I think everyone will agree that organisms in their interaction with the environment have the ability to adapt (atleast to the level of “micro evolution”).
I think its also possible to see that these kind of adaptations such as the ones in the LTEE experiments involve some change in the information/ re-organisation of components to achieve a function.
Many ID proponents such as Behe propose that there is a limit to the kind of change that can be achieved through processes undirected by an intelligence. I agree with him. However, the challenge is in proving these limits.
I think Behe’s arguments based on probability are very reasonable in this regard.
The problem is that biologists seem to work with an axiom that mindless natural processes can achieve any change required to explain the biodiversity we observe in the planet.
This idea has no evidence supporting it, There is no foundation in either information science or probability or physics or mathematics that proves that undirected processes can achieve what is claimed.
This position seems to be axiomatic among most biologists (who are non ID). You are wasting your time arguing with them based on reason or mathematics. Its just a baseless unproven philosophic position that is taken as axiomatic.
Edit: Let me present a counter argument. It seems axiomatic (atleast to me) that
“all information ultimately is sourced from a mind”.
One could find a lot of evidence to support this axiom though it might be very difficult to either prove or disprove it concretely.
Then you give the burden of proof to those who are in opposition to the axiom. This is more or less what is happening in these debates.
Very well put. Yes, it is axiom against axiom, but one (ID) is in agreement with the cause/effect relationships observed in this world whereas the other (naturalistic evolution) is not, to the point that the most lucid evolutionists even recognize its absurdity. Here is what Lewontin said on this: Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.
Let’s be clear, that you are saying this in putative agreement with the statement that “all information ultimately is sourced from a mind”.
But it’s just not true. There’s simply zero evidence that “all information is ultimately sourced from a mind”. In fact we can routinely observe the evolution of new information with no apparent mind involved.
Then the problem is you have your “axiom” that a mind must have been behind it anyway, but you just have no way of showing this. Thus it is not “axiom against axiom”, it’s axiom against observation. And it’s YOUR axiom that stands in contradiction to the observation, the apparent empirical fact that no mind can be shown to be involved.
You yourself calculated above that the evolution of the Cit+ mutant in the Lenski experiment added 41 bits of functional information. And there is just no evidence that any mind was required to force this development to occur. It was just mutation and natural selection. So we have an empirical observation that Cit+ evolved without any “mind” making it happen, and then your axiom, standing in contradiction to each other.
It seems to me the problem here is that Hazen and Szostak use the term “functional information” for a measure they use derived from the probability of a particular function arising from random permutations of a number of variables in a system. This does not pertain to the way ID Creationists are using the term “functional information”, but because the names are the same they are treating it as the same.
It’s like saying because a legume like a pinto bean is a high source of protein, then a green bean (which is technically a fruit) is also a good protein source, because it’s also a “bean.”
Lewontin and “the A Priori”
At Thoughts in a Haystack, Pieret notes that Citizens For Objective Public Education, Inc. (COPE) has brought a lawsuit in Kansas to block the implementation of Next Generation Science Standards. (The whole complaint is here (PDF).) The complaint alleges that teaching evolutionary theory amounts to state endorsement of atheism, and hence is unconstitutional.
In making their case, COPE quotes this well-known passage from Lewontin’s review of Sagan’s A Demon-Haunted World:
“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.” [Rumraket: my bold]
Firstly, this passage is taken out of context; read in context, it is fairly clear that Lewontin is attributing this dogmatism to Sagan, and not endorsing it himself.
Secondly, everything here depends on what Lewontin means by “a priori”. Since he does not tell us what he means, we are left to our own devices. But it is worth pointing out that Lewis White Beck, the Kant scholar mentioned here, was strongly influenced by the once-prominent (and now unjustly forgotten) philosopher C. I. Lewis. One of Lewis’ considerable achievements was the invention of what he called “the pragmatic a priori ,” on which a priori statements are those that hold independent of experience because they are freely chosen by us in order to enable those inquiries that satisfy our needs and interests.
For this reason, when Lewontin claims that
we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
we can take this as meaning something like the following:
In order for us to build more or less reliable and provisional models of causal regularities that account for available data, we must assume that the causal regularities are not alterable by divine whim. For if we could not determine whether any particular event was in accord with or in violation of the laws of nature, the very notion of “a law of nature” would loose all sense.
On Lewis’ account of the a priori , we are not “dogmatically” committed to this conception of the causal order; we chose this principle in order to do science at all. If, in the course of inquiry, we found that our inquiries were unsuccessful because of this principle, we could chose to revise it.
On reflection, I think it is fairly clear that Lewontin is attributing to Sagan the ‘dogmatic’ version of the a priori , and I don’t know whether Lewontin himself would accept the pragmatic version. But I mention this because the pragmatic a priori has merits of its own worth consideration, including a better understanding of what distinguishes “methodological naturalism” (the pragmatic a priori ) from “metaphysical naturalism” (the dogmatic a priori ).
Ashwin has carefully hedged the claim by using the phrase “their are limits”, thus allowing for the immediately observable stuff. And when no limit is seen in any particular case, that still allows the claim that “there are llimits”.
Rumraket is quite correct: there is no law of physics that prevents information in the genome from increasing as a result of the process of natural selection. That is demonstrable both by simple experiments and by simple population genetics models.
I just want to briefly return to the discussion of the claim that the calculation of FI somehow also is a calculation of low probability of that information coming to be in the genome by natural selection. It just isn’t.
No, I just didn’t use it because it makes no difference to the point I was making. If you’re going to say information can only come from a mind, you’re going to need to show this is true. Declaring that it must ultimately do so makes no difference, you still have to do work to show the truth of the claim, otherwise you’re just making stuff up.
I took the “information must come from a mind” statement to be the main point. But even if it wasn’t, It’s the one I responded to because I noticed that Gilberts putative agreement with it contradicts both one of his earlier statements, and his subsequent claim that the conflict between axiom and observation lies with those of us who defend evolutionary science(and that it is creationists who have observation on their side), when it fact the truth is the diametrically opposite.
My take on Lewontin’s claim is that he says, in effect, that “we choose this principle in order to do science at all”. My authority for this is having known Dick for 57 years. He was my Ph.D. thesis advisor. A bit less than 10 years ago I suggested to him that our whole universe could be the Science Fair project of some unimaginably complex teenager, and we would not be able to reject that. He agreed cheerfully.
If that were the case, then he would not have to use a strawman version of evolultion to support his argument.
The most contentious issue in creationism vs evolution is whether human beings can arise from a common ancestor with other organisms without the aid of a god. It really all boils down to that.
And with the genomes of humans and chimps having been sequenced, simple math is sufficient to show that the number of mutations separating us are low enough to have arisen thru mutations and drift alone, even if natural selection was not a factor (which is not to say it wasn’t):
So if creationists are trying to argue that it remains an open question as to whether evolutionary processes alone are sufficient to produce a human being from a common ancestor with chimpanzees, then that claim is plainly, objectively and empirically wrong. Evolutionary processes are easily up to the task, and there is no gap their into which one can try stick a “designer.”
Really? Can you demonstrate where a new functional DNA sequence has been observed to be poofed into existence by a mind that is not itself an attribute of a DNA based organism? I can’t.
All the above disciplines are analytical tools which have been utilized in the study of evolution, but also lets not forget paleontology is a thing. The correlation of age with development suggests a record of macro-evolution. Evolution is hardly some blind guess justified on only snapshot observations of our current biodiversity. The fossil demonstrates that the diversity of life radiated in a progressive manner consistent with an evolutionary process, even if it does not answer all the questions as to the underlying biological drivers.
This is not true for in information theory the amount of information associated with an event, whatever this event is, can be calculated using the following equation: I(E)= -log2(P), with P being the probability of the event E.
In the case we are interested in, the probability that a Cit+ Bug emerges being ~ 3,6x10^-13 (according to Lenski calculation), the information associated with this event is ~ 41 bits. Now, it is true that the information I(E) associated with the emergence of the Cit+ bug in the LTEE experiment is not the same thing than the functional information (FI) associated with the underlying genetic system responsible for the new ability to import citrate in aerobic condition. My error.
One presumes that the funny symbol was supposed to be “P”. Are you quite sure that this is a measure of the information in any event? Or is it the measure of information in a signal? Would you claim that every event is a signal?
Hazen and Szostak don’t measure functional information in any of their papers. In order to do so they would need to know every single amino acid sequence that would produce a specific function. They don’t know that, nor does any scientist. If they had a way of determining this they would be on the short list for a Nobel Prize. Instead, they only measure mutual information which is the shared amino acid residues across a phylogeny. At best, they are measuring the steepness of one fitness peak in a fitness landscape. Even in this case, it is sabotaged by subsequent interactions with new genes after common ancestry.
I agree that FI is not the probability something can evolve by pure definition. In certain cases it can be very close to that number and the Lenski experiment is a reasonable test case.
Do you agree with the claims of @T_aquaticus that FI cannot be calculated or estimated?