Wednesday, 1 February 2023

New Engineering Ideas from Biology

David Coppedge

The 2023 Conference on Engineering in Living Systems, organized by the CSC’s Engineering Research Group, is set for June 1-3 in Denton, Texas. (More info and an application is here) New engineering ideas from biology? That’s right. Engineers won’t run out of inspiration any time soon if they look at the living world. From cell to ecosystem, life knows how to solve problems — how to engineer solutions, it’s not unfair to say. Here are some new illustrations.

Click Like a Beetle

Robot designers face a show-stopper when their invention falls over. Solution? Design like a click beetle. When this insect gets turned upside down, it launches itself with a rapid click, using elastic energy stored in its exoskeleton. Biologists at the University of Illinois were intrigued. News from the U of I says, with pun intended, “Researchers have made a significant leap forward in developing insect-sized jumping robots capable of performing tasks in the small spaces often found in mechanical, agricultural and search-and-rescue settings.”

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Princeton University have studied click beetle anatomy, mechanics and evolution over the past decade. A 2020 study found that snap buckling — the rapid release of elastic energy — of a coiled muscle within a click beetle’s thorax is triggered to allow them to propel themselves in the air many times their body length, as a means of righting themselves if flipped onto their backs.

A 12-second demonstration of their invention is shown in the article. “This process, called a dynamic buckling cascade, is simple compared to the anatomy of a click beetle,” admitted Samek Tawfick, a mechanical science and engineering professor at the University of Illinois. Obviously, their gadget can’t make babies.

Control Heat Like a Camel

Firefighters depend on their special suits for protection from the flames but leave the lifesaving heroes soaked in sweat. New Scientist reports, “Fabric inspired by camel’s hump could protect firefighters from heat.” How is that? Camels have had to face heat challenges ever since the first ancient peoples learned to ride them across the desert on trade routes. They were pre-designed for prolonged exposure to the sun’s fiery rays.

Jian Fang at Soochow University in China and his colleagues have developed an insulating fabric that uses pockets of aerogel, in which the liquid component of a gel is replaced with gas. It is sandwiched between two layers of heat resistant plastic polymer. This is said to mimic the fat stores in a camel’s hump.

Camel hair wicks water from the animal’s sweat glands to the outside air. Material that mimics the fat and hair in camels can not only exceed the specifications of today’s firefighting uniforms, but also keep the first responders more comfortable as they work.

The aerogel pockets are produced using ultrasonic welding, where sound is used to melt the two layers of plastic together at various points. This process also creates micropores in the fabric that can wick away moisture. “We created many pore structures, like the camel’s sweat glands, that can guide liquid from inside to outside, helping you when you get sweaty,” says Fang.

When the researchers exposed the fabric to temperatures of about 80°C (176°F) for about 20 minutes, they found that a thermostatic plate covered by it stayed around 20°C cooler than one covered by conventional firefighter uniform fabric. And when it was exposed to a 1000°C flame for 10 seconds, the camel-hump fabric also suffered far less burning and damage.

The engineered “biomimicking” fabric also traps 13 percent less moisture, is cheap, and easy to make. It looks promising.

Echo Like a Bat

How bats navigate through foliage after their target prey presents a difficult challenge. “Foliage echoes in some cases can help bats gather information about the environment,” says a new paper in PLOS ONE , “whereas in others may generate clutter that can mask prey echoes during foraging.” Hongxiao Zhu from the University of Virginia and colleagues from the UK and Japan had already built a “foliage echo simulator” they could use with a “biomimetic sonar head” to investigate how the bat sorts the useful echoes from the clutter.

In this work, we improve the existing simulator by allowing more flexible experimental setups and enabling a closer match with the experiments. Specifically, we add additional features into the simulator including separate directivity patterns for emitter and receiver, the ability to place emitter and receiver at distinct locations, and multiple options to orient the foliage to mimic natural conditions like strong wind. To study how accurately the simulator can replicate the real echo-generating process, we compare simulated echoes with experimental echoes measured by ensonifying a single leaf across four different species of trees. We further extend the prior work on estimating foliage parameters to estimating a map of the environment.

Bats can make mental maps of their surroundings with sound; that’s remarkable. The research team’s approach — which is engineering all the way down — reveals the complexity of the problem that the bat solves so well: discriminating information from noise in a field of clutter. No mention of evolution was found in the paper. The authors begin their publication with this amazing factoid:

Many bat species rely on echolocation — they emit short ultrasonic pulses and listen for the returning echoes to support navigation and prey hunting. The dominant frequency in bat biosonar pulses can reach up to 212 kHz with thresholds for object detection as low as 0.05 mm — smaller than the thickness of human hair. The extremely capable sonar sensing system coupled with low energy requirements makes bats an excellent biological model for the study of smart sonar systems.

Heal Like a Fungus

Materials scientists have long been biomimetics fans, imitating spider web silk, nacre in oysters, and superhydrophobic leaves of water lilies. In a paper in Nature Materials , researchers from the Netherlands and Switzerland began their paper with praise for the qualities of living materials, particularly fungi. Why mimic them when you can partner with them?

Biological living materials, such as animal bones and plant stems, are able to self-heal, regenerate, adapt and make decisions under environmental pressures. Despite recent successful efforts to imbue synthetic materials with some of these remarkable functionalities, many emerging properties of complex adaptive systems found in biology remain unexplored in engineered living materials. Here, we describe a three-dimensional printing approach that harnesses the emerging properties of fungal mycelia to create living complex materials that self-repair, regenerate and adapt to the environment while fulfilling an engineering function.

This is the 21st-century version of putting a harness on an ox or horse. It took a long time to build an “iron horse” (locomotive) that could exceed the power of an animal. Even so, the engineered copy lacked some of the advantages of the biological inspiration, such as ability to eat grass, make copies of itself and not pollute. If these researchers can harness fungi for clean, self-healing, adaptive “green” technologies, that’s a solution engineers will aspire to.

Smell Like a Dog

A headline from CORDIS asks, “Why can’t we replace sniffer dogs with electronic noses?” Olfaction seems simple in concept; absorb volatile organic compounds (VOC), classify them and identify them according to a lookup table or memory. The reality is much more complicated. Accompanying a photo of a smart-looking German shepherd with nose to the wind, this article gives a status report on progress with “e-nose” technology. The “future is bright” the technology, but after 40 years of work, dogs are still ahead by a nose. Why?

“While it should be possible to train e-noses to smell most things that dogs can smell, dogs retain certain advantages. Their sense of smell is extremely sensitive and can identify VOCs at very low concentrations. Sensors also have shorter lifespans than dogs and are more vulnerable to humidity and temperature,” remarks Roque [a biomechanical engineer in Portugal].

Nose engineers find it difficult to miniaturize the sensors and computers into an autonomous robot, “given the processing power required and the large number of validation samples that the sensors have to accommodate.” So far, e-noses only work for specific types of odorants. Engineers have a long way to go to match the broad talent in dogs that can sniff out everything from squirrels to drugs to cancer cells. Dogs can also detect minute traces of VOCs and chase them along a gradient. Human engineers may need another 40 years.

Evolution Is Like Engineering?

The click-beetle scientist, Sameh Tawfik, repeated a worn-out evolutionary canard that claims evolution is like engineering. He said, “this study plants a seed in the evolution of this technology — a process similar to biologic evolution.” Darwin notoriously compared blind natural selection to goal-oriented artificial selection. In doing so, he created an industry in academia that commits this logical fallacy routinely. Once the magical thinking gets extricated from press offices as the parasitic meme it is, bio-inspired engineering can leap forward with credit going where it belongs — to intelligent design.

The engineering perspective in biology, as exemplified magnificently in Your Designed Body by Steve Laufmann (one of the leaders behind CELS) and Howard Glicksman, offers twin advantages over Darwinism. The first and immediate benefit is practical: ushering in a golden age of new technologies that can bring convenience, safety, and health to everyone. The second — even more significant — is philosophical. It can replace the storytelling of Darwinism that denigrates biology as a heap of junk arrived at by multitudes of accidents, and instead exalt biology with the awe it deserves for solving environmental problems with elegant solutions. This could generate superior understanding of life processes (as engineers attempt to mimic them), imbue life sciences with purpose, and make biology class exciting again.

Tuesday, 31 January 2023

Stone henge redux?

Founding Fathers of the modern I D movement?

Intelligent Design’s Founding Father

David Klinghoffer

Well, that headline is a little misleading since, as I pointed out last week, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Arthur Holly Compton had already endorsed intelligent design – by that name – in 1940. Other Nobel laureates would join him in decades to come. But chemist Charles Thaxton, co-author (with engineer Walter Bradley and geologist Roger Olsen) of The mystery of Life's origin, was arguably modern ID theory’s founding father, or one of the three. Writing at The Federalist, Emily Nordhagen Sandico describes the origins of Thaxton’s book, published in 1984, which had such a profound influence on Stephen Meyer, William Dembski, Phillip Johnson, and others.

An Interdisciplinary Nature

I wrote the historical introduction to the recent Expanded edition of the mystery of life's origin, but a lot of this I did not know. Much is drawn from Thaxton’s new memoir A Leg to Stand On. As Sandico writes, the interdisciplinary nature of the book was key to its importance.

From, How a chemist ,an engineer and a geologist

destroyed Darwin's warm pond theory.

Thaxton recounts a session with about 25 professors and graduate students during which scientists in different disciplines objected to his critique, each by calling upon another scientist in another field. As each man in turn unexpectedly affirmed the correctness of Thaxton’s points, it became clear that the scientists had relied on what they believed to be true outside of their own areas of expertise to shore up their own theories, where they recognized weaknesses. These scientists needed an interdisciplinary view of evolutionary theory to see its true state.

Thaxton was the man for that job. In 1976 he was asked to review a manuscript about the origin of life by Walter Bradley, an engineer, and Roger Olsen, a geologist. Thaxton saw the value in what he read, and he knew what was missing: more chemistry! “You’re the chemist,” said the others.

So after years of research and collaboration, in 1984, Bradley, Olsen, and Thaxton published a rigorous interdisciplinary critique of origin-of-life research: “The Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories.” (The book was republished in 2020 with several new chapters by leading experts.) In it they delved deeply into, among other things, the geochemistry of the early Earth, the role of thermodynamics in ordered systems, and the need for information, not just energy, to accomplish the order that we see in life.

Their work was persuasive. The book garnered unexpectedly positive responses from fellow scientists, many of whom accepted their critique on its merits, and even welcomed it as an accurate and much-needed evaluation of the state of the field. Thaxton, et al. had withheld their alternative hypothesis — that an intelligent cause was behind the origin of life — until the end of the book, allowing materialist readers to consider the evidence against chemical evolution on their own terms before being invited to make the paradigm-shifting concession that the evidence warrants a nonmaterial conclusion.

Sandico notes that, after obtaining a chemistry PhD at Iowa State, Thaxton himself had been influenced by chemist Michael Polanyi:

Thaxton’s interest turned specifically toward chemical evolution and the origin of life after he read Michael Polanyi’s 1967 article “Life Transcending Physics and Chemistry” in Chemical and Engineering News. Polanyi, a physical chemist, argued that life is not reducible to mere chemistry and physics. Thaxton may have forgotten the paper had he not, soon after reading it, happened to hear an analysis of it by Francis Schaeffer, who called Polanyi’s assertion “one of the most outstanding propositions of the twentieth century.” Thaxton was intrigued. He began to examine the state of the origin-of-life field, and found it… well, let’s say unproductive.

It’s a helpful and very interesting intellectual lineage. Read the rest at The Federalist

Thomas Sowell on the modern day fall of Rome.

On the struggle for the Empire of God on earth

Monday, 30 January 2023

One more time

Everything that is true of the one true God MUST be true of any person identical to/ identified as the one true God.

If then Jesus Christ is the one true God. Then everything that is true of the one true God MUST also be true Jesus Christ.

Including : acts ch.3:13 NIV "The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus..."

Jesus must of necessity be his own Lord.

John ch.8:54 NIV"Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. "

Jesus Christ must of necessity be his own Father

And if as trinitarians insist the one God is the trinity. Then Jesus must be the trinity .

If this strikes you as illogical (first good for you)

Hopefully you will at least understand why it strikes me as illogical.

The privileged galaxy?

New Study: The Milky Way Is Exceptional

Guillermo Gonzales

The Copernican Principle is said to be a guiding narrative in modern cosmology. We are told that the great Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus started us on a series of demotions with his removal of the Earth from the center of the Solar System. Later, astronomers discovered that we aren’t even at the center of the Milky Way and that the Milky Way is just one of many billions of galaxies in the observable universe. These discoveries proved that our place in the universe is not special, and when we do cosmology we must assume we are typical observers.

Much of this narrative is false, as Jay Richards and I explain in The Privileged Planet and as Michael Keas further elaborates in Unbelievable. We now know that our planetary home, our Solar System, and our location in the Milky Way are not typical. What about the larger scales? Is the Milky Way typical? What about its place in the local universe?

Not a Typical Galaxy

Astronomers have known for several decades that the Milky Way is not a typical galaxy. It is among the approximately 1 percent of most luminous galaxies in the nearby universe. In addition, the SAGA (Satellites Around Galactic Analogs) survey revealed that the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way exhibit A lower rate of star formation than those around Milky Way analogs. The researchers also found that the Milky Way satellites are more centrally concentrated than those around other galaxies like ours.

A just-published study in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (see Here and Here) reveals the Milky Way to be very atypical in another way. Based on large-scale simulations of the local universe, the researchers found that the Milky Way is more massive than most galaxies imbedded in cold (low velocity dispersion) “walls” similar to ours.

Not Arranged Randomly

Over the last 40 years, surveys of the “nearby” universe have revealed that galaxies are not arranged randomly in space. Rather, they are mostly arranged in a foam-like structure with mostly empty “voids” outlined by “filaments” and “walls” or “sheets.” These structures have been reproduced with massive computer simulations that include ordinary and dark matter.

The lead author, Miguel Aragón, said, “You might have to travel a half a billion light years from the Milky Way, past many, many galaxies, to find another cosmological wall with a galaxy like ours.” They found that only about one in a million galaxies in the simulation are as special as the Milky Way in this way.

They note that the local wall environment can influence the angular momentum and spin alignment of its member galaxies. They suggest that galaxies in our local wall environment may have experienced fewer mergers. We do not yet know why the Milky Way is special in this way. Is this rare condition needed to make the Milky Way more habitable? Does it give us a privileged place to make cosmological observations from? Answers to these questions will have to await further research.

Why the Russian Church remains fuel for JEHOVAH'S wrath.

Religious Repression in Putin’s Russia

Antonio Graceffo

While religion was formally abolished under the USSR, under Putin it has been repressed. Consequently, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom identified Russia as one of the world’s worst violators of religious freedom.

In December 2021, just two months before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s supreme Court dissolved the non-governmental agency (NGO) Memorial, which is the oldest and most respected human rights organization in Russia and an outspoken supporter of religious freedom. Among other activities, the group was compiling a list of those imprisoned for alleged offenses related to religion. The dissolution of Memorial was seen as a warning to other activists, that they too could be prosecuted for speaking out against Putin’s government.

Under the Russian Constitution, though citizens are guaranteed religious freedom, authorities may suspend religious activity in the name of national security. Although the constitution specifically cites extremism as a cause for the suspension of religious freedom, it does not provide a robust definition of which activities could be considered “extremism.”

Additionally, Russia has strict laws on the registration of clergy and places of worship in addition to staunch prohibitions against missionary work. The term “missionary work” is broadly applied to “preaching, praying, disseminating religious materials, and answering questions about religion outside of officially designated sites.” Furthermore, the country has blasphemy laws and has the third-highest blasphemy prosecution rate in the world. Blasphemy is often used as a pretext to suppress the activities of religions other than the Russian Orthodox Church.

Russian law technically recognizes Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism as the four “traditional” religions. But, only the Russian Orthodox Church is elevated to the role of representing the ideals and faith of Russia, passed down across untold generations . Officially acknowledging the Orthodox Church as being part of the country’s cultural and genetic heritage is significant because not only does it subordinate other religions, but it also subordinates Russia’s non-Slavic ethnic minorities.

Among the 200 ethnic groups living in the Russian Federation. Russian Slavs comprise 77.7% of the population while the remainder is comprised of smaller minorities like Tatars, Ukrainians, and Mari (Volga Finnic ethnic group in the republic of Mari El). Other ethnic groups in the Russian Far East and bordering on Central Asia include Khakas, Yakut, Chechens, Mongolic, and Turkic peoples. Many minority groups are adherents of religions not afforded the protection of “traditional” religions such as Christianity. About 63% of Russia’s population are Orthodox Christian, 7% are Muslim, and 26% identify as agnostic. Buddhists, Jews, other Christians, and animists each comprise about 1% or less of the population.

Religious groups and NGOs have reported ongoing abuses committed by the authorities. Members of groups designated “extremist”, “terrorist”, or “undesirable” have been subjected to investigation, detainment, imprisonment, torture, physical abuse, and/or seizure of property.

Among the groups suffering this type of repression are Islamic groups Hizb ut-Tahrir, Tablighi Jamaat, and followers of Muslim theologian Said Nursi. The Church of Scientology was closed on the grounds of posing a threat to national security. The Falun Gong spiritual movement was banned for extremism and terrorism. Multiple evangelical Protestant groups have been persecuted with Protestant Christians often being fined for “illegal missionary activity.”

Indigenous religions practiced by some small minorities, such as those in the Russian Far East, are not identified under the law as “traditional religions.” As such, they have suffered a great deal with even less recourse. Vandalism and desecration of sacred sites have been inflicted on the Mari religion and the indigenous Khakas religion (Siberian shamanism and Christianity) while a Yakut shaman who said she would exorcise Vladimir Putin was confined to a mental institution.

Religious Repression in Putin’s Russia

By Antonio Graceffo on January 11, 2023

read5 min

After the Russian invasion of and annexation of Crimea in 2014, religious groups previously legal in Ukraine were subjected to Russian law. Consequently, the Islamic Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars became a banned faith. Even the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) in Crimea is being persecuted and this has resulted in the confiscation of property belonging to the Cathedral of St. Vladimir and Olga. The Kremlin’s actions against Ukrainian Christians prompted the United States Congress to introduce the Ukraine Religious Freedom Support Act (H.R. 496).

The Russian high court ruled to ban Jehovah’s Witness in 2017, ushering in a period of harassment. To date, there have been more than 1,274 raids of homes belonging to Jehovah’s Witnesses with property confiscated and, in many instances, adherents being arrested. As of 2021, 52 Jehovah’s Witnesses were serving prison sentences. In June 2021, a Russian court sentenced four Jehovah’s Witnesses to 3-5 years in prison citing the Russian government felt that the presence of Jehovah’s Witness threatened the nation’s “civil peace and accord.”

Russia’s Old Believers, a Russian Orthodox denomination which split from the main church in 1666, have called on the Russian government to end its religious persecution of minorities, citing repression of non-Orthodox Christians in Tsarist Russia. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2022 that Russia’s ban of the Jehovah’s Witnesses faith was unlawful.

In 2020, the Russian government discussed religious legislation that would require all clergy who studied abroad to retrain in a Russian college where classes in Russian history and spirituality would be mandatory. This is particularly troubling for Russia’s Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist associations which have depended heavily on overseas educated clergy since the collapse of the USSR. The Catholic church reported that many of their foreign priests and nuns already faced difficulty obtaining work permits and that this new requirement for retraining would most likely force the closure of numerous dioceses.

Another form of religious discrimination has been seen in Putin’s call for conscripts which largely come from the ethnic and religious minority populations since the invasion of Ukraine began. Mongols from Buryatia, many of whom practice Shamanism, were particularly singled out for conscription. The regions that have suffered the highest casualties are Buryatia and the Republic of Dagestan, home to Turkic Muslims and Buryatia. Other predominantly minority regions suffering heavy casualties are the Krasnodar Krai, Bashkortostan, and Volgograd Oblast. As many as 40% of the casualties have been non-Slavic according to some accounts.

Donetsk and Luhansk, two regions of Ukraine with a high concentration of ethnic Russians, have had a long history of violence perpetrated against Christians and non-Moscow Patriarchate Orthodox communities. Now that these regions are occupied by Russia, religious repression is expected to increase.

Since the days of Tsarist Russia, through the Soviet era, and now, in the Russian Federation, under Vladimir Putin, Jews, Muslims, animists, Shamanists, and Christians who did not follow the Russian Orthodox faith have been oppressed. The fact that faith remains and that these believers have not given up the struggle to practice their religion is, in itself a miracle. The religious beliefs of the Russian people have outlived the Russian Empire and the USSR, and they will outlive Vladimir Putin.

Ps. Revelation 18:24NIV "And in her was found the blood of prophets and saints, and of all who were slain on the earth.”"

What breaking some eggs looks like?

Modern day gold rush in the wild east.

The Spectre of Lamarckism looms again?

Blindness in Cave Fish is Due to Epigenetics

Cornelius G Hunter

A recent Paper out of Brant Weinstein’s and William Jeffery’s laboratories on eye development, or the lack thereof, in blind cave fish has important implications for evolutionary theory (paper discussed Here). The study finds that the loss of eyes in fish living in dark Mexican caves is not due to genetic mutations, as evolutionists have vigorously argued for many years, but due to genetic regulation. Specifically, methylation of key development genes represses their expression and with it eye development in this venerable icon of evolution. But the finding is causing yet more problems for evolutionary theory.

Darwin appealed to the blind cave fish in his one long argument for evolution. It is a curious argument in many ways, and the first sign of problems was in Darwin’s presentation where he flipped between two different explanations. At one point he explained the loss of vision in the cave fish as an example of evolutionary change not due to his key mechanism, natural selection. Instead, the Sage of Kent resorted to using the Lamarckian mechanism or law of “use and disuse.” Privately Darwin despised and harshly criticized Lamarck, but when needed he occasionally employed his French forerunner’s ideas.

Elsewhere Darwin hit upon a natural selection-based mechanism for the blind cave fish, explaining that elimination of the costly and unneeded vision system would surely raise the fitness of the hapless creatures.

This latter explanation would become a staple amongst latter day evolutionary apologists, convinced that it mandates the fact of evolution. Anyone who has discussed or debated evolutionary theory with today’s Epicureans has likely encountered this curious argument that because blind cave fish lost their eyes, therefore the world must have arisen by itself.

Huh?

To understand the evolutionary logic, or lack thereof, one must understand the history of ideas, and in particular the idea of fixity, or immutability, of species. According to evolutionists, species are either absolutely fixed in their designs, or otherwise there are no limits to their evolutionary changes and the biological world, and everything else for that matter, spontaneously originated.

Any evidence, for any kind of change, no matter how minor, is immediately yet another proof text for evolution, in all that the word implies.

Of course, from a scientific perspective, the evidence provides precisely zero evidence for evolution. Evolution requires the spontaneous (i.e., by natural processes without external input) creation of an unending parade of profound designs. The cave fish evidence shows the removal, not creation, of such a design.

The celebration of such evidence and argument by Darwin and his disciples reveals more about evolutionists than evolution. That they would find this argument persuasive reveals their underlying metaphysics and the heavy lifting it performs. It is all about religion.

We are reminded of all this with the news of Weinstein’s new study. But we also see something new: The insertion, yet again, of Lamarck into the story. The irony is that the epigenetics, now revealed as the cause of repressed eye development in the cave fish, hearkens back to Lamarck.

Darwin despised Lamarck and later evolutionists made him the third rail in biology. Likewise they have pushed back hard against the scientific findings of epigenetics and their implications.

The environment must not drive biological change.

False.

Well such biological change must not be transgenerational.

False.

Well such inheritance must not be long lasting, or otherwise robust.

False again.

This last failure is revealed yet again in the new blind cave fish findings.

False predictions count. A theory that is repeatedly wrong, over and over, in all of its fundamental expectations, will eventually be seen for what it is.

The rise of epigenetics is yet another such major failure. Evolutionists pushed back against it because it makes no sense on the theory, and that means it cannot now be easily accommodated.

One problem is that epigenetics is complex. The levels of coordination and intricacy of mechanism are far beyond evolution’s meager resources.

It’s not going to happen.

Another problem is the implied serendipity. For instance, one epigenetic mechanism involves the molecular tags places on the tails of the DNA packing proteins called histones. While barcoding often seems to be an apt metaphor for epigenetics, the tagging of histone tails can influence the histone three dimensional structures. It is not merely an information-bearing barcode. Like the tiny rudder causing the huge ship to change course, the tiny molecular tag can cause the much larger packing proteins to undergo conformational change, resulting in important changes in gene accessibility and expression.

This is all possible because of the special, peculiar, structure and properties of the histone protein and its interaction with DNA. With evolution we must believe this just happened to evolve for no reason, and thus fortuitously enabled the rise of epigenetics.

Another problem with epigenetics is that it is worthless, in evolutionary terms that is. The various mechanisms that sense environmental shifts and challenges, attach or remove one of the many different molecular tags to one of the many different DNA or histone locations, propagate these messages across generations, and so forth, do not produce the much needed fitness gain upon which natural selection operates.

The incredible epigenetics mechanisms are helpful only at some yet to be announced future epoch when the associated environmental challenge presents itself. In the meantime, selection is powerless and according to evolution the incredible system of epigenetics, that somehow just happened to arise from a long, long series or random mutations, would wither away with evolution none the wiser.

These are the general problems with epigenetics. In the case of the blind cave fish, however, there is possible explanation. It is a longshot, but since this case specifically involves the loss of a stage of the embryonic development, evolutionists can say that genetic mutations caused changes in the methylating proteins, causing them to be overactive.

This explanation relies on the preexistence of the various epigenetic mechanisms, so does not help to resolve the question of how they could have evolved. What the explanation does provide is a way for evolutionists to dodge the bullet presented by the specter of the cave fish intelligently responding to an environmental shift.

Such teleology in the natural world is not allowed.

So the evolutionary prediction is that these proteins will be found to have particular random changes causing an increase in their methylation function, in particular at key locations in key genes (i.e., the genes associated eye development).

That’s a long shot, and an incredible violation of Occam’s Razor.

My predictions are that (i) this evolutionary prediction will fail just as the hundreds that came before, and (ii) as with those earlier failures, this failure will do nothing to open the evolutionist’s eyes.

Alt-science?

Welcome to Alt-Science

Cornelius G Hunter

Sometimes it’s obvious, as in the case of the scientific research paper that was rejected after it was accepted. While the paper was well accepted and given positive comments from peer reviewers, certain members of the editorial board of a seemingly scientific journal noticed that the results had negative implications for evolution. And so months after the editor had told the authors he was happy “to proceed with publication,” the paper suddenly was, “on further reflection and discussion,” summarily rejected.

And what exactly was the “discussion” about? That “the unspoken implication of the article is that, probabilistically, random undirected evolution is impossible.”

And that, dear scientists, is not allowed.

Random undirected evolution is, by definition, a fact. Break that ground rule, and pay the price. This isn’t about science or truth. This is the alt-science that seeks to control everything from publications and textbooks to careers and funding.

Sunday, 29 January 2023

The thumb print of JEHOVAH: OOL Edition.

On the Darwin delusion.

Mama Bear Apologetics Takes on Richard Dawkins

Evolution News

A new episode of ID the Future puts atheist Richard Dawkins’s book Outgrowing God under the microscope and reveals multiple ways his argument smashes up against contrary scientific evidence. Walking us through the critique are author and Mama Bear Apologetics founder Hillary Morgan Ferrer and her co-host, Amy Davison.

Dawkins invokes the beautiful order evident in the murmuration of bird flocks as evidence that complexity can evolve from simple algorithmic rules. But Ferrer explains why the phenomenon of bird murmuration doesn’t even begin to approach what we find when sophisticated engineering order emerges in the growth of embryos. Ferrer also considers the challenges of re-engineering sperm thermoregulation to move from how it works in marine life to how it works in land animals. For a blind process to traverse this evolutionary pathway while maintaining viability at every stage would require — to adapt a line from Alice in Wonderland — six hundred impossible things before breakfast. What about evolving something simpler, such as the bilayer cell membrane, essential for cellular life? No, Ferrer argues. It’s also far too sophisticated to have evolved through a blind evolutionary process. What is needed is the foresight that comes with intelligent design. Tune in to hear Ferrer and Davison rebut these and other pro-evolution arguments from Richard Dawkins.

Download the podcast or listen to it here. To read more from Ferrer and some of her Mama Bear colleagues, pick up their bestselling book Mama Bear Apologetics: Empowering Your Kids to Challenge Cultural Lies.

David Berlinski re: human nature.

Man playing God again ,what could go wrong?

Yet more on serendipity's key role in Darwinism.

Protein Mutations Are Highly Coupled

Cornelius G Hunter

A new Study from Michael Harms’ laboratory at the University of Oregon finds that potential amino acid substitutions in protein sequences are highly coupled. That is, if one residue mutates to a new amino acid, the swap impacts the other possible substitutions—they now have a different impact on the protein tertiary structure. As the paper explains:

Proteins exist as ensembles of similar conformations. The effect of a mutation depends on the relative probabilities of conformations in the ensemble, which in turn, depend on the exact amino acid sequence of the protein. Accumulating substitutions alter the relative probabilities of conformations, thereby changing the effects of future mutations. This manifests itself as subtle but pervasive high-order epistasis. Uncertainty in the effect of each mutation accumulates and undermines prediction. Because conformational ensembles are an inevitable feature of proteins, this is likely universal.

This coupling leads to a “profound unpredictability in evolution,” and the authors conclude that “detailed evolutionary predictions are not possible given the chemistry of macromolecules.”

This finding seems to confirm what many evolutionists have said for decades—that evolution is a contingent, not law-like, process:

These [macro]evolutionary happenings are unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible.” – Theodosius Dobzhansky, 1957.

Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques” for explaining evolutionary events and processes. – Ernst Mayr

What science needs are “plausible scenarios for a fully material universe, even if those scenarios cannot be currently tested.” – Victor Stenger, 2004

any replay of the tape would lead evolution down a pathway radically different from the road actually taken. – Stephen Jay Gould

All of this is in direct contradiction to the science, which reveals undeniable patterns in biology that have been repeated over and over. From the pervasive instances of convergence, recurrence, and all kinds of other “ence’s”, to the non adaptive patterns discussed by Michael Denton, the biological is anything but haphazard or random. Clearly, the same solution, for whatever reason, is used repeatedly across a wide range of species, in various patterns.

This is a clear falsification of an evolutionary expectation expressed across many years, and widely held by a consensus of experts.

But there is another problem with these protein findings. In addition to confirming the complexity and coupling of protein folding, the findings also seem to corroborate what theoretical and experimental studies have shown for years, that the fitness landscape of macromolecules in general, and proteins in particular, is rugged.

The problem of evolving a protein is difficult for several reasons. First, protein function drops off rapidly with only a few mutations. Very quickly a protein loses its function as you move away from the native sequence.

Second, random or starting sequences are stuck in a flat and rugged fitness landscape. There is little sign of a the kind of smooth and gradually increasing fitness landscape that would aid evolution’s enormous task of figuring out how proteins could evolve.

These problems are just getting worse, and this new finding a good example of that trend.

Saturday, 28 January 2023

JEHOVAH God: friend of science?

Michael Keas Debunks Science-Faith Warfare Myth

Michael Keas

On a classic episode of ID the Future, host Andrew McDiarmid talks with science historian Michael Keas about Keas’s revealing work from ISI Books, Unbelievable: 7 Myths About the History and Future of Science and Religion. “Scientists do love a good story,” says Keas. “Turns out there are plenty of stories we shouldn’t believe, myths about science and Christianity supposedly at war with each other.” He also discusses a future-oriented ET myth that functions as a substitute for traditional religion. Learn more about Keas’s fascinating and informative book. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

No paradise without JEHOVAH.

Dear Transhumanists: Do You Really Want to Live Forever?

Peter Biles

2023 is expected to yield “breakthrough” research in aging treatments, led by the Palo Alto medical company Altos Labs. Jeff Bezos is among the donors of the organization, which notes on its homepage that its mission is “to restore cell health and resilience through cellular rejuvenation programming to reverse disease, injury, and the disabilities that can occur throughout life.”

Not for everyone

A Wired article is optimistic about the direction of the research and compares its potential to the development of antibiotic treatment. Andrew Steele writes:

In 2023, early success of these treatments could kickstart the greatest revolution in medicine since the discovery of antibiotics. Rather than going to the doctor when we’re sick and picking off age-related problems like cancer and dementia in their late stages when they’re very hard to fix, we’ll intervene preventively to stop people getting ill in the first place—and, if those treadmill-shredding mice are anything to go by, we’ll reduce frailty and other problems that don’t always elicit a medical diagnosis at the same time.”

ANDREW STEELE, A DRUG TO TREAT AGING MAY NOT BE A PIPE DREAM | WIRED

Others are worried that even if such medical breakthroughs were achieved, they would only be available to those who seem to have the most vested interest in biological longevity: the wealthy and powerful. Maggie Harrison writes at Futurism:

Seeing as how neither wealth nor power, political or otherwise, are historically something that folks are too keen to share, it’s not exactly outlandish to assume that the already-rich makers of such a miracle drug or device might employ some hefty gatekeeping efforts.”

MAGGIE HARRISON, EXPERTS WORRIED ELDERLY BILLIONAIRES WILL BECOME IMMORTAL, COMPOUNDING WEALTH FOREVER (FUTURISM.COM)

Bezos at the helm

It sounds almost too dystopian to be making headlines, but this kind of research is well funded and gaining traction among prominent researchers across the world. If Jeff Bezos is at the donor helm, chances are the research won’t be in want of extra cash. Interestingly, one of Altos Labs’ leaders is the man responsible for developing the AI that defeated a human in the game “Go.” He’s quoted in his profile:

“I joined Altos Labs because of the unique opportunity to team up with world-class biologists and explore how AI and Machine Learning can be used to understand and control biological processes with the goal of maintaining and restoring the health of our cells.”

ALTOS LABS | THORE GRAEPEL, SVP, COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AND MACHINE LEARNING

Altos Labs’ vision isn’t too far removed from that of the transhumanists who want to computerize human consciousness. For them, however, longevity is a junior varsity goal — what we really need is a way to live forever. Harrison quips at the end of her article, “Anyway. See you in MetaHeaven, where we sacrifice our data to our meat-smoking Lord Zucko in exchange for eternal algorithmic life.”

While perhaps the end goal of biological longevity remains distant, the race for an even longer and healthier life is well underway. Could the results ever be democratized? Would only some people benefit from these “groundbreaking” advances? Who knows. In any case, one question we sometimes neglect is whether the longevity of life is worth it when one’s spiritual, emotional, and mental quality of life is wanting.

A Life of Meaning

In his review of Dr. Randall Smith’s new book, From Here to Eternity, Auguste Meyrat writes:

Even granting the assumption that technology will somehow enable immortality, Smith points out how this still doesn’t resolve the matter of meaning. Working through the implications of a life without end, he concludes that such “immortals” are doomed to a meaningless cycle of events in which nothing lasts. In this way transhumanists run into the same challenge as the ancient pagans, whose version of the afterlife also fell short of transcendence — that is, a fuller life on a higher plane of existence, not simply living the same way indefinitely.

AUGUSTE MEYRAT, REMEMBERING OUR MORTALITY IN A DEATH-AVERSE CULTURE – ACTON INSTITUTE POWERBLOG

For Meyrat and Smith, biological longevity and technological immortality would be terrible because we’d be so bored. We’d still have an existential problem to solve. A life of meaning is what we truly need, and perhaps what we most deeply desire.

Friday, 27 January 2023

Where success is an orphan.

The fossil record continues to troll Darwinism.

Fossil Friday: Elephants and the Abrupt Origin of Proboscidea

Günter Bechly

This Fossil Friday features the iconic Deinotherium (16.9-0.78 mya) since today we look into the last order of afrotherian mammals, the Proboscidea and their putative fossil relatives. Proboscideans include the living and fossil elephants such as mammoths, mastodons, gomphotheres, stegodonts, and deinotheres. The fossil record of proboscideans is very extensive with about 50 genera with 185 species. It includes isolated teeth as well as complete skeletons with numerous early representatives from the Paleogene (Tassy 1990, McKenna & Bell 1997, Shoshani & Tassy 2005, Sanders et al. 2010). These fossils certainly provide significant information about the history and development of proboscideans (Tassy & Shoshani 1988, Tassy 1990, Shoshani & Tassy 1996, 2005, Shoshani 1998, 2001, Gheerbrant 2009, Gheerbrant & Tassy 2009, Begum 2021, Cantalapiedra et al. 2021). For our purpose we will ignore all of the later radiations of elephant-like mammals and will focus on the earliest representatives of the first radiation. So, when do proboscideans first appearance in the fossil record?

Oldest and Most Primitive

The oldest and most primitive assumed proboscidean is Eritherium azzouzorum from Sidi Chennane in the Ouled Abdoun Basin of Morocco (Gheerbrant 2009, Gheerbrant et al. 2012, Schmitt & Gheerbrant 2016). This outcrop is of Middle Paleocene (Selandian, 61.7-58.7 mya) age of almost 60 million years, which makes it the oldest known placental mammal locality in Africa. Eritherium was a relatively small animal, only about the size of a fox, and without a trunk or tusks. It did not really look like an elephant at all, and indeed there is a problem with its alleged proboscidean affinity: in some more recent phylogenetic studies, Eritherium is resolved outside of Proboscidea as a more basal paenungulate (Cooper et al. 2014, Rose et al. 2019), but it was confirmed as basal proboscidean by Gheerbrant et al. (2014, 2016) and Schmitt & Gheerbrant (2016)

Pretty much undisputed is Phosphatotherium escuilliei from the Early Eocene (earliest Ypresian, 55.8-48.6 mya) of the Ouled Abdoun Basin in Morocco (Gheerbrant et al. 1996, 2005a, Shoshany & Tassy 2005, Sanders et al. 2010), which represents the next oldest and second most primitive proboscidean (Gheerbrant et al. 2005a, Schmitt & Gheerbrant 2016). There was one little problem, though, which is the fact that the precise location of its discovery is unknown, because the holotype fossil was acquired from a commercial fossil dealer. The original description by Gheerbrant et al. (1996) admits this but says that an “unambiguous Thanetian age” is documented by the attached phosphatic matrix and the associated shark teeth, which are index fossils for an Upper Paleocene (Thanetian) layer that lacks Ypresian taxa. This “unambiguous” evidence apparently was not so unambiguous after all, because these very phosphatite layers were later recognized as earliest Ypresian by Gheerbrant et al. (2001, 2003), and the Ypresian age was also confirmed by later discovered new material of Phosphatotherium (Gheerbrant et al. 2005a).

Daouitherium rebouli is another primitive proboscidean from the Early Eocene (earliest Ypresian, 55.8-48.6 mya) of the Ouled Abdoun Basin in Morocco (Gheerbrant et al. 2002, Shoshany & Tassy 2005, Sanders et al. 2010). The original describers mentioned that the discovery of Daouitherium documents “an unexpected early diversity of proboscideans and of the old origin of the order” (Gheerbrant et al. 2002).

Numidotherium koholense was described from the Early Eocene (Ypresian) from El Kohol in Algeria (Mahboubi et al. 1984, Court 1995, Shoshani & Tassy 1996, Sanders eat al. 2010). A second species N. savagei was described by Court (1995) from the Upper Eocene (Bartonian, 40.4-33.9 mya) of southern Libya.

Last but not least, there is Khamsaconus bulbous, which was described from a single molar tooth from the Ypresian (55.8-48.6 Mya) of south Morocco. It was initially attributed to the louisinine “condylarths” thus in the possible relationship of the elephant shrew order Macroscelidea (Sudre et al. 1993; also see Bechly 2022c). Most later works rather considered this taxon as a very primitive and small early proboscidean (Gheerbrant et al. 1998, 2002, 2005a, 2012, Gheerbrant 2009, Sanders et al. 2010), but sometimes only with a question mark because the taxon is very poorly known.

One of the best-known early proboscideans is the somewhat younger genus Moeritherium, of which six species have been described. The earliest species is M. chehbeurameuri from the Bartonian of Algeria, which is 40.4-33.9 million years old (Delmer et al. 2006). Moeritheriumis quite remarkable for its very elongate body shape, which is certainly a derived trait that excludes Moeritherium from the direct ancestry of later proboscideans. The similarities between Moeritherium and the “walking sea cow” Protosiren led Andrews (1906) to first suggest a close relationship of elephants and sea cows, which later became generally recognized as the Tethytheria clade (McKenna 1975, Asher et al. 2003, Nishihara et al. 2005, Seiffert 2007, Tabuce et al. 2007, 2008, Asher & Seiffert 2010, O’Leary et al. 2013). Similar adaptations were considered by some experts as indicating a common semi-aquatic ancestor for these two mammal orders (Gaeth et al. 1999, Thewissen et al. 2000, Shoshani & Tassy 2005, Asher & Seiffert 2010).

Barytherium grave is the youngest of the primitive proboscideans and was discovered at the Eocene/Oligocene Fayum Depression in Egypt (33.9-28.4 mya) (Andrews 1906, Shoshani & Tassy 1996, Sanders et al. 2010), which also yielded other early proboscideans like Moeritherium, Phiomia, and Palaeomastodon.

None of these early proboscideans shows the strange phenomenon of horizontal tooth displacement that is found in more modern elephants and independently originated three times within Tethytheria (Shoshani 2001; also see Bechly 2022a). It is also worth noting that the phylogenetic relationships and classification within Proboscidea proved to be a quite controversial issue (Tassy 1988, Tassy & Shoshani 1988, Court 1995), which is hardly a big surprise as it seems to apply to most issues of higher phylogeny in all groups of organisms.

Embrithopoda

Embrithopoda is an enigmatic extinct group of large mammals from the Paleogene of the Old World, of which the best-known member is the iconic Arsinoitherium from the Late Eocene and Early Oligocene of Northern Africa. Even though Arsinoitherium resembled a rhino, most experts considered Embrithopoda as tethytherians within Afrotheria (see Erdal et al. 2016: tab. 2), and maybe even close relatives of proboscideans (Benoit et al. 2013, Avilla & Mothé 2021). However, the most recent studies rather suggest that embrithopods occupy a more basal position as sister group to all other Tethytheria (Erdal et al. 2016, Gheerbrant et al. 2018, 2021), so that the derived similarities with proboscideans have to be considered as convergences (also see Gheerbrant et al. 2005a and Benoit et al. 2013). The allegedly oldest fossil record for this group is Stylophus minor from the Early Eocene (Ypresian, 55.8-48.6 mya) Grand Daoui area in Morocco (Gheerbrant et al. 2018).

Anthracobunia

The Anthracobunia is a group of primitive perissodactyl-like mammals and includes the extinct families Cambaytheriidae and Anthracobunidae from the Early Eocene (55.8-48.6 Mya) of India and Pakistan (Wells & Gingerich 1983, Rose et al. 2006, 2014, 2019; also see Dunn 2020), and according to some workers may\ even include the extinct Desmostylia we discussed last week (Cooper et al. 2014, Rose et al. 2019, Gheerbrant et al. 2021; also see Bechly 2023b). Some scientists considered anthracobunids as tethytherians (Wells & Gingerich 1983, Ginsburg et al. 1999, Ducrocq et al. 2000, Rose et al. 2006, Tabuce et al. 2007, and Gheerbrant et al. 2014) and some other authors even considered them as basal proboscideans (Gingerich et al. 1990, Shoshani et al. 1996, Thewissen et al. 2000, Gheerbrant et al. 2005b, Asher & Seiffert 2010, Erdal et al. 2016), which would make them contemporaneous with some of the earliest proboscideans in Africa (Asher et al. 2003). Shoshany & Tassy (2005) preferred to exclude anthracobunids from Proboscidea until additional evidence becomes available, and Tabuce et al. (2008) mentioned that “the hypothesis that some extinct taxa (desmostylians, embrithopods and anthracobunids) are included in tethytheres is less supported, because the characters used to include them within tethytheres are homoplastic and/or of ambiguous distribution.” Indeed, more recent studies by Cooper et al. (2014), Gheerbrant et al. (2016), and Rose et al. (2014, 2019) unambiguously placed them outside Afrotheria in the stem group of odd-toed ungulates (Perissodactyla). This also makes much more sense from a paleobiogeographic point of view, as all anthracobunids were found in East Asia.

As I discussed in my article on fossil sea cows (Bechly 2023b), Ishatherium subathuensiswas described by Sahni & Kumar (1980) and Sahni et al. (1980) from the early Eocene (Ypresian, 55.8-48.6 mya) Subhatu Formation in the Himalayas. It was described as the oldest known sirenian but only a few authors concurred with this interpretation (Sereno 1982). Domning et al. (1982) questioned the sirenian affinity as well as the dating. Indeed, most other experts think that it could as well be an anthracobunid perissodactyl or a moeritheriid proboscidean (Wells & Gingerich 1983, Domning et al. 1986, Zalmout et al. 2003, Rose et al. 2019), but Cooper et al. (2014) excluded Ishatherium from Anthracobunidae.

Radinskya and Phenacolophus

Both genera have been considered as putative Paenungulata and Tethytheria related to Embrithopoda (McKenna & Manning 1977, McKenna & Bell 1997). Asher et al. (2003)mentioned that “if the hypothesized relation between Arsinoitherium and phenacolophids in the Embrithopoda is correct (McKenna and Manning, 1977), then crown afrotheres are also represented by Paleocene taxa from Central Asia,” which of course would be problematic. The cladistic studies by Gheerbrant et al. (2005a, 2014) confirmed Phenacolophus as a sister group to Embrithopoda in Paenungulata, but resolved Radinskya as sister group to Perissodactyla. More recent studies (Gheerbrant et al. 2016, 2021) even excluded both genera from Afrotheria and instead placed them in the stem group of odd-toed ungulates (Perissodactyla), just like anthracobunids and possibly desmostylians, which makes much more sense biogeographically. But here is the more general question: Isn’t it strange that two totally unrelated groups like elephants and odd-toed ungulates, which belong to different supergroups like Afrotheria and Laurasiatheria, seem to have so many similarities, that it is difficult to place some extinct groups and even some recent groups like hyraxes (Bechly 2023a) closer to one or the other? Is that what Darwinism would predict? Of course not! Is it instead what intelligent design theory would predict? Indeed it is. Just add two and two together yourself.

Ocepeia and Abdounodus

There are two more taxa that are often discussed in the context of proboscidean phylogeny and evolution, which are the two species Abdounodus hamdii and Ocepeia daouinensisdescribed by Gheerbrant et al. (2001) from the Middle Paleocene (Selandian, 61.7-58.7 mya) phosphatic beds of Ouled Abdoun in Morocco, a fossil locality that also produced some of the earliest fossil proboscideans (see above). They were considered to be the first condylarth-like mammals from Africa and related to Perissodactyla and Paenungulata, which now are attributed to different supergroups of placental mammals. Later studies by the same authors suggested a possibly affinity with aardvarks or basal paenungulates (Gheerbrant et al. 2014, 2016). Abdounodus and Ocepeia have meanwhile been confirmed as basal Paenungulata by several phylogenetic studies (Gheerbrant et al. 2018, Avilla & Mothé 2021).

We can conclude that, apart from the usual mess of incongruent phylogenies, it is an undeniable fact that Proboscidea appeared abruptly in the Late Paleocene / Early Eocene with a surprising early diversity (Gheerbrant et al. 2002). Moreover, there are anatomical discontinuities between the distinct radiations of early lophodont proboscideans and later elephant-like forms (Tassy 1988, 1990, Begum 2021, Cantalapiedra et al. 2021). Herewith we have completed our review of the afrotherian mammal orders and can move on to the next mammalian supergroup, called Euarchontoglires, which includes primates, tree shrews, colugos, hares, rabbits, and pikas. Since we have already dealt with the origins of primates (Bechly 2022b), we will look into the fossil history of tree shrews next Fossil Friday.

The God hypothesis redux?

File under "well said," LXXXIX

"“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”"

Plato

One old NY home's brief architectural history.

The Houdini of the animal kingdom?

More on the origin of life re:the design debate

Thursday, 26 January 2023

Science vs. Chance and necessity of the gaps.

Another Nobel Prize-Winning Scientist for Intelligent Design

David Klinghoffer

Earlier this week, John West Reported on a major new exhibition on faith and science in Washington, DC, tackling the question of whether the Bible impeded or inspired the rise of modern science. (Judging from the historical record, “inspired” is clearly the correct answer.) In the article, he mentioned another Nobel Prize-winning scientist who endorsed the idea of an intelligent design behind the universe, using that phrase explicitly. This was news to me. He is physicist Arthur Holly Compton

Compton’s remark was, “The chance of a world such as ours occurring without intelligent design becomes more and more remote as we learn of its wonders.” Interesting. He said that in 1940.

From the Wikipedia article

Arthur Holly Compton (September 10, 1892 – March 15, 1962) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927 for his 1923 discovery of the Compton effect, which demonstrated the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation. It was a sensational discovery at the time: the wave nature of light had been well-demonstrated, but the idea that light had both wave and particle properties was not easily accepted.

Compton joins fellow Nobel Prize-winning physicists Charles Townes (UC Berkeley) and Brian Josephson (Cambridge University) who have likewise come out for ID as a legitimate interpretation of the scientific evidence. (Townes passed away in 2015.) To those names you could add two more, Sir John B. Gurdon (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) and Gerhard Ertl (Nobel Prize in Chemistry) who, along with Dr. Josephson, endorsed the Discovery Institute Press book by chemist and ID proponent Marcos Eberlin, Foresight ,how the chemistry of life reveals planning and purpose

"Species" as a social construct?

Biologist Advocates Biology Without Species; What Could Go Wrong?

Evolution News

Like defining the term “life,” defining the biological category “species” has been the subject of interminable debate. Literally dozens of definitions of “species” exist, which is probably best explained by the ineliminable role of philosophy in the debate. When differing philosophies are competing, any definition represents an act of war (so to speak) — laying a claim to the whole conceptual territory by trying to drive out the competitors using semantic fiat.

So what is the definitional equivalent of the ultimate act of war? Blow the concept “species” to smithereens. Just say that species don’t exist — at all. One cannot define what does not exist. To complete the act of destruction, coin a term such as “speciesism” to attach as a pejorative to one’s opponents. They are the baddies who insist that the unreal (i.e., the standard taxonomic category of species) actually exists out there in the world.

From the Latin

The sober name for this “blow it to bits” approach is radical nominalism. “Nominal” comes from the Latin root for name (nomen). On this view, species are artificial categories, on which, for our own purposes, we hang names. Darwin promoted radical nominalism in the Origin of Species (1859, p. 52):

I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, for convenience’s sake.

Radical nominalism didn’t fare very well in the 20th century, however, mainly because evolutionary biologists found they needed a category with some correspondence to real groups, out there in the nature, simply to have a coherent science of living things. But the blow-it-to-bits approach never went away.

A Program of Radical Nominalism

Recently, biologist Brent Mishler at UC Berkeley and his colleagues have laid out a full program of radical nominalism, presented in two open access volumes:

Speciesism in Biology and Culture: How Human Exceptionalism is Pushing Planetary Boundaries

What, if anything are species.

So what is real, according to Mishler? Only phylogeny — the tree of evolutionary descent. We slice the tree into arbitrary units of description, but ALL the units, including the species, are unreal.

Sigh. A long sigh. Biology without species? Like chemistry without the periodic table.

Anyway, thanks to Mishler and his publishers for making the texts open access.

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