ON EVOLUTION

Let's go back to the much- touted story of the two varieties of the moth Biston betularia, the light- colored one and the melanic (dark) one. As the soot settled over the industrial regions of northern England, the moths did not have to wait for one of them to start mutating a suitably melanic form, but melanism was already in its genetic arsenal. In fact, from what we could tell at the end of the twentieth century, apparently the genome of the population never did get changed. All that happened was that for a time one variety was favored over another. Given the reversal of proportions, from 99/1 to 1/99, it would appear that, if it had not been for the melanic mutation, which was already present, Biston betularia would have become yet another species in the "extinct" column of the ledger.

Or let's consider a case on a much larger scale. If I remember correctly, grazing animals evolved after browsing animals because grasslands appeared later than leafy plants. (If I got this wrong, we can retell the story in reverse.) So, let us stipulate a population of proto-deer, which has been happily dining on leaves for quite a while. Its neighbors are the tiny little proto- hippocampi who are grazers, but unfortunately for them, there is nothing yet for them to feed on. Well, that wouldn't work, so the proto-hippocampi must have been browsers as well. But they're really too small to be browsers, so let's just forget about them for the moment.

Now grass appears. So do all those grazing hippocampi. Where did they come from? This is getting confusing. Let me start over.

Now grass appears. We have two options. Either

1. the grasslands replace the leafy plants to the point where there is not enough food for the browsers, or
2. the grasslands are a new resource in addition to the leafy plants.

In either case we have a problem. In the first case, the probability should be that the browsers would die out long before there has been enough time for any of them to evolve into grazers (including the hippocampus, regardless of what his forebears were eating). Since that didn't happen, the adaptation must have taken place in an unbelievably short time, much shorter than similar evolutionary developments among other animals. The fossil record, as reconstructed nowadays, seems to bear this out. Given the evolutionary time scale, the development of the hippocampus into the horse happened in a very short time. So short, in fact, that the only way in which one can explain the rapidity of the change is by inventing new nomenclature to cover it. It was tachytelic (extremely fast) evolution, as opposed to bradytelic (extremely slow) evolution. Unfortunately, as always, finding new terms to describe a phenomenon does not help us much in understanding the phenomenon.

Under the second possibility, where the grass is simply an addition to the leafy plants, there is insufficient reason for the browsers to evolve into grazers, which they obviously did. In fact, it was not just perissodactyls (hoofed animals with odd numbers of toes), such as horses or rhinos, that showed up and started to feed on grass, but some members of the originally browsing artiodactyls (hoofed animals with even numbers of toes), such as bovines, switched over to grazing as well.  Furthermore, as we just said, the fossil record shows us that they did so in record time.  Once the grass appeared, grass-eaters appeared right along with it. 

So, let us summarize, adopting an evolutionist stance: Once upon a time there were only browsing animals and no grazers because there were no grasslands yet. When grass evolved, it opened up a whole new niche, which was filled in unusually short time by newly-evolving grazing animals, as illustrated by the evolution of the hippocampus into the horse. However, it is also a logical necessity that, in order for this rapid adaptation to take place, the ancestors of the grazers must already have had the genetic disposition to evolve in that direction.  According to evolutionary theory, organism are supposed to be genetically determined as to what nourishments they need and take.  They don't just mutate into the direction of trying a new food source because they want to. Or, for that matter, because one of them tried it and liked it, and so they all followed suit.  You just can't have it both ways: either the genetic determinism holds, in which case you need to have the change in genes occur before the change in behavior, or you need to beg out of one of the main planks that upholds the theory of evolution: viz. that changes in the genes are sustained in response to changes in the environment.  

Now, we agreed last time that neither animals nor plants decide for themselves how they are going to evolve. But if you look at the directions in which the gene pool moved, it would be much likelier that either nothing changed or that all of the browsers should have gone extinct than that grazers should appear and that they should do so at such a rapid rate. It is not possible to look at the events in the history of evolution, whether we are talking about the emergence of grazers or the "warfare" between butterflies and their host plants, without recognizing some sort of directionality. The evolutionists themselves provide the best examples thereof, as demonstrated by Scott's exposition of the interaction between butterflies and plants, which I quoted yesterday. Remember:

• "Ancient insects ate ancient plants; in response, the plants evolved thick, tough, tooth-edged leaves . . . which physically deter animals from eating the leaves."
• "Plants have also evolved chemical defenses against attack."
• "Some butterflies have adopted special tactics to prevent their own extinction."

I know that scientists like Scott don't mean such anthropomorphic or intentionalist language literally. My point is that looking at the facts and taking the probabilities into account, it's virtually unavoidable to see directionality.

And thus the time has come for me to go out on a limb (by which I do not mean that I am going to devolve into a brachyating anthropod). What you see is what you get.

Evolutionary adaptation requires that the mutations necessary for the adaptation are already present in the genome. That requirement entails that there is an intentional directionality in the evolutionary process.

First of all, if you start from the perspective of creation in six twenty-four hour days, none of what I've said has anything to do with your position. I'm not advocating evolution, but I'm describing what would be entailed in a theory of evolution.

Second, if you hold to some form of progressive creationism under some name or other, I trust that these observations contribute to your position.

Third, even if you take any idea of creation out of the picture, I contend that it is still not possible to describe the evolutionary process without recognizing some form of directionality. If you prefer to think or speak of it as some unknowable, unutterable, mysterious force, that's up to you, but I think that the idea of a personal infinite God as Creator is more rational.

Fourth, let me come back around to my initial point. I've tried to call attention to all of the difficulty and complexity involved in speciation. My suggestion is that, for all practical purposes, it is unavoidable to look at the process and not see directionality along the way. Consequently, the evolution of homo sapiens simultaneously from different species of Homo, viz. Homo erectus A, Homo erectus B, etc., is utterly unsustainable. In fact, it appears to me that it is becoming increasingly likely that the notion of intelligent design, regardless of how phrased, may just be on its way to becoming the new paradigm.

On Evolution, part 5

Origins of Life: Smithsonian Style

I haven't heard from anyone who knows of or has written a reponse to a recent article on the origin of life in Smithsonian, so hopefully I'm not just duplicating someone else's labors. The article in question [Helen Fields,"Before There Was Life"Smithsonian 41,6 (October 2010):48-54; photographs by Amanda Lucidon] is actually as much about the mineralogist Bob Hazen as about the scientific issues with which he concerns himself. The article portrays him as a person who can develop enthusiasm for many areas of study, who loves to play music, and who, together with his wife Margee, enjoys amassing collections (including one of thousands of trilobites), which they then donate to publicly accessible displays. Hazen receives his regular pay envelope from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., where he does research utilizing high- pressure, high- temperature equipment.

A little more than a year ago, I wrote an entry in which I expressed my appreciation for the book Origins of Life by Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross (NavPress, 2004). If I may quote myself: "[The book] has given me a good sense overall where science is these days with regard to this issue." Where science is, is stuck. If one scientist comes up with a new wrinkle on a method in which life may have originated spontaneously; other scientists immediately apply the starch and iron out the wrinkle.

The Smithsonian article quotes Hazen as saying, "A few years before, we would have been laughed out of the origins-of-life community." (50) The fact that he does not activate the risibility of his fellow scientists could be due to the significance of his work. It could also be due to the fact that this so-called community is desperate for any notion, no matter how bizarre, that will provide them with a possible idea of how life may have originated on the basis of purely naturalistic events. Furthermore, as Hazen himself avers, NASA is happy to cooperate with origin-of-life endeavors, which will presumably result in funding for both partners. The cold hard truth appears to me to be that Hazen has not yet made any contributions, which advance the research significantly.

Please note the words "not yet" in the previous sentence. This expression could be a sign of a realistic assessment, leaving the door open to something marvelous making a sudden appearance in the future. On the other hand, it could also be an indicator of unbounded optimism, conveying the attitude that it's only a matter of time before the significant epiphany will occur. My use of "not yet" is in the former sense; articles of this nature tend to reflect the latter attitude.

It is of serious benefit to some areas of contemporary science that the languages of most popular writers on science contain a future tense and a subjunctive mood. A lot of articles written for the public glide smoothly from what a scientist has discovered to what will be proven as the next step of their work, and this article constitutes no exception, as I will show after I have explained Hazen's work a little more.

Let us start with a working definition of life; there is no universal agreement on how it is phrased, but the outcome tends to be pretty much the same: We know that we are looking at a living organism when it consists of proteins and it reproduces itself. At its most simplistic, to have protein you need to have peptide chains, and to have peptide chains, you need to have amino acids. So, where can one get amino acids on a planet that is supposedly still in the process of formation, billions of years prior to the emergence of anything that we would recognize as "nature"? Lots of places, as it turns out.

In 1952, Stanley Miller recreated what he imagined to be the conditions of earth in its early, pre-life stage. This is the primordial soup, which scientists now know to have been extremely thin, if it existed at all. Miller sent electric sparks through the mixture, and--to everyone's surprise (except maybe Miller's)-- some of the elements in his concoction interacted so as to form amino acids. But that's as far as Miller's experiment went. He could not find a way in which, still trying to simulate natural conditions, he could persuade the amino acids to combine any further to take the next step to becoming a life form.

And Hazen has not gotten any further. What he has done (the "breakthrough," as Fields calls it) is to show that amino acids can be recreated in environments other than Miller's hypothetical early earth. One of the theories of the naturalistic origin of life is that the necessary building block molecules may have been produced at thermal vents in the ocean. These are springs at great depths in the sea that release extremely hot water at extremely great pressure. Hazen has simulated those conditions in containers called "pressure bombs," and, starting with the right kinds of elements and precursor molecules, after some time amino acids and some other organic (i.e. carbon- based) compounds have appeared. And thus, he has wound up pretty much where Miller was fifty-eight years ago: with amino acids that have little inclination to do any further work.

There are some further problems of which Miller was not aware back at his moment of temporary triumph, but that Hazen has to take into account.

• As alluded to already, the hypothetical primordial soup could only have been a thin broth, reducing by a far greater factor than initially thought, the chances that the molecules, once they have formed in the thermal vents and set out on their meanderings, will encounter other molecules and undergo a chemical reaction.
• Furthermore, I will now tell you the item I concealed when I brought up this issue above. I mentioned an article by George Wald ("The Origin of Life," Scientific American, August 1954, p.48 ) in which the author made the fallacious argument that, given enough time, the probability of even a seemingly impossible event occurring moves eventually to virtual certainty. Not only is that argument invalid, as I explained a year ago, but the window of time in which life must have developed is much smaller than originally proposed. Wald estimated about 2 billion years. Realistically, by today's information, the window could not have been any wider than 50 million years, possibly even narrower. So, it has shrunk by a factor of 40, or, if you prefer raw numbers, it lost 1,950,000,000 of its supposed 2,000,000,000 years. These numbers really lower the probability of the spontaneous formation of living molecules (Ross and Rana, p. 85).
• And, oh yeah, I almost forgot, the hydrothermal vent theory doesn't work anyway. The identical Stanley Miller has shown that the same extreme conditions that could allow the formation of amino acids would also destroy them a few minutes later. (Ross and Rana, pp. 102-103). And that's assuming that in real- life conditions the amino acids could actually form. Unfortunately, amino acids require nitrogen, which could theoretically be supplied by ammonia--if only at that point in time there had been enough ammonia to go around, but, apparently there wasn't (ibid).

Hazen stipulates that the key to raising the probabilities may lie with the presence of minerals. To quote from the article:

"'So the chances of a molecule over here bumping into this one, and then actually a chemical reaction going on to form some kind of larger structure, is just infinitesimally small,' Hazen continues. He thinks that rocks--whether the ore deposits that pile up around hydrothermal vents or those that line a tide pool on the surface--may have been the matchmakers that helped lonely amino acids find each other. . . . An amino acid that drifts near a mineral could be attracted to its surface. Bits of amino acids might form a bond; form enough bonds and you've got a protein." (50 -51, emphasis mine)

Now I'm going to make a comment that will appear to be unkind and then try to show that the comment is not quite as unkind as it looks at first glance: We see here that if you ignore the problems (e.g. the survival of the molecules) and gratuitously stipulate the necessary assumptions (e.g., the availability of ammonia), you can achieve great results in the subjunctive mood. So, I'm saying in so many words that Hazen solves a scientific problem purely theoretically. But what (maybe, to some extent) takes the sting out of that evaluation is the observation that this has been a philosophical, theoretical problem all along. The last paragraph of the Smithsonian article begins:

"Everywhere he looks, Hazen says, he sees the same fascinating process: increasing complexity. 'You see the same phenomena over and over, in languages and in material culture--in life itself. Stuff gets more complicated.'"

Really? That statement is at least disputable, if not downright false. I can't pass judgment on what Hazen sees, but I can assess the truth of the existence of the phenomenon to which he refers. Unfortunately the statement is too vague to evaluate it completely, but one item is clearly wrong: languages definitely simplify over time. And here's a debatable question: My normal transportation consists of a car with an automatic transmission. Does this state of affairs represent greater or lesser complexity than if it had a standard transmission? Whose point of view is decisive: the driver's or the engine builder's? What if I usually travelled by horse and buggy and had to maintain a horse? Would things be more or less complex compared to maintaining a car? My point is that Hazen is expressing a subjective point of view, and he sees what he has been trained to see. I must confess that I don't see what he sees. My life now is relatively complicated. But it would be rather arbitrary for me to say that it is more complicated than if my survival depended on the contingencies of a hunter-gatherer economy. For that matter, I cannot imagine anything more complicated than the naturalistic methods scientists propose to somehow get those molecules generated, bonded, bonded some more, and then to reproduce themselves. But if the door remains closed to the idea of creation, where else can you go than into this mythological realm of science- in-the-subjunctive?