Making new evolutionary innovations (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, November 27, 2019, 09:01 (1605 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You persist in skipping over the fact that cells in multicellular organisms are programmed in their DNA for specificity of action.

dhw: you persist in skipping over the fact that of course they are programmed for specificity once the species has been formed! But speciation involves changes to the programme!

DAVID: The only cells I know of that are pristine are stem cells. How do individual groups of them in different parts of the body communicate to decide on a major change? I still thinks it needs an agent.

Stem cells may well be the key to the whole evolutionary process. Cell communities would communicate in the same way as when they decide on a minor change. Why do you think cells are incapable of communication when all the articles you have presented here illustrate that very process?

DAVID: That is not what I present to you. He has done a fabulous piece of work. Of course Shapiro knows about genetic biology all over the spectrum. His book is a presentation of his bacterial findings with an attempted extrapolation to the multicellular. His book is filled with references to current research which suggest there is a possibility his findings will in the future, with much more research, have an application. You do not understand his book from the reviews.

dhw: Thank you for confirming that Shapiro’s theory is just as I have presented it, and that he must have done a lot of research outside his own specialist field. So please stop harping on about the fact that his own research was confined to bacteria. That is irrelevant.

DAVID: It is not irrelevant since he tries to plug it into major evolution processes as you do and it is just a theory that has not received any support I can find. You have a right to support the theory of course.

He obviously plugs it into major evolution processes using the research of others (“references to current research”) who are as convinced as he is that cells are cognitive, sentient, intelligent beings. The rest of his theory (and mine) grows from this one basic premise, and the fact that his personal research is confined to bacteria does not invalidate the argument. Of course it is “just a theory”, as is the existence of your God, and your belief in a 3.8-billion-year-old set of programmes for all undabbled innovations. We can only test the feasibility of each theory that is proposed. I do not regard the theorist’s main field of research as relevant to the reasonableness of his theory.