# The Flagellum is Not a Motor?
**URL:** https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801
**Category:** Side Conversation
**Tags:** Science
**Created:** [January 8, 2019, 2:42am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801 "2019-01-08T02:42:13Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 17
### Author:  [@John\_Harshman](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/John_Harshman)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 2:41am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/376 "2019-01-13T02:41:02Z")
> [@Michael\_Callen](#):
>
> I do not believe that my intuition is not misleading me.
One too many negatives?
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### Author:  [@Michael\_Callen](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Michael_Callen)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 2:45am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/377 "2019-01-13T02:45:12Z")
Hahaha… True. Thanks…
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### Author:  [@Michael\_Callen](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Michael_Callen)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 2:59am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/378 "2019-01-13T02:59:32Z")
> [@swamidass](#):
>
> The diagrams you picked are highly selective to emphasize the similarities. However, they are very differnet in how they work.
John Harshman explained to me that every analogy fails. Actually, you explained it first and he schooled me over it when I pushed back. So the fact that there _are differences_ is implicit. There _ARE major differences_. The two (the bacterial flagellar motor and an electric motor) are not the same thing. They are not identical (one is not the identity of the other.)
The diagrams that I picked may be highly selective, but they were selected to highlight the similarities between the two, _because the similarities exist_. As well, the third image (despite my unfortunate and unintended double negative), because of the lack of similarities, shows why a leg is not a good analogy for the bacterial flagellar motor. Aside from the fact that the two are constructed from organic materials, they have nothing else in common that would make a “leg” a good analogy for a bacterial flagellar motor.
There is nothing wrong with, as you say, learning more about their differences. This does not, however, get back to your original point… it gets back to your previous point (below), which is to question my opinion that an electric motor, not a human leg, is a better analogy, or more like, a bacterial flagellar motor.
> [@swamidass](#):
>
> Really? Why do you say that? A flagella is a microscopic entity but a motor (common understanding) is macroscopic. This makes it work in just totally different ways. Our intuition misleads us.
If you say I’m wrong, or that my intuition is not correct, I may actually silence myself for two weeks. I can do that. I wield that kind of sorcery.
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### Author:  [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 3:10am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/379 "2019-01-13T03:10:20Z")
> [@Michael\_Callen](#):
>
> If you say I’m wrong, or that my intuition is not correct, I may actually silence myself for two weeks. I can do that. I wield that kind of sorcery.
It is not busy your intuition. It is all of our intuition. Science is really really no intuitive.
Honestly though, I think we are on the same page now. Both you and @DaleCutler are engaging on the details. It might be good to get into that in another thread. Thanks for sticking it out.
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### Author:  [@DaleCutler](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/DaleCutler)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 3:34am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/380 "2019-01-13T03:34:07Z")
Will you tell a nanoengineer his motor is not a motor because it is too small? The ET bioengineer’s motor is the same as the flagellum’s motor, but it may have a load other than a helical ‘prop’. It is driven ‘electrically’, by proton or ion gradient. If the physics providing the torque is conformational change, cool. If the physics providing the torque is actually electrical fields, that’s cool, too. (Conformational change is really due to electrcal fields, anyway.) I don’t think this is really about intuition.
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### Author:  [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 3:53am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/381 "2019-01-13T03:53:28Z")
> [@DaleCutler](#):
>
> Will you tell a nanoengineer his motor is not a motor because it is too small?
No. The nanoengineer would tell you that his motor works by totally different principles than your car’s motor, because it is so small.
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### Author:  [@DaleCutler](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/DaleCutler)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 4:19am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/383 "2019-01-13T04:19:12Z")
> [@swamidass](#):
>
> The nanoengineer would tell you that his motor works by totally different principles than your car’s motor, because it is so small.
That is rather an aside. That he is still calling it a motor is the point!
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### Author:  [@Guy\_Coe](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Guy_Coe)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 4:40am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/384 "2019-01-13T04:40:39Z")
Now’s the time to make the “safe” comment that each of the scientific disciplines has their own unique vocabulary.
Unfortunately, that still doesn’t change the validity of @DaleCutler 's point.
“How much, versus how little” is what is really under dispute, here.
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### Author:  [@John\_Harshman](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/John_Harshman)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 5:11am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/385 "2019-01-13T05:11:03Z")
> [@DaleCutler](#):
>
> That he is still calling it a motor is the point!
No, I talked to him yesterday. He decided to call it a thingummy instead. My point is that you made the whole thing up and can’t use it to show anything other than that you can make up scenarios with names.
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### Author:  [@DaleCutler](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/DaleCutler)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 5:14am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/386 "2019-01-13T05:14:56Z")
And that would be called a straw man and pretty content-free.
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### Author:  [@Mercer](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Mercer)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 7:43am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/387 "2019-01-13T07:43:55Z")
> [@DaleCutler](#):
>
> Suppose the bioengeer wasn’t familiar with flagella.
With which of the multiple flagella is she unfamiliar?
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### Author:  [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 8:16am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/388 "2019-01-13T08:16:35Z")
I’m going to call the flagellum a literal motor. A machine, literal machine. Powered by a literal electrical engine. Literally encoded in by a literal code in a literal digital information storage system. Built by a literal program executing literal instructions.
Now that we’ve got all that utterly irrelevant label-nonsense over with, **the flagellum still evolved.** That literal rotary motor, powered by an electrical engine, constructed according to a digitally encoded set of instructions, still evolved.
So we know of at least a handful of exampes(all the different types of flagella) of a rotary motor, a machine, powered by an electrical engine and encoded in a digital information storage system, that evolved.
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### Author:  [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 8:19am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/389 "2019-01-13T08:19:21Z")
> [@DaleCutler](#):
>
> Will you tell a nanoengineer his motor is not a motor because it is too small?
I would happily and enthusiastically agree with your nanoengineer friend that her motor is a motor, and I would agree the flagellum is also a motor. Literally.
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### Author:  [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 8:30am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/390 "2019-01-13T08:30:27Z")
I just don’t see why anyone is impressed by this kind of Ray “Bananaman” Comfort-type argument.
Let’s see some of his favorites:
Creation requires a creator!
Paintings require a painter!
Buildings require a builder!
Programs require a programmer!
Codes require a coder!
Watches require a watchmaker!
…etc.
The first thing I realized now 11 years ago when I first happened upon this creationism-evolution debate is that one side is OBSESSED with _labels_ and _appearances_. What does it _look like_, and what should we _name/label/categorize_ it?
Why, WHY does it not IMMEDIATELY become obvious to these people that these are irrelevancies that do no work to establish whether any entity was designed/created, or evolved, or congealed in some other way out of some natural process? Please just stop obsessing over these damned irrelevant labels. _Please_.
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### Author:  [@gbrooks9](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/gbrooks9)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 6:15pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/391 "2019-01-13T18:15:21Z")
The shortest definition for Motor is: anything that makes something MOVE.
But then you have to qualify the heck out of that:
What MOVES a car to turn left or right?:
A. the driver?
B. the steering wheel?
C. the rubber tires?
D. the tread on the tires?
E. the outer layer of molecules of the tread that engage the road surface?
See how ugly this can become?
If we agree bacterium is ALIVE (!), then i find it pretty odd that someone would insist that a microscopic set of molecules that can spin a flagellum clockwise or counter clockwise should be called a motor…
While full sized human muscles that pull and release ligaments are NOT called motors.
If microscopic life can “sport” motors… then certainly humans do as well.
This whole topic is another toxic burden to Peaceful Science’s operation… and should be restricted to the Sound Proof disputation area… leaving everyone else out of the immediate toxic zone.
@moderators please take note.
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### Author:  [@John\_Harshman](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/John_Harshman)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 6:23pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/392 "2019-01-13T18:23:59Z")
> [@gbrooks9](#):
>
> See how ugly this can become?
All I see is you creating difficulties where none exist. You have fudged the definition of “move”.
> [@gbrooks9](#):
>
> If we agree bacterium is ALIVE (!), then i find it pretty odd that someone would insist that a microscopic set of molecules that can spin a flagellum clockwise or counter clockwise should be called a motor…
>
> While full sized human muscles that pull and release ligaments are NOT called motors.
It may be that there is more to the definition of “motor” than you suppose here. Perhaps rotary motion is necessary? That would keep the flagellum but remove the muscles. In order to figure out what “motor” means, you have to look at how people use the term, not attack their implicit meanings.
> [@gbrooks9](#):
>
> This whole topic is another toxic burden to Peaceful Science’s operation
Then why are you taking part in it?
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### Author:  [@nwrickert](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/nwrickert)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 9:06pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/393 "2019-01-13T21:06:42Z")
> [@gbrooks9](#):
>
> This whole topic is another toxic burden to Peaceful Science’s operation…
You might take note of who originated this topic.
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### Author:  [@gbrooks9](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/gbrooks9)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 9:15pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/394 "2019-01-13T21:15:12Z")
> [@nwrickert](#):
>
> You might take note of who originated this topic.
What happens here … starts at the top.
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### Author:  [@Michael\_Callen](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Michael_Callen)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 9:48pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/395 "2019-01-13T21:48:05Z")
My vote for the voice of reason among many voices!! I may retire now.
> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> I’m going to call the flagellum a literal motor. A machine, literal machine. Powered by a literal electrical engine. Literally encoded in by a literal code in a literal digital information storage system. Built by a literal program executing literal instructions.
>
> Now that we’ve got all that utterly irrelevant label-nonsense over with, **the flagellum still evolved.** That literal rotary motor, powered by an electrical engine, constructed according to a digitally encoded set of instructions, still evolved.
>
> So we know of at least a handful of examples (all the different types of flagella) of a rotary motor, a machine, powered by an electrical engine and encoded in a digital information storage system, that evolved.
I want to just close the topic now, and leave a note that says, “See above.” Hallelujah!! 🙂
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### Author:  [@Mung](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Mung)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2019, 9:54pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-flagellum-is-not-a-motor/3801/396 "2019-01-13T21:54:46Z")
> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> Please just stop obsessing over these damned irrelevant labels.
But saying it is “evolved” is just as much another label as saying it is “designed.” Isn’t it?
😉
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