Pre-adapt or die!

A previous post raised the issue of pre-adaptation in evolution. The idea remains controversial, but if it is true, it could point to a design or plan built into the DNA of all living things from the outset. In his book The Science of God, Gerald L. Schroeder makes a case for pre-adaptation, which I've excerpted below. 

Schroeder is an interesting figure - a trained scientist who tries to reconcile modern scientific data with the Bible. Since I view the Bible as a compendium of myth, legend, poetry, fiction, and a dash of history, I'm not particularly sympathetic to this project. I don't much care if the Bible can be made to seem scientifically prescient, any more than I care about seeing the Epic of Gilgamesh reinterpreted as a forecast of quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, I find Schroeder's books fascinating because he thinks outside the box of materialism and explores concepts like an information-based cosmos (see his book The Hidden Face of God). 

In this excerpt, Schroeder considers the implications of the Cambrian Explosion - the sudden worldwide emergence of advanced life forms from very primitive antecedents circa 530 million years ago. How, he asks, did simple protozoans and sponge-like creatures become complex, articulated, lobster-like trilobites virtually overnight? 

Over three billion years spanned the gap between the immediate appearance of one-celled life on the just-cooled Earth, 3.8 billion years ago, and the explosion of multicellular life 530 million years ago. Perhaps during those eons, random mutations in the one-celled antecedents of all modern life stored genetic material containing latent (neutral) information potentially useful for the impending explosion of animal complexity. This would then be available for expression suddenly and simultaneously at the inception of multicellular life. Species of modern algae and protozoans have the space in their DNA for this neutral information. Each of their cells contains as much as one hundred times more DNA than a cell of any mammal, including humans. Since micro-fossils of primordial algae and protozoans have shape and size similar to modern specimens, it may be inferred that their genetic library was equally large.

We know that the genetic material of many plants and animals contains blocks of latent information able to be immediately expressed by changes in the environment or by single mutations. Chickens are known to grow hair, not feathers. Horses are born with multiple digits. Human babies unfortunately at times emerge from the womb with their "gill slits" still open. Both mammals and birds produce gill arches during embryo development, but then both mammals and birds, according to the fossil record, share a common origin as primitive fish. Marsh plants when submerged in water develop a leaf structure different from that of the same plant grown on dry land, even when cloned and therefore genetically identical.

According to the "latent library" theory, all this information is quietly present in the genome, waiting for the cue to be expressed. When the marine lizard ichythosaurus appears suddenly in the fossil record with an outer shape essentially that of a fish, or a land mammal becomes fish-like in shape as the arise for the whale, we may be witnessing a stored shift of preexisting genes from latent to active states. Fossils of what appear to be ancient primitive whales having small vestigial hind legs have been found in India and Pakistan. If the fossil record is correct, the phylum Chordata, of which both lizard and mammal are members, has at its base primitive fish. Some fish-like genes are certainly held in the genomes of modern land-based chordates, hence the occasional gill slits of human babies and the gill arches and yolk sacs of mammal embryos. Reorganization and expression of stored genes could account for a rapid "evolution" of the fish-like characteristics of these species....

The obvious questions with regard to algal and protozoan genome size are: why does an algal cell or an amoeba retain so much genetic capacity? And why, within this huge genetic library space, would a primordial protozoan have stored information related, for example, to jointed limbs or vertebrae? There would be no immediate benefit to the amoeba and so no genetic reason for them to maintain this neutral information in their DNA. If it were not neutral, then its expression was clearly not in the forms as expressed in the Cambrian animals.

The concept of a latent library posits a mechanism very different from the classical theory of evolution wherein random mutations provide changes in morphology. Nonetheless, primordial preprogramming of life's developments is exemplified in the morphogenesis of the eye. A gene group, Pax-6, is a key regulator in the development of eyes in all vertebrates. Its analog (a very similar gene) has been found to control development of the visual systems of mollusks, insects, flatworms, and nemerteans (ribbon worms). These represent five of the six phyla that have visual systems. (The sixth phyla with vision has not yet been studied.) The molecular similarity among these analogs is nothing less than astounding. The paired domain of the gene contains 130 amino acids. The match of these amino acids between insects and humans is 94 percent! Between zebra fish and human the match is 97 percent.

Could five genetically separate phyla have evolved these similar genes individually by chance?... The likelihood that random mutations would produce the same combination five times is 10 [to the power of 170] raised to the fifth power.

There is no way this same gene could have evolved independently in each of the five phyla -- it must have been present in a common ancestor. The gene that controls the development of eyes was programmed into life at at a level below the Cambrian. That level is either the amorphous sponge-like Ediacarans or one-celled protozoa. But neither has eyes. 

[pp. 90-92, The Science of God, Gerald L. Schroeder]

Comments

[Michael Duggan]

Fascinating post. I'm reminded of Robert Lanza's theory of biocentrism and also theories of retrocausation in modern physics. Maybe information reaches back in time to influence and promote conscious possessing organsims? It's also rather strange that we didn't see the emergence of microtubules until the beginning of the Cambrian explosion. Stuart Hameroff and others have postulated theories of consciousness based on these sub-cellular structures. Maybe the primitive consciousness these tiny cells possessed provided a catalyst for rapid evolution of subsequent life. It's a pity Schroeder has to play to the fundamentalist crowd. This area it too exciting to be left with these guys!

[Kathleen]

Very interesting, it's almost like there is a big computer programmer up there in the sky behind evolution, planting the code that manifests when required. Could it be a bridge between Creationism and Evolution, so that neither are incorrect?

[Art]

Little different than a Netflix DVD with the whole movie written on it, only in holographic form. - Art
------------------------------
excerpt from an interview with Dr. Brian Green in National Geographic Magazine:

"In the final chapter of your book, you suggest that the world may be a hologram. That sounds very Matrix-like."

"It's a very speculative idea that seems to, strangely enough, naturally emerge from string theory. Basically, the fundamental laws of the universe don't really operate in the environment around us. They may operate on sort of a distant bounding surface and give rise to the familiar world that we experience in much the same way that a thin piece of plastic, when illuminated correctly—if it's a hologram—can yield a three-dimensional image."

It might be that the deep laws are more like the thin piece of plastic existing on a thin bounding surface. Everything we know might be akin to a holographic projection of those distant laws."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/03/0326_040326_briangreene_2.html
-------------------------------------------
"At its deeper level reality is a sort of superhologram in which the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously." - excerpt from The Universe as a hologram,
http://www.earthportals.com/hologram.html
--------------------------------------------
excerpt from The Holographic Universe: When it pays to be first

"If this doesn’t blow your socks off, then Craig Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: ‘If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram.’"
http://blogs.monografias.com/sistema-limbico-neurociencias/2010/02/19/the-holographic-universe-when-it-pays-to-be-first/
--------------------------------------------
excerpt from Carl Turner's mystical experience:

"I had the realization that I was everywhere at the same time...and I mean everywhere. I knew that everything is perfect and happening according to some divine plan, regardless of all the things we see as wrong with the world."
http://www.beyondreligion.com/su_personal/dreamsvisions-kundalini.htm
--------------------------------------------
excerpt from Jame's E's NDE:

"I was not "told" anything in the light, as much as, I just knew everything there was to know. I knew why there was bad in the world, I knew why there was good, I knew that every little thing that will ever occur here, is exactly planned out, in order to bring about something else. Everything we have ever done or known or will know, is perfectly planned out and perfectly in tune."
http://www.nderf.org/james_e_nde.htm

[Roger Knights]

Here are a few lines from Robinson Jeffers' poem, "De Rerum Virtute" that I posted here in an earlier thread. (I recommend Jeffers' "Selected Poems" to followers of this blog.)

... the egg too has a mind
.............................
Choosing and forming: a limited but superhuman intelligence,
Prophetic of the future and aware of the past
....................
... and slowly, if it works, the race
Forms a new race: that is also part of the plan
Within the egg. I believe the first living cell
Had echoes of the future in it, and felt
Direction, and the great animals, the deep green forest
And whale's-track sea; I believe this globed earth
Not all by chance and fortune brings forth her broods,
But feels and chooses. And the galaxy
.....................
Is not blind force, but fulfills its life and intends its courses. "All things are full of God.
Winter and summer, day and night, ware and peace are God."

[nbtruthman]

A very interesting post. Schroeder's hypothesis would seem to require that early primitive animals like the first proto-vertebrates (modern representative Amphioxus) have a genome including the entire complement of fish, amphibian, reptile and mammalian genes. All of the later embodied genetic information had to have been contained in some form in the genome of primitive organisms. A problem with such a "front-loading" scenario for evolution is that huge amounts of genetically neutral DNA would have to be maintained for hundreds of millions or billions of years against the constant degrading effect of random mutations. Instead, it is known that nonfunctional DNA is generally not conserved in evolution (that is, it is not protected against mutational degradation). This effect is actually used to date various innovations in evolution, based on the calculated average rate of mutational degradation or genetic drift.

Another problem is that the idea of genetic front-loading seems to require, in addition to high intelligence in the beginning to design and incorporate the originally implanted genomic data, the ability of that intelligence to accurately predict the vicissitudes of global tectonic, climatic and atmospheric changes over subsequent ages of geologic time. There have been powerful asteroid or cometary impacts, and titanic volcanic lava eruptions, which caused major extinctions and redirected the evolution of life. These events would also have to have been predicted or predetermined by this intelligence.

It looks like a simpler intelligent design hypothesis would be that Mind occasionally intervenes in evolution to inject key genetic changes necessary for major evolutionary innovations (macroevolution), while Darwinistic random genetic variation culled by natural selection still operates in microevolution.

Unfortunately it has to be recognized that there is a huge body of evidence for the Darwinistic process actually being the major mechanism of evolution. Orthodox Darwinian evolutionary biologists scoff at any and all of these sort of ideas as Creationist nonsense, as they also scoff at any notions of spiritual existence, psi, psychical phenomena, etc. Of course, there is also a huge body of evidence for psychical phenomena and for survival. This seems to automatically produce an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance - how to reconcile materialist Darwinism with psychical phenomena. It isn't easy - Darwinism as accepted in biology is materialism down to the bone and doesn't allow any room whatsoever for psi much less survival. It would probably be better for the future of parapsychology to just accept this, rather than to further discredit parapsychology by associating with what is thought to be Creationism.

[Michael Prescott]

"Unfortunately it has to be recognized that there is a huge body of evidence for the Darwinistic process actually being the major mechanism of evolution. Orthodox Darwinian evolutionary biologists scoff at any and all of these sort of ideas as Creationist nonsense"

A few years ago Michael Shermer organized a gathering of many of the world's most prominent evolutionary biologists to celebrate some anniversary - Darwin's birth, or death, or whatever. He naturally expected these leading evolutionary theorists to heap praise on Darwin, but as it turned out, all of them, without exception, said that neo-Darwinism was radically flawed and badly incomplete, and that a new paradigm was needed. I'm not saying any of them embraced the pre-adaptation idea, but there seems to be widespread agreement within the community of evolutionary biologists that neo-Darwinism in itself is mainly useful in explaining microevolution, not macroevolution. That's why ideas like punctuated equilibria, evo-devo, and pre-adaptation are being bruited about.

Diehard neo-Darwinists like Richard Dawkins don't seem to be at all typical of the major researchers in the field.

I'd also disagree that there's a huge body of evidence supporting neo-Darwinism as the major mechanism of evolution. What is this evidence? The fossil record shows only a few dubious transitional forms (which is why Gould developed his theory of punctuated equilibria). The Cambrian explosion implies that major changes happen swiftly, not incrementally. Laboratory experiments with fruit flies have not yielded any examples of macroevolution even when thousands of generations of flies have been bombarded with radiation to encourage mutations. (Only microevolutionaey mutations have been observed, and these have all been counterproductive dead ends.) Nor have one-celled organisms shown any propensity to evolve in macro terms, no matter how much they are coaxed and prodded in the lab. Haeckel's embryos have been exposed as a hoax. The spotted moth story has been shown to be inaccurate. The beaks of Darwin's finches vary according to the weather - wet seasons and droughts - but always revert to the mean.

There is certainly evidence of common descent - mainly in the genomes of different species, and also in body plans, vestigial organs, etc. But common descent doesn't equal neo-Darwinism. The question is not whether evolution has occurred (I think it obviously has), but what is the mechanism? Evidence for neo-Darwinism as the main mechanism of macroevolution would consist of numerous transitional forms in the fossil record, macroevolutionary changes in fruit flies and one-celled organisms in the lab, and present-day evidence of marked changes in species over time. As far as I know, there is very little by way of fossil evidence (the horse series, the whale series, and the archaeopteryx are about all there is, and all three are disputed), nothing by way of lab evidence, and nothing by way of present-day observations.

The late paleontologist Colin Patterson used to vex his colleagues by asking them to tell him "anything you know about evolution [meaning neo-Darwinism], any one thing, any one thing that you think is true." He said, "The only answer I got was silence."

[nbtruthman]

"...there seems to be widespread agreement within the community of evolutionary biologists that neo-Darwinism in itself is mainly useful in explaining microevolution, not macroevolution."

None of the new fads in evolutionary biology, like evo-devo, propose any genetic change mechanism that isn't driven by ultimately random factors, that is, random with respect to reproductive fitness. For the most part, the new forms of modern evolutionary theory just add more mechanisms of genetic change that remain random with respect to fitness. Anything else would be to admit teleology or intelligence into the system, which they can't do.

"Evidence for neo-Darwinism as the main mechanism of macroevolution would consist of numerous transitional forms in the fossil record, macroevolutionary changes in fruit flies and one-celled organisms in the lab, and present-day evidence of marked changes in species over time. As far as I know, there is very little by way of fossil evidence"

I agree that the Cambrian Explosion is still a mystery, long-term forced evolution research with bacteria and fruit flies has yielded little but degradative changes, no valid gradual series have been found to explain irreducibly complex structures like the bacterial flagellum, and there still don't seem to be the number of intermediates required by neodarwinism.

However, on the large scale of classes, genera and tens of millions of years there is a clear progression, where each new stage of a developmental line is an elaboration that very clearly is based on the previous. New innovations seem always to utilize previously existing structures, rather than inventing entirely new ones. Like the mammalian inner ear bone homology with primitive fish jaw bones. Supposedly mysterious macroevolutionary events like the evolution of giraffes with their apparently irreducibly complex body systems still have traces of what must have been gradual evolution, like the laryngeal nerve. In the giraffe it has an unnecessary loop of some 15 feet, just as if the neck in lengthening had dragged this branch of the vagus nerve with it. In other words, contingency and improvisation based on what is at hand, rather than creative innovation, which would have rerouted the nerve.

I think the progression from primitive jawless fish through amphibians to reptiles is one of the better examples:
- Ostracoderms, beginning in early Cambrian, 510 Ma; Jawless, covered by a bony plate except for the tail region, cartilaginous notochord.
-Placoderms, beginning in late Silurian, 400 Ma; Functional jaws but no teeth, armored over most of body, bony skeleton.
-Bony fishes (Osteichthes), beginning in early Devonian, 390 Ma
-Sarcopterygean lobe-finned bony fishes, mid-Devonian, 380 Ma
-Various forms physiologically intermediate between crossopterygians and early amphibians, mid to late-Devonian, 380-360 Ma. Especially Tiktaalik, near the beginning of this process.
- Very first amphibians, quite fish-like, such as Acanthostega and Ichthyostega, late Devonian, 370-360 Ma
- Labyrinthodonts, larger amphibians with some ichthyostegid characteristics, late Devonian/early Mississippian 370-350 Ma
- Anthracosaurs-early reptiles with some amphibian and some reptile characteristics; late Mississippian, 330-320 Ma
- Cotylosaurs (primitive reptiles), early Pennsylvanian, 320-310 Ma
- This is soon followed by the first primitive mammal-like reptiles

There are more intermediates being discovered all the time, like the numerous primitive birdlike dinosaurs being found in China.

So the picture is confused, but I think neodarwinism has a lot of evidence for it, whether we like it or not.

[Art]

It's amazing how quick it all happened isn't it? Essentially 600 million years from one celled animals and plants to what we have today 600 million years later? Pretty impressive! As to how it all exactly happened? I'm going with the holographic universe theory! Like a giant piece of holographic film with all the information encoded on it. Then the Creator of the Universe shone a Light on it and BANG! Here we are!

[realpc]

Neo-Darwinists make a lot of assumptions without caring about evidence. It is a theory based on materialist faith, because no other theory of evolution agrees with materialism.

Rupert Sheldrake's theory of evolution, for example, makes a lot more sense, and is compatible with both science and mysticism.

There has also been recent evidence for neo-Lamarckism, which also makes more sense than neo-Darwinism.

There is hardly any theory ever devised that makes less sense than neo-Darwinism. Yet there are millions of devoted followers.

[RabbitDawg]

nbtruthman,
That's an impressive little list you have there, but I don't think any rational person disputes evolutionary progression.
The issue here is the mechanism.

[Pat]

Michael, pardon my nit picking, but the Epic of Gilgamesh is *not* analogous to the Bible.

The Bible is a library - a collection of books written in different eras and cultures, to different audiences and for different purposes, using a variety of different genres. As such, the Bible contains myth, poetry, personal reflections (in some cases bordering on journal entries), politics, theology... and yes... *history* as well. There are also cases of overlaps between the genres.

So the Bible - or rather, collection of books we call "the Bible" - is more nuanced than the Epic of Gilgamesh.

- Pat

[Pat]

P.S. Just to clarify, my main point is that the Bible contains more than a "dash" of history. That's what I was getting at. Peace

[Ronnie Lee]

Off-topic, but I know Art will like this:

http://io9.com/#!5789635

[nbtruthman]

RabbitDawg: "That's an impressive little list you have there, but I don't think any rational person disputes evolutionary progression.
The issue here is the mechanism."

The problem is, more and more intermediates are being discovered all the time, which progressively is reducing the mystery bit by bit. It definitely seems to be true that evolution progresses by fits and starts ("punctuated equilibrium"), where most innovation-in-progress is not preserved by fossils, indicating it often happens too fast for such preservation. But the Darwinians respond with the observation that fossilization is indeed rare and might well miss transitional forms.

We can posit a non-Darwinian mechanism that somehow involves outside intelligent introduction of new genetic code for innovations. But then we have to explain why it always utilizes the material/structures at hand rather than inventing entirely new systems. An intelligent creative source intervening in evolution with new genetic code would supposedly have no such restriction. It could even use creative engineering to produce truly revolutionary forms, like land animals using wheels for locomotion. And if it had a long-term goal related to man rather than just relatively short term advancements, why produce organisms that obviously produce untold suffering in humanity, like the specialized protists and anopheles mosquitos of malaria?

A non-Darwinian mechanism not involving outside intelligence would get around these objections, but would still need to have some form of innate intelligence in order to determine just what genetic modifications were necessary to make the advance required. That Lamarkian-appearing mechanism would still need to be creative in an engineering sense, and we can't even imagine what that could be. It certainly wouldn't be any of the evo-devo mechanisms identified so far, which definitely can't produce irreducibly complex systems. Evo-devo just demonstrates that evolution alters developmental processes to create new and novel structures from the old gene networks (such as bone structures of the jaw deviating to the ossicles of the middle ear), but the change mechanisms are still dependent on random mutations or recombinations producing developmental changes to gene regulation, which may then are preserved and spread in the population by natural selection. Evo-devo doesn't really violate Darwinian principles or have anything truly Lamarkian.

[Art]

"why produce organisms that obviously produce untold suffering in humanity, like the specialized protists and anopheles mosquitos of malaria?" - nbtruthman
--------------------------------------------

Because this ain't the main show and life ain't supposed to be a bowl of cherries and it's through suffering that our souls learn the lessons they are here to learn. Mosquitoes and malaria cause separation, teaching the soul what it means and how it feels to be separate.

Losing someone you love is the ultimate lesson in what it means and how it feels to be separate, something you can't learn in heaven due to those overwhelming feelings of oneness and connectedness.

This earth life is a school and we are only here for a little while. The education of the soul is too important to leave up to chance.

I reiterate, life ain't supposed to be a bowl of cherries! There will always be wars and rumors of wars. There will always be arguments and disagreements leading to separation. There will always be the haves and the have nots. There will always be the intelligent and the ignorant. Life is one big long lesson in what it means and how it feels to be separate. From the moment you are born and separate from your mother till the day we die and our deaths become a lesson in separation to the loved ones we leave behind.

[Michael Prescott]

"we have to explain why it always utilizes the material/structures at hand rather than inventing entirely new systems."

The Cambrian explosion saw a profusion of entirely new systems. Schroeder's argument is that these systems were front-loaded into primordial DNA. This wouldn't necessarily require intervention by a cosmic Mind at the dawn of the Cambrian Era, but it might imply a plan or blueprint put in place by this Mind at the very beginning of life - such a plan being left to play itself out over time without further interference (or with minimal interference).

Another example of an entirely new system is sonar in bats. Even the earliest known bats appear to have used sonar.

Schroeder doesn't necessarily dispute that evolution uses materials or structures at hand - if by "at hand" you mean preexisting in the genetic code. His example of the parallel evolution of the eye in six phyla is meant to show that the necessary coding was "at hand" and must have been available even in the ancestors of all six phyla - eyeless pre-Cambrian critters.

[Art]

Michael Talbot says everything, past, present, and future would all ready exist in a holographic universe. Pretty much like a DVD of a movie only holographic.

Like the holodeck program on the ship's computer on Star Trek: Next Generation.

The education of the soul is too important to leave it up to chance.

[nbtruthman]

"Another example of an entirely new system is sonar in bats. Even the earliest known bats appear to have used sonar."

The improbability of strict Darwinist random genetic variation + natural selection creating ultra complex biological systems is also encountered with the dolphin sonar system. This is just one of many different systems that had to be elaborated and/or originated simultaneously in the animal. An engineering analysis has listed just some of them, for just this particular system:
- Sound signal emitter to produce an optimal very short broadband pulse
- Modifications of the hearing mechanism, middle ear, cochlea, for aquatic life
- Hearing perception acuity and frequency coverage matching echos received from produced sounds
- Computation of distance and direction from echo delay and phase characteristics
- Neural pattern recognition and processing including ability to extract features and classify the extracted features from modulations and amplitude of returned echos
- Feedback processes to optimize the emitted signal and the return reception
process for particular types of targets and distances.
- Time variable receiver gain to greatly reduce hearing sensitivity during signal emission
- Emitter power gain control to reduce power as range decreases
- Emitter "click" rate control to increase rate as range decreases
- Accompanying behavioral modifications to accommodate all this in hunting,
reproduction, etc.

In order for the animal to continue to survive, at the same time the same sort of processes had to be going on in a coordinated way to develop all the other amazing features like underwater birth, deep diving adaptations, food gathering structures and behavioral strategies, etc. etc.

It is unreasonable to suggest that these innovations could have been already stored in the genome, but it does look as if the genetic codes were varied somehow in a way not purely random with respect to fitness in the new environment.