WATCHMAKER'S BRAILLE

B. Deric Morris
(c) 1997

"I must confess, a great vexation..." Charles Darwin

What is Evolution? the controversy surrounding the adversarial claims of Creationism and Darwinism is due, I feel, not only to the lack of a truly comprehensive understanding of Nature, but to the dogmatic contention of true believers as well. I agree with Karl Popper's point that "what is" questions lead only to semantic disagreement in defense of increasingly nebulous abstractions. The question of evolution, however, is certainly significant to us as humans, and easily discussed in terms of common experience.

The word "evolve" literally means to roll out; to unfold, as in the blossoming of a bud. Evolution is the progressive expansion from simpler to more complex forms: in other words, it's "the way things turn out".

Evolution as an ongoing process is clearly universal, at every scale accessible to science, from quarks to quasars--and everything in between. Evolution is the pervasive functional essence of a cosmos unfolding through seeming antitheses: matter and energy;  time and space; radiation and gravity; entity and number. The mechanism by which this global process functions has not been quite so clear.Traditionalist attempts at formal elucidation of the process we speak of as evolution have each in some ways proved inadequate.

Giants In The Earth

Every culture has its own Creation Myth, an expression of spiritual values peculiar to that culture in terms of ritual metaphor. The familiar Judeo-Christian biblical account of Genesis is, no less than any other, a testament of unimpeachable mythopoeic integrity, and as such, high art. But Genesis is no more about science than it is about technology. Nor does it lay claim to explaining the known facts of nature. Religious Right ideologues who insist on enforcing their oxymoron of "Creation Science" upon our schools are pursuing a political rather than a religious agenda. Their implicit objectives involve compromise of human  (and especially womens') rights, to further their own ends. One aspect of their campaign is founded on the logical fallacy that to discredit Darwinist theory is to validate Special Creation, hence their efforts to endow Creationism with the status of a science.

Another pitfall of Creationist dogma is the assertion that all which exists was created de novo exactly as it is today. Thus when asked how stars and fossils can be shown to be millions or billions of years old, the response is that they were created  with the appearance of great age. As if the "smoking gun" is explained away by invoking an exploding cigar!I find the mentality of such fundamentalist demagogues, to put it charitably, simplistic at best. At worst it has been genocidal.

 Evolution And Revolution

What, then, is the scientific background story? I think it's safe to say that the science of evolution has had much to do with the evolution of science. Recall that prior to Darwin, creationist doctrine was the unquestioned conventional (and canonical) wisdom for quite a few centuries. Therefore when Bishop Ussher "calculated" that the creation took place at such-and-such year, day, and hour, there was no question that it might possibly have been otherwise! The official doctrine, based on Ptolemaic and Platonic worldviews, was accepted (and enforced) right up until the Enlightenment.

Lamarck was the first to seriously attempt to fit observed facts, such as fossils, to the received truth of holy writ according to the canonof his time. The Lamarckian notion of the inheritance of acquired characteristics is generally considered discredited by Darwinists today, but recent research (bacteriophage experiments leading to studies of DNA) might justify another look at Lamarck. Lynn Margulis' work with eukaryotic cell development also seems provocative.  At any rate, it was Darwin's theories which became the preeminent paradigm, for better or for worse.

"The first point to make about Darwin's theoryis that it is no longer a theory, but a fact." Julian Huxley.

What an overweening assertion for a biologist to make! Although Huxley was perhaps Darwin's staunchest advocate, in this, at least, he was quite simply wrong. Evolution, mutation, and selection are facts;  they are subject to repeatable observation,  falsification, and statistical confirmation. Darwin's theory, on the other hand, like the theories of Newton and Einstein, can only and always be just that: a formal assertion of (possible) predictive power.

Though Darwin's Galapagos finches, cited in his works as evidence of speciation, clearly result from microevolution through specialization, genetic drift, and isolation of gene pools, the proposal that the processes of mutation and selection, over geological time, can fully account for observed biodiversity has never yet been confirmed by science. Cladistic (macro) evolution (fish into frog; bird into bat) has simply never been documented. Thus while creationist dogma may be seen as sufficient (for true believers) but not necessary (to explain evolution),  the Darwinist doctrine of Natural Selection is necessary, but not sufficient!

Science since Darwin's day has developed into a discipline in which strict scientific rigor is fundamental to experimental methodology. The presumed scientific quality of Darwin's work, as contrasted with the accepted knowledge of the time, first attracted support among his contemporaries. Much like his Viennese counterpart Freud (another great victorian paradigm shifter), if Darwin's own life works were the subject of present-day peer review his methods would probably be considered at best laughable, and at worst, reprehensible. Work lacking stastistical  support, repeatability, or falsifiability would be dismissed as anecdotal;  the likely consensus would be "complete disregard for scientific rigor".

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; but such evidence, in Darwin's case, is not forthcoming. Important iquestions are still unanswered. No doubt most thinking persons accept the fact of evolution as an observable aspect of nature; still, the mechanisms at work have yet to be fully explained.

The origins of life, although clearly a consequence of natural processes, remain indeterminate, while the evolution of a species into a novel genome (from one class or order to another) through random mutation and subsequent selection has evidently never been observed. What has been documented by science is the tendency of genomes to self-correct, adapting to all manner of externally inflicted stresses while still maintaining genetic integrity. Nor has any really unequivocally transitional fossil form turned up.

Thus although natural selection can clearly be seen at work around us, it's apparently not enough to account for the manifold diversity of life. There are still too many issues which remain unresolved. For instance: how can a new species emerge, survive, and reproduce, if only a single individual (genesis notwithstanding) is born? Surely this would require, at the very least, a breeding pair--rather more likely a generation with significant numbers of both sexes born at once. Which would require that the parent generation would have had to simultaneously undergo the same (viable) mutation; not so very random after all! Further, the daughter generation would need to be successful enough to pass their genes along...and so on.

So Darwin's essential work was critical to the development of science, and the evolutionary paradigm shift has shaped our culture;  but Darwin's theory of the Origin of Species still can't entirely explain how nature works. There's got to be more to it than that.

A Species Of Divarication

Evolution as seen in Darwinian terms has been likened to the work of a "Blind Watchmaker" constructing an intricate chronograph. If some sort of hidden agency actually is the engine of biodiversity, what might its nature be?

According to Lyall Watson "Evolution is probably the most important scientific concept ever formulated." He cites its descriptive and predictive powers as evidence. But as we've seen, these powers don't quite perform as advertised; there's too much going on which they fail to explain. The concept of evolution is certainly one of major significance. But I feel the most profound and portentous disclosure of science to date was the realization, not so long after Darwin's time, that reality is statistical in nature. This is, after all, fundamental to our understanding of physics--and, it turns out, an integral aspect of evolution as well.

The statistical continuum of possible outcomes over time leads to a probability matrix of unfolding event; that is, an evolutionary process.This process is driven by the inherent logistics of information. When information is extracted from a system, as in observation of the locus or momentum of a particle, disorder within the system is increased. Thus entropy increases. But when information is input to a system, as in self-organizing or autocatalytic processes, entropy is displaced, while order is increased. Hence there is a progressive trend toward order and/or chaos: the core of Complexity Theory, and the basic fundamental tendency of systems to evolve. And living organisms  evolve in balance between order and disorder.

What about the genetic basis of evolution? Richard Dawkins, in his book The Selfish Gene, coined the term Meme to designate the conceptual equivalents of genes, that is, self-replicating units of information. His point was that genes and memes alike are driven to seek perpetuation, to the point of immortality, even at the expense of their individual hosts. Now that humans have evolved to the stage where the human genome project became possible, the genes are very near to realization of their goal. Because both genes and memes can best ensure their own continuance in the form of pure information.

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain." The Great OZ

Like computer software, which exists independently of hardware or media, genes and memes can both be encoded in the form of digital data or text. What is a gene at its most fundamental level, after all, but a binary number string? And like the binary computer code strings known as genetic algorithms, the strings which encode genes can add and exchange information. Hence the "genetic algorithm" of any given genotype can be seen as a dynamical system rather than an immutable set of static numbers. Therefore subject to evolution.

David Bohm's hidden variable (which attempts to account for the unpredicted outcomes in physics) and Rupert Sheldrake's implicate order (a hitherto undisclosed organizing factor in organic processes) are both workable concepts, I feel, despite having received a degree of derision from conservative critics. Though these two authors were dealing with disparate phenomena, in different fields, there seems to be some type of connecting link. I think perhaps it's the ubiquitous and inherent informational logistics of nature which, by means of nonlinear, nonlocal causality, might elicit unexpected consequences from "ordinary" natural processes. Such processes (including "life as we know it") seem to "surf chaos" in Rudy Rucker's phrase; maybe the surfboard is simply nature's behind-the-scenes informational infrastructure.

To examine this unorthodox notion (with thanks to Bucky Fuller) try a thought experiment. Visualize, if you will, an ordinary knit, woolen glove, with fitted thumb and fingers, a cable-knit pattern on the back, and a rib-knit cuff at the wrist.  An interesting thing about it is that the glove is not the knit, the knit is not the knot, the knot is not the yarn, and the yarn is not the wool; each of these elements is, in fact, a successive addition of information input to the basic raw material, the fleece. And the knitting process itself is accomplished by means of two simple recursive steps: knit (knot) and purl (negative knot); in a binary system.

So the simplest knitting pattern is that expressed as "knit one, purl one"; a recursive algorithm, repeated sequentially (recursively iterated) through variations as required to comprise the fabric of the glove. Note here that the successive steps of manufacture follow the historical stages of technological development of the process. Thus ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, indeed!

Finally, reflect that the chirality (right/left-handedness) of a glove is in this case determined by turning one piece of a pair inside-out, to achieve the correct offset for the thumb. So one glove is in fact the reverse mirror-image of the other.

Now, all of the levels of information involved in the existence of the gloves are metalevel-recursive; feedback ensures that each level entails the unfolding of the next, as each in turn comprises all those preceding it; wheels within wheels. And the process and product alike are encoded memes; I can explain the process of making the glove, describe it, or simply mention it as an item among others, with written or spoken words, or even digital computer data, quite apart from the actual glove as a "real" physical object.

In my own operational definition: Hardware is local, linear, and continuous; Software is nonlinear, nonlocal, and discontinuous.

And genes are the software of biology and evolution. In his book Lifetide Lyall Watson quotes "one brave cell biologist" as follows: "there is substantial evidence that organisms are not limited for their evolution to genes that belong to their own species...the whole of the gene pool of the biosphere is available." This must be at the (software) level of information exchange, I think; systems interacting toward coevolution. Kurt Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem (which loosely translates as "No self-referential system can ever completely define itself") comes to mind.

Recent developments in Complexity science have led us to accept that the cosmos is pervasively nonlinear in its functions. Concepts such as emergent order, self-organized criticality, recursive feedback, and quasiperiodicity turn out to accurately account for many hitherto incomprehensible phenomena. Mathematical disclosures such as fractals and attractors present science with unpredicted and robust descriptive powers. It seems the more we learn, the more it all makes sense!

Consider, then, that evolution is at its core a mathematical process, with contingent operations which are mathematically driven as well. Systems in nature are informed by number and impelled to evolution; an unfolding algorithm. Surely it is this recursive elegance in which we perceive the beauty and the harmony of nature.

BDM