Re: What's more important, self-organzation or evolution?

dkomo wrote:

John Harshman wrote:


Perplexed in Peoria wrote:



<sheldongb@xxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1185661229.854287.98150@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



On Jul 28, 1:40 am, j.wilki...@xxxxxxxxx (John Wilkins) wrote:



dkomo <dkomo...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



John Harshman wrote:



dkomo wrote:

This was one of the questions I wanted to get answered when I first
poked my head into this n.g. a number of years ago. I must say, I have
been major big time disappointed. Discussions of evolution have been
endless and endlessly repetitive. The received view in biology has been
recycled over and over again. Discussions of self-organization in
biology have been virtually nil.

Yet, I think there is a way to resolve this question, and the answer
IMHO is that self-organization is *way* more important than evolution in
producing the phenomenon of life, as can be seen by examining one
particular aspect of organisms. What do you think that is?

No idea. Why not stop being coy and tell us all what you mean?

An organism's structure and function is vastly *underdetermined* by its
genome. Its DNA governs how protein and RNA molecules are built, when
and how much. It doesn't direct where those molecules are to go inside
a cell and what they are to do. The cell's self-organizational
processes take care of that. In fact, the existence of DNA itself is a
result of those processes

Development of a multicellular organism from a single cell to complete
adult is an excellent example of self-organization. DNA has a
ralatively minor part to play in that. Another example is how brains
wire themselves up automatically. The trillions of synaptic connections
are not mapped at all in DNA.

All selection can do is pick the most effective self-organized forms,
but it does not have detailed control over the tremendous complexity of
that organization.

The problem arises from thinking of DNA as a recipe for an organism and
its phenotype. It ain't. It's part of the evolving causal process by
which chemicals self-organise themselves into organisms from prior
organisms.


What are you talking about? The DNA *is* a recipe for an organism and
it's phenotype, Darwinian wise. That it "evolves" does not detract

from being true for "an organism". Any consideration of "self-


organization" must consider heritability or waver from Darwinian
concepts; DNA is regarded as what is inherited and determines
phenotype. Sure, the way I brush my hair or develop as a result of
environmental variables will cause individual traits to occur in a
population, but these are not heritable, and therefore not relevant to
evolution. Dkomo provides "brain wiring" to be an example of "self-
organization", yet that is a profoundly trivial assumption not
relevant to "life", even were he right that DNA only plays a minor
part in brain wiring. And "relatively minor part" is an unproven
assumption at that. He suggests that selection chooses from these
"self-organized forms" but that DNA doesn't have "detailed" control
over phenotypic complexity. That's plain hogwash; you grow four limbs,
one pecker and a big schnose whether you were raised in AU or the US.
If you were born with less or more, Darwinism dictates the reason is
because of DNA, and nothing but DNA.


Bravo! And out of the mouth of Glenn Sheldon, yet.

And the most remarkable thing is that our resident philosopher, who takes
Rick Norman and I to task for suggesting that there is emergence in
biology, is here claiming that DNA is "part of the evolving causal process
by which chemicals self-organise themselves into organisms from prior
organisms." And why does he adopt this tortured way of speaking? Because
he sees this as the only alternative to saying "DNA is a recipe"!


I don't care much about emergence, but I wouldn't say that DNA is a
recipe. That may be a little better or a little worse than the computer
program analogy, but that's because both are more or less useless. DNA
isn't much like anything else I can think of. I like Wilkins'
formulation much better than "DNA is a recipe".

DNA is a part of a complex system of interactions that also include
proteins, RNAs, various signalling molecules (some of which are proteins
and some of which aren't), other physical signals, and the properties of
materials.

Huh? The information in DNA is composed of nucleotides. It is only
those that get transcribed. So the only molecules it can code for are
proteins and RNAs. It couldn't, for example, code for ATP or for
carbohydrates. So I'm not sure what you mean by "various signalling
molecules (some of which are proteins and some of which aren't), other
physical signals, and the properties of materials."

Several points:

DNA doesn't code for ATP or carbohyrdates, but it does code for all the
proteins that act to synthesize them.

By "various signalling molecules" I mean any molecule that participates
in determining which genes are switched on or off. Some of these are
proteins, like the various transcription factors. Others are not, and
perhaps the most famous of these is cyclic adenosine monophosphate
(cAMP), which you might like to look up.

By "other physical signals" I mean the various means other than
molecules that help to determine which genes get turned on or off. This
includes physical forces like tension and compression, which are
communicated to sensors on cell surfaces and interiors, and thence by
signalling molecules (again) to the nucleus.

By "properties of materials", I refer to the physical features of cells
and extracellular matrices that are important in epigenesis. Have you
read On Growth and Form?

> Without all these, development wouldn't happen. Now the

special status of DNA as the vehicle of heredity means that it's the
proximal target of evolution, which none of those other things are. But
that hardly seems like a reason to single it out as the sole container
of information, which is what the recipe analogy seems to be saying.

Right. I keep saying that the information to build a new cell, for
example, is distributed throughout that cell. Without all this
information being "enfolded" within a self-organizing global process
which itself consists of numerous biochemical networks, DNA could do
absolutely nothing because it is just a big passive molecule(s).

This is true. But I don't see how this makes self-organization more
important than evolution. First, because I don't consider development to
be self-organization, and calling it so removes much of the meaning of
the term. And second, because the diversity of life is still produced by
evolution, which is accomplished by mutations to DNA and selection
thereof. While the information is distributed, differences between
species are still due ultimately to differences in their DNA. Other
sorts of inheritance are trivial.

.

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