Group

Here is an important article, a 1995 review of Dawkins' "River out of
Eden", which does not appear to be webbed anywhere. I have linked this
on my "Articles posted on CED"
(http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/cedartic.html) page.

Here are some tidbits. First, Dawkins, the arch-materialist, has been forced
by the admission by another arch-materialist, leading Darwinist
theoretician George C. Williams that "The gene is a package of
information, not an object. The pattern of base pairs in a DNA molecule
specifies the gene. But the DNA molecule is the medium, it's not the
message" (see tagline) to, in effect, repudiate materialism, and embrace
what can only be called "the new vitalism":

"Welcome to the new vitalism! In this latest instalment of Richard
Dawkins's exploration of the Darwinian principle we find him hard
at work driving the final nails into the coffin of the ancient belief
that living things are animated by a mystical vital force. The result,
however, is as odd as it is unexpected. For there rises from the
pages of this book, like a phoenix from the ashes, a version of
Darwinism more suffused with vitalistic imagery than anything we
have witnessed heretofore. Born again in the shining armour of
molecular biology and information technology, the new vitalism
imagines life as a flowing river - but it is a river of DNA, and DNA
is `pure information'. It is worth recalling the words of one of the
great vitalists of our century, the philosopher Henri Bergson,
whose notion of the elan vital electrified a generation until it was
short-circuited by the revival of Darwinism under the umbrella of
the `modern synthesis'. In his Creative Evolution of 1907, Bergson
likened life to a `current passing from germ to germ through the
medium of a developed organism'. Flowing ever outwards from its
point of origin, Bergson thought, the current of life continually
congeals into novel forms, through which it is handed on, relay
fashion, to their evolutionary successors. ... Enter Dawkins. ... his
imagery, with its river of life `majestically flowing through
geological time and splitting into three billion branches', seems to
come straight out of Bergson. Evolution, for Dawkins, is a life
process after all. But he pulls off this trick by attributing a vital
impulse to DNA itself. Indeed, if one were to substitute DNA for the
elan vital, then much of Bergson's rhetoric, in Creative Evolution,
would slot seamlessly into Dawkins's new book."

It is interesting how the wheel is turning full circle. Materialists are being
forced by the evidence to embrace a position that looks more and more
like creationism. For example, one definition of Progressive Creation (that
I accept) is "God guided the process of development, injecting information
at key stages in the development ... life to design new forms of
organization."

"OLD-AGE or PROGRESSIVE CREATION: God guided the
process of development, injecting information at key stages in
the development of the universe and life to design new forms of
organization." (Pearcey N., "We're Not in Kansas Anymore,"
Christianity Today, May 22, 2000, Vol. 44, No. 6, p.42.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/006/1.42.html)

And Johnson, commenting on this, observed: "That way of describing
reality brings to mind the biblical description of how the world began ...
`in the beginning was the Word' (John 1:1):

"That way of describing reality brings to mind the biblical
description of how the world began. The Gospel of John begins with
the memorable statement that `in the beginning was the Word.' That is
exactly how we would describe the creation of a literary work or a
computer programs or a building. In the beginning was the concept
and the working out of that concept in the mind of the author or
designer. Thereafter the concept was recorded, or realized, in matter.
Matter is important, but secondary. The Word (information) is not
reducible to matter, and even precedes matter." (Johnson P.E.,
"Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds," InterVarsity Press:
Downers Grove IL, 1997, p.71).

On "evolution is a fact", Ingold, professor of social anthropology at
the University of Manchester, points out that it "does not help ... if
we are given no clear or consistent indication of what that fact is
supposed to be:

"Ever since the notion of evolution was co-opted to refer to the
process that Darwin had originally called `descent with
modification", evolutionary biologists have been in a hopeless
muddle over what they have actually managed to explain. It does
not help to be told that evolution is a fact if we are given no clear
or consistent indication of what that fact is supposed to be."

Being told that "evolutionary theory is simply about changing gene
frequencies in populations of organisms", Ingold responds that this is
inadequate because (amongst other things) then "the theory could tell us
absolutely nothing about the evolution of form" and "indeed it would
short-cut the organism altogether":

"Faced with the objection that form is not thus prefigured but
the outcome of a developmental process, neo-Darwinists
habitually resort to the default position that evolutionary theory is
simply about changing gene frequencies in populations of
organisms, and that it remains entirely open on questions of
development. But if that were the case the theory could tell us
absolutely nothing about the evolution of form; indeed it would
short-cut the organism altogether. There is a clear desire on the part
of evolutionary biologists, Dawkins included, to have it both ways,
leaving the rest of us understandably confused."

Steve

==========================================================================
The Times Higher Education Supplement

Swept away by the current
Tim Ingold
16 June 1995

Title: River out of Eden
Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: Weidenfeld and Nicolson
No of pages: 166
Price: œ9.99
ISBN: 0 297 81540 7

Welcome to the new vitalism! In this latest instalment of Richard Dawkins's
exploration of the Darwinian principle we find him hard at work driving the
final nails into the coffin of the ancient belief that living things are
animated
by a mystical vital force. The result, however, is as odd as it is unexpected.
For there rises from the pages of this book, like a phoenix from the ashes, a
version of Darwinism more suffused with vitalistic imagery than anything
we have witnessed heretofore. Born again in the shining armour of
molecular biology and information technology, the new vitalism imagines
life as a flowing river - but it is a river of DNA, and DNA is "pure
information".

It is worth recalling the words of one of the great vitalists of our century,
the philosopher Henri Bergson, whose notion of the elan vital electrified a
generation until it was short-circuited by the revival of Darwinism under
the umbrella of the "modern synthesis". In his Creative Evolution of 1907,
Bergson likened life to a "current passing from germ to germ through the
medium of a developed organism". Flowing ever outwards from its point of
origin, Bergson thought, the current of life continually congeals into novel
forms, through which it is handed on, relay fashion, to their evolutionary
successors. Some six decades later another Frenchman, the distinguished
biochemist Jacques Monod, was able to claim that advances in molecular
biology - above all the discovery of DNA and its role in the synthesis of
proteins - had finally put paid to Bergsonian vitalism. In his Chance and
Necessity (1970), Monod insisted that evolution is not a life process. For
the life of the organism is expended in the replication of its genes, and it is
the latter alone that are transmitted to successors. Evolution occurs
because of imperfections in the very mechanism of molecular conservation
upon which life itself depends.

Enter Dawkins. His argument, like Monod's, is starkly mechanistic.
Organisms are constructed by genes as machines to secure the latter's
replication. Yet his imagery, with its river of life "majestically flowing
through geological time and splitting into three billion branches", seems to
come straight out of Bergson. Evolution, for Dawkins, is a life process
after all. But he pulls off this trick by attributing a vital impulse to DNA
itself. Indeed, if one were to substitute DNA for the elan vital, then much
of Bergson's rhetoric, in Creative Evolution, would slot seamlessly into
Dawkins's new book. It is the genes themselves, Dawkins tells us, that are
alive and "at work" within the bodies they inhabit. Life, in short, is not a
property of organisms at all, for organisms simply provide the conduits
along which it flows: they are the banks of the river of digital information.

In reality, of course, DNA is just a molecule, and a remarkably inert one at
that. It does not do things, or make things, or build things. Nor does it
flow. It is not an agent at all, but a reactant. Within the context of the
living
cell, a number of reactions are set in train, including that which leads to the
synthesis of further copies of the molecule itself. In what sense, then, can
we regard strands of DNA as "information"? Dawkins himself offers an
allegorical piece of science fiction that goes to the heart of the matter. A
certain Professor Crickson has been kidnapped by the evil empire to work
in its germ warfare laboratories. He desperately needs to send a message to
the outside world. Lacking other means, he codes his message into a DNA
sequence that is artificially inserted into one of the laboratory's influenza
viruses. He then injects himself with the altered virus and deliberately starts
an epidemic. Scientists on the other side of the world, searching for a
vaccine to stem the outbreak, sequence the virus's DNA and discover a
peculiar pattern. Using codebreaking techniques they soon uncover the
professor's message. The information has been safely carried by the DNA,
through countless replications. Civilisation is saved.

Now if the DNA of Crickson's 'flu stood for his message, what does the
DNA of ordinary, real-world organisms stand for? If genes carry
information, they must stand for something. Or in more formal terms, there
must be some context-independent decoding that would yield the
"message" that the DNA is supposed to carry. Just as Crickson's fictional
message originated in his own mind, so there can be only one place for this
decoding, namely as an ideal construct in the minds of biologists.
Conventionally, this construct goes by the name of the "genotype" (not to
be confused with the actual DNA of the genome). It is an artefact not of
nature but of scientific reason, derived by analytic abstraction from the
observational contexts of real life. But the logic of natural selection,
inverting the relation between reason and nature, instals the genotype at the
heart of the organism, as a kind of inner intelligence, from where it is
supposed to direct the organism's affairs.

But in reality DNA can stand for nothing but itself. It is simply there, and
while it has consequences for the organisms in which it is found, these
consequences will depend critically on the circumstances they encounter
during their lifetimes. Organisms, in general, are not genetically preformed,
nor, strictly speaking, can form be understood as a result of the interaction
of genetic instructions and environmental constraints. Rather, it is a
property of the total developmental system of which genes and components
of the environment, both internal and external to the organism, are equally
a part. One way of putting this is to say of any aspect of the form of a
developed organism, that it is 100 per cent genetic and 100 per cent
environmental. Another way, perhaps more sensible, is to stop thinking as
Dawkins does, of genes as pure information that is somehow injected into
the formless material of nature whenever a new life-cycle is initiated.

Ever since the notion of evolution was co-opted to refer to the process that
Darwin had originally called "descent with modification", evolutionary
biologists have been in a hopeless muddle over what they have actually
managed to explain. It does not help to be told that evolution is a fact if we
are given no clear or consistent indication of what that fact is supposed to
be. Does it refer to changes in the DNA, or to changes in morphology and
behaviour - what Dawkins calls "ways of making a living"? Like most
committed neo-Darwinists, Dawkins assumes that the latter follow directly
and unproblematically from the former, by a kind of translation process, as
though the record of genetic change were itself tantamount to an account
of morphological and behavioural evolution. But to make this assumption
is automatically to privilege the genome as the locus of organic form.
Faced with the objection that form is not thus prefigured but the outcome
of a developmental process, neo-Darwinists habitually resort to the default
position that evolutionary theory is simply about changing gene frequencies
in populations of organisms, and that it remains entirely open on questions
of development. But if that were the case the theory could tell us absolutely
nothing about the evolution of form; indeed it would short-cut the
organism altogether. There is a clear desire on the part of evolutionary
biologists, Dawkins included, to have it both ways, leaving the rest of us
understandably confused.

Dawkins writes, as ever, with great conviction and panache. Not for him
the image of the scientist as one tormented by doubt and uncertainty.
Darwinists are right; creationists, cultural relativists, primitive tribesmen
and assorted others who have a different view of things are wrong. Period.
The difference is likened to that between building an aeroplane that will fly
and one that never even gets off the ground. There is no room for debate
here. It seems that some of the zealotry of Dawkins's fundamentalist
opponents, as well as their penchant for allegory, has rubbed off on the
man himself. Moreover Darwinism is elevated into a principle of awesome
power, sustained by the digital genetic system "over eons of geological
time". It is most awesome of all in its sheer, heartless indifference. "DNA
neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music."

But Dawkins both knows and cares. He knows a lot and cares a great deal
about what he writes. If it is not too personal a question, I think we are
entitled to ask: what is the relation between Dawkins's DNA and his book?

Tim Ingold is Max Gluckman professor of social anthropology, University
of Manchester.

[...]

THES Editorial (c) 2002 TSL Education Ltd. [...]
==========================================================================

(Ingold T., "Swept away by the current." Review of "River out of Eden,"
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995, by Richard Dawkins. The Times Higher
Education Supplement, 16 June 1995.
http://www.thes.co.uk/search/story.aspx?story_id=76304)


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"Evolutionary biologists have failed to realize that they work with two
more or less incommensurable domains: that of information and that of
matter. ... These two domains will never be brought together in any kind of
the sense usually implied by the term `reductionism.' You can speak of
galaxies and particles of dust in the same terms, because they both have
mass and charge and length and width. You can't do that with information
and matter. Information doesn't have mass or charge or length in
millimeters. Like wise, matter doesn't have bytes. You can't measure so
much gold in so many bytes. It doesn't have redundancy, or fidelity, or any
of the other descriptors we apply to information. This dearth of shared
descriptors makes matter and information two separate domains of
existence, which have to be discussed separately, in their own terms. The
gene is a package of information, not an object. The pattern of base pairs in
a DNA molecule specifies the gene. But the DNA molecule is the medium,
it's not the message. Maintaining this distinction between the medium and
the message is absolutely indispensable to clarity of thought about
evolution." (Williams G.C., "A Package of Information," in Brockman J., "The
Third Culture," [1995], Touchstone: New York, 1996, reprint, p.43.
http://www.edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/h-Ch.1.html)
Stephen E. Jones http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Moderator: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign
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