Physics vs. Darwin

Physicist David Snoke on Denton's Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis
David Klinghoffer February 23, 2016 12:50 PM

I highly recommend reading a review, by University of Pittsburgh physicist David Snoke, of Michael Denton's Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis. It's fascinating and wonderfully lucid. While expressing some disagreement, he concludes that the book deserves to sit on the same shelf with Stephen Jay Gould's work -- a high compliment whatever your position on evolutionary questions.

I think that Dr. Snoke's comments as a physicist are particularly helpful and illuminating. He draws a comparison to the "topological argument" well known in his profession:

We are all so programmed by the current evolutionary debate to see Darwinian evolution as the only viable materialist theory that it is hard to understand at first what Denton is proposing, if not intervention from a spirit world, and it is hard to grasp that there were evolutionists who preceded Darwin, with strong arguments against Darwin's ideas. To understand Denton's view (and Owen's) it is crucial to realize that it is first and foremost an empirical theory. Science has a long tradition of empirical theories which simply state the facts in unifying language without proposing any mechanism at all to explain them. Thus, for example, Newton famously proposed that gravity force could act at a distance, without proposing any explanation why. We are all so used to Newton's laws now that we forget how empirically driven it was. The same empirical approach was used to build the Periodic Table of chemistry, long before quantum mechanics explained why it has the form it does. In the same way, Denton, following Owen, draws us to look at a glaring and obvious fact of nature: that living organisms do not exist in a continuum of small differences with gradual transitions between them; rather, they exist in highly distinct types and forms, with specific identities and unique features for each type. Thus, for example, mammals all have four limbs, five digits per limb, two eyes, mammary glands in pairs, etc. These patterns persist over hundreds of millions of years despite all manner of selective pressure in different directions.

Darwinian evolutionists are familiar with these properties, of course, and have a standard explanation that they are leftover vestiges from archetypal ancestors. Against this, Denton has two main arguments. First, the record strongly supports the view that new Forms appear suddenly, without precursors. This is known as "saltation" -- the sudden appearance of a fully formed new structure. In all of the cases we know, the "transitional forms" between one type of organism and another do not consist of creatures with half-novelties, but rather, creatures with whole and complete novelties. Their transitional nature is identified because they have a subset of a larger set of several wholly novel features belonging to later descendants. But in each step that we see along the way, that which is new is whole and complete. The problem this creates for Darwinian evolution is similar to what is called a "topological argument" in physics. There are some things that can be continuously transformed into other things, while some things cannot. In the canonical example, a coffee cup can be transformed continuously into a doughnut, but not into a saucer. In the same way, all feathers are tubular, which requires a follicle with circular form, while reptile scales are flat sheets. Topologically, a flat sheet cannot be continuously transformed into a tube. (It was fascinating to me to hear that the dinosaurs-acquiring-feathers story actually creates new problems for Darwinism.) There are also more generalized topological arguments. Some molecular cycles in the cell are circular -- the so-called "chicken-and-egg problems" in which element A is required to create element B, and B is required to create C, but C is required to create A. These loops therefore have the same toplogical problem of lack of continuous generation from a prior process.

The transitional forms which indicate common descent also therefore create huge problems for gradual change via Darwinian selection as a mechanism. The most plain reading of the data is "descent with saltation." This occurs at every level. New organs occur suddenly, new processes occur suddenly (such as human language), and new genes occur: in every form of life there are whole genes (known as ORFans) that appear to be utterly unique to that form, with no homolog in any other type of creature. In some cases, even when genes from an ancestor are used, they are pressed into service to perform utterly new functions via the sudden appearance of a completely new set of switches and timers.

Snoke wrote his review for the Christian Scientific Society, so not surprisingly he asks about the relevance for Christians of Denton's "heavily empirical and materialist book." The "materialist" descriptor may be a little confusing, since Denton's view also "sounds a lot like neo-Platonism." Anyway, Snoke says this about anatomical features that seem to serve no purpose:

The idea of robust Forms is worth examining for the Christian. As Denton notes, much Christian thinking has been as utilitarian as Darwinist thinking. We tend to assume that everything in living systems must have a useful function. Perhaps some things, especially overall architectures, have their particular form not for function but for beauty or diversity. This leads to, for example, a helpful way of looking at the problem of male nipples. If we ask "What are male nipples for?" we are assuming a fully utilitarian view of living forms, and can get into knots trying to decide what they are good for, or if God has made a mistake. If we adopt a view of Forms, we can say that male nipples exist because the proper form for human bodies is to have nipples there.

Also, regarding the implications of Denton's thinking that run contrary to Darwinian racism:

The idea of Forms also makes a difference when think about race and racism. Darwinism has always had an ugly flirtation and sometimes open marriage with racism. If all of life is a continuum of gradual changes, then it makes sense that various subgroups of humans would be at different stages in evolutionary development, some closer to apes and others closer to the next upward step. Darwin argued in The Descent of Man that "lower" versions of humans such as Hottentots were proof of his theory of evolution. But Denton makes the case that, like other creatures, humans have had a stable single Form since they first existed, with all the basic gifts of language and culture in all geographical locations from the very beginning.

Snoke observes the irony that current evolutionary thinking is so hidebound -- "calcified," is how he puts it -- that it took Discovery Institute, leading advocate of intelligent design (not a materialist theory), to give a forum to Dr. Denton, whom Snoke sees as a sort of latter-day Gould. I think Denton's structuralism is in fact best understood as a form of ID. But the point is well taken. In today's orthodox evolutionary circles, protected from criticism behind walls of academic prestige, the spirit of intellectual exploration and discovery is largely extinguished.


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Published paper on nervous system's information processing does just fine minus Darwinian gloss.

Design Paper Hits a Home Run
Evolution News &Views

Baseball lovers will appreciate this glimpse into what your senses and nerves have to do to bat a homer. A news item from Oregon State:

Researchers have discovered a mechanism of intercellular communication that helps explain how biological systems and actions -- ranging from a beating heart to the ability to hit a home run -- function properly most of the time, and in some scenarios quite remarkably. [Emphasis added.]

It's a noisy world out there. The batter can't focus on irrelevant sounds from the stands. The information coming in through his senses has to be sorted and organized quickly. Simple but accurate representations must be served to the brain. Then, the brain's decision has to signal responses in the muscles, nerves and heart. All this must happen very quickly. Each cell is a player on a vast field:

In this process, a chemical stimulus called ATP functions as a signaling molecule, which, in turn, causes calcium levels in a cell to rise and decline, and tells a cell it's time to do its job -- whether that be sending a nerve impulse, seeing a bird in flight or repairing a wound. These sensing processes are fundamental to the function of life.

So how does the body pull all this together? There are trillions of cells involved, all signaling each other. The resulting "interactive chatter" among them would be overwhelming, but the body takes advantage of collective wisdom. Physicist Bo Sun at OSU explains:

"The thing is, individual cells don't always get the message right, their sensory process can be noisy, confusing, and they make mistakes," Sun said. "But there's strength in numbers, and the collective sensory ability of many cells working together usually comes up with the right answer. This collective communication is essential to life."

Cells have a way of voting a consensus:

This interactive chatter continues, and a preponderance of cells receiving one sensation persuade a lesser number of cells reporting a different sensation that they must be wrong. By working in communication and collaboration, most of the cells eventually decide what the correct sensory input is, and the signal that gets passed along is pretty accurate.

Now let's put it together in a real-life situation requiring rapid response. Watch a baseball play from the cells' perspective, as the batter sees a 93-mile-per-hour fastball coming in low:

The photoreceptor cells in the batter's eyes see the pitch coming. Some cells see it as a curve in the dirt, and some mistake it for a changeup, a slower pitch. But the majority of the cells come to the correct conclusion, it's a fastball at the knees, and they spread the word. After extensive communication between all these cells, a conclusion is reached and the correct message is sent to neurons in the brain.

Think how fast this has to happen. That's a pretty rapid committee meeting! The conclusion is barely out the eyeballs, and the fastball keeps coming at 93 mph.

The brain cells, in turn, send a strong signal through nerves to muscles all over the batter's body, the shoulders, legs, and especially arms. The signals arrive and once again a collaborative process takes place, deciding what the message is and how to react. Calcium ions in muscle cells are triggered and a brutally fast-but-accurate response is triggered, swinging the bat. This entire process, from the ball leaving the pitcher's hand to contact with the bat, takes less than half a second.

Nobody bats a thousand, we know. The real wonder is that the batter connects at all.

On a perfect day -- the cellular debate over what pitch was coming was sufficiently short-lived, the timing exact, the muscle contractions just right -- the ball explodes off the bat and sails over the center field fence.
On a more realistic day -- since the best hitters in the world only succeed 3 times out of 10 -- the ball bounces weakly to the second baseman for an easy out. This in turn triggers the collective groans of 30,000 disappointed fans. But the heart has cellular communication that continues to guarantee its normal beating, and the player lives to bat another day.

Behind this colorful description is a scientific paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about the chemical details of cellular signaling, without the baseball references. The paper is notable for its mention of "design principles" and utter lack of Darwinian vocabulary like natural selection, phylogeny, or evolution. Enjoy this refreshing outlook, loaded with design concepts:

Decoding the cellular response to environmental perturbations, such as chemosensing, photosensing, and mechanosensing, has been of central importance in our understanding of living systems. To date, most studies of cellular sensation and response have focused on single isolated cells or population averages. An emerging picture from these studies is the set of design principles governing cellular signaling pathways: these pathways are organized into an intertwined, often redundant network with architecture that is closely related to the robustness of cellular information processing.

The Oregon State researchers had a hunch that a higher level of information processing is going on:

However, many examples suggest that collective sensing by many interacting cells may provide another dimension for the cells to process environmental cues. Examples, such as quorum sensing in bacterial colonies, olfaction in insects and mammals, glucose response in the pancreatic islet, and the visual processing of retinal ganglion cells, suggest a fundamental need to revisit cellular information processing in the context of multicellular sensation and response, because even weak cell-to-cell interaction may have strong impact on the states of multicellular network dynamics. In particular, we seek to examine how the sensory response of cells in a population differs from that of isolated cells and whether we can tune between these two extremes by controlling the degree of cell-cell communication.

They've set up an intriguing question. How does the inside of a body respond to cues from the outside? What translates sensations into chemical signals? How are those signals communicated inside cells and between cells? The OSU team describes their approach:

We study a population of fibroblast cells that responds to a chemical stimulus (ATP) and communicates by molecule exchange. Combining experiments and mathematical modeling, we find that cells exhibit calcium oscillations in response to not only the ATP stimulus but also, increased cell-cell communication. Our results show that, when cells are together, their sensory responses reflect not just the stimulus level but also, the degree of communication within the population.

And thus, with exemplary scientific techniques, they shed light on a phenomenon of great interest to us all. OSU's Dr. Sun explains why this is "remarkable":

"These processes of collective sensory communication are usually accurate, but sometimes work better than others. Mistakes are made," Sun said. "Even so, this process makes life possible. And when everything goes just right, the results can be remarkable."

We don't know if these folks at OSU will appreciate the applause, but ask any researcher anywhere: Would a Darwinian spin have added anything to this paper? Baseball games are familiar to us all, and each time a batter swings, these phenomena -- cell signaling, quorum sensing, and information processing -- really happen. The evidence for "design principles" is pretty clear every time the batter connects with the ball. Learning about how that happens makes for good scientific work; it is sufficient without a narrative gloss about how it might have "evolved."
Show us the phenomenon, describe how it works, and advance our understanding with sound laboratory practices. If the phenomenon exhibits good design principles, it's OK to say so. If all scientists followed OSU's example in this paper, and if science reporters wrote like the author of the news items cited above, then the science-consuming public would be well served.