Evolution Engineered

I admit that lately, I haven’t been too interested in actively participating in the ID/evolution debates. I have various excuses reasons: the culture war mentality doesn’t appeal to me, my extra-curricular interest has moved to other topics (economics, health care, theology), it has been a slow news period for this topic, I don’t see a need to add to what others have already so eloquent written, and currently, I find the debate predictable and boring.

That is, until an old argument of mine got resurrected (thanks Brent):

BTW, I still consider “design” a mechanism.

I’ve already debated this at TT over a year ago, and I’m not looking to rehash old arguments. What I do want to point out is that I am not alone in taking this position. Continue reading »

“Life-like evolution in a test tube” is the title of an article at Cosmos Magazine that describes a potential breakthrough in Origin-of-Life (OOL) research.  (HT RichardtHughes at AtBC )

For the first time, scientists have synthesized RNA enzymes – ribonucleic acid enzymes also known as ribozymes – that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components.

If true, this could help shed light on the RNA-World and create many different and intriguing lines of research. 

That said, there’s an obvious caveat: these RNA molecules were designed. For a purely natural RNA-World scenario to be true, scientists would have to show that a self-replicating RNA could have arisen through natural means, and last time I checked, they ain’t even close to demonstrating this.

Keep in mind I am NOT questioning whether evolutionary mechanisms exist. It is obvious that they do exist and function in nature. However, take a good look at what Dr. Joyce and his colleagues did: they took their knowledge of how living things work and change/evolve, and used it to create an RNA molecule that “evolves” (or runs under the properties of known evolutionary mechanisms). This is very similar to what engineers do, using their knowledge of the known world/universe to create an object or system to suit some predetermined function(s) or design objective(s). In essence, what Joyce et al. did was attempt to engineer life.

As if to reinforce the engineering aspect of the research, the article goes on to say:

The ultimate goal is to create genetic systems that behave like life, and are for all intents ‘life’ as we know it, but arose without using biological systems.

“The aim is to create systems that have inventive capabilities, that can develop novel solutions to challenges posed by the environment. But that we don’t have yet,” [molecular biologist Gerald Joyce] said. …

[Joyce continues] “They are synthetic genetic systems, and they are evolving. But they’re not living because they don’t yet show the capacity to invent functions out of whole cloth [independently from basic building blocks].

“The idea is to given them enough information wherewithal [build up enough genetic informaton] so they can start inventing their own solutions, rather than just optimising existing solutions,” he added.

To recap, Joyce et al. “create[d] … [synthetic] genetic systems that behave like life” (i.e. replicate and pass on genetic information – a simple design objective). Further research will have the goal of ”… creat[ing] systems that have inventive capabilities, that can develop novel solutions to challenges posed by the environment.” (i.e. predetermined function). To accomplish this, the researchers aim to “give them enough information wherewithal [build up enough genetic informaton] so they can start inventing their own solutions, rather than just optimising existing solutions…”

Golly gee! That sure sounds a lot like engineering and front-loading to me.

“Front-loading is the investment of a significant amount of information at the initial stage of evolution (the first life forms) whereby this information shapes and constrains subsequent evolution through its dissipation.”
p.147, The Design Matrix by Mike Gene

I thought FLE/design couldn’t lead to fruitful research. Silly me!

All kidding aside, this could set the stage for interesting new OOL research. Stay tuned!

In Part 1, I called attention to an interesting side discussion that occurred at a Telic Thoughts post. Part 2 will focus on my comments regarding that discussion.

Continue reading »

In the comments section of the previous post, a link was provided that led to the following definition of reverse engineering:

In a landmark paper on the topic, M.G. Rekoff defines reverse engineering as “the process of developing a set of specifications for a complex hardware system by an orderly examination of specimens of that system.” He describes such a process as being conducted by someone other than the developer, “without the benefit of any of the original drawings … for the purpose of making a clone of the original hardware system.”
Reverse Engineering and Design Recovery: A Taxonomy- E.J. Chikofsky and J.H. Cross II

The first sentence is a fairly straight forward definition of reverse engineering that very few would have issues with. It is the second sentence, when examined in parts, that I find interesting.

1a. “He describes [reverse engineering] as being conducted by someone other than the developer [or designer]“  While this may seem obvious, it is an important aspect that is missed or overlooked when using the reverse engineering argument in ID. Alone, this would make for many long (and perhaps boring) philosophical discussions and discourses.

1b. “…’without the benefit of any of the original drawings …’ “ Again, this seems obvious, but it is even more important than point 1a. It is an extremely difficult task to reverse engineer a structure/process without the original plans, without the original design notes, and without making off-the-cuff remarks about the designer. Reverse engineering often deals with incomplete information and that, in of itself, should temper any claims/findings from the process.

2. “… for the purpose of making a clone of the original hardware system.” The two-part question I pose to both critic and defender of ID is this: should someone reverse engineer and then subsequently and successfully re-engineer a single-celled organism, a) would that be considered science (either the reverse engineering or the re-engineering processes or both combined), and b) would that constitue evidence (no matter how comprehensive/complete it may be) of a designer for the cell that was re-engineered?

The asylum is now open.

Note: the Rekoff quote was referenced from “On Reverse Engineering”, IEEE Trans. Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, March-April 1985, pp. 244-252

In a previous post, I called attention to what looked like an interesting debate at Telic Thoughts on defining intelligence. While entertaining at times, it was somewhat dissappointing.

However, an interesting side debate started on defining design. I have separated it from the main thread (minus the whining, chest-thumping and fluff) for ease of viewing. So pop your popcorn, crack open a bottle of suds, and enjoy (it’s a long read)!

Continue reading »