Scientists Confirm: Darwinism Is Broken
SCIENCE, 26 Dec 2016
Paul Nelson and David Klinghoffer | Media Research Center – TRANSCEND Media Service
(Wikimedia Commons Photo)
13 Dec 2016 – Darwinian theory is broken and may not be fixable. That was the takeaway from a meeting last month organized by the world’s most distinguished and historic scientific organization, which went mostly unreported by the media.
The three-day conference at the Royal Society in London was remarkable in confirming something that advocates of intelligent design (ID), a controversial scientific alternative to evolution, have said for years. ID proponents point to a chasm that divides how evolution and its evidence are presented to the public, and how scientists themselves discuss it behind closed doors and in technical publications. This chasm has been well hidden from laypeople, yet it was clear to anyone who attended the Royal Society conference, as did a number of ID-friendly scientists.
Maybe that secrecy helps explain why the meeting was so muffled in mainstream coverage.
Oh, there were a few reports. In the Huffington Post, science journalist Suzan Mazur complained of a lack of momentousness: “[J]ust what was the point of attracting a distinguished international gathering if the speakers had little new science to present? Why waste everyone’s time and money?” On the other hand, a write-up in The Atlantic by Carl Zimmer acknowledged a sense of strain between rival cliques of evolutionists: “Both sides offered their arguments and critiques in a civil way, but sometimes you could sense the tension in the room – the punctuations of tsk-tsks, eye-rolling, and partisan bursts of applause.”
Mild drama notwithstanding, why should anyone care?
For one thing, the Royal Society, dating back to 1660, is a legend in the science world. Its founders included the great chemist Robert Boyle, and it was later headed for 24 years (1703-1727) by Isaac Newton – a fact that is hard to forget with Newton’s death mask on prominent display in a glass case. Portraits of Boyle and Newton look down from the walls above. So the historical connections lend a certain weight by themselves.
What’s really notable, however, is that such a thoroughly mainstream body should so openly acknowledge problems with orthodox neo-Darwinian theory. Indeed, though presenters ignored, dismissed, or mocked the theory of intelligent design, the proceedings perfectly illustrated a point made by our colleague Stephen Meyer, author of the New York Times bestseller “Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design.”
Dr. Meyer, a Cambridge University-trained philosopher of science, writes provocatively in the book’s Prologue:
“The technical literature in biology is now replete with world-class biologists routinely expressing doubts about various aspects of neo-Darwinian theory, and especially about its central tenet, namely the alleged creative power of the natural selection and mutation mechanism.
“Nevertheless, popular defenses of the theory continue apace, rarely if ever acknowledging the growing body of critical scientific opinion about the standing of the theory. Rarely has there been such a great disparity between the popular perception of a theory and its actual standing in the relevant peer-reviewed science literature.”
The opening presentation at the Royal Society by one of those world-class biologists, Austrian evolutionary theorist Gerd Müller, underscored exactly Meyer’s contention. Dr. Müller opened the meeting by discussing several of the fundamental “explanatory deficits” of “the modern synthesis,” that is, textbook neo-Darwinian theory. According to Müller, the as yet unsolved problems include those of explaining:
- Phenotypic complexity (the origin of eyes, ears, body plans, i.e., the anatomical and structural features of living creatures);
- Phenotypic novelty, i.e., the origin of new forms throughout the history of life (for example, the mammalian radiation some 66 million years ago, in which the major orders of mammals, such as cetaceans, bats, carnivores, enter the fossil record, or even more dramatically, the Cambrian explosion, with most animal body plans appearing more or less without antecedents); and finally
- Non-gradual forms or modes of transition, where you see abrupt discontinuities in the fossil record between different types.
As Müller has explained in a 2003 work (“On the Origin of Organismal Form,” with Stuart Newman), although “the neo-Darwinian paradigm still represents the central explanatory framework of evolution, as represented by recent textbooks” it “has no theory of the generative.” In other words, the neo-Darwinian mechanism of mutation and natural selection lacks the creative power to generate the novel anatomical traits and forms of life that have arisen during the history of life. Yet, as Müller noted, neo-Darwinian theory continues to be presented to the public via textbooks as the canonical understanding of how new living forms arose – reflecting precisely the tension between the perceived and actual status of the theory that Meyer described in “Darwin’s Doubt.”
Yet, the most important lesson of the Royal Society conference lies not in its vindication of claims that our scientists have made, gratifying as that might be to us, but rather in defining the current problems and state of research in the field. The conference did an excellent job of defining the problems that evolutionary theory has failed to solve, but it offered little, if anything, by way of new solutions to those longstanding fundamental problems.
Much of the conference after Müller’s talk did discuss various other proposed evolutionary mechanisms. Indeed, the prime movers in the Royal Society event, Müller, James Shapiro, Denis Noble, and Eva Jablonka – known to evolutionary biologists as the “Third Way of Evolution” crowd, neither ID theorists nor orthodox Darwinists – have proposed repairing the explanatory deficits of the modern synthesis by highlighting evolutionary mechanisms other than random mutation and natural selection. Much debate at the conference centered around the question of whether these new mechanisms could be incorporated into the basic population genetics framework of neo-Darwinism, thus making possible a new “extended” evolutionary synthesis, or whether the emphasis on new mechanisms of evolutionary change represented a radical, and theoretically incommensurable, break with established theory. This largely semantic, or classificatory, issue obscured a deeper question that few, if any, of the presentations confronted head on: the issue of the origin of genuine phenotypic novelty – the problem that Müller described in his opening talk.
Indeed, by the end of Day 3 of the meeting, it seemed clear to many of our scientists, and others in attendance with whom they talked, that the puzzle of life’s novelties remained unsolved – if, indeed, it had been addressed at all. As a prominent German paleontologist in the crowd concluded, “All elements of the Extended Synthesis [as discussed at the conference] fail to offer adequate explanations for the crucial explanatory deficits of the Modern Synthesis (aka neo-Darwinism) that were explicitly highlighted in the first talk of the meeting by Gerd Müller.”
In “Darwin’s Doubt,” for example, Meyer emphasized the obvious importance of genetic and other (i.e., epigenetic) types of information to building novel phenotypic traits and forms of life. The new mechanisms offered by the critics of neo-Darwinism at the conference – whether treated as part of an extended neo-Darwinian synthesis or as the basis of a fundamentally new theory of evolution – did not attempt to explain how the information necessary to generating genuine novelty might have arisen. Instead, the mechanisms that were discussed produce at best minor microevolutionary changes, such as changes in wing coloration of butterflies or the celebrated polymorphisms of stickleback fish.
Moreover, the mechanisms that were discussed – niche construction, phenotypic plasticity, natural genetic engineering, and so on – either presupposed the prior existence of the biological information necessary to generate novelty, or they did not address the mystery of the origin of that information (and morphological novelty) at all. (Not all the mechanisms addressed were necessarily new, by the way. Niche construction and phenotypic plasticity have been around for a long time.)
Complex behaviors such as nest-building by birds or dam construction by beavers represent examples of niche construction, in which some organisms themselves demonstrate the capacity to alter their environment in ways that may affect the adaptation of subsequent generations to that environment. Yet no advocate of niche construction at the meeting explained how the capacity for such complex behaviors arose de novo in ancestral populations, as they must have done if the naturalistic evolutionary story is true.
Rather, these complex behaviors were taken as givens, leaving the critical question of their origins more or less untouched. While there is abundant evidence that animals can learn and transmit new behaviors to their offspring – crows in Japan, for instance, have learned how to use automobile traffic to crack open nuts – all such evidence presupposes the prior existence of specific functional capacities enabling observation, learning, and the like. The evolutionary accounts of niche construction theory therefore collide repeatedly with a brick wall marked “ORIGINAL COMPLEX FUNCTIONAL CAPACITY REQUIRED HERE” – without, or beyond which, there would simply be nothing interesting to observe.
James Shapiro’s talk, clearly one of the most interesting of the conference, highlighted this difficulty in its most fundamental form. Shapiro presented fascinating evidence showing, contra neo-Darwinism, the non-random nature of many mutational processes – processes that allow organisms to respond to various environmental challenges or stresses. The evidence he presented suggests that many organisms possess a kind of pre-programmed adaptive capacity – a capacity that Shapiro has elsewhere described as operating under “algorithmic control.” Yet, neither Shapiro, nor anyone else at the conference, attempted to explain how the information inherent in such algorithmic control or pre-programmed capacity might have originated.
This same “explanatory deficiency” was evident in the discussions of the other mechanisms, though we won’t attempt to demonstrate that exhaustively here. We would direct readers, however, to Chapters 15 and 16 of “Darwin’s Doubt,” where Meyer highlighted the way in which, not just neo-Darwinism, but also newer evolutionary mechanisms (including many discussed at the conference) fail to solve the question of the origin of information necessary to generate novelty.
In those chapters, Meyer reviewed a range of proposed fixes to the Modern Synthesis. He acknowledged and described the various advantages that many of these proposals have over neo-Darwinism, but also carefully explained why each of these mechanisms falls short as an explanation for the origin of the biological information necessary to build novel structures and forms of animal life. He quoted paleontologist Graham Budd who has observed: “When the public thinks about evolution, they think about [things like] the origin of wings … . But these are things that evolutionary theory has told us little about.”
Many fascinating talks at the Royal Society conference described a number of evolutionary mechanisms that have been given short shrift by the neo-Darwinian establishment. Unfortunately, however, the conference will be remembered, as Suzan Mazur intimated in her coverage, for its failure to offer anything new. In particular, it failed to offer anything new that could help remedy the main “explanatory deficit” of the neo-Darwinian synthesis – its inability to account for the origin of phenotypic novelty and especially, the genetic and epigenetic information necessary to produce it.
These are still problems that evolutionary theory tells us little about – constituting, in our judgment, an invitation to scientists to consider the alternative of intelligent design.
__________________________________
Dr. Paul Nelson and Mr. David Klinghoffer are Senior Fellows with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture.
DISCLAIMER: The statements, views and opinions expressed in pieces republished here are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of TMS. In accordance with title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. TMS has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is TMS endorsed or sponsored by the originator. “GO TO ORIGINAL” links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the “GO TO ORIGINAL” links. This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
These are still problems that evolutionary theory tells us little about – constituting, in our judgment, an invitation to scientists to consider the alternative of intelligent design.
Is there ANY explanation offered by the “intelligent design” team for these deficiencies? I find it a little unfair to expect explanations for everything, and I remember those who said there was a “missing link” whenever fossils were found, and if it were found would then look for the TWO missing links on the sides of the new discovery. ID foes by faith, not by evidence that I have seen. Do not accept it and become like the climate change deniers.
It’s disappointing that articles like the above are given space in TMS, to flog Meyer’s book. Rather than contributing to the Peace debate, or searching for truth and understanding, they contribute to general ignorance.
Paul Nelson and David Klinghoffer simplistically assume that new developments and disagreements in understanding the various mechanisms of Darwinian evolution mean that evolution is wrong. Their naïve confusion equates scientific debate about the details of the process as evidence for non-existence of the process; whereas new technologies only dreamt of in Darwin’s time such as DNA sequencing are leading to deeper and deeper understandings of the many facets of evolution.
In fact Darwin was incredibly prescient. For instance, he is often quoted on the evolution of the eye. Unfortunately unethical anti-evolutionists only quote Darwin’s first sentence. The authors of the article above deliberately misinform by quoting Meyer who, in spite of freely available proof to the contrary, maintains that evolutionists have not explained the origin of eyes Here is Darwin’s full quote and below are two videos explaining the origin of the eye.
“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of Spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei [“the voice of the people = the voice of God “], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certain the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.”
Now see how it works. http://www.wimp.com/david-attenborough-the-evolution-of-the-eye/
And here’s the version for dummies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ9uMb8GqNY
This controversy is certanly of interest for the proto-history of homo sapiens.
It is of little relevance for theories of conflict and conflict resolution in the next centuries because:
– homo sapiens is now ONE constant over space. There are no races only racism.
– There will not be any socially relevant temporal variations within timeframes less than 10’000 years (except after a nuclear war or GM-human-O)
– There ist a massive cultural evolution with a 10’000fold speed of biological evolution. This evolution is neither Darwinian nor Lamarckian but a mix including unintended social action, falure to act, successful action and crime. = Intelligent and malevolent design(s) + random variation + selection.
Yours
Werner T. Meyer
To start with, I have to declare that (1) I am not a scientist but (2) I have an abiding interest in peace pursuit, hence I show interest in the article written by Paul Nelson and David Klinghoffer.
In brief, I have to say that I do not see the crux of Fitzhenrymac’s objection to the article written by Nelson and Klinghoffer. It may be because of my assumption hitherto that TMS is a forum of peace researchers and activists from various backgrounds striving to contribute their bits and pieces to a pool for peace.
I have read the article twice and do not perceive them denying that there are new technologies that “are leading and o deeper and deeper understanding of the many facets of evolution”. What I understand them to be saying is that there are basic questions that neither Darwinism in the 19th century nor neo-Darwinism in 2016 has answered or addressed satisfactorily. Rather, they contend that there are yet unsolved long-stand fundamental problems including (1) phonetic complexity, (2) phonetypic novelty, and (3) non-gradual forms and modes of transition. While accusing the duo of simplistic assumption, it seems to me that Fitzhenrymac’s rejoinder especially the sentence that has three “if”s in its premise is the one making a simplistic assumption and wondering why everybody does not make the same assumption or fall in line.
For the avoidance of doubt, I find Nelson and Klinghoffer’s report enlightening, from an African observatory, and find the idea of rejecting the conference report rather intolerant.