Atomic steps of dumb happenstance?

By: James V. Kohl | Published on: June 15, 2014

‘A Perfect and Beautiful Machine’: What Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Reveals About Artificial Intelligence

Excerpt 1): “Turing, like Darwin, broke down the mystery of intelligence (or Intelligent Design) into what we might call atomic steps of dumb happenstance, which, when accumulated by the millions, added up to a sort of pseudo-intelligence.”
My comment: Ecological speciation has since replaced mutation-initiated natural selection as the cause of ecological adaptations manifested in biodiversity. The model is based on the fact that behavior is receptor-mediated and that odors induce the de novo creation of olfactory receptor genes. Nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled ecological adaptations: from atoms to ecosystems
Excerpt 2): “Charles Darwin managed to compress his entire theory into a single summary paragraph that a layperson can readily follow.”
My comment: Unfortunately, neo-Darwinists ignored Darwin’s ‘conditions of life.’ The ability to readily follow his theory was subsequently taught in courses that should have been titled “Evolution for Dummies.”
It has been much more difficult to compress what is currently known about the conserved molecular mechanisms that allow ecological variation (‘conditions of life’) to result in the ecological adaptations manifested in the morphological and behavioral phenotypes of species from microbes to man. However, this is an example of how the summary paragraph from a model of biological facts might be used to replace a theory that any layperson could follow.
“This atoms to ecosystems model of ecological adaptations links nutrient-dependent epigenetic effects on base pairs and amino acid substitutions to pheromone-controlled changes in the microRNA / messenger RNA balance and chromosomal rearrangements. The nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled changes are required for the thermodynamic regulation of intracellular signaling, which enables biophysically constrained nutrient-dependent protein folding; experience-dependent receptor-mediated behaviors, and organism-level thermoregulation in ever-changing ecological niches and social niches. Nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled ecological, social, neurogenic and socio-cognitive niche construction are manifested in increasing organismal complexity in species from microbes to man. Species diversity is a biologically-based nutrient-dependent morphological fact and species-specific pheromones control the physiology of reproduction. The reciprocal relationships of species-typical nutrient-dependent morphological and behavioral diversity are enabled by pheromone-controlled reproduction. Ecological variations and biophysically constrained natural selection of nutrients cause the behaviors that enable ecological adaptations. Species diversity is ecologically validated proof-of-concept. Ideas from population genetics, which exclude ecological factors, are integrated with an experimental evidence-based approach that establishes what is currently known. This is known: Olfactory/pheromonal input links food odors and social odors from the epigenetic landscape to the physical landscape of DNA in the organized genomes of species from microbes to man during their development.”
Excerpt 3): To this day many people cannot get their heads around the unsettling idea that a purposeless, mindless process can crank away through the eons, generating ever more subtle, efficient, and complex organisms without having the slightest whiff of understanding of what it is doing.
My comment: To this day there is no experimental evidence of biologically-based cause and effect that suggests that is possible. All experimental evidence that links physics, chemistry, and conserved molecular mechanisms to nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled ecological adaptations suggests that organismal complexity results from amino acids substitutions that differentiate the cell types of all organisms of all species.
If everything that is not mechanistic is left out of any equations used in the past to support the population geneticists’ invention of neo-Darwinism, one is left with the most obvi0us of all molecular mechanisms, which are conserved across species because they link the epigenetic landscape to the physical landscape of DNA in organized genomes. These molecular mechanisms can be understood in the context of Darwin’s ‘conditions of life.’ Every organism must eat and reproduce and those that do that best enable biodiversity via their nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled reproduction, not by mutations that randomly arise and are somehow naturally selected so that they result in the evolution of biodiversity.
Thus, any ideas about atomic steps of dumb happenstance should continue to be attached to neo-Darwinism, so that Darwin’s claims can be pursued in the light of what is currently known about molecular biology. For example, see:  Interplay between pre-mRNA splicing and microRNA biogenesis within the supraspliceosome, but do not be surprised if you cannot understand it; it’s not like “Evolution for Dummies.” This is, after all, the 21st century, which may be when ideas about evolution from the 19th and 20th centuries should be replaced with experimental evidence of cause and effect. However, even “If you learnt evolutionary biology and genetics a decade or more ago you need to be aware that those debates have moved on very considerably, as has the experimental and field work on which they are based.” — Denis Noble (2011)
 


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