Very interesting points here... Question: Repeatability??? Can all of the
points be verified in the lab? If not -> it falls well outside the sphere
of science.
One has to be VERY careful with metaphysics my friend :)
Best Wishes,
William - N6RKY
Keith B Miller wrote:
>
> To all:
>
> A very interesting post from Holmes Rolston critiquing Dennett's cranes
> metaphor (see his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea) for evolutionary
> innovation.
>
> Keith
>
> ________________________________________________________________
> >Below is another installment from Holmes Rolston on the thread "Genes, Genesis,
> >and God." This piece deals with Daniel Dennett's use of the metaphor of
> >"cranes and skyhooks" to frame the debate about evolution.
> >
> >Rolston writes in conclusion: "It is not that there is no "watchmaker"; there
> >is no "watch." Looking for one frames the problem the wrong way... The
> >watchmaker metaphor seems blind to the problem that here needs to be solved:
> >that information-less matter-energy is a splendid information-maker. Biologists
> >cannot deny this creativity; indeed, better than anyone else biologists know
> >that Earth has brought forth the natural kinds, prolifically, exuberantly over
> >the millennia, and that enormous amounts of information are required to do
> >this. The achievements of evolution do not have to be optimal to be valuable,
> >and if a reason that they are not optimal is that they had to be reached
> >historically along story lines, then we rejoice in this richer creativity.
> >History plus value as storied achievement in creatures with their own integrity
> >is better than to have optimum value without history, autonomy, or adventure in
> >superbly-designed marionettes. That is beauty and elegance of a more
> >sophisticated form, as in the fauna and flora of an ancient forest."
> >
> >-- Billy Grassie
> >
> >
> >=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> >From: Holmes Rolston, III
> >Subject: Genes, Cranes, and Skyhooks
> >
> >One should posit, says Daniel Dennett, "cranes," not "skyhooks" for the
> >building up of evolutionary history (1995, pp. 73-80). That contrast of
> >metaphor seems initially persuasive, appealing to causes more natural than
> >supernatural, more immanent than transcendent. Pinpoint the issue: What is the
> >most plausible account to give of these genes and their genesis? What is the
> >most adequate explanation for the remarkable negentropic, cybernetic
> >self-organizing that characterizes the life story on Earth? Look more closely
> >and the metaphor becomes more pejoratively rhetorical than analytically
> >penetrating.
> >
> >There is the repeated discovery of information how to re- direct the downhill
> >flow of energy upward for the construction of ever more advanced, higher forms
> >of life, built on and supported by the lower forms. Up and down are rather
> >local conditions (down, up a few miles); it does not matter much which
> >direction we imagine this help as coming from--east or west, from the right or
> >left, below or from above, high or deep, immanence or transcendence, skyhooks
> >or cranes. The Hebrew metaphor was that one needs "wind" as well as "dirt." The
> >current metaphor is that one needs "information" as well as "matter" and
> >"energy."
> >
> >The story in natural history becomes memorable--able to employ a memory--only
> >with genes (or comparable predecessor molecules). The story becomes cumulative
> >and transmissible. The fertility possibilities are a hundred times
> >recompounded. If the DNA in the human body were uncoiled and stretched out end
> >to end, that slender thread would reach to the sun and back over half a dozen
> >times (as estimated from data Orten and Neuhaus, 1982, pp. 8, 154). That
> >conveys some idea of the astronomical amount of information soaked through the
> >body.
> >
> >In nature, in the Newtonian view there were two metaphysical fundamentals:
> >matter and energy. Einstein reduced these two to one: matter-energy. In matter
> >in motion, there is conservation of matter, also of energy; neither can be
> >created or destroyed, although each can take diverse forms, and one can be
> >transformed into the other.
> >
> >In the biological sciences, the novelty is that matter-energy is found in
> >living things in diverse information states. The biologists still claim two
> >metaphysical fundamentals: matter-energy and information. Norbert Wiener
> >insists: "Information is information, not matter or energy" (1948, p. 155). In
> >living things, concludes Manfred Eigen, this is "the key- word that represents
> >the phenomenon of complexity: information. Our task is to find an algorithm, a
> >natural law that leads to the origin of information. ... Life is a dynamic
> >state of matter organized by information" (1992, p. 12, p. 15). Bernd-Olaf
> >Kueppers agrees: "The problem of the origin of life is clearly basically
> >equivalent to the problem of the origin of biological information" (1990, p.
> >170).
> >
> >George C. Williams is explicit: "Evolutionary biologists have failed to realize
> >that they work with two more or less incommensurable domains: that of
> >information and that of matter. ... Matter and information [are] two separate
> >domains of existence, which have to be discussed separately in their own terms.
> >The gene is a package of information, not an object. ... Maintaining this
> >distinction between the medium and the message is absolutely indispensable to
> >clarity of thought about evolution" (quoted in Brockman, 1995, p. 43).
> >
> >John Maynard Smith says: "Heredity is about the transmission , not of matter or
> >energy, but of information. ... The concept of information is central both to
> >genetics and evolution theory" (1995, p. 28). The most spectacular thing about
> >planet Earth, says, Dawkins, is this "information explosion," even more
> >remarkable than a supernova among the stars (1995, p. 145). And, adds, Klaus
> >Dose: "More than 30 years of experimentation on the origin of life in the
> >fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better perception of
> >the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on Earth rather than its
> >solution. ... We do not actually know where the genetic information of all
> >living cells originates" (1988, p. 348).
> >
> >When sodium and chlorine are brought together under suitable circumstances,
> >anywhere in the universe, the result will be salt. This capacity is inlaid into
> >the atomic properties; the reaction occurs spontaneously. Energy inputs may be
> >required for some of these results, but no information input is needed. When
> >nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen are brought together under suitable
> >circumstances anywhere in the universe, with energy input, the spontaneous
> >result may be amino acids, but it is not hemoglobin molecules or lemurs--not
> >spontaneously.
> >
> >The essential characteristic of a biological molecule, contrasted with a merely
> >physicochemical molecule, is that it contains vital information. Its
> >conformation is functional. With the typical protein, enzyme, lipid, or
> >carbohydrate this is structural, keyed by the coding in DNA. The coding here is
> >information about coping in the macroscopic world that the organism inhabits.
> >The information (in DNA) is interlocked with an information producer-processor
> >(the organism) that can transcribe, incarnate, metabolize, and reproduce it.
> >All such information once upon a time did not exist, but came into place; this
> >is the locus of creativity.
> >
> >With this "information" as the model for what needs to be explained, return to
> >the "cranes" and "skyhooks" metaphors. Stripped of the rhetoric, what the
> >"skyhook" metaphor means, Dennett says, is explanations that are more
> >"mind-like" and the "cranes" metaphor posits "mindless, motiveless
> >mechanicity." Dennett holds that Darwinian science, extrapolated
> >philosophically, has discovered cranes upon cranes "all the way down" and
> >building up and up with "creative genius." "There is simply no denying the
> >breathtaking brilliance of the designs to be found in nature" (1995, p. 76, p.
> >155, p. 74). But if the secret of such creativity is information possibilities
> >opening up and information searched and gained, then the kind of explanation
> >needed can as plausibly be said to be mind-like as mindless mechanicity.
> >
> >One might look to the potential deep in matter, "cranes all the way down," as
> >Dennett puts it. There is a kind of bottomless bootstrapping, as if lifting
> >oneself up and up by one's own bootstraps was not remarkable, matter lofting
> >itself up into mind. Such cranes, piling up higher and higher, are still pretty
> >"super," quite imposing with their endless superimposing of one achievement on
> >another. One can just as well look to some destiny toward which such matter is
> >animated and inspired (skyhooks). Even after an infinite regress of cranes, or
> >a regress ending in nothing at all, or in informationless matter-energy, or in
> >a big bang, one might not find that explanations are over. The issue is where
> >the information comes from by which matter and energy become so superimposingly
> >informed across evolutionary history that this brilliant, "sacred" (Dennett)
> >output arises from a beginning in mindless chaos, how "out of next to nothing
> >the world we know and love created itself" (p. 185).
> >
> >In this "world of propensities," concludes Karl Popper, the "inherently
> >creative" process with its "staggering" biodiversity is neither mechanistic nor
> >deterministic. "This was a process in which both accidents and preferences,
> >preferences of the organisms for certain possibilities, were mixed: the
> >organisms were in search of a better world. Here the preferred possibilities
> >were, indeed, allurements" (1990, p. 26, p. 20). Cranes or skyhooks,
> >evolutionary development is "attracted to" (in the current "chaos" metaphor)
> >cumulating achievements in both diversity and complexity, and this attraction
> >needs explanation. Attractors, or, at a more metaphysical level, even an
> >Attractor, seem quite rational explanations.
> >
> >Dennett sometimes finds the process "uncanny" in being somewhat like "mind."
> >"To me the most fascinating property of the process of evolution is its uncanny
> >capacity to mirror some properties of the human mind (the intelligent
> >Artificer) while being bereft of others" (Dennett, 1987, p. 299). It seems
> >important to Dennett that the design is a mirage. Or, more accurately, the
> >design isn't a mirage, for there is a designing system, but that there is a
> >Designer of the designing system is a mirage. One needs no supernature, and the
> >evidence for this is that we can plunge into sub-nature, and sub-sub-nature,
> >and sub- sub-sub-nature, simplifying all the way down until there is nothing at
> >all. Although creativity is forbidden from above, it is welcomed from below.
> >But set aside the above-below imagery, still the "attraction" to something out
> >of chaos, the "genesis" of something out of nothing, of more out of less--such
> >brute fact remains as evident as ever, and as demanding of explanation.
> >
> >The creation of matter, energy, law, history, stories, of all the information
> >that generates nature, to say nothing of culture, does need an adequate
> >explanation; some sources, source, or Source competent for such creativity. In
> >the materializing of the quantum states, bubbling up from below, in the
> >compositions of prebiotic molecules, in the genetic mutations, there are
> >selective principles at work, as well as stabilities and regularities, forming
> >and in- forming these materials, which principles order and order up the story.
> >
> >
> >There once was a causal chain that led to vertebrae in animals, where there
> >were none before, an incremental chain no doubt, but still a chain by which the
> >novelty of the vertebral column was introduced on Earth. Such a chain is
> >constructed with the emergence of more and more information; this information,
> >coded in DNA, informs the matter and energy so as to build the vertebral cord.
> >The cord is constructed because it has a value (a significance, here a
> >precursor of meaning) to the organism. It makes possible the diverse species of
> >life that the vertebrate animals defend. Continuing the development of the
> >endoskeleton, it makes possible larger animals with mobility, flexibility,
> >integrated neural control. When such construction of valuable biodiversity has
> >gone on for millennia, the epic suggests mysterious powers that might well
> >signal the divine presence.
> >
> >The question, the biologists will say, is of the selective forces. Yes, but the
> >answer comes, partly at least, from seeing the results, with ever more emerging
> >from what is earlier less and less. One seeking to detect the divine
> >"inspiration" ("information") will notice how there are occasions--seasons,
> >contexts, events, episodes, whatever they are called--during which critical
> >information emerges in the world, breakthroughs, as it were, incremental and
> >cumulative though these can also be. The could be in some inspiration that
> >first animates matter and energy into life, or launches replication and genetic
> >coding, or eukaryotes, or multicellular life, or sexuality, or energizes life
> >with mitochondria and chloroplasts, or glycolysis and the Krebs cycle, or moves
> >life onto land, or invents animal societies, or acquired learning, or endows
> >life with mind, and inspires culture, ethics, religion, science.
> >
> >The skeptics reply is always to emphasize that evolution is not elegant. It is
> >wasteful, blundering, struggling. Evolution works with what is at hand, and
> >makes something new out of it. The creatures stumble around, and if there is a
> >God who "intervenes" God ought to do better than that. There is only a "blind
> >watchmaker" (Dawkins, 1986). Still, consider again the remarkable results, and
> >the providence appropriate to a God who celebrates an Earth history, who
> >inspires self-creativity. The word "design" nowhere occurs in Genesis, nor am I
> >using it in this argument, though the concept of creativity pervades the
> >opening chapters. There is divine fiat, divine doing, but the mode is an
> >empowering permission that places productive autonomy in the creation.
> >
> >It is not that there is no "watchmaker"; there is no "watch." Looking for one
> >frames the problem the wrong way. Maybe that kind of frame is needed at the big
> >bang with the anthropic principle; it is the right frame for genesis and the
> >genes. In the earthen genesis, there are species well adapted for
> >problem-solving, ever more informed in their self-actualizing. The watchmaker
> >metaphor seems blind to the problem that here needs to be solved: that
> >information-less matter-energy is a splendid information-maker. Biologists
> >cannot deny this creativity; indeed, better than anyone else biologists know
> >that Earth has brought forth the natural kinds, prolifically, exuberantly over
> >the millennia, and that enormous amounts of information are required to do
> >this.
> >
> >The achievements of evolution do not have to be optimal to be valuable, and if
> >a reason that they are not optimal is that they had to be reached historically
> >along story lines, then we rejoice in this richer creativity. History plus
> >value as storied achievement in creatures with their own integrity is better
> >than to have optimum value without history, autonomy, or adventure in
> >superbly-designed marionettes. That is beauty and elegance of a more
> >sophisticated form, as in the fauna and flora of an ancient forest.
> >
> >The elegance of the thirty-two crystal classes is not to be confused with the
> >grace of life renewed in the midst of its perpetual perishing, generating
> >diversity and complexity, repeatedly struggling through to something higher, a
> >response to the brooding winds of the Spirit moving over the face of these
> >earthen waters. The genes do bubble up from below ("cranes"--if one insists on
> >looking down) but these genes are lofted higher and higher in their creative
> >genius, resulting in course in the genius of the human spirit, elevated enough
> >to look the world over and ask ultimate questions--debating, as we are doing,
> >the best metaphors for what has been taking place on this Earth.
> >
> >"Skyhook" is at least an upward looking word. Or if "deep" is your preferred
> >direction, either way there is something "uncanny" about several billion years
> >of continuing breakthrough in achievement and power, made possible by and
> >manifest in the genes.
> >
> >In the next (and final) Meta installment, we return to these themes as the
> >opening up of new possibility space, in which this information explosion can
> >take place--all this raising the possibility of God in, with, and under natural
> >and human history.
> >
> >
> >References
> >
> >Brockman, John, 1995. The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution. New
> >York: Simon and Schuster.
> >
> >Dawkins, Richard, 1986. The Blind Watchmaker. New York: W. W. Norton.
> >
> >Dawkins, Richard, 1995. River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life. New York:
> >Basic Books, HarperCollins.
> >
> >Dennett, Daniel C., 1987. The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
> >
> >Dennett, Daniel C., 1995. Darwin's Dangerous Idea. New York: Simon and
> >Schuster.
> >
> >Dose, Klaus, "The Origin of Life: More Questions Than Answers,"
> >Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 13(1988):348-356.
> >
> >Eigen, Manfred, with Ruthild Winkler-Oswatitsch, 1992. Steps towards Life: A
> >Perspective on Evolution. New York: Oxford University Press.
> >
> >Kueppers, Bernd-Olaf, 1990. Information and the Origin of Life. Cambridge, MA:
> >The MIT Press. Maynard Smith, John, 1995. "Life at the Edge of Chaos?" New York
> >Review of Books 52(no. 4, March 2, 1995):28-30.
> >
> >Orten, J. M., and O. W. Neuhaus, 1982. Human Biochemistry, 10th ed. St. Louis:
> >C. V. Mosby Co.
> >
> >Popper, Karl R., 1990. A World of Propensities. Bristol, U.K.: Thoemmes.
> >
> >Wiener, Norbert, 1948. Cybernetics. New York: John Wiley.
> >
> >--
> >Holmes Rolston, III
> >Department of Philosophy
> >Colorado State University
> >Fort Collins, CO 80523
> >Phone: 970/491-5328 office
> >Webpage: http://lamar.colostate.edu/~rolston/
> >
> >
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>
> Keith B. Miller
> Department of Geology
> Kansas State University
> Manhattan, KS 66506
> kbmill@ksu.ksu.edu
> http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/
-- William A. Wetzel icq-uin# 13983514 http://home.pacbell.net/n6rky http://www.qsl.net/n6rky mailto:n6rky@pacbell.net mailto:n6rky@qsl.net