• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Darwin's Illusion

LIIA

Well-Known Member
and yet the underlying issues that were highlighted by Louis Pasteur remain unchanged...so no, contrary to your statement, @Neuropterons point is very much invalidated...200 years ago!
@Neuropterons never claimed that spontaneous generation is true. His point is simply that at the time Darwin was working on his theory, he was not aware that spontaneous generation is false. How could he if he already published the origin of species in the same year when Louis Pasteur did his experiment in 1859?

At Darwin’s time it was understood that the emergence of relatively complex life such as maggots or fleas could arise from nonliving matter regularly and relatively quickly. They didn’t have any awareness of the complexity of the living systems.

Before Louis Pasteur experiment in 1859, Darwin thought that life is something simple that can get spontaneously generated in a warm little pond and then diversify.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
It’s not a threat but rather the consequences of our actions. We make the choice.

But in your case, I know the threat “shortage of vaccine". :D
No, you need to do better than that. And due, you keep forgetting that you pointed out that you are the one that is in dire need.

You never did answer as to what you think that you are.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
It’s the other way around. The rise of the golden age had its roots in Islam itself.

You are ignoring history now. Perhaps it had it had its rise through Islam. That is the claim, it has not shown to be the case. But you are now forgetting that it was the rise of fundamentalism, the disease that you appear to have as well, that was a key factor, but not the only one in its decline. Your own Wiki article pointed that out.
Do you really believe that when Gerd B. Müller was talking about “dogmatic hostility” in the royal society conference in 2016, he was talking about me? :D:laughing:

No, you have your own problems. But he might as well have been talking about attitudes like yours.
This definitely qualifies as the fourth most ridiculous claim ever made on the thread. Or actually it could be number one. I’ll leave that to others to decide. But don’t worry; in any case, you are still the winner.
Please, you are fibbing again. You own the top ten. Please quit making false claims about others. You should not be so jealous.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Not at all, let me explain some Islamic concepts.

Islam teaches that the entire causality chain is initiated by a first non-contingent brute fact, i.e., the necessary being/God. (No other option is logically possible)

The concept works as follows:

A caused B caused C caused D, etc.

Islam teaches that the influence of A is a continual influence along the chain. Meaning, the influence of A doesn’t stop at B but rather continues to C and D and every single entity along the chain. It’s true and logical that A is the cause for C or D or any other effect/entity as well as the entire chain but that doesn’t contradict the fact that D is caused by C and C is caused by B.

Well there's your problem. That God is a "necessary being" is merely an empty claim. It is the stumbling block in countless Muslim debates. They have claimed that but never come anywhere close to doing anything more than that. You are a master of empty claims. You can only do the same. Do you think that you could come close to demonstrating that God is a necessary being.
To the contrary of your understanding, Islam not only teaches but also mandates that if we encounter the effect D, we must pursue the cause C and B. It doesn’t take us away from God but rather takes us directly to him. I.e., the ultimate end of the scientific route/endeavor is God. The scientific investigation is our means to God. That is the spirit behind the scientific achievements of the golden age and the Muslim scholars of that era.

To bad that they have never shown that to be the case. Perhaps that is the reason for the immoral excesses of so many Islamic faiths.
History acknowledges the golden age era to be from the 8th to the 13th century. But I’m not the one who claimed that the golden age continued to the 17th century, (long after the death of Al-Ghazali on 1111), the wiki link did. See the link below under “decline”.

Islamic Golden Age - Wikipedia

But it did not say that. You are misstating. Some people said that it lasted much longer, reality disagrees with those people. You seem to think that his fundamentalism should have caused an instant decline, that is not the case. But he was the bad seed that led o quite a bit of science denial that Islam has not fully recovered from.
Regardless, I never denied the fact that other civilizations had their contributions to science or that major incidents such as the barbaric Mongol destruction of Baghdad and the Bayt al Hikma (House of Wisdom) was a major blow to the golden age.

the Ottoman period spanned more than 600 years (1300 - 1922), the Ottoman empire was the most powerful states in the world during the 15th and 16th centuries and came to an end in 1922.

Even so the Ottoman empire had their great scientific achievements such as the invention of currently used surgical instruments, the early practical steam turbine engine, advances in medicine, mining and military technology (See the link below), But when we talk about the Islamic golden age (from the 8th to the 13th century), it's not really about the Ottoman empire.

Science and technology in the Ottoman Empire - Wikipedia
Yet you have tried to claim that Islam's effects were greater than they actually were and you seem to ignore the decline of reason among Muslims.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
@Neuropterons never claimed that spontaneous generation is true. His point is simply that at the time Darwin was working on his theory, he was not aware that spontaneous generation is false. How could he if he already published the origin of species in the same year when Louis Pasteur did his experiment in 1859?

At Darwin’s time it was understood that the emergence of relatively complex life such as maggots or fleas could arise from nonliving matter regularly and relatively quickly. They didn’t have any awareness of the complexity of the living systems.

Before Louis Pasteur experiment in 1859, Darwin thought that life is something simple that can get spontaneously generated in a warm little pond and then diversify.
Wow! You appear to be still conflating spontaneous generation and abiogenesis.
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
I was addressing the declination of the golden age (from the 8th to the 13th century), at that time, the Islamic world was one of the largest empires in history. it was a Muslim empire that initially embraced “the true spirit of Islam”, the final end of that era was the Ottoman Empire that gradually got corrupted, grew weaker, and eventually suffered multiple military defeats and territorial losses till it finally came to an end in 1922.
But the decline started before the rise of the Ottomans. It was in full force by at least the 12th century.
The dynamics of the fragmented Muslim world today are quite different than the Islamic empire of the golden age, but the short answer is yes, most or all these individual countries/regimes today have cut ties with” the true spirit of Islam".
Islam of the 10th century wasn't unified. Andalusia (Spain) was politically and philosophically different than the regime in Baghdad, not to mention the Sunni/Shia split. So, while the expansion of Islam happened very fast and produced a large empire, that empire split up quickly as well.
But it's important to understand that the Islamic way of life is not a religious reality vs. an economic/materialistic reality, not at all.

Islam acknowledges the duality of the body and spirit of the human being. The Islamic way of life is based on establishing the balance between both the physical and spiritual aspects of reality.
What spiritual aspects? Show us one.
Islam teaches Muslims to pursue the materialistic means of life as if life has no end and at the same time pursue the spiritual values/responsibilities as if life ends tomorrow.

A Muslim who pursues the materialistic means of life at the expense of the spiritual values has failed to embrace the spirit of Islam. Similarly, a Muslim who pursues the spiritual values at the expense of the materialistic means of life has failed to embrace the spirit of Islam.

The true spirit of Islam must achieve the delicate balance between the materialistic means and the spiritual values.

That balance requires both the understanding of the Islamic principles and the belief, which emerges through that understanding. Both are almost nonexistent today. Yes, Muslims are many today but it’s never about the number. A Muslim who practices Islam is not the same as a Muslim who embraces Islam.
Hmm...that looks like your particular interpretation, not that of, say, Al Ghazali.
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
Not at all, let me explain some Islamic concepts.

Islam teaches that the entire causality chain is initiated by a first non-contingent brute fact, i.e., the necessary being/God. (No other option is logically possible)

The concept works as follows:

A caused B caused C caused D, etc.

Islam teaches that the influence of A is a continual influence along the chain. Meaning, the influence of A doesn’t stop at B but rather continues to C and D and every single entity along the chain. It’s true and logical that A is the cause for C or D or any other effect/entity as well as the entire chain but that doesn’t contradict the fact that D is caused by C and C is caused by B.

To the contrary of your understanding, Islam not only teaches but also mandates that if we encounter the effect D, we must pursue the cause C and B. It doesn’t take us away from God but rather takes us directly to him. I.e., the ultimate end of the scientific route/endeavor is God. The scientific investigation is our means to God. That is the spirit behind the scientific achievements of the golden age and the Muslim scholars of that era.
But that is not even close to the viewpoint of Al Ghazali. His position was that God intervenes at each instant to produce the next instant and that, because of this, there is only an illusion of cause and effect. But that illusion is simply due to God choosing to keep an orderly pattern to things.

His most popular example was that cutting of a person's head would not necessarily lead to them dying. It requires a decision by God to allow that death.
History acknowledges the golden age era to be from the 8th to the 13th century. But I’m not the one who claimed that the golden age continued to the 17th century, (long after the death of Al-Ghazali on 1111), the wiki link did. See the link below under “decline”.

Islamic Golden Age - Wikipedia
And even if we follow one of the alternative timelines, the intellectual decline of Islam is still very much the case. In those alternative descriptions, the Golden age is a result of military, not intellectual, might,
Regardless, I never denied the fact that other civilizations had their contributions to science or that major incidents such as the barbaric Mongol destruction of Baghdad and the Bayt al Hikma (House of Wisdom) was a major blow to the golden age.
Together with the rise of a fundamentalist mindset that discouraged philosophical and scientific investigations, the mongol invasion served to end the advances of Islam previously made. There was some good research under the mongols (including some very relevant questioning of Ptolemaic astronomy), but those were not based on Islam specifically.
the Ottoman period spanned more than 600 years (1300 - 1922), the Ottoman empire was the most powerful states in the world during the 15th and 16th centuries and came to an end in 1922.
You don't need to do a basic history lesson. We weren't talking about the military might of Islam, but rather the decline in intellectual investigations. And that decline started long before the Ottomans came to power.
Even so the Ottoman empire had their great scientific achievements such as the invention of currently used surgical instruments, the early practical steam turbine engine, advances in medicine, mining and military technology (See the link below), But when we talk about the Islamic golden age (from the 8th to the 13th century), it's not really about the Ottoman empire.

Science and technology in the Ottoman Empire - Wikipedia
Later advances under the Ottomans was due to European influence, not a native growth of intellectual discoveries.
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
It’s the other way around. The rise of the golden age had its roots in Islam itself.
That is questionable, at least. The translations from Greek into Arabic were done by Nestorian Christians. Most of the early math and science was done by non-muslims (there were early restrictions on who could convert to Islam). The elimination of the Persian empire and the (brief) unification of a large territory certainly had a lot to do with intellectual (and economic) growth under the early caliphates. What isn't so clear is the influence Islam itself had.

Remember that, at first, there weren't very many moslems in the Islamic lands. The elite were moslem, but the vast majority of the populace was not.
 
Last edited:

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
“Likely” implies doubt but regardless, if you believe it occurred in the past, why couldn’t it happen again in the future through the same mechanisms? Give the bacteria some time, random mutations, natural selection and voila “elephant”! Or a “dinosaur”! If you really believe that nothing can prevent evolution from going on and on and on and on indefinitely, then why don’t you believe that the bacteria on/within your body would transform to elephants at some point in the future? What would prevent the transformation? Can you see the contradiction?
Yes, there is always a degree of tentativeness in any scientific statement. It's likely that matter self-organized into the first life (chemical evolution, or naturalistic abiogenesis) and then the tree of life including extinct forms (biological evolution).

The reason it is unlikely to occur on earth again is because we do not expect abiogenesis to occur in the presence of existing life. Abiogenesis occurred on pre-biotic earth with little free oxygen in the oceans or atmosphere. That world is gone.
a) The article provided a summary of the MS assumptions on page 2 (P#1236). Here is the quote of third assumption.

“Third, following genetic change, natural selection leads to particular gene variants (alleles) increasing in frequency within the population. Those variants are said to confer an advantage in terms of fitness on the individuals concerned, which therefore increasingly dominate the population. By this process and other mechanisms, including genetic drift and geographic isolation, new species can arise.”

Then the article concluded on the same page.

“All these assumptions have been disproved in various ways and to varying degrees,”
The claim was that all of the central tenets of evolution, which you refer to as MS (I presume that's short for modern synthesis) have been overturned. What I'm looking at these is the summary of one such central tenet followed by the claim that they have been disproved. Not here they haven't. Where's the falsifying argument for the claim in quotes? It's not here, and you know why I won't go to your link to find it if you can't summarize the argument in bullet points. That pretty much guarantees me that there will be nothing there, because even if you stumbled onto something worthwhile, how would you know that if you can't paraphrase it?
b) If you think the article above was not clear enough, here is another one,

2021 paper titled “Further illusions: On key evolutionary mechanisms that could never fit with Modern Synthesis” by Radomir Crkvenjakov and Henry H. Heng and was published on “ScienceDirect” said,

MS's key concept, that gradual accumulation of gene mutations within microevolution leads to macroevolution, requires reexamination”

Further illusions: On key evolutionary mechanisms that could never fit with Modern Synthesis - ScienceDirect
I still don't see an argument, much less the repudiation of every tenet of the theory.
c) Microevolution is basically about the adaptation process (not random) that we see in nature such as microorganisms resisting the drugs designed to kill them. Simple changes within a population occur due to change to the frequency of gene variants (alleles). “Allele frequency” of a population is not new or increase of information, but rather alterations to information/genes that already exist.

Macroevolution is about hypothesized changes that occur at higher taxonomic levels such as the evolution of new families, phyla or genera. I.e., changes that allegedly give rise to whole taxonomic groups over long periods of time. Such alterations are associated with vast increase of genetic info.

The DNA replication/synthesis is controlled by the cell’s DNA repair mechanisms, which proofread the DNA replication to maintain the integrity of its genetic code. Errors of the coding sequence are extremely low. If a random mutation escapes the proofreading mechanisms, in most cases it causes genetic diseases. Mutations can change DNA by deleting, damaging, duplicating, or substituting already existing information but cannot increase information. The vast majority of mutations are harmful or have no apparent effect.

The Macroevolution hypothesis is derived from the observed adaptation process, but to the contrary Macroevolution can neither be observed nor there is any mechanism that gives rise to a new taxonomic family.
Here's more - a summary of the scientific position followed by a claim with no connecting argument.
It’s relevant because you are the one who insisted that the ends of ring species are different species and you claimed it to be evidence of evolution. Simply, It’s not.
OK. I disagree, but don't see any value in arguing the point beyond that.
Pluto orbiting the sun is not an evolutionary process
Sure it is, just not biological evolution. Evolution refers to change. The entire universe is evolving all of the time. It all expands. It all moves. It all interacts with other aspects of reality as atomic nuclei evolve from hydrogen to heavier elements and the sun evolves into a red giant. "To roll out of," as in the new from the old. Pluto's old position becomes its new positions as it "rolls" from one to the other.

1691498952774.png


Five ages of evolution:

Material evolution - begins with the Big Bang resulting in galaxies of solar systems of heavy atoms and organic molecules
Chemical evolution - organic molecules evolve into life
Biological evolution - life evolves into the tree of life
Psychological evolution - animal life awakens and intelligence appears
Cultural evolution - language, civilization, and technology appear and begin to evolve.
You cannot equate a stable phenomenon that we observe and understand such as Pluto orbiting the sun with a hypothesis that can’t be seen, without a mechanism and contradicts observations as explained above.
I am equating them at least as far as the analogy goes. Biological evolution and Pluto orbiting are natural process that proceed without limit until life or Pluto no longer exist. You are dismissing this without cause. We have a mechanism for biological evolution. You resist seeing that, but that's a choice that doesn't change others' reality. Yes, speciation occurs. Yes, new taxonomic divisions can arise given sufficient time.

“Traditionally, researchers had proposed that mind or consciousness – our self - is produced from organized brain activity. However, nobody has ever been able to show how brain cells, which produce proteins, can generate something so different i.e. thoughts or consciousness. Interestingly, there has never been a plausible biological mechanism proposed to account for this.

Recently some researchers have started to raise the question that maybe your mind, your consciousness, your psyche, the thing that makes you, may not be produced by the brain. The brain might be acting more like an intermediary. It's not a brand new idea. They have argued that we have no evidence to show how brain cells or connections of brain cells could produce your thoughts, mind or consciousness.

The fact that people seem to have full consciousness, with lucid well-structured thought processes and memory formation from a time when their brains are highly dysfunctional or even nonfunctional is perplexing and paradoxical."

Is There Life After Death? | The New York Academy of Sciences (nyas.org)
This still doesn't address my question, which was why should I believe that consciousness is not or cannot be an epiphenomenon of physical reality. Your words say it might night be. I agree. So what? You seem to have rejected materialistic interpretations with no argument.
If you acknowledge that physical processes don't imply consciousness, why you insist that consciousness is physical?
Again? Please try to understand that I do not insist that consciousness is a physical process. I just wrote that to you. Did you see it? If so, why didn't you address my reply then or at least assimilate it? One last time: no process reveals consciousness directly except our own conscious experience, which may be and seems to be an epiphenomenon of brains. I cannot look at any other matter and call it conscious with certainty, but I assume that all higher vertebrates are conscious. My dogs are. Parrots are.

It gets harder with reptiles. A lizard seems to look around and stalk insect prey, which seems to imply consciousness. Fish seem hypnotized or between sleep and wakefulness.

But these are all organisms made like I was from a fertilized egg and made out of the same materials. I can't comment at all on whether human appearing robots can be or are conscious. There is no test for it. Nor does it matter. I would treat such a machine with the same kindness, dignity, and respect that I would any conscious soul.
No matter how sophisticated a robot could be, but the input processing ability is limited due to the limitation of the hardware and software. The robot may have sensors for light, sound, temperature and even smell but it's merely data that get translated to the machine language and processed based on the specific programming. The output/actions are controlled by the program/software not through self-awareness /consciousness. The system cannot have qualia, feelings, or thoughts. And definitely, conscious experiences or concepts such as love, hate, happiness, sadness, pain, desire, beauty, ugliness, etc. have no meaning to the physical system.
You don't know that. Consciousness might arise from a certain density and complexity of information in inorganic systems. You have no test for when the machine wakes up if ever, and no basis to say that silicon cannot do for computers what carbon does for brains.
It’s totally supported by the fact (as clarified in the article above) that there are no known physical processes/mechanisms to account for thoughts/self-awareness/consciousness.
Not enough to call that support for a non-materialist metaphysics. It's an ignorantiam fallacy - if one can't show what is, he should assume it isn't.
I didn’t redefine anything. The article stated, “Cognition is a basic feature of life”. I didn’t select the word “cognition”, Shapiro did.
You're Shapiro when you quote him if you don't disavow any of it. You might not like that responsibility, but if you brought it here, it's your idea that you learned from Shapiro. In the words of the sage, "Just because you put it in quotes doesn't absolve you of responsibility for repeating it." - Anon.
 

AdamjEdgar

Active Member
At Darwin’s time it was understood that the emergence of relatively complex life such as maggots or fleas could arise from nonliving matter regularly and relatively quickly. They didn’t have any awareness of the complexity of the living systems.

Before Louis Pasteur experiment in 1859, Darwin thought that life is something simple that can get spontaneously generated in a warm little pond and then diversify.
the original point was ... Pastuer was a skeptic of Charles Darwin and was a creationist! Pastuer did not believe at all in the idea that life could come spontaneously and he directly challenged that idea from the outset. Creation ministries research of his studies found that... "microbes were not spontaneously generated from the broth itself. Microbes would only appear in the broth if they were allowed in with the air. He clearly showed that even for microbes, life came only from life—‘Microscopic beings must come into the world from parents similar to themselves."’2
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
I didn’t accuse you of anything, I’m only asking you to respond to logic by logic. If your response is simply that this is the way you believe it (energy is involved) period. Then it’s not a rational argument. Would it make sense to you if I do the same?

You as well as other fellow Darwinists always fail to engage in a rational argument and always find your comfort in the typical escape route through nonsensical claims that “all is well” and the opposite side is wrong simply because they don’t know. Even scientists and scientific sources are no exception to these silly claims. This specific issue was addressed by Gerd B. Müller in his lecture in the royal society conference in 2016. See #7742

Darwin's Illusion | Page 388 | Religious Forums

But whether it’s an intentional escape tactic or some baseless presumptions; you should know that your source adds nothing. I know what evolution is, what it is not and more importantly why it’s a false concept.

Thanks for the wiki link and your input.
I not only studied the ToE but also taught it, and I came from a position similar to yours when I was in my teens, which propelled me away from the fundamentalist church I grew up in.

IOW, I've done the work on this for many decades now, and I can categorically say you don't have much of a clue and are too arrogant to eat some humble pie and actually do real research from real scientific sources instead of picking & choosing and nit-picking statements out of context.

IOW, you have literally nothing to add to serious discourse on this, so I'm no longer going to waste my time. All material things change over time, and that is what "evolution" is in simple language.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
the original point was ... Pastuer was a skeptic of Charles Darwin and was a creationist! Pastuer did not believe at all in the idea that life could come spontaneously and he directly challenged that idea from the outset. Creation ministries research of his studies found that... "microbes were not spontaneously generated from the broth itself. Microbes would only appear in the broth if they were allowed in with the air. He clearly showed that even for microbes, life came only from life—‘Microscopic beings must come into the world from parents similar to themselves."’2
What do you mean by " even microbes "? You do not seem to realize that modern day microbes have at least a three and a half billion year history of evolution. They are not going to be simple. Nor did abiogenesis only take a few days. It was a lengthy process.
 

Audie

Veteran Member
the original point was ... Pastuer was a skeptic of Charles Darwin and was a creationist! Pastuer did not believe at all in the idea that life could come spontaneously and he directly challenged that idea from the outset. Creation ministries research of his studies found that... "microbes were not spontaneously generated from the broth itself. Microbes would only appear in the broth if they were allowed in with the air. He clearly showed that even for microbes, life came only from life—‘Microscopic beings must come into the world from parents similar to themselves."’2
No.

He showed that under the specific conditions tested
no living thing was spontaneously developed.

" creation ministrries" is btw not a reliable source
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
What do you mean by " even microbes "? You do not seem to realize that modern day microbes have at least a three and a half billion year history of evolution. They are not going to be simple. Nor did abiogenesis only take a few days. It was a lengthy process.
I think what's difficult for some to understand is how could inanimate objects somehow help lead to the formation of life forms as that indeed seems problematic. However, what we perceive as being "inanimate" is not really what it is as even "inanimate" objects still have energy within them in various forms. A stationary rock is not stationary if we consider the atomic activity going on within them and also the bombarding of them [quarks and other subatomic particles].
 

AdamjEdgar

Active Member
If creation ministries quote is wrong, would it not be appropriate to show an example of spontaneous generation of a lifeform?

As far as I can tell, the whole idea was dumped because the theory is simply false. That is fundamentally bad for the entire secular evolutionary world veiw
 
Last edited:

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
If creation ministries quote is wrong, would it not be appropriate to show an example of spontaneous generation of a lifeform?

As far as I can tell, the whole idea was dumped because the theory is simply false. That is fundamentally bad for the entire secular evolutionary world veiw
You are not even asking proper questions. You have conflated abiogenesis and spontaneous generation. Spontaneous generation is the sudden appearance of complex modern life. Abiogenesis is the slow development of life in a prebiotic environment. Spontaneous generation is an idea that is very similar to creationism. That concept has been dumped. Just like creationism. Abiogenesis is far from being rejected since more and more evidence is found for it every year.
 

Astrophile

Active Member
A stationary rock is not stationary if we consider the atomic activity going on within them and also the bombarding of them [quarks and other subatomic particles].
You only have to think of the chemical reactions that take place when a sedimentary or igneous rock undergoes metamorphism, or, conversely, when rocks and minerals experience chemical weathering.
 

AdamjEdgar

Active Member
You are not even asking proper questions. You have conflated abiogenesis and spontaneous generation. Spontaneous generation is the sudden appearance of complex modern life. Abiogenesis is the slow development of life in a prebiotic environment. Spontaneous generation is an idea that is very similar to creationism. That concept has been dumped. Just like creationism. Abiogenesis is far from being rejected since more and more evidence is found for it every year.
so we are reverting now to the idea that life isnt life, its just a series of chemical reactions?

I am not a scientist, however someone who understands it, has addressed this issue in response to a website post about the idea of "Life Arises Constantly from non living matter:

boammaaruri says:
March 13, 2018 at 04:19

"The properties of living matter are irreducible to chemical properties. Reductionism in biology has been demonstrated philosophically to be untenable. Michael Polanyi wrote an excellent article in Chemical Engineering News and the journal Science about 50 years ago on this topic. (http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/polanyi/Polanyi_Life_Structures.pdf).
Below is my own illustration of the proposition that the chemical facts of DNA do not determine the symbolic and semantic facts of DNA.
Imagine giving a DNA strand such as (CGCAGC) to a biochemist who knows all about the genetic code and asking them to tell you which amino acids are represented by the DNA strand. The problem is they could give you all of the physiochemical properties about the DNA strand such as its molecular weight, bond angles and bond lengths, type of bonds, activation energy to break the bonds however when it came to telling you which amino acids are represented by the DNA strand there are a number of possible interpretations all equally possible but mutually exclusive.
First interpretation could be [CGC] is Arginine and [AGC] is Serine. Second interpretation could be the strand is broken in between a codon and that C[GCA]GC only represents one amino acid. Therefore in this case GCA is Alanine. Third interpretation could be the strand contains one codon starting from the third nucleotide CG[CAG]C and in this case (CAG) is Glutamine.
There are other interpretations possible such as the codon should be read backwards instead. Perhaps the strand does not represent any amino acids because it was created from scratch in a lab rather than being taken from an organism. One could argue that of course the context is required to understand the meaning of it – but then that is precisely the point that things such as context, representation and interpretation do not apply to chemical properties and laws. The main point is that the physical facts are indeterminate with regards to the information content. There are a number of different possible interpretations of what the nucleotides represent even though in all possible interpretations the chemical and physical properties, as well as the molecules involved are exactly the same. This demonstrates that the symbolic representation of amino acids by nucleotides is not identical and is not determined by the chemical and physical properties of the chemicals.



I agree – you can make a protein using a cell-free protein synthesis kit with a DNA strand. The biomechanics of the process are not in question (although one could argue as Polanyi does that biochemical machines are irreducible to chemical laws – but that is an argument for another day). To use an analogy. The meaning of a word in a book is not determined by the physical properties of the ink and paper. The fact that you can make a copy of that book with all its words using a physical photo-copying machine does nothing to change the fact that the meaning of words is not determined by and reducible to chemical laws such as covalent bonds and bond angles. Similarly the fact that a set of nucleotides represents another molecule (an amino acid in this case) is not a chemical property but a semantic property. No one disputes that the chemistry is necessary for protein synthesis from DNA, anymore than anyone denies that creating a book made from paper and ink is a physical process."
 
Top