Evolutionary theory: the coming quantum jump?

After decades of being constrained by a neo-Darwinist ultra-reductionist mindset it is refreshing to see signs of new horizons opening up. Here are five developments that I, as a layman, have observed recently:

Kin selection under attack

Edward Wilson has rejected kin selection and the associated ‘selfish gene’ hypothesis as an explanation of evolution and instead proposes group selection in his latest book The Social Conquest of Earth. Formerly, Wilson was a supporter of kin selection and it is not surprising he should incur the wrath of Richard Dawkins and a hundred or so other evolutionary biologists. I suspect that Wilson’s group selection theory, while a significant improvement, will leave many unanswered questions about the extraordinary evolution of life on this planet: but what matters to me most is that we may at last be getting some fresh thinking and deeper worldview in a blinkered biological establishment. See also

The five-fold threat to science.

Fighting fatalism: the anthropic principle
The doctrine of chance

 Virus-driven evolution

Darwin’s original view was that evolution occurred by a gradual accumulation of beneficial traits culminating in new species as the best traits were preferred by natural selection, since only the fittest would survive. Darwin himself, and more so Wallace, the co-discoverer of evolution, had strong doubts about this. The fossil record soon showed it to be wrong – new species arrive suddenly, not gradually. Moreover, the whole body plan and life system of a new species is totally different from any existing species, and cannot be explained by the occurrence of random mutations, since random mutations add nothing to the information content of a genome. All they can do is switch on or off a few genes which are already in the genome.

There is now a wealth of evidence to show that it is viruses, not random mutations, which drive evolution and that these transfer beneficial traits from one species to another by incorporating themselves in the germ-line, i.e. egg or sperm cells, of a different species. Moreover, new species do not arise by modified descent in a tree of life. The whole process is, of course, barely understood but we at least know that evolution is best portrayed graphically as being more a web than a tree.

Viral-type DNA has recently been found to account for a substantial proportion of an organism’s genome – much more than the genes which code for protein expression (1.5%). This is at least partially derived from outside the organism and from its ancestors.

Epigenetics

What primarily alters the characteristics of an organism is which genes are switched on, in which way and at what time. They don’t do this switching on and off themselves. It is determined and initiated by proteins and enzymes active within the cell and these are in turn affected by the environment, both within the organism and outside it, as well as food and drugs taken in by the organism and by previous generations.  The study of these extra-genetic processes is called epigenetics and it is a burgeoning field. It will, I suspect, have major implications for the mechanism of evolution and since much of the activity involved occurs within the brain there is no telling where the research could lead.

It is conceivable that our body-mind system and behaviour could all be affected by previous generations or have an effect on future ones. The epigenetics revolution by Nessa Carey points out that this could have major implications for drug R&D if the potential effects on future generations have to be taken into account.

Bacteria

The number of bacteria, fungi and other micro-organisms in your body is 10x greater than the number of body cells (i.e. hundreds rather than tens of trillions) and the importance of this in the functioning of the body is becoming increasingly recognised.  Could bacteria, too, have implications for evolution, given that our current understanding of the process is barely scraping the surface?

Communication between organisms

There is increasing evidence of chemicals and information being meaningfully transferred between trees in a forest, even between different species, via their root networks. Transfers of this type may well happen for other forms of plant life and also between mobile life forms in ways we cannot envisage.

Quantum biology


The incredible degree of organisation and purpose in the microscopic processes of life (e.g. editing and transfer of protein molecules between DNA segments) could originate from outside the measurable world, i.e. at the quantum level, and I seem to have seen suggestions of this somewhere, although this may just be  speculation on my part. I know definitely that quantum phenomena are being invoked in attempts to explain bird migration. There is also the fact of quantum entanglement which shows interaction of quantum systems independently of distance: where this could lead in evolutionary theory is beyond imagination.

I am looking at these developments as an outsider ignorant of all the eddies, cross currents  and fine points of discovery but I am hoping that science magazines, popular books and documentaries on biology will become more interesting, exciting and inspiring as the paradigm changes from attributing every miracle of nature, including human beings, to an evolutionary accident and facing up  to the strangeness and wonder of our existence.

John

cosmik.jo@gmail.com

author, 2077 AD (being revised)

Preaching evil

In the UK the BBC publishes a science magazine called Focus, which is normally informative and enjoyable to read; but the April 2012 issue had a very prominent cover story, spelling out in large letters to its readers (mostly young, I  suspect),  that, ‘it is GOOD to be BAD: the scientific secrets of career success, better relationships and good health.’

This reminds me of 1984 by George Orwell, in which the Party claims that ‘good is bad’ etc. See 1984 revisited and collective postmodernism. Like the Party the publishers of this magazine are in effect saying that good and bad do not exist in any absolute, moral sense. They are human constructs and so it would be foolish to obey a non-existent deity if this stops you climbing the ladder to power and wealth. You are the only deity so anything goes.

Opening up the lavishly illustrated magazine one finds a series of short reports over 7 pages, some of which exhort readers to lie, cheat and get angry at work or in trying to attract a partner.  As regards relationships between couples the scientific findings suggest sadistic and masochistic behaviour strengthens them. All this is ‘backed up’ by ‘scientific’ findings.

Even if the findings are ‘scientifically’ substantiated, rather than just selectively assembled from a wide morass of conflicting sociological data to make a sensational collection (the more likely option in my view)  most people in the UK will not need any thoughts from me on the obvious inadvisability of putting out such messages.

As a Christian I see it as evil but even in my four decades of adult agnosticism I would have regarded this as irresponsible and totally wrong headed. It testifies to a society led by people who are increasingly out of touch with the reality from which humanity and the natural world have emerged and who are speeding up social decay and breakdown as well as undermining faith in a rational, creative universe, thereby removing the intellectual milieu  which allowed the peer-reviewed science of the last 400 years in  Protestant Europe and the USA to thrive in a way which the science of the Greeks, Moslems, Babylonians, Egyptians and Chinese could not. (Other branches of Christianity also did not lead to a sustained advancement of science but for different reasons.)

See also

The five-fold threat to science.

Compassion (self- and for others) fosters mental health (Scientific American)

When nice guys finish first (Scientific American)

Trying to resist temptation? Think about God (Scientific American)

Below is an imaginary letter to the editor, written from the standpoint of a secular citizen with no concern about the godlessness of the offending articles.

Dear editor

I have no belief in a divine source of right and wrong; these are human constructs and our conscience is just an illusion, an evolutionary accident, as we ourselves are as a species, and as is the whole universe. In fact I’m puzzled as to why I am even writing this letter given that I live in a meaningless universe.

However, most people will think it a bit odd for a scientific magazine to be presenting their young readers with suggestions for self advancement in their careers through cheating, lying and aggression. No doubt the idea is for the magazine to appear cool, unstuffy and unpaternalistic while stimulating controversy and hence sales; but a small proportion of readers will take this as a license to engage in just this behaviour and many more will be subliminally tipped in that direction.

We know from the butterfly effect in chaos theory that a micro-disturbance in one location in a very large system can have major influences in places very remote from the micro-disturbance. The expression comes from the mathematically derived idea that the flutter of a butterfly can cause a storm on the other side of the world. For example, a tiny speck of dust dropping into a large vat of calm but superheated water causes the whole lot to boil vigorously in one instant.

This applies to the social behaviour of an individual in society as much as to a butterfly in the global weather system. It only requires one wrong action to happen when society is in the wrong state and it could trigger a huge social breakdown beyond our imagination to foresee.

Suppose Mr or Ms X goes into the office after taking on board the Focus article and as a result behaves more aggressively than intended to their boss. A whole chain of events could be set off. The boss is already at the end of his tether under stress from his boss and is no longer able to constrain himself in dealings with those around him. Negative ripples are sent out in all his dealings with others. Some of these ripples of negativity (i.e. mutually destructive behaviour) generate in turn other waves of trouble, and so on exponentially as time passes, until a whole office of 50 people is directly or indirectly affected in some way, and each of those people will act accordingly to propagate more waves of trouble, sometimes as a result of direct meetings but also as a result of telephone calls or twitter or Facebook or email or interactions in their social life beyond work. And each wave of trouble will generate further waves of trouble, and so on – a snowball of trouble from one person reading one article.

Negative behaviour that could ripple out in this way across the social milieu could include cheating at tax, lying about one’s abilities, lying about one’s motives, spreading malicious gossip, suggesting unacceptable business practices to extract more money from the market, introducing planned obsolescence into products, closing down community-centred operations to save on costs, falsifying accounts or making them misleading to potential investors, shareholders, auditors or the inland revenue, or falsifying scientific data to secure a grant or generate media interest.

In fact it needs only one negative influence to have enormous effects in certain situations. Remember this from G. Herbert?

erbrtHerbertFor the want of a nail the shoe was lost
For want of a shoe the horse was lost
For want of a horse the rider was lost
For want of a rider the battle was lost
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

I am almost inclined to stop attacking religion because it has a role as a policeman in people’s head. Still, one must be true to oneself. Sorry, I forgot, there is no real truth, and in fact sometimes I wonder if I exist since the one who is supposed to have created me does not exist. It’s all a meaningless illusion. So why am I attacking someone else’s illusion? Life gets confusing at times. All I know is that society could get nasty if we abandoned the illusion of right and wrong (or is it an illusion? how can anything be an illusion if there is no reality?).

So you see, Mr Editor, such contributions to your magazine are not a ‘good’ idea (I mean, of course, ‘good’ in the sense of being expedient for human survival).

Humanity be with you

Dick  (call me an evolutionary accident) Snikwad

I suspect that this is the only viewpoint that would carry any weight with the editorial team unless, perhaps, their aim was to stimulate thought and spiritual reformation. After all, I started on the road to Christ after reading Richard Dawkins,  although it is doubtful whether that was his intention.

See also

 John Paul Sartre: not the way to Peace on Earth

Free will rules OK

Are some scientists from the planet Vulcan?

A link to this post will be sent to the editor, who is of course welcome to reply, either via the comments facility below or writing a guest post  for this blog and emailing it to me at

cosmik.jo@gmail.com

John

The passive gene

In every living organism there are cells and in the nucleus of each cell,  as well as other parts of the cell, there are stored instructions on how the cell should behave in certain situations, depending on

• The environment inside the cell

• Other cells within the organism

• The world external to the organism

According to the latest research in epigenetics  there is a startling fourth causative factor – the environment and food intake of the organism’s ancestors, to at least several generations. See The epigenetics revolution by Nessa Carey.  The author has produced an excellent website on epigenetics which stands on its own as a brief introduction: a whistlestop tour of epigenetics.

The nucleus comprises a microscopic strand of DNA which is folded around a compact complex of 8 protein molecules called histones. A vast array of instructions is coded in the DNA’s double helix, in segments called chromosomes and subsegments of chromosomes called genes.  Typically there are a few hundred genes per chromosome. The complete sequence is called the genome. A small proportion of the genome comprises genes which, when ‘told’ to do so in a highly organised process of cutting, splicing, tranferring, repairing and editing across billions of base pairs (the units which store the information, like 1's and 0's in a computer), initiate, but do not enact, the manufacture of proteins in the right place at the right time; but most of the these genes are either little understood or a total mystery. 98% of the human genome was conveniently, perhaps arrogantly, labelled ‘junk’ until only a decade or so ago, on the grounds that they did not appear to have anything to do with the production of proteins. 

What is often overlooked in popular science documentaries and books is that the gene is only a passive set of instructions. The essence of biological life is the way these instructions are formed, passed on from generation to generation and read by a complex of protein molecules in such a way as to allow the building and functioning of the host organism (e.g. you or I). The gene does nothing. It is no more the essence of a living organism than a book on how to make a car or repair it are functional parts of a motor car or an automobile factory or an automobile R&D operation.  What is fantastic is how the book of life was written, is continually being rewritten and edited, together with the extraordinary process by which it is read and used to make, maintain and repair a living, adaptive organism.

Three examples to put the gene in its place:

The honey bee
It is well known that a honey bee colony comprises a queen, female workers and males which mate with the queen. What is less well known is that every bee of every type in the honeybee colony, whatever its role or physical structure, is genetically identical. Some incredible process occurs by which totally different organisms with different functions (such as gathering pollen or mating), grow out of the same DNA with the same genes in the same chromosomes, depending on how some agency picks out the right biological instructions at the right time to allow the organism to fulfil its role in the colony. Even the food eaten affects the development of a bee – e.g. royal jelly, made from pollen and nectar collected by workers, is fed selectively to certain female bees and somehow causes them to become queens. These facts are only the tip of a very large iceberg. Collectively the process can only be called miraculous, yet the genes are not the drivers.

The butterfly
It is also well known that a butterfly starts life as a caterpillar. What two organisms could be more different? Yet, again, they are genetically identical. The same genes are used in entirely different ways in the butterfly from when they reside in the caterpillar. The two creatures look different, have different survival strategies and different predators. One flies through the air, the other crawls painfully slowly over vegetation. A fly and the maggot from which it emerges also have exactly the same genes.

People and worms

We have about 20,000 genes, the same as a worm.  But look at the difference. We each have trillions of cells in hundreds of complex organs, all cleverly and intricately orchestrated and in balance with many more bacterial cells which form part of us, the whole system being in balance with the environment. The worm, albeit an engineering masterwork, contains only a thousand cells and relatively rudimentary organisms.

Genes are not even self-replicators - the information is passed on to the next generation by a copying process originating outside the gene and precisely how this is done is not understood.  They do not 'decide' to replicate or copy themselves- they do not have free will. They are neither selfish nor altruistic but part of a miraculous process.

See also

Natural technology: the bacterium

John

cosmik.jo@gmail.com