlighting contrast, variety, detail, echoing familiar forms, skilled combination and more.

We may see this with greater richness by taking a side-light from literature, drama and cinema, by using the premise that art tells a story, drawing us into a fresh vision of the world, ourselves, possibilities:

Already, it is clear that beauty has in it organising principles and that coherence with variety in composition indicates that there is indeed organisation, which brings to bear purpose and thus a way in for reflective, critical discussion. From this, we reach to development of higher quality of works and growing knowledge that guides skill and intuition without stifling creativity or originality. So, credibly, there is artistic — or even, aesthetic — knowledge that turns on rational principles, which may rightly be deemed truths.

Where, as we are rational, responsible, significantly free , morally governed creatures, the ethical must also intersect.

Where also, art has a visionary, instructive function that can strongly shape a culture. So, nobility, purity and virtue are inextricably entangled with the artistic: the perverse, ill-advised, unjust or corrupting (consider here, pornography or the like, or literature, drama and cinema that teach propaganda or the techniques of vice) are issues to be faced.

And, after our initial journey, we are back home, but in a different way. We may — if we choose — begin to see how beauty, truth, knowledge, goodness and justice may all come together, and how beauty in particular is more than merely subjective taste or culturally induced preference or disguised population survival. Where also, art reflecting rational principles, purposes and value points to artist. END

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on March 10, 2019 11:26

What drives the trend toward astrology today?

Astrology Signs Chart As a cultural studies prof explains, it’s whatever you want it to be:

Despite the one-dimensional astrology perpetuated by some critics, there are many shades of potential investment and basically no actual, enforced rules in astrology, making it one of the most unpredictable spiritual practices. No one will stop you from forming your own interpretations of planets and signs—although many astrologers will question you for attempting to include the recently discovered “thirteenth sign” Ophiuchus in your chart readings. Some astrological traditions have mathematical reasons for their interpretations of signs, planets, houses, limiting their scope to keep their charts in order. Others are more open to the expanse of different, fluid meanings and astronomical bodies. Some focus on fate and fortune, others on inner life and emotional growth, some on both.Tabitha Prado-Richardson, “Who Needs Astrology?” at LitHub

Anything, everything, and nothing.

Follow UD News at Twitter!

See also: As astrology goes mainstream, will Big Science start to accommodate it?

At CSICOP: Why millennials and liberals turn to astrology

and

Sceptic asks, why do people who abandon religion embrace superstition? Belief in God is declining and belief in ghosts and witches is rising

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on March 10, 2019 06:21