Re: "We Believe in Design"

--- Iain Strachan <igd.strachan@gmail.com> wrote:
So I think the flagellum did evolve, but the space in
which it evolved was designed so it could evolve.

So we agree, that there is evidence of design. So the
real issue is not design in nature, which given the
nature of natural selection is inevitable, but rather
the nature of the designer.
Science is exploring how the genotype-phenotype
mapping can evolve itself. Indeed, this is where
design can be found but as such, this approach also
makes intelligent design, scientifically vacuous. (ID
refers to the argument from ignorance approach
developed by Dembski and Behe)

Starting with the work by Landweber, Knight and others
on the origin and evolution of the genetic code, via
RNA work by Schuster, Stadler and Fontana and the
recent work on scale free networks, science is slowly
unravelling these issue.
To me it is fascinating that a process which increases
robustness also increases evolvability.

Your comment that gene duplication increases
dimensionality also rejects Dembski's and Bracht's
claims about evolution and innovation/novelty.
9http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-get_topic-f-6-t-000287.html)

For interesting applications see

Kirschner M, Gerhart J. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1998
Jul 21;95(15):8420-7.

    Evolvability is an organism's capacity to generate
heritable phenotypic variation. Metazoan evolution is
marked by great morphological and physiological
diversification, although the core genetic, cell
biological, and developmental processes are largely
conserved. Metazoan diversification has entailed the
evolution of various regulatory processes controlling
the time, place, and conditions of use of the
conserved core processes. These regulatory processes,
and certain of the core processes, have special
properties relevant to evolutionary change. The
properties of versatile protein elements, weak
linkage, compartmentation, redundancy, and exploratory
behavior reduce the interdependence of components and
confer robustness and flexibility on processes during
embryonic development and in adult physiology. They
also confer evolvability on the organism by reducing
constraints on change and allowing the accumulation of
nonlethal variation. Evolvability may have been
generally selected in the course of selection for
robust, flexible processes suitable for complex
development and physiology and specifically selected
in lineages undergoing repeated radiations.

In GA's these concepts are also being explore, see
http://dynamics.org/Altenberg/PAPERS/EEGP/
Received on Sat May 28 15:39:18 2005