Darwin's Dilemmas: Essence Precedes Existence--Part 5

As we've seen in this series, evolutionary theory and its existential nature is refuted by the fossil record and by our newfound insight into the development of an organism. Whereas evolutionary biologists illustrate the history of life using a "tree of life", the fossil record--if viewed in the way evolutionary biologists view it--illustrates the history of life instead as a "forest of life", a great many kinds of animals leaping into existence all at once with no common ancestry. Whereas random mutations during the copying of DNA are proposed as the mechanism by which genetic information increases over time, we now know that a second, mutually dependent source of information exists containing the instructions for assembling the protein parts defined by DNA, and this information is not in the DNA itself. These discoveries demonstrate that, unlike existentialism's "existence precedes essence," when it comes to life, "essence precedes existence."

How, then, do we "put the pieces together?" Can legitimate science point us to an alternative explanation? Is any appeal to a supernatural cause by definition unscientific?

NOT DOING SCIENCE

Critics of intelligent design often accuse its advocates as "not doing science." In Stephen Meyer's book, Signature in the Cell, he recounts that "reporters kept repeating the same criticism, namely, 'ID advocates aren't really scientists, because they don't do any experiments of their own'" (p. 138). In a recent debate between intelligent design advocates (including Meyer) and its critics (listen here), one of the design opponents said he was not aware of any intelligent design scientists who have labs and do experiments, implying that laboratory experimentation is the only way to properly "do science."

In the debate, evolutionary proponent Michael Shermer argued, "There's only two explanations...to answer the question of what's the origins of life or the diversity of life: one, science; two, everything else." He continued:

The problem is that by invoking something that is by definition not testable, there's no experiment we can run. You're now off the page of science. So, by invoking some kind of extranatural, supernatural, supranatural, paranatural--something beyond the natural, there's nothing we can do with that.

His partner, Donald Prothero, continued:

As Michael just said, we're talking about testable hypotheses...We cannot resort to supernatural explanations. It's not because we're antireligious...It's because religious ideas are simply not testable. There's no way to say, "God did it," and then find a test that works.

So, evolutionary scientists demand that the only way to address the question of the origins of life in a scientific manner is through a) laboratory experimentation, and b) testable hypotheses. Because, they claim, appeals to supernatural causes are by definition untestable, they are not scientific.

THE GUMSHOE DETECTIVES OF BIOLOGY

In April of 1953, J. D. Watson and F. H. C. Crick revolutionized biology when their article, "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid," appeared in the journal Nature. In their article, the pair revealed the molecular structure of DNA, winning a scientific race that had been going on for years. Yet, their work was not primarily the result of their own laboratory experiments. As Meyer put it in Signature, "While others approached the problem methodically, steadily gathering data in their labs, Watson and Crick behaved more like gumshoe detectives, heading from one place to another looking for clues to help them weigh the merits of competing hypotheses" (p. 72).

This approach is not unique among scientists throughout history. As Meyer notes in Signature:

Many of the great discoveries in science were achieved not just by experimentalists who produced new factual knowledge, but by theoreticians who taught us to think differently about what we already know. Examples of this kind of scientific work leaped to mind: Copernicus's De Revolutionibus orbium coelestrium, Newton's Principia, and the papers Einstein produced in his annus mirabilis...Charles Darwin also did little experimental science...his masterpiece, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, contains neither a single mathematical equation nor any report of original experimental research. Yet he formulated a great scientific theory. He did this by drawing together disparate lines of observational evidence and presenting an argument for a novel interpretation of that evidence. (p. 139)

Proper science does not by necessity include one's own, personal laboratory experimentation. Instead, legitimate science often involves reasoning like a detective, considering multiple suspects, weighing clues and excluding suspects that could not have committed the crime, eventually narrowing in on the one suspect whose involvement is pointed to by the weight of the evidence.

HISTORICAL VS. EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCES

One can see a distinction between these two scientific approaches when one looks at what might be called "historical sciences" versus what might be called "experimental sciences." Experimental scientists, such as chemists and physicists, hypothesize about how things work now, and then test those hypotheses through laboratory experimentation. Historical scientists, on the other hand, such as geologists, archaeologists, paleontologists, cosmologists, and yes, evolutionary biologists, look at multiple competing attempts to explain the past, weighing the merits of each, excluding those explanations which do not fit the evidence, and narrowing in those explanations that do fit the evidence.

In History of the Inductive Sciences (1837) and The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840), scientist and philosopher William Whewell explained the distinctions between these two kinds of sciences. Instead of trying to establish universal laws by which nature operates, the objective of historical scientists is to determine ancient conditions or past causes. Rather than studying "forces that are permanent causes of motion, such as gravitation attraction," historical scientists study "causes that have worked their effects in temporal succession." And in attempting to reconstruct those "ancient conditions," historical scientists "calculate backwards" and determine what has occurred in the past based on known cause-and-effect relationships in operation in the present.

No chemist, physicist or biologist claims that historical scientists are "not doing science." The dictionary defines geology as "the science that deals with the dynamics and physical history of the earth;" archaeology as "the scientific study of historic or prehistoric peoples and their cultures;" and paleontology as "the science of the forms of life existing in former geologic periods" (emphasis mine in each case). But scientists in these fields do not make hypotheses that can be tested through laboratory experimentation. Instead, they look at the present effects of past causes; they weigh competing attempts to explain what happened in the past based on what we see today.

The hypotheses of geologists, archaeologists and paleontologists, despite being untestable through laboratory experimentation, are not untestable altogether. They're merely tested in a different manner. Historical scientists look for the best attempt at explaining what occurred in the past resulting in what we see today. Given the effects of some event or condition in the past, they look at what causes, known to produce similar effects, could have occurred in the past, and exclude causes that cannot account for those effects.

THE TESTABILITY OF EXPLANATORY POWER

So while experimental scientists test their theories by predicting what will happen and validating or invalidating their hypotheses in the lab, historical scientists test their theories by comparing the explanatory power of competing theories. The claim made by critics of intelligent design theory, that it is untestable and thus not science, is refuted by some of the very heroes of evolutionary science like Watson, Crick, and Darwin himself, as well as by historical scientists like geologists, archaeologists and paleontologists.

How, then, can this legimiately scientific approach and its test of the explanatory power of competing theories be used to determine the cause of the diversity of biological life we see today? Stay tuned.

Darwin's Dilemmas: Essence Precedes Existence--Part 3

As we've seen, existential philosophy, as summarized by the phrase, "existence precedes essence," is woven into the very fabric of the biological processes evolutionary biologists claim are responsible for the diversity of life we see to this day. All life, having descended from a first, common ancestor, is illustrated using a great "tree of life," the first living organism being the trunk, from which branches extend representing very slightly different offspring, from which branches further extend representing very slightly different offspring still, and so on. There is no preexisting essence or conception of what it is to be an arthropod, there is merely a recognized similarity between a variety of organism we classify together in a category we call arthropoda.

Is this illustration an accurate representation of what we see in the fossil record, the very basis of this "tree of life?" Does the study of fossils confirm or contradict evolutionary theory and the existential nature of the biological processes it proposes?

THE TREEFOREST OF LIFE?!?!


In its December 4th, 1995 edition, the cover of Time Magazine called to the reader's attention a cover story reporting on "Evolution's Big Bang," saying, "New discoveries show that life as we know it began in an amazing biological frenzy that changed the planet almost overnight." The "big bang" referred to is otherwise known as a biological event called the "Cambrian Explosion."

In a period of earth's alleged history called the Cambrian period, some 570 million years ago or so, the majority of the "body plans" we see today appear to have leapt into existence in a geologic blink of an eye. So short was this period of time that if life's assumed history on this planet were condensed into a 24-hour period of time, it would be equivalent to a couple of minutes. These organisms, whose presumed ancestors appear nowhere in the fossil record, appeared suddenly, fully-formed, as complex as their apparent ancestors today.

Whereas evolutionary theory illustrates the history of life using a tree, a more accurate analogy would be that of a forest. Each tree in the great "forest of life" has at its base a single kind of creature, such as arthropods with their segmented body, jointed limbs and exoskeleton, or echinoderms, marine animals "radiating arrangement of parts and a body wall stiffened by calcareous pieces that may protrude as spines." As these early creatures with their separate and distinct body plans diversified further and further over time, more and more branches are added to each tree of life, such that we see in each group a variety of similar but different creatures: the insects, spiders and crustaceans of arthropoda, and the starfish and urchins of echinodermata.

Scientists who believe in Darwin's theory of evolution, including Darwin himself, recognize the difficulty the Cambrian explosion presents for evolutionary theory. Speaking of the Cambrian fossils, infamous atheist Richard Dawkins wrote, "It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history" (The Blind Watchmaker, New York: W. W. Norton & Co. , 1996). Of course, proponents of evolution have posited possible solutions to the problem.

Darwin, recognizing the problem of "Evolution's Big Bang", believed that the Cambrian and Precambrian periods were not yet fully represented in what we'd discovered from the fossil record. Given time, he wrote, we would discover the ancestors of these creatures earlier in the geologic strata. However, scientists have spent years and years evaluating the data, finding more and more fossils of organisms from the Cambrian and Precambrian periods. Still, the ancestors have not been found. Every time a new discovery is made, it is not a new kind of creature, but is instead a variation on the same theme: another arthropod, another echinoderm, and so forth, as fully formed and as complex as the ones found before. Again, without evidence in the record of an ancestor. Our picture of these periods of time appear to be virtually complete.

Some have argued that the ancestors to the Cambrian organisms were soft-bodied, too fragile to be preserved in the Precambrian strata. This seemed like a reasonable argument, until scientists in China discovered in the Precambrian rock tiny fossilized embryos of soft-bodied creatures! In other words, the sediment comprising the Precambrian period was able to preserve incredibly fragile, soft-bodied organisms as fossils. While the ancestors of the Cambrian creatures may have been soft-bodied, they certainly were more preservable than tiny sponge embryos.

So according to evolutionary biologists' own interpretation of the geologic record and its fossilized contents (I qualify it this way because I believe their interpretation is incorrect, a topic I will write about in the future), the majority of the kinds of organisms we have today appeared virtually overnight, fully-formed, with no apparent ancestors. No conceivable natural mechanism can account for the sudden existence of highly complex organisms--as complex, if not more so, than many we see today--representing dozens upon dozens of separate and distinct body plans. Something conceived of these disparate kinds of creatures--essence--and then assembled them in-place--existence. The philosophy of existentialism cannot account for this.

THE SEEDS OF LIFE

It's no wonder that some scientists believe these forms of life were "seeded" here by some extraterrestrial life. Called panspermia or exogenesis, exponents of this theory acknowledge the problem posed by the Cambrian explosion. They would argue, however, that this demonstrates that these early kinds of organisms were deposited on earth, as fully-formed as we find them, having originated elsewhere in the universe, and began to reproduce and diversify from there. This would seem to allow for the undirected nature of theorized evolutionary diversification, and thus its existential underpinning.

But as we'll see when we look at other recent discoveries in biology, and how they impact the theory that complex structures are formed serendipitously from parts which evolved separately, over time, the "seeds of life" theory falls flat. Stay tuned.

Darwin's Dilemmas: Essence Precedes Existence--Part 2

Historically philosophers viewed things as having a transcendant, more fundamental "essence" shared by all like things. Chairs have chairness. People have humanity. And the existence of these things depends upon their preexistent essences, or ideals, which truly exist in the metaphysical realm. Existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre reversed this, saying instead, "existence precedes essence." To them, there is no real thing called an "essence"; there are merely things that exist, and what philosophers had previously called essences are merely categories imposed upon things by humans able to recognize similarity.

What does this have to do with biology? How are the theory of evolution and the philosophy of existentialism related? One might expect a Christian like myself would equate evolution with the philosophies often associated with it--such as materialism or atheism--and find the connection there, but one would be wrong. In fact, the philosophy of existentialism as summarized by the phrase, "existence precedes essence," is manifested in the very biological processes predicted in evolutionary theory.

THE TREE OF LIFE

Evolutionary biologists envision all species as having descended from a common ancestor, the first living organism. This first living organism reproduced, and eventually its offspring experienced a change in the hereditary information inherited from its parent. This change, the result of a mutation occurring during the copying of the parent's DNA, provided the organism some benefit, allowing it to survive better than its siblings and parents. And so on and so forth, life becoming increasingly diverse, resulting in the great diversity of life we see today.

This process of change over time, of all species sharing a common ancestor, is illustrated using a "tree of life." At the base the tree has a trunk, representative of the first living organism. Branches emerge from the trunk, representing those offspring which were ever so slightly different from their parent. Branches emerge from those branches, and so on and so forth.

Like existentialism's "existence precedes essence," according to this model there are no such things--not really--as kinds of organisms. There is no real kingdom, or phylum, or class, or order, or family, or genus, or species. These are merely categories humans impose upon creatures which are similar enough to be classified together. There is no "essence" of "what it is to be" an arthropod; there are simply creatures like lobsters and crabs which, by virtue of having soft insides and hard exoskeletons, are classified together using the name arthropoda in order to distinguish them from creatures which don't share these same properties.

So we see that the diversification of existing animals--existence--leads to the imposition of classifications--essence--upon them. "Existence precedes essence." But existentialism is not only apparent in evolutionary theory's conception of the "tree of life."

STRUCTURE BY SERENDIPITY

According to the theory of evolution, complex structures do not come about suddenly, fully formed, comprised of all their constituent parts. A creature was not suddenly born with eyeballs from a creature that had none. Instead, the parts that make up complex structures appeared gradually, over very long periods of time, bit-by-bit, over generations upon generations.

A random mutation in the copying of a parent organism's DNA might result in the offspring having one of a future complex structure's many parts. That individual part, by itself, provides the offspring with some benefit, making it better capable of surviving its environment. Thus, natural selection preserves that trait and it gets passed on to future generations. Some time later, this organism's DNA is further mutated during reproduction and its offspring manifests a second part. That part, in and of itself or in conjunction with the first part, again provides the offspring some benefit and both traits get preserved through future generations. This process continues, over millions of years and millions of generations, each part of a future complex structure coming into being by chance, piece-by-piece.

Again we see existentialism's "existence precedes essence" in action. Natural processes don't conceive of something called an eyeball, or an ear, or a brain, or a tail, or a stomach, and then put the pieces together. Instead, the pieces come about individually, without respect to one another, over long periods of time, and happen to form eventually into structures we give names to today. We call an eyeball an eyeball, but the concept of an eyeball--essence--came after the happenchance assembling of its randomly-produced parts--existence.

LET THE EARTH BRING FORTH LIVING CREATURES AFTER THEIR KIND

The Bible militates against this existential nature of the theory of evolution. Before God created anything, He conceived of it. He thought about it. He planned it. And upon deciding to bring into existence physically the creation He conceived of in His mind, He spoke it into existence:

Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them"; and it was so. (Genesis 1:11)

Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind"; and it was so. (Genesis 1:24)

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." God created man in His own image... (Genesis 1:26-27)

God conceived of kinds of plants, and then brought them into existence according to those plans. He imagined kinds of animals, and then brought them into existence according to those plans. He devised a creature in His own image, and then brought man into existence according to that plan.

But what does the study of biology suggest? Does it confirm the theory of evolution and the existentialism woven into the very fabric of biological process responsible for the diversity of life? Stay tuned.