All items reduced... part 3

(Part 1 is here)

(Part 2 is here)

The study of life (humans very much included) has not missed out in race to reduce. Our studies have borne much fruit. The realisation that DNA, inherited and reproducible, encodes our entire bodies has revolutionised our understanding. A natural conclusion of this might be that everything about us can be explained by our genes. Going back to our ‘onion’, we’ve peeled back all the layers to the core, found there a reel of programming, and then worked our way back out taking with us explanations for everything as we go. In some ways this is helpful and indeed true. In other ways it is hopelessly inadequate.

Take for example human behaviour. It is true that our genes do affect us and the way we act. We know this from twin-studies. Taking whole series of identical twins and seeing how their behaviour is similar or different to their brother or sister gives us a good idea of how much influence their shared genetic programmes have. What we find is that whilst the genes do have their say, they don’t have control. For some behaviour patterns there is a stronger genetic pressure than others, but the important thing to realise is that their effects are limited. They are only a fraction of the story.

Genes contain the programmes that have given us the bodies, and especially the brains, that in turn have given us permission to enter a whole new world, an unprecedented vista of culture, history, legacy, spirituality, morality and countless other things that when added together make us human. In these realms genes are like a parent unwilling to let go of a child though it has come of age. They still have influence but they’re limited, sometimes even powerless.

Suppose I were offered the position of Agony Aunt in my local paper (an unlikely scenario I know). In my new position I get asked by one heartbroken individual about why they were suffering so much in their love life. Would it be out of place of me to politely suggest that their problem is all down to their particular variant of the gene AVPR1A (known to be involved in pair bonding and relationship quality)? Or how about if I blame it all on their oxytocin levels? I don't think it would go down to well or even actually be of any help. Clearly, in these kind of situations reductionism doesn't work.

So, whilst we can gain much from breaking any complex subject down into its component parts - in many cases that isn't enough. Some scientist/philosophers fail to spot the difference.

On the origin of life...

Why is it that anytime even a *hint* of a drop of water is found anywhere else in space there are loud cries of 'Life!' to accompany it? Is it anything to do with research budgets?

The latest example spotted by NASA is Enceladus, a tiny moon orbiting Saturn.  Let's be fair though, if they're right then this is more than just a drop - its a whole subterranean ocean.  The BBC report has the following quote:

"We need three ingredients for life, as far as we know - liquid water, energy and the basic chemical building blocks - and we seem to have all three at Enceladus, including some fairly complex organic molecules," commented John Spencer, a Cassini scientist from the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado.

Now don't get me wrong, this is an exciting find, but the one thing that has been learnt in the study of abiogenesis so far is that it is far from straightforward.  The search is still on for how to get to 'first base'  and gather all the necessary basic ingredients.  A very recent suggestion is Titan, another one of Saturn's satellites.  It has an atmosphere made from Nitrogen and Methane giving traces of other simple organic compounds.  So maybe the basic chemicals were synthesized there and came to Earth on the No 42 meteorite?

I'm not saying a natural mechanism for life's origin will never be found but if it is I'll wager it will be very intricate, very coincidental and very unlikely... almost to the point of being unbelievable.

Who were Adam and Eve? Part 1

In uniting the twin progeny of God’s Word (the Bible and Creation) the most serious question raised is, ‘How do Adam and Eve fit in?’

There are at least two possible scenarios that I’d like to suggest.

The first is the simplest and most literal option. Adam was miraculously moulded from the dust of the ground and Eve just as miraculously was moulded from Adam’s flesh: in other words exactly as a straight reading of Genesis 2 describes.

The Bible does indicate that there were other humans around at the time but Adam and Eve were special. In the Garden of Eden they were separated off from the world beyond its boundaries, free to live and walk with God, and the first creatures to have a knowledge of and relationship with Him.

This was the beginning of God’s direct revelation. With such revelation comes responsibility. Knowing what God wants brings the opportunity to accept or reject it. As Genesis 3 documents they chose the latter and so sin (choosing to go against God) entered the world.

Following their eviction Adam and Eve’s family went on to build their lives in the dog-eat-dog world outside. And the rest? Well that's history.

See here for an alternative scenario.

All items reduced... part 2

(Part 1 is here)

Well it wasn't a leaf!

The problem is that you were only looking at part of the picture.

Here in this simple analogy we come to realise the great danger of reductionism, and how errors can creep into our thinking. The closer we get to a topic, the more we zoom in, the narrower our field of view becomes, until we eventually lose sight of the whole picture. Where the picture is relatively simple this isn’t a problem. The reduction can tell us just about everything we need to know. Reducing the flight of a passing comet to be an object that follows clear, definable laws of physics allows us to predict with incredible accuracy the next time when we’ll see that comet again. All well and good. But what about something more complicated?

Disease

Some diseases lend them self to a reductionist approach. A single point mutation in a length of genetic code can wreak havoc. Whilst the symptoms may be complicated, reduce it down to the level of the gene and we find the cause of the problem. Yet most of medicine isn’t quite so simple. Many diseases have much more complicated causes, they can affect different people in different ways, and treatments that work on one individual might not work on another. Then there are the psychological issues. What effect do they have? The reductionist is doomed to failure. That’s not to say that there isn’t a logic to what is happening, there is, but it cannot be reduced. Doctors have long realised that to be successful they have to take a holistic approach, tailoring their treatments to the patient and looking at the whole picture.

Reductionism is a great tool for solving 1-dimensional problems. It has its uses in more complicated situations as well but these are limited because often a 3, 4 or 5 dimensional problem cannot be broken down into components. Each aspect affects the others; unless you have them altogether the picture isn’t true. Perhaps we see this most clearly when we start to look in the mirror.

All items reduced... part 1

If monolith of science can be described as having a ‘general tendency’ it would probably be fair to say that this has been to reduce the universe down. No we’re not talking about a giant shrinkage experiment to create a new kind of Lilliput. What we are saying that in order to understand the world science has tried to reduce it, break it up, to its component parts. So the computer that I sit at to type this out can be broken down to keyboard, mouse, processor chips, memory cards etc and these in turn can be broken down into their basic materials, silicone, plastic, aluminium, and then even further to atoms, molecules, and whizzing electrons, and then… You get the idea. The great thing about this process is that, hopefully, as we reduce down through the various orders of magnitude, like peeling back the layers of an onion, each layer explains how the last one worked. So, the passage of electrons through conductors explains how computer chips work, for example.

This procedure has yielded outstanding results in practically every single discipline of science and as such has led some people to suggest by reducing the world down, again and again, we will eventually be able to explain our entire existence. Is this true? Or being drunk on our own success have we missed something?

Consider the image above. What is it?

Why I am not an atheist

1) Though the universe offers no proof of God's existence it does show strong evidence. From the anthropic principle to the remarkable beginning of life on earth and onwards to the arrival of us human beings there is plenty to suggest that there is more going on than mindless, meaningless materialism.

2) God has spoken to us through the Bible. Its message, delivered over a period of 1500 years to over 40 different individuals, testifies to that.

3) The prophetic vision of the Bible commends it as being from God.

4) After the crucifixion of Jesus many of his followers were persecuted, tortured and killed for their belief that Jesus had risen. Many of these were eye-witnesses.

5) The human senses of eternity, morality and spirituality are there for a reason.

A bird in the hand...

There are lots of reasons to think that birds evolved from therapod dinosaurs but there are also lots of questions. One of those questions appears to have been answered by a new fossil find.

Early therapods have a hand with five digits. Birds have three. As the shape of the birds 'fingers' look like numbers 1, 2 and 3 of their dino predecessors it was assumed that they had simply lost numbers 4 & 5 through time.

Then enter the developmental biologists to throw a spanner into the works! They observed that in bird embryos all five digits start to develop, but then numbers 1 & 5 wither away leaving 2, 3 & 4. That kind of vestige is powerful evidence for evolution but it did leave a bit of a puzzle. This new find helps sort it out. The developmentalists were right.

Limusaurus inextricabilis is a therapod dinosaur of a 160 million year vintage. It has 4 digits but number 1 is dramaticaly reduced in size whilst 5 is absent completly, and there are shape changes too... in other words this is a snapshot in the process that starts with 5 fingered therapods and ends with modern day birds.