3 ms·

This is not logical : it is the main contribution of Michael Behe who coined the term "irreductible complexity". The arch cannot be build from gradual micro evo

by Tphil 4y ago

This is not logical : it is the main contribution of Michael Behe who coined the term "irreductible complexity". The arch cannot be build from gradual micro evolutions, because each stone (or function) has no benefit (and will not be selected for the offspring) until it is totally build with the keystone. This is pure logic. Also the identical solutions that appear in different species are named "convergent evolution" (e.g. the eye of vertebrates and cephalopods); it is by no way a validation of gradual evolution because chance could not build the exact same solutions. It is on the contrary a proof of design (reuse of building blocks)

ncmncm 4y ago
Nature is not bound by any logic of convenience. Nature is happy to take the long way around, without care for our ease of understanding that path. (May I suggest your God is neither so constrained?) "Irreducible complexity" is specifically what the arch principle answers. The uncompleted arch along with everything holding it up is of immediate value, as it is, for maximizing reproductive fitness; it is our task to understand how. Later, the completed arch has value as, possibly, something entirely else, where the scaffolding did not and fell away. Nature doesn't care what the arch or its intermediate forms were "for". Any structure may be used in any way that aids fitness (or, often, not). Insects' extra wings become protective wing covers. Legs that were once fins may walk instead of swimming, or fly, or type. T. rex's arms, and ostrich's, waggle uselessly. The evolution of eyes has been traced from eye spots through to completed eyes, and each intermediate stage is in fact better for reproductive fitness than the previous one. The form of eyes is dictated by their use, but human eyes' present form is decidedly inferior to squids'. (Ask your God about that?) It has lately turned out that the basis for eyes was already in the last common ancestor of squids and us. It has been a very long time since eyes were a persuasive example. Maybe read up?
- Tphil 4y ago
  The "arch principle" is a nice terminology to say that we have no clue of which gradual steps led to the final irreductible complex system. Being irreductibly complex, the missing of only one part leads to nothing and cannot pass the natural selection. M. Behe gives dozen of examples. Also time is missing in any cases, see the evolution of a little mammal into a whale for example. In less than 5 million years a little moppet becomes a giant submarine with at least a hundred new coordinated organs and functions. Have you ever designed a complex system ? Each function has to be designed, and each interface has to be taken into account for both sides. And all this through a code, and in a code the finality must precede the result. About the eye, which common ancestor to squids and vertebrates is it ?
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    The argument from incredulity has not held up well. Nature is infinitely more clever, creative, and patient than (if I may say) you, or I. Anything that can reproduce is foundation for a next stage. Each individual in each generation may sport an innovation, which if reproduced joins the rest. Five million years is a very long time, too long really for human apprehension. (How many times could a pharmacist fill your prescription, in that time?) Whales' niche favors increasing size, although, that filled, other niches were discovered by porpoises. You are aware that all species that existed 500 million years ago are extinct, leaving only their descendants? That would include our common ancestor, leaving squids, and us, and fruit flies. (Some coeval species left fossils, though probably not that one.) But the gene that places our eyes, inserted into a fruit fly chromosome at a place dictating growth of a body part, grows an eye there. A fruit fly eye, of course.
    - Tphil 4y ago
      It is interesting that your dogma is gradualism, and you explain gradualism through gradualism. Then you appeal to the God of time, but many great paleothologists and mathematician have demonstrated that it is not enough ! Please note that I am not a fixist creationnist, apparition (evolution ?) of species happened in history, but what is the engine of evolution ? Where the new information to build new orders, reigns, branches, proteins, functions, organs, orders, species, came from ? Chance applied to a code can by no way create new functions. It is easy to understand as any programmer will tell you. There is no computer science domain, neither developpers who use chance to create or improve a computer program. Nevertheless, a computer can run more generations than nature had for many new species to appear. If positive mutation happen, it is a build-in system, it cannot be pure chance (a lot of maths on the subject) If it is a build-in system, it is one more mystery to explain how chance can create codes, coders, decoders, engines, pumps, pipes, organs, species, self-replicating systems, and also self-improving systems.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        You argue that software is impossible, but here we are using it. Where did the ideas that went into the software come from? Were they all divinely inspired, or were they logical next steps upon what came before? Careful: claiming software you wrote is divinely inspired will not go over well at code review, particularly if you insist it doesn't need to pass tests.
gilleain 4y ago
As a former biochemist graduate ... I strongly disagree with Michael Behe's ideas on Irreducible Complexity. It is not 'pure logic' because your analogy is flawed - biological systems are not arches or mousetraps. Imagine a system as a triangle of three components that all rely on each other. The vertices of the triangle are component (proteins, organs, whatever) and the edges are 'dependencies' of some kind. Now add a fourth component, dependent on some (or all) of the others. Now remove some of the edges until you have a square (or 4-cycle). Now this system is 'irreducible' as breaking the dependent links breaks the cycle. Essentially, all biological systems have a 'chain' of previous versions that were functional and evolvable into the next version. This is only possible because these systems have redundant parts, and flexible associations. For example, many proteins 'moonlight' as alternate roles within an organism.
- Tphil 4y ago
  Ok this is the définition of gradualism, but it is a great claim, a nice story never scientifically proven. Which mecanism ? which statistics, odd of creation of functional protéins ? Since biochemistry darwinists have to work and to prove now !
  - gilleain 4y ago
    Who said it had to be scientifically proven? Behe's claim is that it is theoretically impossible, and clearly that is not the case. "Since biochemistry darwinists have to work and to prove now!" - This sentence doesn't even make sense. It is Intelligent Design advocates like Behe that are making the claim that these systems "could not" have evolved. As another commenter said, this is the 'Argument from Ignorance' : "We do not know how it evolved so it could not have!". We know the structure of biological systems in more and more detail. We know how they change at the smallest level. The theory is fairly basic : redundant, self-assembling, flexible systems can change through gradual evolution. Gould would talk about 'rewinding' the tape of history. There's no way to go back in time and see for sure what previous systems looked like. However that in no way means the tape itself does not exist.
jjk166 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_arch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_arch Nature has no problem building an arch through a long series of small changes, no keystone required.
- Tphil 4y ago
  Ok i Give up !! We are not talking about natural stone arches... As many software developers are reading HN, you can meditate about the creative power of randomly mutated code.... which is the official engine of darwinian évolution.
  - jjk166 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm The creative power of randomly mutated code is, again, easily verified.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    You are maybe aware that living systems are chemical, not digital? Changing a single bit in computer code is very likely to have an arbitrarily large, commonly fatal effect. Changing a single base in a gene rarely does. But a lot of bases changed is likely to have some effect; the more changes, the more effect. What critics of natural selection always miss is that the set of small changes between one state and another, in a breeding population, do not need to happen one after the other. It could take hundreds of steps, but they all may exist scattered through the population at the same time, and can over just a few dozen generations propagate to all, when conditions favor that; or even fewer if lacking most is fatal. Bacteria need a lot more generations to evolve, because they don't swap genes around much. But their generations are very short. Some mutations they do swap around, particularly antibiotic resistance, and ability to infect a new host, via plasmids. Anthrax normally lives in soil, but picks up virulence genes from plasmids it happens upon.

by Tphil 4y ago

ncmncm 4y ago

Nature is not bound by any logic of convenience. Nature is happy to take the long way around, without care for our ease of understanding that path. (May I suggest your God is neither so constrained?) "Irreducible complexity" is specifically what the arch principle answers. The uncompleted arch along with everything holding it up is of immediate value, as it is, for maximizing reproductive fitness; it is our task to understand how. Later, the completed arch has value as, possibly, something entirely else, where the scaffolding did not and fell away. Nature doesn't care what the arch or its intermediate forms were "for". Any structure may be used in any way that aids fitness (or, often, not). Insects' extra wings become protective wing covers. Legs that were once fins may walk instead of swimming, or fly, or type. T. rex's arms, and ostrich's, waggle uselessly. The evolution of eyes has been traced from eye spots through to completed eyes, and each intermediate stage is in fact better for reproductive fitness than the previous one. The form of eyes is dictated by their use, but human eyes' present form is decidedly inferior to squids'. (Ask your God about that?) It has lately turned out that the basis for eyes was already in the last common ancestor of squids and us. It has been a very long time since eyes were a persuasive example. Maybe read up?

Tphil 4y ago
The "arch principle" is a nice terminology to say that we have no clue of which gradual steps led to the final irreductible complex system. Being irreductibly complex, the missing of only one part leads to nothing and cannot pass the natural selection. M. Behe gives dozen of examples. Also time is missing in any cases, see the evolution of a little mammal into a whale for example. In less than 5 million years a little moppet becomes a giant submarine with at least a hundred new coordinated organs and functions. Have you ever designed a complex system ? Each function has to be designed, and each interface has to be taken into account for both sides. And all this through a code, and in a code the finality must precede the result. About the eye, which common ancestor to squids and vertebrates is it ?
- ncmncm 4y ago
  The argument from incredulity has not held up well. Nature is infinitely more clever, creative, and patient than (if I may say) you, or I. Anything that can reproduce is foundation for a next stage. Each individual in each generation may sport an innovation, which if reproduced joins the rest. Five million years is a very long time, too long really for human apprehension. (How many times could a pharmacist fill your prescription, in that time?) Whales' niche favors increasing size, although, that filled, other niches were discovered by porpoises. You are aware that all species that existed 500 million years ago are extinct, leaving only their descendants? That would include our common ancestor, leaving squids, and us, and fruit flies. (Some coeval species left fossils, though probably not that one.) But the gene that places our eyes, inserted into a fruit fly chromosome at a place dictating growth of a body part, grows an eye there. A fruit fly eye, of course.
  - Tphil 4y ago
    It is interesting that your dogma is gradualism, and you explain gradualism through gradualism. Then you appeal to the God of time, but many great paleothologists and mathematician have demonstrated that it is not enough ! Please note that I am not a fixist creationnist, apparition (evolution ?) of species happened in history, but what is the engine of evolution ? Where the new information to build new orders, reigns, branches, proteins, functions, organs, orders, species, came from ? Chance applied to a code can by no way create new functions. It is easy to understand as any programmer will tell you. There is no computer science domain, neither developpers who use chance to create or improve a computer program. Nevertheless, a computer can run more generations than nature had for many new species to appear. If positive mutation happen, it is a build-in system, it cannot be pure chance (a lot of maths on the subject) If it is a build-in system, it is one more mystery to explain how chance can create codes, coders, decoders, engines, pumps, pipes, organs, species, self-replicating systems, and also self-improving systems.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      You argue that software is impossible, but here we are using it. Where did the ideas that went into the software come from? Were they all divinely inspired, or were they logical next steps upon what came before? Careful: claiming software you wrote is divinely inspired will not go over well at code review, particularly if you insist it doesn't need to pass tests.

gilleain 4y ago

As a former biochemist graduate ... I strongly disagree with Michael Behe's ideas on Irreducible Complexity. It is not 'pure logic' because your analogy is flawed - biological systems are not arches or mousetraps. Imagine a system as a triangle of three components that all rely on each other. The vertices of the triangle are component (proteins, organs, whatever) and the edges are 'dependencies' of some kind. Now add a fourth component, dependent on some (or all) of the others. Now remove some of the edges until you have a square (or 4-cycle). Now this system is 'irreducible' as breaking the dependent links breaks the cycle. Essentially, all biological systems have a 'chain' of previous versions that were functional and evolvable into the next version. This is only possible because these systems have redundant parts, and flexible associations. For example, many proteins 'moonlight' as alternate roles within an organism.

Tphil 4y ago
Ok this is the définition of gradualism, but it is a great claim, a nice story never scientifically proven. Which mecanism ? which statistics, odd of creation of functional protéins ? Since biochemistry darwinists have to work and to prove now !
- gilleain 4y ago
  Who said it had to be scientifically proven? Behe's claim is that it is theoretically impossible, and clearly that is not the case. "Since biochemistry darwinists have to work and to prove now!" - This sentence doesn't even make sense. It is Intelligent Design advocates like Behe that are making the claim that these systems "could not" have evolved. As another commenter said, this is the 'Argument from Ignorance' : "We do not know how it evolved so it could not have!". We know the structure of biological systems in more and more detail. We know how they change at the smallest level. The theory is fairly basic : redundant, self-assembling, flexible systems can change through gradual evolution. Gould would talk about 'rewinding' the tape of history. There's no way to go back in time and see for sure what previous systems looked like. However that in no way means the tape itself does not exist.

jjk166 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_arch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_arch Nature has no problem building an arch through a long series of small changes, no keystone required.

Tphil 4y ago
Ok i Give up !! We are not talking about natural stone arches... As many software developers are reading HN, you can meditate about the creative power of randomly mutated code.... which is the official engine of darwinian évolution.
- jjk166 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm The creative power of randomly mutated code is, again, easily verified.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  You are maybe aware that living systems are chemical, not digital? Changing a single bit in computer code is very likely to have an arbitrarily large, commonly fatal effect. Changing a single base in a gene rarely does. But a lot of bases changed is likely to have some effect; the more changes, the more effect. What critics of natural selection always miss is that the set of small changes between one state and another, in a breeding population, do not need to happen one after the other. It could take hundreds of steps, but they all may exist scattered through the population at the same time, and can over just a few dozen generations propagate to all, when conditions favor that; or even fewer if lacking most is fatal. Bacteria need a lot more generations to evolve, because they don't swap genes around much. But their generations are very short. Some mutations they do swap around, particularly antibiotic resistance, and ability to infect a new host, via plasmids. Anthrax normally lives in soil, but picks up virulence genes from plasmids it happens upon.