The Origin of Life
An argument frequently used by adherents of “Intelligent Design” is the improbability of life having arisen spontaneously. Citing Stuart Kauffman 1993 (The Origins of Order. Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution. Oxford University Press, New York Oxford), page 287: “Improbable features of current organisms imply improbable origins. If the probability that a protein catalyzes a given reaction is 10 to the power of minus 20, and if a minimal contemporary organism such as a pleuromona-like organism has on the order of 1000 or 2000 enzymes, then the probability of their joint occurrence by chance is, say 10 to the power of minus 40 000. More likely that, as Hoyle says, the whirlwind assemble a 747 from scraps in a junkyard.”
However, the detailed investigations of Stuart Kauffman suggest that life is not improbable, it is “an expected, emergent, collective property of complex systems of polymer catalysts.” “ It “crystallizes” in a phase transition leading to connected sequences of biochemical transformations by which polymers and simpler building blocks mutually catalyze their collective reproduction”. And such a “collectively reproducing polymer system is relatively probable”.
A blog is not a suitable place to discuss the theory in detail, the reader is referred to: Kauffman (pages 287-341) where a detailed account of the mathematical theory and evidence for the hypothesis is given, and where experiments are described to test for the in vitro creation of self-reproducing biochemical systems.
Even if not all aspects of the hypothesis should turn out to be correct, it is important that a problem such as the origin of life can be theoretically and experimentally examined and should not be left unexplained by referring it to “Intelligent Design”, ultimately a meaningless phrase which does not explain anything.
March 24th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
I will chase down Kauffman’s book and give it a good read. My chemical feeling is that the matter and energy density in environments on terrestrial planets are not conducive to the development of collectively reproducing polymer systems and that there are other environments in the universe where this is more likely.
I must also cavil at the characterisation of ‘intelligent design’ as a ‘meaningless phrase’. ‘Intelligent design’ is, after all, a good description of what we have done with controlled selection or gene transfer to make things like chihuahuas and golden rice, and there is no a priori reason why something similar could not have happened to our remote ancestors. We really have no very good evidence at the moment to judge whether this is highly improbable or not, but it is not an untestable hypothesis. By Kauffman’s arguments, potential intelligent designers must be very widespread in the universe, after all…
March 24th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
The question, then, of course is who designed the intelligent designers, and who designed the designers of intelligent designers (leading to an infinite regression, if this is the correct term).
March 24th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
But is that not a tremendously exciting problem? It is usually better, of course, to assume a problem is relatively small, and solvable with the information we have available to us on Earth. But many times I am sure this puts us in the position of the drunk searching for his keys under the streetlight, instead of where (s)he lost them!
You know as well as I do that it there is a vanishingly small chance that we live in Fred Hoyle’s universe of ‘continuous creation’, so we can never have an infinite regression, only a finite regression to an enviroment (or enivironments) conducive to self-organisation.
March 24th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
re:improbability of life having arisen spontaneously I must admit that most of the useless discussions/arguments I have had with Christians of the evangelical bent have hinged upon this issue. Also for most of the ones that I have talked to the adaptive transition from monkey->human is as rediculous as molecules -> amoeba to them. However I feel the necessity for the former to have happened naturally on Earth is obvious, but if one assumes planetary hopping of bacteria as a common occurence, the necessity for the latter to have happened on Earth is non-existant. That leaves the question of the origin of life as an unknowable.
March 25th, 2007 at 8:58 am
It seems quite possible that life has originated elsewhere and was introduced to earth through space (but I don’t know how likely that is). However, this is not an argument for Intelligent Design and it does not make the question of the origin of life unknowable. It would perhaps make the problem even more “tremendously exciting” (citing Chris).
Returning to Intelligent Design: intelligent design is of course a meaningful term describing many inventions of mankind, “Intelligent Design” (in capitals) is something quite different, i.e., a hypothesis or perhaps better a belief that assumes a superior being as the primary cause of everything and (in most versions) as making “adjustments” whenever necessary. As such, it can be tested (see Richard Dawkins on this) and was found wanting. No evidence supporting such a hypothesis has been found. Continuing application of Intelligent Design as an explanation for natural phenomena therefore becomes a meaningless phrase.
March 25th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Re: “Intelligent Design†(in capitals) is something quite different, i.e., a hypothesis or perhaps better a belief that assumes a superior being as the primary cause of everything and (in most versions) as making “adjustments†whenever necessary. As such, it can be tested and was found wanting.
I agree. I just liked the idea that by re-branding “Creation Science” as “Intelligent Design” and carefully avoiding any explicit mention of the Almighty, the creation scientists have left themselves open for anyone forced by a foolish education department to give “Intelligent Design” equal time to teach it completely from the Panspermia/Little Green Men perspective.
March 25th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Technically, I guess I don’t agree with your definition of “Intelligent Design” exactly. I think the hypothesis of a superior being as the primary cause of everything is not “Intelligent Design”. The idea that the origin of life and its development cannot be explained by natural laws is “Intelligent Design”.
March 25th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
And I guess, for the sake of clarification/obfuscation, I also disagree that capital letter “Intelligent Design” can be tested. If it was testable, it would be falsifiable, and would be science.
March 25th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Black magic is falsifiable and has been falsified. So has Intelligent Design. Does that really make them science?
“Technically, I guess I don’t agree with your definition of “Intelligent Design†exactly. I think the hypothesis of a superior being as the primary cause of everything is not “Intelligent Designâ€. The idea that the origin of life and its development cannot be explained by natural laws is “Intelligent Designâ€.” Well, may be so “exactly”, but it seems like a bit of hairsplitting to me. I think we know what we mean.
March 25th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
re: Black magic is falsifiable and has been falsified. So has Intelligent Design. Does that really make them science?
“Proof denies faith” (From H2G2) If one thinks that reliance on the supernatural falsifies a belief, saying that they are falsified is a simple tautology. Surely the existence or otherwise of the supernatural is outside the scope of science, since it only deals with observable and repeatable experiments. It is only where one ignores the supernatural bits, that things get interesting. Creation science without creation? Black magic without the magic? These are things we can discuss and analyse.
March 26th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
I guess everything I know about biology I learned from Stephen Jay Gould, and when I say Intelligent Design is untestable I am thinking of things like Gosse’s Omphalos.
Black magic is not falsifiable because the hypothesis proposes the use of beings which, like human beings, would not reproducibly give the same behaviour under similar stimuli. e.g., I am sure that any black magician would say that the demons rejected *your* virgin sacrifice because they knew you were just trying to test them. We reject black magic because, as well as being dangerous and stupid, it has shown itself to be without predictive value- but because the proponents of the hypothesis can always weasel out of any particular failure by claiming that the demons were stroppy that day, it can’t be falsified.
April 8th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Stephen Jay Gould is not in the mainstream of neo-Darwinian thought and his views are in fact rejected by many (Dawkins has to say a lot about this in his Unweaving the Rainbow).
Re falsification: strictly taken, of course, one can falsify and verify neither science nor black magic, but only certain statements within them. I did not check what Popper has to say about this, but I strongly suspect that he would agree.
April 17th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
I ought to clarify my hyperbolic claim that ‘all I know about biology I learned from Stephen Jay Gould’, since it is, of course, not strictly true!
I did a Biochemistry/Chemistry double major and taught some molecular biology at my previous institution… I also accompanied my girlfriend to practically all the third year zoology lectures at James Cook University, way back when.
September 12th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
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