03 February 2010

Signature in the Cell: Chapter 2

The chapter is called "The Evolution of a Mystery and Why It Matters." It's interesting and engaging, and I enjoyed reading it. The "mystery" in question is first described on page 35:
...most philosophers and scientists have long thought that Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection destroyed the design argument. Yet I also discovered that Darwin himself admitted that his theory did not explain the origin of life itself. [...] His theory assumed rather than explained the origin of the first living thing. Since this limitation of Darwin's theory was widely recognized, it raised a question: Why were nineteenth- and twentieth-century biologists and philosophers so sure that Darwin had undermined the design argument from biology?

Meyer is asserting that scientists in the late 19th century knew that they had no satisfactory naturalistic account of the origin of life. I assume that he's right about that. He's struck by the fact that they weren't shaken by that "small hole in this elaborate tapestry of naturalistic explanation":
Despite the impasse, late-Victorian-era biologists expressed little, if any, concern about the absence of detailed explanations for how life had first arisen. The obvious question for me was, Why? – page 40
Meyer then begins an interesting discussion of the declining popularity of vitalism during and preceding that time, a decline caused by the relentless advance of effective naturalistic explanation. For example:
During the 1860s and 1870s scientists identified the cell as the energy converter of living organisms. Experiments on animal respiration established the utility of chemical analysis for understanding respiration and other energetic processes in the cell. Since these new chemical analyses could account for all the energy the cell used in metabolism, biologists increasingly thought it unnecessary to refer to vital forces. –page 41
The following section, "Evolution on a Roll," is quite good. Meyer credits his dissertation mentor, Harmke Kamminga, with the claim that "Darwin's theory inspired attempts at 'extending evolution backward' in order to explain the origin of the first life." He then explains why "Darwin's theory inspired confidence in such efforts." One key reason: his theory "implied that living species did not possess an essential and immutable nature."

The rest of the chapter is a narrative of the development of early OOL theories, ending with the famous Miller-Urey experiment of 1953. Although I'm not well-qualified to assess the accuracy of Meyer's account, I found the section interesting and informative. The chapter ends with this ominous transition:
A seamless and fully naturalistic account of the origin and development of life-forms appeared, if not complete, then at least sketched in enough detail to preclude anachronistic speculations about a designing hand. The problem of the origin of life had at last been solved. Or at least so it seemed, until scientists began to reflect more deeply on the other great discovery of 1953. –page 57
That "great discovery," of course, is Watson and Crick's description of the structure of DNA. And I call the transition "ominous" because I sense a return to rhetorical tactics that disgusted me in chapter 1. That last sentence suggests that "scientists" share Meyer's seeming awe before "the DNA enigma." And I don't believe that at all. So, here are two observations that I think will be central to a critique of this book.

1. Meyer finds late nineteenth-century scientists to be "oddly confident," even triumphalistic, about their naturalistic explanations for how life began. It seems to me that he seeks to plant doubt in readers' minds about the utility of such explanations by showing that scientists of that time were enthusiastic about naturalistic explanation. My response goes something like this.
You're right, Steve Meyer. Scientists then, and now, are enthusiastic about naturalistic explanation. It's worked really well, so well that many of us are convinced that it will succeed even in areas that it seems to have barely touched. If your point is that science should remain ruthlessly critical of its ideas, or if you suspect that some scientists are overly credulous when it comes to some aspects of OOL theorizing, then you'll find me in agreement. But if you think there is something fundamentally wrong with assuming that life can be naturalistically explained, then we are at odds, and I will oppose your ideas.
I think it's important to be clear about something here. I don't think that Steve Meyer is stupid or dishonest for expressing his own preference in this matter. It seems to me that he prefers to assume that the origin of life could be – or is even likely to be – refractory to naturalistic explanation. He prefers to assume that the origin of life can be shown to be necessarily dependent on a "designing intelligence," such that it is inexplicable apart from that preexisting mind.

I don't have a problem with Steve Meyer's preference for design-based explanation. It will always be a rational and defensible choice, no matter what new data turn up or which new theories – however fantastical or elegant – are proposed. But I want to point to the nature of our difference. It is a difference of opinion, of preference, even of outlook (Meyer would say "worldview," I think). It seems to me that Meyer believes this difference to be decisive, meaning that it will cause me to miss the things that matter: the enigmas, mysteries and other glaringly obvious indications that naturalistic explanation can't work.

But I don't think the difference is all that important. To me, it just means that two Steves, Meyer and Matheson, see the world in two distinct ways. For Steve Meyer to convince Steve Matheson that the mind-first view is vastly superior from an explanatory standpoint, he'll have to do a whole lot more than point to things we don't understand. Until he does that, his writings, even in nicely-crafted chapters like this one, will be little more than quaint explications of the peculiarities of his view of the world. Interesting, even endearing? Maybe. Decisive? No.

2. In this chapter, Meyer continues a theme that he introduced in the first chapter. I'll call it "driving a wedge." The wedge in question is one that seeks to establish a gulf between the idea of design and the idea of naturalistic explanation. Meyer seems to accept the notion that phenomena that can be explained while relying on solely "material processes" are phenomena that do not involve design, intelligence, purpose, guidance. I could be wrong about that; maybe he'll disclaim such a stark dichotomy later in the book. But here's what he writes in a section called "Setting the Philosophical Stage:"
The age-old conflict between the mind-first and matter-first worldviews cuts right through the heart of the mystery of life's origin. Can the origin of life be explained purely by reference to material processes such as undirected chemical reactions or random collisions of molecules? Can it be explained without recourse to the activity of a designing intelligence? If so, then such an explanation would seem to make a materialistic worldview ... all the more credible. Who needs to invoke an unobservable designing intelligence to explain the origin of life, if observable material processes can produce life on their own? –pages 37-38
I'm a Christian of a particular stripe, and I have an answer to that final question. A believer invokes the hand of God, not because he needs an explanation for those things that can't yet be explained by material processes, but because he believes, and therefore sees God's hand in all the processes he observes. Steve Meyer has failed to convince me that the origin of life is a true "mystery." And he's failed to convince me, in any case, that it matters. Not because he's a fool or a failure (though both may also be the case). But because I don't see God's world the way he does.

7 comments:

SWT said...

"A believer invokes the hand of God, not because he needs an explanation for those things that can't yet be explained by material processes, but because he believes, and therefore sees God's hand in all the processes he observes."

Very nicely put ... thank you!

toddcwood said...

Why were nineteenth- and twentieth-century biologists and philosophers so sure that Darwin had undermined the design argument from biology?
I'm not going to let this one go. The ID version of the design argument is quite different from the nineteenth century's natural theology version of the design argument. The design argument as articulated by Paley was a nearly arbitrary mapping of some of God's attributes (often wisdom and benevolence) to attributes of nature. Paley's philosophy led to absurd conclusions about the emotional state of flies (seriously - read Natural Theology). Structuralist versions of natural theology like Owen's appealed arbitrarily to a divine design plan to explain homology. Contrary to popular belief (even at the time), Darwin did not attack the concept of design (the idea that God might have been involved). Instead, he insisted that appealing to design in the way natural theologians were prone was not an acceptable explanation, especially if there was a suitable secondary cause that could explain the data at least as well. The other feature of natural theology that Darwin directly challenged was its Pollyanna optimism about nature. In contrast, Darwin emphasized the struggle for existence, which directly challenged the naive assumption that nature revealed God's benevolence. Reading Origin as a direct challenge to the concept of design is obviously possible (as some individuals in Darwin's day did), but it was not Darwin's intention nor is it a necessary reading of Origin.

Back to my point: I think the two questions Meyer is asking are being conflated. The first is why is Darwin perceived as having defeated the design argument, and the second is why did OOL turn to purely naturalistic accounts. I haven't read this chapter, but it sounds to me like he wants to conflate the two into one question: Why didn't scientists after Darwin consider design as an explanation of OOL? But that's actually two different questions. Your description sounds like he's got an interesting account of the rise of naturalistic OOL theories, but I don't think he has a good handle on design, especially if he thinks that design (in the form of natural theology) was ever really interested in OOL to begin with. Origin of life as a distinct subject from the origin of species was never seriously considered by natural theologians (to my knowledge). They were interested in the origin of species as examples of God's benevolence and wisdom. When Darwin argued persuasively that species came from other species, I suspect it took a while for OOL as a distinct design argument to become popular. I suspect it was there in early antievolutionism (probably in the form of arguments against spontaneous generation from Redi and Pasteur), but I would have to look into that to be certain. In any event, It sounds like Meyer is doing a bait-and-switch by conflating concerns of 19th century natural theologians with the concerns of 21st century IDists.

Sorry about that pontification, but I had to get that off my chest.

Agnosis00 said...

Prof. Matheson and Prof. Wood, would you guys be interested in discussing this or other topics in a forum (outside of the comments section of this blog), and maybe hosted on one or both of your blogs? I think many could benefit from seeing such an exchange. Just a thought...

Cliff Martin said...

I had copied the exact sentence SWT did above, and intended to paste it here along with a simple "Bravo". then I saw that SWT had already done that.

No one knows whether we will ever identify a natural mechanism for abiogenesis. I sometimes think we will not, even if such an mechanism exists (or existed). But what happens to the faith of a Steve Meyer if and when we do?

Michael Fugate said...

All of the minds of which I am aware are matter-based. Even if a mind were nonmatter-based (which I very much doubt is possible), it would need to be intimately connected with matter to design. A nonmatter-based mind would seem to be much more of a mystery than a natural origin of life.

Bill said...

"No one knows if we will ever discover X."

Yes. I know. We will. It's only a matter of time.

"Life" is chemistry and we have a very good handle on chemistry. As a grad student it was predicted that we might sequence the human genome in a hundred years. Maybe a thousand.

However, once the problem was cracked it took only a few years and now thousands of organisms have been sequenced. I would expect in a few years that newborns will be sequenced as a matter of course.

So why should the origin of replicating biology be any different? Plausible explanations for forming membranes, catalyzing reactions, developing chemical cycles and pathways already exist.

That creationists like Meyer deny the existence of this research is of no account, as is Meyer's book. Meyer is intellectually dishonest by setting up the reader to believe that the origin if life is a big mystery when that's not the case at all. It's a puzzle, but not a mystery. It's chemistry all the way down.

Martin LaBar said...

A friend of mine once said that God is not just the God of infinity, but He is also the God of 2 + 2. Just because we think we can explain something doesn't mean God wasn't involved in how it came to be.