A look at the search for a third way.

 Another Call for a “New Synthesis”

Daniel Witt

 recently wrote a post critical of biologist Peter Corning’s “synergism hypothesis.” Afterwards Dr. Corning got in touch and advised me to consider his new paper, “Cooperative Genes in Smart Systems: Toward an Inclusive New Synthesis in Evolution,” in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. 

Of course I was happy to read it. And I’m glad he pointed me to it, because although the paper doesn’t address any of the criticisms from the intelligent design perspective (honestly, I would have been pleasantly surprised if it did) it is quite relevant to the ID/Darwinism debate. 

In the new paper, Corning argues that it’s time to throw out the neo-Darwinian synthesis. He goes farther than the call for an “extended synthesis” that was made by some biologists a few years ago. It’s not that the synthesis needs to be extended, he writes — it needs to be replaced. 

This paper follows closely behind an article in Nature by Oxford’s Denis Noble arguing for much the same thing, which Casey Luskin reviewed here. Luskin wrote: 

Noble’s vision of biology… where dogma is discarded, new ideas are considered, agency and purpose are acknowledged, cells are more complex than computers and machines, proteins are like miniature transformers, and organisms control their genomes, is highly compatible with intelligent design — certainly far more compatible than the biological thinking of the past hundred years. This means biology is moving in the right direction. 

In his paper, Corning adds his voice to Noble’s. He cites Noble to argue that genes “play only a minor role” in evolution. Instead, many factors guide the evolution of life. Evolution is complex and unpredictable, he writes, and “biological evolution is not reducible to physics.” 

“The time has come,” Corning declares, “to abandon the gene-centered Modern Synthesis and The Selfish Gene model of evolution.” The new synthesis should be a “more inclusive, open-ended synthesis, in recognition of the fact that there may still be more influences yet to be discovered.”

Corning identifies several factors in evolution that are neglected by the Modern Synthesis, including: 

Epigenetic guidance of genetic change

Lamarckian evolution (heritable traits introduced by the habits of the parent) 

Horizontal gene transfer 

Symbiosis (or “cooperative effects,” or “synergy”) 

Teleonomy (internal “purposiveness”) 

He even cites the panspermia hypothesis, albeit in one of its more modest forms: the idea that the compounds that eventually formed the first life were seeded on Earth by meteors. 

If Lamarck Can Do It… 

All this points to a truth that is important for the ID position: namely, that “the assured results of modern science” may not be assured forever.

The gene-centered model is a clear example. We were supposed to believe that the “selfish gene” was unassailable and was only doubted by religious fundamentalists and cranks. If ID theorists rejected it, that was because they were at best biased, and at worst, secretly anti-science. 

But now, poof! it’s just another discarded model. 

Or take Lamarckian evolution. According to Corning, old Lamarck is making something of a comeback. Yet when I was first studying biology, Lamarck’s theory was presented to students as nothing but the debunked historical alternative to Darwinian evolution, faintly ridiculous in hindsight. (And to give you an idea of how quickly that means things can change: I don’t remember 9/11.) 

If one theory can return from the dusty, forgotten shelves of the History of Science and spring back to pages of biology journals, then so can another. No theory should be dismissed out of hand simply because the scientific “consensus” is against it. Likewise, no theory is so well-established that it might not someday be discarded. 

There Was No Problem, and Also, We Solved the Problem 

Granted, the fact that biologists such as Corning are calling for a new synthesis does not, in itself, necessarily indicate a flaw in Darwin’s theory. Yes, you could interpret it as a sign that the contemporary formulation of Darwinism is failing and that its devotees are scrambling to repair or replace it. But you could also put a different spin on it — that Darwin’s mechanism works just fine, but so do many other means of evolution. The call for a new synthesis could simply show that life actually has many ways to evolve. 

Corning’s statement in his book Synergistic Selection that “Darwin’s theory does not provide an explanation for the rise of biological complexity” would seem to favor the former view. Yet in this paper, despite the fact that Corning is calling for a new synthesis, he does not seem to want to state that there was ever really any big mystery or explanatory gap in unguided evolution. I suppose to do so would be to admit that ID theorists and critics of Darwin’s theory had a point. That sort of admission would be hard to publish in a peer-reviewed scientific journal (and Corning himself might not like to make it).

This is the sad irony: people will often only admit that an argument against their position has any merit after they think they have come up with a sufficient rebuttal. First, there’s no problem, and you’re ignorant to think that there is — then next thing you know, with no steps in between, you hear that the problem has been solved.

[Editor’s note: Casey Luskin has wryly called this dance move the “retroactive admission of ignorance.” “Years ago,” writes Dr. Luskin, “I began to recognize a repeating phenomenon in the rhetoric of evolutionary literature: Scientists, echoed by science journalists, would only admit a problem with their models or a challenge to their ideas once they thought they had found a solution.” See, for example, here.]

Winning by Not Playing? 

Of course, if you’re going to pull the trigger and move on to Phase 2, “The problem has been solved,” you’d better be darn sure that the problem really has been solved. I suspect a major reason the “new synthesis” has yet to become truly mainstream is that its various hypotheses don’t actually resolve any of the problems posed by ID arguments. 

Actually, it’s worse than that. They don’t even seem to address the arguments at all. 

It’s hard to effectively refute an argument without referencing it. The paper, and the hypotheses it promotes, are presented as being in some sense a rebuttal to the ID position. Yet there are no (even indirect) references to ID arguments in this paper. The mathematical difficulties of getting information for free are not addressed. The fact that only foresight, not natural selection, increases the probability of a system of interworking parts uniting to create a given adaptive feature, is not addressed. The demonstrated improbability of getting even a single truly constructive mutation by chance in the course of Earth’s 4.6-billion-year history is not addressed. The tendency of selective pressures to break things much faster than they build them is not addressed. 

If the architects of the new synthesis show no evidence of knowing more about intelligent design arguments than you can learn from Wikipedia, it’s no wonder defenders of Darwinism might be reluctant to embrace this synthesis as the new authoritative explanation for biological complexity. Although it’s rarely said out loud, the point has never been merely to explain complexity; it’s to explain complexity without design. And to do that, sadly, you sometimes have to actually engage with the design arguments (not all of which, by the way, are obvious enough to think of on your own). 

As tempting as it may be, simply ignoring the dissidents didn’t work for the old synthesis, and it won’t work for the new synthesis either. Eventually — if the new synthesis survives long enough — its proponents will have to come up with their own answers to the challenges facing unguided evolution.  

Making ID advocates of us all by lowering the bar?

Do Fungi Have Free-Will?

Daniel Witt 

Nicholas P. Money has a bold hypothesis. Money, a professor of mycology at Miami University in Ohio, has argued in a peer-reviewed paper that fungi have minds. 

Whenever a new hypothesis like this is published and calmly debated in scientific journals without arousing any furor, your first instinct may be to scoff: “Why is this absurd thesis acceptable, but intelligent design absolutely anathema?”

Given how often ID theorists have been dismissed without a fair hearing, that reaction is quite understandable. However, given that scientific inquiry is in fact in this sad state, I also think that any case of an out-of-the-box theory being debated civilly is a phenomenon that should be encouraged, not discouraged — especially so when the theory runs against the grain of the old scientific-materialist paradigm. We should consider this kind of thing with an open mind, and expect to receive the same courtesy. 

So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at Money’s argument. Why does he think that fungi think?

Actual Mind, or a Facsimile? 

Before looking at his evidence, we need to clarify something: what does Money mean by mind? Whenever the idea of “mind” come up in a scientific context, I am resigned to expect that mind will be equated with mere computing power — which isn’t really mind at all. The idea of mind is typically thrown around in a very sloppy manner, and its two key elements — experience and will/agency — are vaguely assumed to be emergent properties of physical systems. 

Experience is assumed to arise automatically out of computer-like complexity. No coherent explanation for why is given, and what’s forgotten is that we only know that we possess first-person experience because we get the “inside scoop,” so to speak, from our own experience. A computer that gives certain outputs for certain inputs is only imitating the actions that we have learned (due to that inside scoop) to associate with conscious experience. That carefully crafted imitation is the only reason computers seem conscious, and it doesn’t imply that they actually are conscious (see: philosophical zombies). 

Likewise, discussions of will or agency in science tend to omit the most important part: that free will cannot arise in a strictly deterministic system, or by definition it would not be free will. That means that if any system is alleged to manifest free will, we should in theory be able to find some element (however small) behaving in a way that is not predictable by fixed and inflexible laws.  

Now, to be sure, “fungal mind” would be interesting from an evolutionary perspective either way. If, on one hand, it is a mere computer, with no true mind attached (no experience or will), this would indicate a very high level of complexity and mechanical sophistication; and if, on the other hand, there is a conscious mind involved, then that would strike at the very heart of the pervading scientific-materialist worldview. 

Apparently, Actual Mind!

Given how often scientists (and science writers) ignore these key points, I was expecting Money to present some evidence of extreme complexity and computer like behavior, and equate that with “mind.”

I was pleasantly surprised. Money doesn’t address the metaphysics of experience. But, tentatively — without coming out and saying it in so many words — he seems to want to suggest that fungi might have free will, in the robust sense. He writes:

There is a natural tendency to consider an organism conscious if it appears to engage in decision-making that results in a unique behavioral outcome. Whether or not humans have free will, we take actions that seem willful: she finished her coffee, whereas her friend left her cup half full. On a simpler level, fungi express the same kind of individualistic behavior all the time… Although there is a high degree of predictability in the overall time-dependent form of the emerging fungus, it seems likely that its detailed shape is irreproducible.

Do you see what he’s suggesting? He seems to imply that the growth of the fungus might be non-predictable even in theory. This, in turn, would imply that it is non-deterministic — irreducible to the fixed laws of physics, chemistry, genetics, and so forth — which leaves room for the possibility of either (1) true randomness, or (2) true will or agency in the strict philosophical sense.

This is fascinating, and I do believe it has philosophical merit. (Whether it has experimental merit is a question for other mycology labs to answer.) Money is quite right that the standard way humans intuit free will is by detecting action that cannot be fully explained deterministically by outside causes. 

For example: Imagine you are a great inventor in the 1890s. You’ve created a marvelous automaton that can mimic human behavior. To a casual observer it seems lifelike — but not to you. You as its creator know that it has no true freedom; certain inputs inviolably result in certain outputs. You know that chain reactions in its internal gears and switches produce each action, so you aren’t fooled by the illusion of mind. 

But suppose, one day, the automaton begins to do and say things that you are quite sure you didn’t design it to do (not even by the one-step-removed process of deterministic “machine learning”). How would you react? Most likely, you would be shocked. You would declare (in your 1890s accent), “My creation has come to life!” — and you would be quite justified in your conclusion. 

Likewise, a fungus with behavior that cannot be pinned-down and predicted shows every sign of being alive — in the powerful everyday sense of the word, not merely in the sense we learned in biology class. It’s very hard to prove a negative, and I doubt any mycologist has done so yet (you would probably need to involve a physicist) — but if a fungus’s actions genuinely cannot be reduced to any deterministic process, that suggests free will.  

Building Blocks of a Mind

Like a human brain, a fungal brain with true free will would need to be founded on some basic unit of action that is not strictly deterministic. Money believes the origin of non-deterministic action is found in the hyphae, root-like structures that collectively form a subterranean web called a mycelium. Working together, the simple decisions of the hyphae could result in more complex decision-making for the fungal brain as a whole.  

“If individual hyphae are conscious, what happens when an interconnected colony, or mycelium, of thousands of these cells forms in the soil?” Money asks. “Is a mycelium more than a sum of its parts? Can it be regarded as an integrated conscious entity?” 

As support for this hypothesis, he brings in apparent evidence of complex decision-making capabilities in fungi, including an experiment that seemed to show that when fungi are burned with fire they can remember the experience for up to a day after it occurred and behave differently as a result. 

Money argues that it does injustice to the fungal brain to compare it to even a sophisticated mechanical system such as the Internet. He writes in his conclusion

In this brief essay I have considered fungal expressions of consciousness, including sensitivity, decision making, learning, and memory. This rich behavioral repertoire allows fungi to adapt in real time to changes in environmental circumstances. Our internet shows none of this inherent flexibility. It is a network of pathways that generates nothing on its own. Life outshines the limitations of this drab technology in every cell.

More Philosophical Work Needed

Money is a biologist, not a philosopher, and he is prone to semantic imprecision. For example, he writes: “There is nothing artificial about this intelligence. The continuous flow of information in the live cell would overwhelm the most complex robot.”

You have to wish he would clarify what he means by “artificial.” Most dictionaries define the word as meaning human-made, but since no one to my knowledge believes that fungi were made by humans, this would be an odd thing to assert. I suspect he means something more like “merely mechanical.” It would be helpful for the interpretation of the experimental evidence if qualified philosophers of science get involved in the discussion. 

That said, Money seems to understand the qualitative difference between real mind and mere artifice, and I hope his paper will be the starting point of a deeper inquiry into which kind of “mind” fungi might have. 

As things stand, I don’t claim know whether there truly is any sort of immaterial “fungal mind” — and I doubt that anyone else really knows. But outside the constraining box of methodological materialism, there’s no reason to call it implausible prima facie. 

Granted, it might offend an old-school Cartesian who holds to a particular interpretation of the Judeo-Christian imago Dei concept. But for my money, it’s probable. After all, we know from direct experience that we have minds. And we can infer that we and fungi share the same designer.

Plan B?

 

Discovering the genesis of the universe.

 

On the three body problem.

 

The amazing Randi vs. Psychics

 

The supremacy of the God and Father of Jesus is common sense itself.

        Luke Ch.1:32NIV"He will be great and will be called the Son of the MOST HIGH. The LORD God will give him the throne of his father David,"

John Ch.10:29NIV"My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than ALL c ; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. "

The God and Father of Jesus christ is the MOST HIGH God and thus is co equal to no one.

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

According to Jesus his God and Father is the one and only God of Israel . By common consent the God and Father of Jesus is not triune. Therefore the one and only God of Israel is not triune.

John ch.20:17NIV"Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ”"

The God and Father of Jesus is not triune by common consent . The God and Father of Jesus is also the God and Father of Jesus' disciples . Therefore the God and Father of Jesus' disciples is not triune.

Matthew Ch.24:36NIV"“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, f but ONLY the Father. "

ONLY the God and Father of Jesus Christ is omniscient thus only the God and Father of Jesus Christ is the MOST HIGH God.

Roman's Ch.1:9EHV"To be sure, (the)God, whom I serve with my spirit by proclaiming the gospel of his Son, is my witness to how constantly I make mention of you. In all my prayers, "

Roman's Ch.3:30NIV"since there is only ONE(Grk.eis) God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. "

Paul was an actual monotheist and thus rendered exclusive sacred service to one most high God. Whom he clearly identifies as the God and Father of Jesus Christ.

Matthew Ch.16:16NKJV"Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”" not merely the living Father but the living God to whom all believers owe EXCLUSIVE Devotion/Sacred Service.

Malachi Ch.2:10NIV"Do we not all have one Father b ? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors by being unfaithful to one another?"

The God and Father  of Jesus Christ  is the only true God.

The machinations of Darwinism's ministry of truth.

 

Serendipity did it?

Napoleon 1799: a brief history.

 

The party and the Fatherland are Christendom's true Gods?

 

Rehabilitating nuclear energy.

 

For OoL research: the pile on continues.

 

Big brother is still watching?

 

Necessary but not sufficient.

 A Closer Look at Natural Law 

Stephen J Iacobini

In my last post on the science of purpose, I pointed out that modern science took its inspiration from a belief that the universe was governed by immutable laws of nature emanating from the mind of God. This idea originated with the ancient Greeks, including Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle. Based on these concepts, in the 13th century, St. Thomas Aquinas defined within a Christian framework the specific ways and means of natural causation.

But the history of Western science took a major detour in the 17th century when René Descartes up-ended Thomistic Aristotelianism. The new Cartesian metaphysics provided fertile ground for reductionist science.

“Life Itself”

In his 1991 book Life Itself, theoretical biologist Robert Rosen attempted to reconcile materialist natural law with “life itself.” He explains that science is the endeavor of observing regularities in nature that allow scientists to create a “model” of natural behavior that is in congruence with natural events. For noncomplex natural events such as diffusion, gravitation, refraction, electricity, magnetism etc., it has been possible for scientists to derive mathematical formalisms that quite remarkably comport very well with these phenomena, such that they have great predictive power. And it has been that astonishing success which has led to the mistaken belief that these models of reality are one with nature itself. But Rosen pointed out that one huge shortcoming remains. There are no such formalisms that apply to life. Does that mean that life is at fault? Or does science need to be reimagined?

Resolving the Impasse

The solution, of course, is that scientists have mistakenly reified their formalisms, which is an obvious error. The laws of science are simply models that reflect regularities seen in nature. But they are not nature itself. They are as separate from the objects and events they describe as words on a page are separate from that which the literature attempts to depict.

Recognizing this problem, a number of innovative philosophers have been developing what seems to be an entirely new description of our world, such that it can include not just noncomplex inorganic material events, but truly all of life itself. This new metaphysics is variously termed dispositionalism, or powers ontology. But actually, it is not new. It is a revival of the insights of Aristotle and Aquinas, in a way quite intelligible to present-day philosophy and biology.

The concepts of Aristotle remain with us after almost 2,400 years because he focused directly on the concrete facts of life on display in the world around him. No computers. No calculators. No telescopes, microscopes, or laboratories. Just real life.

His description of reality was accordingly simple. Every thing has a form, i.e., a shape. And for designed objects it is the form which generates or allows the function. Forks are for gripping and spoons are for sipping. Chairs are made for sitting and ladders are made for climbing. And of course, the function of a thing defines its purpose, what Aristotle named telos

Aristotle offered a broad description of reality including inanimate objects. The form and function of stones and water and wood may seem less obvious to modern man than that of a coffee cup or a coat hanger. But the usefulness, i.e., power inherent in the properties of even these primal material objects was quite evident to earlier men.

The idea is simple because it is so fundamental. Every object has an intrinsic power because it has a corresponding inherent property. Stones have the property of solidity which gives them the power of weight and stability. Water has the property of fluidity which gives it the power of free movement. These simple substances can be further designed to acquire additional properties leading, of course, to complexity. Stones can be chiseled to give them the power to cut or penetrate. Water can be channeled to harness kinetic energy. Wood has the property of buoyancy and can be designed to build objects that float, and it also has the property to be shaped or formed into all the innumerable wooden objects one can imagine.

Now Consider Living Creatures

The property of sharp vision gives birds the power to hunt objects at great distances or pluck tiny insects out of the air. The property of echolocation gives bats the power to snatch insects on the wing even in the dark. The property of a keen sense of smell allows a polar bear to smell a seal miles away under the ice. The property of nectar production gives flowers the power to attract pollinating insects. The property of prehensile digits allows many animals the power to clutch objects needed for survival.

All of what I have said so far is immediately obvious. Now here is the payoff. The carbon atom has the property to form covalent bonds in three dimensions, giving it the power to create the scaffolding for complex molecules. Oxygen has the property of a strong electron valence, giving it the power to create an electronic asymmetry with atoms of lesser power. This is why water is a semipolar compound. Nitrogen has properties of chemical bonding intermediate between carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, giving it the power to combine with these other three elements to create extremely complex organic compounds. And of course, CHNO (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen) make up 99 percent of the atomic composition of life itself.

One with Reality Itself

As one’s thinking proceeds in this manner, we suddenly find ourselves talking about all of natural reality, from atoms to stones to vibrant living organisms, in the simple terms of properties which confer powers on matter, by virtue of form and function or telos. Nowhere in all of this is there a mathematical formula or need for materialist natural law.

Finally, and most importantly, describing natural kinds in terms of the properties that give them their power of cause and effect is one with reality itself. There is nothing derivative here. This ontology is at the ground of all we can know

This is in fact the divine natural law defined by Thomas Aquinas. His greatest metaphysical insight was to distinguish being from essence. Materialist natural law is an abstract derivative of natural essence, devoid of being. But real properties that bestow real power instantiate being in essence. For that which is in being also is in act. And according to Aquinas, that which is in act does so only as the result of divine intention.

The future is just not what it used to be?

 

The Jupiter of atheism?

 Compelled by Multiverse Logic

Evolution News

Any “person who is fully knowledgeable about the subjects is compelled by logic to accept the reality of multiverses.”

That emphasis on “compelled” is in the original. From, “The sounds of science — a symphony for many instruments and voices: part II.”

Warning: if one doesn’t accept at least some variant of the multiverse, says co-author and Texas A&M physicist Roland Allen, that refusal “may be potentially harmful to the progress of science, in the same way that not accepting evolutionary biology would be potentially harmful to biology…” He describes six different flavors of the multiverse (1-, 1, 1+, 2, 3 and 4) so if you are still skeptical after stepping away from that cosmological ice cream cart, you’ll have only yourself to blame for being so stubborn and hard to please. 

Well, all right then. You’re a Bad Egg if you doubt the multiverse, whatever the flavor, in the same Basket of Bad Eggs as evolution deniers. And like them, standing in the way of scientific progress.

See   here for more (see pages 23-28) — a comprehensive guide to current controversies and open problems in physics.

By the way, adjectives such as “fully knowledgeable” function as circularity-guaranteeing loops in a decision tree. Do you doubt the existence of a multiverse? Then you’re not fully knowledgeable (and have no right to an opinion).

Exploring inner space?

 

Make it so!

 

A tangled web for Darwinism?

 

Time to listen to your body re: the design debate?

 

OoL research has finally found the cheat codes?

 

The lowly butterfly vs. Darwinism

 Battle Butterflies

Daniel Witt

You can probably think of a lot of creatures that a military might decide to copy for its submarine designs. Sharks or giant squids. Whales, perhaps. Or what about… butterflies? 

MIT reports that one of their engineers, Dr. Philip Daniel, is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Defense to a create a magnetic navigation system inspired by monarch butterflies. Daniel explains:

They’re able to migrate long distances and find the exact forest that their ancestors were born into. How? One theory is that they’re able to sense the Earth’s magnetic field. They have a compass in their head, and they can use it to get where they want to go. The question is: Can humanity take advantage of the Earth’s magnetic field to accurately navigate without GPS?

Every year, around a billion monarchs travel from across North America to gather overwinter in a few specific locations in Mexico. Because adult monarchs live less than a year, none of these butterflies have made the journey before, yet they all somehow know how to travel hundreds upon hundreds of miles to arrive in the same place. (The sheer awesomeness of this journey is well-presented in the excellent Illustra Media documentary Metamorphosis: The Beauty and Design of Butterflies (2011). If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it.)

Magnetic Fingerprints

Daniel calls the navigational mechanism a compass, but this is just a shorthand. The word “compass” doesn’t do justice to the equipment monarchs have, as Daniel himself would no doubt be the first to acknowledge — after all, the U.S. miliary already has compasses. But monarchs have much more. What they need to navigate from different locations across the U.S. and Canada to a specific destination in Mexico is more like a complete GPS system. 

So how do they do it? Daniel explains that deposits of metal in the earth’s crust can create ripples in the magnetic field, giving certain sites specific “fingerprints” to a highly sensitive detector. It has been hypothesized that monarchs use such a system, and that’s what he is hoping to create for the U.S. military. 

Monarch navigation is still poorly understood, although we have figured out some pieces of it. The hypothesis of a magnetic map is necessary because what they are already known to use wouldn’t be enough to do what they do. So far, it’s known that they have an internal solar compass calibrated with an internal clock, and an internal magnetic compass as a backup for night and cloudy weather, but both of those systems would only tell them latitudinal direction, not longitude. 

A reason to suspect that a magnetic map might be the solution is that it has been shown to exist in other animals. Experiments have demonstrated that turtle hatchlings can use magnetic fields to determine both latitude and longitude, implying they possess a sort of internal geographic coordinate system based on the earth’s magnetic field. 

Nobody knows how this magnetic mapping system actually works. Whether it’s turtles, monarchs, or one of the other animals with seemingly magical navigational capabilities, we can still only wonder at what they can do. But if Dr. Daniel and his lab can crack the problem and engineer even a large and clumsy human equivalent of a magnetic mapping system, it might yield clues towards the design of the natural systems. A manmade functioning version would show how the system theoretically can work, and those details might enable scientists to make hypotheses that can be experimentally tested on butterflies and other migratory animals. 

As always, biologists and engineers working together yields both better manmade designs and better understanding of the designs of living creatures. 

Next on the Agenda…Self-Assembling Helicopters? 

Incidentally, this navigation system is not even the most impressive thing about butterfly design. Another engineering marvel, also discussed in Metamorphosis, is the metamorphosis itself. It turns out, during the transformation the caterpillar completely dissolves within the chrysalis into a gooey soup, before self-assembling into a butterfly. Needless to say, this requires an incomprehensible level of coordination and planning to succeed. 

Who knows? Eventually, the U.S. miliary might invent a tank than can dissolve and reassemble itself as a helicopter. 

But I guess we’d better just start where we are. For the time being, the sophistication of butterfly design is far, far beyond us. 

Darwinism should keep its enemies closer?

 

Suboptimal design or suboptimal science?

 The Panda’s Thumb: An Extraordinary Instance of Design?

Andrew McDiarmid

Does the panda’s thumb refute intelligent design? Or is it one of the most extraordinary manipulation systems in the mammalian world, as one respected study has found? On this episode of ID the Future, host Casey Luskin speaks with philosopher Dr. Stephen Dilley about his recent paper evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the iconic panda’s thumb argument for evolution.

Harvard scientist and historian of science Stephen Jay Gould is well-known for his theory that science and religion are non-overlapping magisteria and best kept separate from one another. Yet one of his favorite arguments for evolutionary processes was the panda’s thumb, which is underpinned by a theology-laden premise: namely, God wouldn’t design the panda’s thumb like this, therefore a clumsy step-wise natural process is responsible. But does this argument hold up to philosophical and scientific scrutiny? 

In this conversation, Dr. Dilley challenges the assumptions implicit in the panda’s thumb argument. He also explains that what might be deemed by some as sub-optimal design may actually be an engineering trade-off. Optimizing a structure can sometimes come at the cost of certain design constraints. Ultimately, Dilley holds that the panda’s thumb may be more of a problem for an evolutionary view than a design perspective: “If in fact the very best studies commend the thumb for its efficiency, its dexterity, its precision…then by Gould’s own framing the panda’s thumb would pose a problem” for evolutionists. Download the podcast or listen to it here

On time at the speed of light

 

On the founding of "the eternal metropolis"

 World History Encyclopedia

According to legend, Ancient Rome was founded by the two brothers, and demigods, Romulus and Remus, on 21 April 753 BCE. The legend claims that in an argument over who would rule the city (or, in another version, where the city would be located) Romulus killed Remus and named the city after himself. This story of the founding of Rome is the best known but it is not the only one.

Other legends claim the city was named after a woman, Roma, who traveled with Aeneas and the other survivors from Troy after that city fell. Upon landing on the banks of the Tiber River, Roma and the other women objected when the men wanted to move on. She led the women in the burning of the Trojan ships and so effectively stranded the Trojan survivors at the site which would eventually become Rome. Aeneas of Troy is featured in this legend and also, famously, in Virgil's Aeneid, as a founder of Rome and the ancestor of Romulus and Remus, thus linking Rome with the grandeur and might which was once Troy.Still other theories concerning the name of the famous city suggest it came from Rumon, the ancient name for the Tiber River, and was simply a place name given to the small trading center established on its banks or that the name derived from an Etruscan word which could have designated one of their settlements.

What could go wrong: air force edition.

 

Just another invisible war?

 

The congress of Vienna 1814 :a brief history.

 

All book smarts no street smarts?

 

The black heterodoxy on the politics of race.

 

The black heterodoxy on Tom Sowell

 

Animal navigators vs. Darwin

 

Neanderthal man:just as sapien as we are?

 Fossil Friday: Suppressed Dissent About Neanderthal DNA in Modern Humans

Günter Bechly

Since the seminal study by Nobel laureate Svante Pääbo almost 15 years ago (Green et al. 2010), there have been numerous publications supporting the idea that non-African modern humans have a few percent of their DNA inherited from Neanderthals through introgression. This has basically become a widely accepted fact and the textbook orthodoxy. However, there is one dissenter. It is not some crank amateur but a professor of evolutionary genetics at the University of Cambridge, William Amos, who has published over 160 peer-reviewed publications including many in the highest-ranked journals such as Nature, Science, Nature Genetics, PLOS, Current Biology, and PNAS. Amos claims that the supposed evidence for introgression has been misinterpreted and is better explained by the hypothesis “that heterozygous sites attract additional mutations at and around them, creating a link between evolutionary rate and population size.“ Testing this hypothesis led him “to the prediction that mutation rate in humans would have dropped as a result of the large loss of variability that occurred during the out of Africa event, and thence to an alternative model to inter-breeding that could explain why non-Africans are closer to Neanderthals than Africans.”

Obscure Forums

So, how did the scientific establishment react to this maverick view? Actually, in spite of his credentials and in spite of his thorough argumentation and analyses, Amos tried in vain to get his dissenting hypothesis published in a peer-reviewed academic journal. Since 2017 his manuscript is still only available as a preprint from bioRxiv (Amos 2017). On his personal webpage Amos writes that “challenging the idea that many humans carry Neanderthal legacies has proved near-impossible!” Therefore, he decided to make a 20-page document freely available as a download on his website. It is titled “Is the idea that many humans carry some Neanderthal DNA correct?” and it summarizes his ideas, analyses, and reasons. The only brief discussions of his alternative hypothesis are found in the obscure forums of BioLogos and Peaceful Science, which is quite telling because these are sites mostly known for bashing intelligent design advocates.

A Parallel with Intelligent Design

Indeed, the case of Professor William Amos represents an interesting parallel with dissenters in the intelligent design community, who challenge the Darwinian orthodoxy and try to get their scientific studies published in peer-reviewed mainstream academic journals. In relatively rare cases it works (see here for a list), but most often the Darwinian thought police make sure that such manuscripts get rejected by the editors without even having been sent to reviewers. You heard right: such dissenting studies are mostly not rejected by peer reviewers because they are considered bad science. They are never seen by peer reviewers but are suppressed by overzealous watchmen of the scientific orthodoxy without further consideration. This is not just hearsay, because I experienced it twice in the past three months myself. So I can very much sympathize with the frustration of William Amos with the scientific community.

The latter community is clearly not driven by an unbiased quest for truth. Indeed, the peer review system has become deeply corrupted. Biologist and Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner said in an interview: “I think peer review is hindering science. In fact, I think it has become a completely corrupt system. It’s corrupt in many ways, in that scientists and academics have handed over to the editors of these journals the ability to make judgment on science and scientists.” Historian Philip Magness agreed and noted in a blog post that “Academic peer review is a highly dysfunctional process, replete with perverse incentives and maddeningly Kafkaesque outcomes.”

References

• Amos W 2017. Testing an alternative explanation for relatively greater base-sharing between Neanderthals and non-African humans. bioRxiv, 25 pp. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/133306
• Green RE, Krause J, Briggs AW, … Pääbo, S. 2010. A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome. Science 328(5979), 710–722. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1188021

Rabble rouser David berlinski on the deniability of Darwinism

 

On the two Adams and the Socinian/biblical unitarian paradigm

   1Corinthians ch.15:47NASB" The first man is from the earth, [s]earthy; the second man is from heaven."

Luke ch.3:38NASB"the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God."

If we take the Socinian/biblical unitarian position it seems odd that either Adam should be spoken of as originating from heaven.

And if this originating from heaven is figurative language for the extraordinary origin of the second Adam. How can anyone argue that the origin of the first Adam was less distinctive? 

Unlike the second Son of (the)God the first was not also son of (the)Man.

JEHOVAH's Archangel breathe the first breath into the lungs of the first Adam see Genesis 2:7. What could be more distinctive than that?

From a Socinian perspective it seems that the first Adam is much more worthy of the titles

son of God and Lord from heaven in terms of his origin.

Romans ch.5:14NIV"Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come."

The first Adam is the prototype . How can any man born of a fallen woman possibly have more of a claim to the title Son from heaven than him if the Socinian/biblical unitarian paradigm be true?

AI as Darwinism's loyal opposition?

 Science Paper: Use Artificial Intelligence to Challenge Evolution

Casey Luskin

A new bold paper in the Elsevier journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology states, “Darwinian evolution has become dogma; AI can rescue what is salvageable.” Authors Olen Brown and David Hullender note, “The publication of scientific disagreements with elements of Darwinian evolution including its modern variants is increasing” and they cite various examples from the literature:

The publication of scientific disagreements with elements of Darwinian evolution including its modern variants are increasing. The view that “Evolution is both a fact and … the most important theory in biology. Evolution explains every situation” (Russo and André, 2019) is being challenged. Wray and Hoekstra in the Comment Does evolutionary theory need a rethink” published in Nature (Wray and Hoekstra, 2014) reported that Kevin Leland and seven colleagues responded “Yes, urgently”, while Gregory Wray and five colleagues responded: “No, all is well”. Typical of balanced questioning is Dennis Noble who wrote “Something has gone deeply wrong in biology” (Noble, 2021).

The paper thus argues that “that the theory of biological evolution, including its modern variants, suffers from several logical deficits, is absurdly improbable mathematically, and also biologically mechanism-deficient.” However, as the title suggests, the authors believe that “Darwinian evolution has become dogma” and some new method is needed to move past non-objective adherence to evolutionary models. They believe this method is artificial intelligence (AI).

Use AI to Challenge Evolution?

The authors propose that “the new approach of AI … is required to move forward scientifically.” They note that AI provides “powerful analytical tools” that can be used for evaluating the merits of scientific theories and ask, “[C]ould a complex computer be programmed to evaluate the theory (many say the fact) of biological evolution? Or perhaps test particular postulates essential to the theory?” They believe AI is well-suited for this task, since it has already been used to “rediscover fundamental equations” in fields such as physics and chemistry, and has been highly successful at playing games and solving puzzles. They believe this makes AI applicable to studying evolution: 

Use AI to Challenge Evolution?

The authors propose that “the new approach of AI … is required to move forward scientifically.” They note that AI provides “powerful analytical tools” that can be used for evaluating the merits of scientific theories and ask, “[C]ould a complex computer be programmed to evaluate the theory (many say the fact) of biological evolution? Or perhaps test particular postulates essential to the theory?” They believe AI is well-suited for this task, since it has already been used to “rediscover fundamental equations” in fields such as physics and chemistry, and has been highly successful at playing games and solving puzzles. They believe this makes AI applicable to studying evolution: 

Evolution, also, is a puzzle. It necessarily involves the absurdly improbable self-assembly of many complex biological machines using simpler parts (Brown and Hullender, 2023). Gartner et al. (2020) stated, “self-assembly of a large biological molecule from small building blocks is like finishing a puzzle of magnetic pieces by shaking the box.” AI works well for chess; we propose that it would work well for assessing ideas about biological evolution, especially the problem of self-assembly. Initially, it should be applied to testing the limits of the usefulness of ‘survival of the fittest’ for microevolution and the highly-improbable self-assembly required for macroevolution.

If AI were used to test and evaluate evolution, would people trust its results? 

Some May Not Like This Approach 

They believe that using AI to test evolution will lead to a problem: evolution will be challenged, and some may not want AI applied in this manner. They write that this should not matter because dogmas should never prevent scientific questions from being asked:

A perceived potential difficulty, which might, however, produce the first positive result of applying AI, is that focused discussion of the tenets, assumptions, and established facts of biological evolution would result. Consensus without criticism is not healthy for science. Biologists can learn from the field of Physics which is open to recognizing new ideas. It has shown itself receptive to change with concepts about gravity evolving from Newton to Einstein and the current interpretations, an example. The consequences of challenging the overall theory and subcomponents of biological evolution are monumentally significant for progress in this field and has ramifications for all of science including the freedom to challenge dogmas. “The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors” —J. Robert Oppenheimer.

[…]

Problems with the Darwinian theory of evolution, including its modern variants, and origin of life theories are significant and require new approaches and a willingness of scientists to look for bold solutions. The application of AI has great promise both for assessing the problems and weaknesses and for providing innovative and significant solutions of great significance for science and humankind. AI can be the pathway to correcting the problems in evolutionary theory, but the human brain must create that pathway. There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science.

Not Turtles All the Way Down?

These are nice statements of the importance of freedom of scientific inquiry. But what would AI find if it were let loose to critically investigate biological evolution? Their main argument is that we need to apply it to such a task. But they predict that if AI were applied to questions of biological origins, it would find serious flaws in evolutionary models: “We conclude that AI has this potential and encourage its application immediately for evaluating theories of biological evolution. It seems remote that AI would conclude that it is ‘turtles all the way down’.”

Surely any conclusion from AI about theories of biological evolution would be highly controversial — people would either accept and tout them or criticize the AI model that was used as flawed and inadequate. But it would be an interesting project to undertake nonetheless.

Isaac Newton scientific revolutionary among other things

 

Coded communication and design.

 New Study Reveals Secrets of Honey Bee Waggle Dance

Eric Cassell

The honey bee “waggle dance” is the method used to communicate to members of a hive information about the location of food sources as well as potential nest locations. The information includes direction and distance. One of the mysteries about the method is how other bees are able to detect the direction that the dancer bee is attempting to communicate. There are several factors that make detecting direction challenging for the observing bees. One is that the dances take place inside a dark hive. Therefore, other bees can’t visually observe the dancing bees. Second is that the surface in the hive where it occurs is vertical, whereas the direction that is being communicated is lateral. Third is that it takes place in a crowded hive with hundreds of tightly packed bees.

Do the Hustle

Previously it had been assumed that the following bees aligned their bodies with the dancing bees to determine direction. However, a new study published in Current Biology has provided evidence that the non-dancing bees (followers) utilize a more sophisticated method where they use their antennae to track the movement of a dancing bee and therefore its relative orientation.1 The followers do this by maintaining a constant angle between their antennae and the direction of the waggle dance line. As explained by the authors, “Knowing its own orientation relative to gravity, this allows the follower to deduce the dancer’s orientation relative to gravity.” The gravitational direction is a proxy for the direction of the sun, and the dance angle represents the communicated direction relative to the sun. 

Another important aspect of the method is that “the dancer’s orientation remains consistent (relative to gravity) over continuously varying angles of the follower to the dancer, so that by continuous integration of this estimate” the follower can determine the direction. The paper points out that their hypothesis requires two other assumptions. The first is that bees can track their head direction relative to gravity. It is not known how gravity is represented in the bee brain, specifically within what is known as the “central complex.” The second assumption is that the bee antenna position influences information processing in the central complex. The paper points out that, “There is evidence from bees, locusts, cockroaches, and flies that mechanical signals from antennae reach the central complex.” This is a region that is common in all insects. 

As described by noted bee expert Lars Chittka, the central complex, “contains the computational centers for integration of the polarized light-based sky compass, information about the animal’s own position and movement, and landmark information.”2 In other words, the central complex is the region of the brain where it appears that much of this information processing and algorithmic computation takes place.

Animal Algorithms

Recent research has also revealed that learning is integral to bee’s interpretation of the distance associated with the dance and translating that to travel distance.3 That study concluded that the distance calibration, as well as the directional component, requires fine-tuning through learning.4

As I describe in my book Animal Algorithms,5 there are several programmed algorithms designed to detect and apply the information that is used to guide the bees to specific locations. Detecting the waggle dance direction and computing the navigation guidance involves algorithms that apply several forms of mathematics, including geometry and coordinate transformation. The Current Biology paper is further confirmation of that, and an indication of a larger number and complexity of the algorithms. Even though much has been learned about these sophisticated behaviors, there are still several elements that are poorly understood, among them being how the brain’s neural networks are designed to implement the algorithms.

Notes

Anna Hadjitofi and Barbara Webb, “Dynamic antennal positioning allows honeybee followers to decode the dance,” Current Biology, 34, April 22, 2024, 1-8.

Lars Chittka, The Mind of a Bee (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022), 144.

“Social signal learning of the waggle dance in honey bees,” Dong et al., Science 379, March 10, 2023, 1015-1018. 

Eric Cassell, “The Role of Learning in the Honey Bee Waggle Dance,” Evolution News, March 20, 2023.

Eric Cassell, Animal Algorithms (Discovery Institute Press, 2021), 60-62.

By common consent Jesus is NOT the most high God.

 

File under "Well said" CVI

 "Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind."

Albert Einstein 

The thumb print of JEHOVAH Geology edition.

 

The ministry of truth is on the march?

 Slouching Toward Totalitarianism — How to Fight Science Censorship

Andrew McDiarmid

Scientific censorship is on the rise. Governments are colluding with Big Tech to suppress unfavorable ideas. De-platforming and dismissal campaigns are all the rage. How do we prevent our society from slouching towards totalitarianism? On a new episode of ID the Future, host Casey Luskin welcomes science journalist Denyse O’Leary to discuss today’s forms of censorship, how they affect the intelligent design community, and most importantly, what we can do about it.

The Internet was supposed to represent a great democratization of ideas where everyone could have a voice and access the world’s information, says Dr. Luskin. Today it is becoming a battleground of open and hidden censorship. O’Leary explains why. She also analyzes the latest form of censorship — the idea of “disinformation.” In simplest terms, disinformation is any information the government doesn’t want you to have. Luskin and O’Leary give examples of how this is playing out in science. The intelligent design community is no stranger to the impact of censorship, of course. But this refresher on the latest forms of censorship should inspire all supporters of free science to continue defending and advocating for a diversity of opinions to exist on the Internet and in our society. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

In search of a problem for the solution?

 

JEHOVAH is King!

 1.Oh sing unto JEHOVAH a new song: Sing unto JEHOVAH, all the earth.

2Sing unto JEHOVAH, bless his name; Show forth his salvation from day to day.

3Declare his glory among the nations, His marvellous works among all the peoples.

4For great is JEHOVAH, and greatly to be praised: He is to be feared above all gods.

5For all the gods of the peoples are idols; But JEHOVAH made the heavens.

6Honor and majesty are before him: Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

7Ascribe unto JEHOVAH, ye kindreds of the peoples, Ascribe unto Jehovah glory and strength.

8Ascribe unto JEHOVAH the glory due unto his name: Bring an offering, and come into his courts.

9Oh worship JEHOVAH in holy array: Tremble before him, all the earth.

10Say among the nations, JEHOVAH reigneth: The world also is established that it cannot be moved: He will judge the peoples with equity.

11Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof;

12Let the field exult, and all that is therein; Then shall all the trees of the wood sing for joy

13Before JEHOVAH; for he cometh, For he cometh to judge the earth: He will judge the world with righteousness, And the peoples with his truth.

On resisting settled science's ministry of truth.

 

Ignorance is indeed bliss?

 Ignorance of Evolutionary Theory as a “Superpower”

Daniel Witt

Princeton University recently offered a glowing profile of their maverick developmental biologist Celeste Nelson. The piece talks about how her lab is, atypically, not simply composed of biologists but contains researchers from wildly different fields — engineering, physics — working together to study lung development. It turns out they are getting results by not knowing what “everyone knows” in biology. 

Nelson says:

What I like about putting them all together in one lab is that they start to question each other’s assumptions. Everyone comes in with a certain level of ignorance, and that ignorance is a massive superpower, because they don’t know what the dogmas are. Just about all our major findings have come from being completely ignorant about how biology is supposed to work, and actually seeing the system with fresh eyes.

So what are these burdensome assumptions? The example the piece gives as an illustration is, interestingly, an evolutionary assumption: 

Within the biology community, for instance, it’s traditionally been assumed that conserved traits — those shared by different species and selected by evolution on multiple occasions — are inherently important, while nature’s outliers are less worthy of study. Because many in Nelson’s group were trained outside the world of biology, they’re not beholden to its assumptions and have no issue prioritizing the study of unconserved traits, like mechanisms of lung development. 

Of course, if you believed that all biological systems were built with care by a designer, you wouldn’t assume that less-common designs were most likely inferior or worthless evolutionary dead-ends. I have no reason to think that Nelson supports intelligent design or that she is in any way a critic of contemporary evolutionary theory. But as you read her profile, you begin to get the uneasy feeling that it’s not just ignorance in general that is a superpower in her lab, but more particularly ignorance of evolutionary theory. 

The example above is only the beginning. In one short article (which seems in no way intended as a critique of evolutionary theory) I can see about five other examples of the superpower of evolutionary ignorance at play.  

1.Homology vs. Unique Design

Early in her career, Nelson tried to publish a paper on chicken lung development. The reviewers were not very interested in her findings, because scientists had found similar results about mouse lungs, and “the conventional wisdom at the time said that chicken lungs form and behave like mouse and human lungs.” 

This response made her question if the lungs of different species really were so similar, or if that was merely an assumption. 

She started looking into it, and found that lungs actually develop by significantly different processes in different related species. Homology was only assumed — it wasn’t the reality. How often might that be the case? 

2.Reductionism vs. Holism 

Nelson was able to uncover these differences in the lungs of different species by setting aside the genes and proteins — which are so often the focus — and actually studying the developing lungs themselves. 

There has long been a tendency to reduce an entire living organism to its genes. And no wonder; this approach is very comfortable for a Darwinian perspective, because random variation in genes seems relatively manageable for evolution — switch out a few letters, and voilà! you’ve got a new gene, perhaps a functional one. 

But this view of things doesn’t grasp the full of scale of organization and complexity of life. It’s becoming more and more apparent that the genetic code is only one factor that guides the development of organisms. Which was to be expected, in retrospect — living systems are obviously intricate in the extreme, and we never should have imagined that translating this intricacy into code would somehow make it less complex. 

3.Going Solo vs Coordinated Action

One of the new discoveries Nelson’s lab has made is that smooth muscles guide lung development:

Nelson found that a type of stiff tissue called smooth muscle, which was previously assumed to lack a role in lung development, is critical for the formation of branches in mouse lungs…Using mouse cells that express fluorescent proteins, Nelson’s team created a time-lapse video that showed smooth muscle wrapping around the elongating bronchiole like a telephone cord, forcing the softer bronchiole to fork into two daughter branches that, fittingly, together resemble Mickey Mouse ears. This process occurs at the terminus of each growing branch, resulting in millions of such branching events over the course of lung development.

One part actively directing another part, with precision, is par for the course in engineering. And it is becoming increasingly apparent that it is also ubiquitous in biology. However, is it not what an evolutionary framework leads one to expect, because random beneficial mutations are not coordinated. Even if there is a viable evolutionary pathway to a complex system of interworking parts — with no step in the process lacking functionality for either the new structures or the organism as a whole, through some sort of “co-option” or “scaffolding” process — Darwinian mechanisms do not increase the likelihood of evolutionary development occurring according to this pathway, because the huge adaptive pay-off at the end of the process would not be foreknown and would therefore not itself be selected for. 

A large pile-up of individual useful traits is much more likely through Darwinian mechanisms than it would be by sheer luck, but a single useful trait that emerges only out of many traits working together is not.

4.Incremental Change vs. Synchronicity

In fact, this is the very problem Nelson is currently working on — but from a developmental biology perspective, not an evolutionary biology perspective. (The change of subdisciplines apparently makes the problem suddenly relevant and worth discussing.) Nelson calls it the “Thanksgiving dinner problem.” The perennial difficulty of Thanksgiving dinners is that it’s hard to time everything just right so every dish finishes at the same time, and nothing gets cold. It’s the same problem in embryo development — if something gets “done” before everything else is done, the organism dies or is permanently impaired. That’s because all the parts are working together, and their coordination is what makes an organism function. 

When you think about it, it’s clear that problem applies to both development and evolution: a developing embryo can’t gain one organ without gaining another at the same time, or it doesn’t work — and the same goes for an evolving species. If five days of miscoordination in developmental history kills or impairs an individual organism, then of course 5 million years of miscoordination in evolutionary history wouldn’t work — since even one generation in this state would be an evolutionary dead end. 

In developmental biology, the solution is assumed to be some sort of underlying plan — biologists look for the signals, the code, written in the DNA or somewhere else, that must be directing the development. So the obvious question is, what’s guiding the timing of evolution?

5.Randomness vs. Engineering 

Richard Dawkins has said that biology is the study of natural systems that have the appearance of design. But many scientists seem to be overburdened by the length of this definition. It must be hard to always remember to add “the appearance of.” They perpetually revert to just saying “design.” 

So, not unexpectedly, the subtitle of the article lauds the “efficient designs” of various organisms that Nelson’s lab has uncovered. But this goes deeper than just semantics. If you think about Nelson’s research, most of her success comes from looking at life from an engineering perspective — even to the point of involving engineers in her lab. Whether she admits it or not, life is best understood through the framework of design. Might that be a hint about whether it might actually be designed?

All things considered, it looks like ignorance really is a superpower. No doubt that’s true in any area of expertise, since beginners can see things with fresh eyes. But I suspect it is especially true in the current field of evolutionary biology.