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Denis Noble: "The Facts Are Clear: Neo-Darwinism is DEAD!"
July 30, 2024
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Climb right, there's a huge amount of biology still to be discovered. Processes well beyond what you'll find in the textbooks today. The experimental facts are already clear. Neo-Darwinism is dead. Does the claim that neo-Darwinism is quote-unquote dead overstate, accurately state or understate your position?
Well, he more or less accurately states it, I think. The fact is that there are four major foundations of the neo-Darwinist position that DNA is a self-replicator. It isn't.
that the vicin barrier protects the eggs and sperm from being affected by the body really doesn't. We've shown that information can travel from the body to the germ line and that the central dogma as it's called which is that DNA is used to make proteins but proteins are never used to make DNA doesn't prevent
I'm organisms when they need to to change their DNA know those are the basic assumptions of the new darwin is to view of modern biology and i'm afraid they've all crumbled is there you got the foundations of a subject and they've gone.
So no, I don't apologize for using rather strong language. I think as a theory, it is now dead by any criteria. If you show the foundations are incorrect, then the theory is not worthwhile. Furthermore, the obvious test of it is the information you get from the molecular
Processes like the DNA sequence and so on which we can measure is that really useful in predicting disease and the only major study that's being done on that has failed to show significant success because there are almost as many false predictions as correct predictions if you had a drug and
put forward by a pharmaceutical company and ask the FDA the Food and Drug Administration would like you to approve this drug they'd use precisely this test how good is it that
Curing the disease and if it doesn't then you don't allow it to be sold and the same test was put for the ability of DNA sequencing to predict what diseases you would suffer from and it doesn't work. It's very simple.
It seems like your framework still relies on core Darwinian principles like variation, inheritance, selection. So would you say that this is more a statement about neo-Darwinism being incomplete or that this is some radical departure and not just an expansion on an existing theory? You're asking a very interesting question, Kurt. You know that I refer to neo-Darwinism because I am not saying that Darwin was wrong.
Interesting okay that is a fundamental fact darwin never accepted the idea that there was a barrier between what the body could do and is germ cells the future egg and sperm.
He supposed even formulated a theory for how it would be possible for the body to communicate with the future egg and sperm. He called the particles that he postulated gemmules. We now call them extracellular vesicles but they perform exactly the function that Darwin outlined. So I think we need to make a very fundamental distinction between
Darwin and his theories of evolution and the neo-Darwinist interpretation of that which is a great restriction on what Darwin himself supposed and in particular he would not have accepted the existence of the Weismann barrier, the idea that the future eggs and sperm can't be influenced by the body during its lifetime. So
I think the answer to your question is neo-Darwinism is the problem. That's what is not supported by the molecular biological information that I've been researching for around 20 years or so now. And I think it's that that is dead. Darwinism as a theory that evolution has happened, that
doesn't disprove that at all. So I think we've got to distinguish between the original Darwin theory and the successes today creating the neo-Darwinist interpretation. Now why is that important? It's important for this reason. You see, we as living organisms, humans, have what we call values. We
like to think that we're making those choices through the social values that we accept, whether they be straightforward values that we just inherit from our parents or whether it's because of religious belief or whatever it may come from. Now, if the theory is that you are born selfish, that's a quote from Richard Dawkins, the selfish gene,
And that you can't help that you've got to be taught to be cooperative. Well, you do need to do that. You to teach children a cooperation. Of course you do. Right. But the point I'm making is that there is no restriction on our ability to choose and therefore our ability to have moral values and values that matter in society.
There's no restriction on that from our genetic makeup. And so it's incorrect to say that genes created as body and mind. Again, that's a quote from the selfish gene. You've stated that Richard Dawkins may not fully grasp your arguments. Do you think this could be due to say differences in definitions of some key terms like selfishness or purpose?
Well, it's muddling, I'm afraid, because he uses the word selfish applied to a gene and then confuses it by saying, we are born selfish. That's a direct quote from his book, The Selfish Gene.
No i think he's confused you cannot attribute selfishness to a chemical it is a chemical can only do what a chemical can do it will you know if he's got the right energies it will bind with this molecule or that one but it can't be given any sense in which he's got freedom to choose to go one way rather than another is buffeted around by the
Rest of the chemical environment. So no, I'm afraid it's a fundamental misunderstanding. Now you could say therefore it's a confusion of language, but I think that doesn't get the essence of my argument. It is that the fundamental assumptions of biology itself don't support the gene centric view.
So I'm saying much more than it's a matter of what words you use and what definitions you use. Yes, there is a model over the definition of selfishness and what it really means. But over and above that, there are these straightforward assumptions, dogmas, I call them of modern biology that just are no longer correct. Yes.
The central dogma does not exclude the possibility of organisms changing their genomes. We were doing that during the pandemic. Our immune systems were doing that. It doesn't mean that the DNA itself self replicates. And so I can go on. So I think it's much more than a matter of definitions of words. It's also true to say in my view that
The molecular biological information on which the neo-darwinist interpretation of biology relied doesn't support what they claim it does support. It's as simple as that. It's not just definition of words, therefore. What if someone or Dawkins responds and says, hey, this still sounds like an example of natural selection.
operating at a different level, because how does it differ from traditional accounts of semantic hypermutation or clonal selection in the immune system? Yes. Kurt, I like your questions. Absolutely true. Thank you. When the immune system changes the DNA, it performs natural selection. You couldn't have got it more accurate. Of course it does.
But the point is it does it within the organism. It doesn't wait for natural selection determining the death or life of me and other organisms. It happens within our body within this lifetime.
so yes it is using natural selection of the immune system cells the B cells as they're called that generate the immunoglobulins and generate many different forms of immunoglobulins and what the immune system does is to choose the ones that are successful in producing the result that is natural selection within our bodies but notice that it's directed
Because it's functional. Only the ones that succeeded are told to reproduce, to produce more of that immunoglobulin. The rest are told to die. That is not natural selection. That is a directed functional process. Our immune systems, thank goodness, are very functional. They are not just random.
They use randomness. That's the way I would put it. I call it the harnessing of stochasticity, the use of random changes that generate directed function to generate purposive response. So it generates purposive response. It doesn't have a purpose itself. Good question. And that's an interesting one.
It sort of does, let me put it this way, if you, we have things that have purposes, we have knives, we have forks and we know how to eat with them. Now you can say if the knife and fork they have purpose, if the purpose has been given to them by the makers of knives and forks. Now that's one sense of purpose and I think the immune system has precisely that kind of purpose.
That is, it's generated within our bodies. We inherit all of that, of course, from our parents. And it is purposive in that sense, just in the same way as tools that organisms use have purpose because they're given that purpose by those who create them. But it's deeper than that because I think it's also correct to say that we as humans have intentional purpose.
And that depends on conscious intentionality. It's not dependent on purely chemical processes. So I think that over and above the question of whether individual systems within our body like the immune system can be said to have purpose. Those can be said to have purpose just as tools do.
But over and above that, we have the ability to consciously choose what we wish to do. And incidentally, this is another respect in which Darwin disagreed with the neo Darwinists. Darwin gave organisms birds as an example, the ability to choose who they
cooperate with who they mate with he asked the question why does the peacock have this extraordinary display which he shows when he's trying to attract a mate a pea hen who might mate with him well his argument was very simple it is it's developed all of that as part of
the process of making sure that he mates with the best peahen or the peahen chooses the best peacock but the point he made and he emphasized this in his book in 1871 that's after he published on natural selection and he said this is conscious intentional choice he didn't mince the words at all hmm so he was attributing
to birds and other organisms by implication, exactly the same kind of ability that we ourselves have. Now, of course, he was running counter to a very important tradition in science ever since Descartes. Descartes way back in the 17th century said, well, animals don't have this ability. They're machines. They're just mechanical processes.
Well, Darwin would have fundamentally disagreed with that. It's another reason why I say that the neo-Darwinists are not true to Darwin's original theory. He allowed what you call sexual selection, it's a form of social selection if you like, who will cooperate with who in a population. That, he accepted, involved intentionality.
Is it possible for a chemical to have purpose in this sense, not intentional purpose, but the other form, a biochemical? Well, a chemical can be a tool. Yes, I see what you're getting at. And it's a very good question. Obviously, in one sense, the DNA has
It has purpose that has evolved in the sense that its purpose, if you wish, is to transmit the information for making proteins from one generation to another. That's a tool which the living system uses, but that's not purpose in the sense of being anything other than a tool.
It's not purpose in the sense in which you and I and other organisms have purposive intentional behavior. So what if there's Dawkins here? Somehow Dawkins became constructed right beside me and he says to you, he says, Dennis, let us bridge this semantic gap. We can have a productive dialogue. You're saying biochemicals like DNA can't be selfish. I'm watering down the usage of the word selfish, but
Can I not claim the same about you and the word purpose? That I'm just a bunch of molecules and that therefore I don't really have the sense or I don't have the reality of having free choice and purposive behavior. Well, I think I would ask him, look, Richard,
Have a look at what humans are capable of you are capable of writing a brilliant book I always call it brilliant because I think it is the selfish gene is a terrifically well-written book I envy his ability to communicate in the way that he does But is nevertheless incorrect and so I would say well you intended to write that book And you want to tell me you didn't
That you, just your chemicals made you do it. I just don't believe you Richard. That would be my answer to him I think. At Capella University, learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get support from people who care about your success. Like your enrollment specialist who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus,
Career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella.edu. So tell me and the audience how is purpose? Well, we have to distinguish between the two types of purpose. So let's say purpose one is the one that you referred to. Yes, we do the purpose given to things and the purpose
that we have as individual agents. Yes. A very important question, incidentally, because... So the former, the purpose given. Exactly. It's at the heart of the arguments over artificial intelligence. Exactly. Very important indeed. Can you explain how purpose given can be measurable and testable? Well, let me first of all say that interpreting processes in life
purposefully, in the sense that they have purpose, has proven extremely effective in medical research. Ask the question, how did William Harvey, when in the 17th century he worked out that the blood circulates, doesn't just ebb and flow, it circulates, he gave a purposive account of the circulation.
The function of the blood is to circulate through the body, but he then realized, okay, if we give it that purpose, there must be connections between the arteries and veins in the periphery. He couldn't see anything that would correspond to that. So he invented a term. He called them porosities. Well, actually he was writing his book in Latin, but in those days, many people did.
Porosities. Porosities meaning some way in which the veins and arteries can communicate. Now 30 or 40 years later when the first microscopes were introduced, one of the first uses of those microscopes was to find capillaries and so
Harvey's prediction based on his attributing purpose to the circulation was correct. There are capillaries that connect the arteries and the veins in the periphery of the circulation. That's just one example. The other example I often take is Darwin's hypothesis about how the body communicates to the germline. He had a very similar problem which is he couldn't see
tiny particles that could contain the messages that he thought must exist to pass between the body and the germ cells. So he admitted, look I can't see them but I think they're there. Well 150 years later we've proven him right.
You see, what happened there was that a prediction, and he admitted it was a prediction, with the microscopes you could use in the 19th century, it was not possible to visualize these very tiny particles that all cells in the body pour out to communicate with other cells in the body. But we now can do that. Again,
His purposive explanation that this is to transmit to the next generation some of the characteristics of this generation led to a very valuable hypothesis which we've now confirmed. So the first point I would make in response to that very deep question is purposive explanations actually satisfy the main scientific test. Do they work? Do they make successful predictions?
I have many more examples of that kind, but I think you're asking a deeper question than the one of giving purpose to something like a knife and a fork and having the ability to choose. Now, this is at the heart, it seems to me, of the big argument today over what it is that artificial intelligence can do because it looks
Let's try to give the best account we can of what AI thinks or the AI creators think they can create in their wilder moments. They think they'll replace us and no doubt for some purpose of building a car doesn't really require a human. A robot could do it and a very intelligent robot
would be even better than one that isn't because it would be able to watch when something doesn't quite work and then adjust it and so and so be reactive. I go along with the AI people who think that that's going to transform our ability in industry and in the way in which we conduct our lives. No doubt about that. But then I asked the following question.
What is it that organisms use to create all the stochasticity in their bodies that enable them to be so creative? Now ask the question what is AI built from? It's built from silicon. Silicon is a kind of crystal, it's solid. The molecules within
The silicon don't move. They can vibrate, as all molecules do, but they are fixed. We are not made like that. We are made, well, what is it, about 80 to 90% of us is water. Now, I think that's fundamental. You see, way back in the beginning of the 19th century, 1827, a man called Brown
Watch what happened when he ground pollen grains, already very tiny, but he ground them up into even tinier particles, pollen dust if you wish, and he sprinkled under a microscope, he sprinkled that pollen dust on the surface of water. And what he found was fascinating. The particles are moving around the whole time in all kinds of stochastic ways.
and our cells are just like that. All the particles suspended including the DNA, including our proteins, including our iron channels and so on, they're all being buffeted around because the reason for that movement as Einstein showed about 70 or 80 years later is that the water molecules themselves are bumping in to the suspended molecules.
So that gives us humans and other organisms built of water systems an enormous amount of stochasticity. Now, the AI people will tell you, well, that's not a problem. We just introduce randomness into our simulations. That's fine, except that I think the degree to which we have that ability to
Harness our stochasticity is vastly greater than an AI system will because as I said earlier on it's made from silicon and the silicon does not itself have inherent stochasticity. It has a little bit the vibrations but not enough not in the way that we as humans
So I sometimes put the following question to the AI people. When are you going to make computers made of water? And they look at me as though I must have come from some planet way out there where people ask very silly questions. When are you going to make a computer out of water? And I say, well, you know, nature took about four billion years to do it, but it did it. Are you going to try and do it?
Obviously, it is in some ways a slightly absurd question, but it shows what the challenge is. I believe that to get the kind of creativity that humans have probably would require that you harness the ability to make computers out of water. I don't see that happening very soon. So there's quite a plenitude that was said there.
Let's see, there's three directions I could go. So number one is choice. You mentioned choice and I do want to ask about free will at some point. So let's put that aside. I'm just putting that in your head right now. And then liquid systems versus solid systems. So there is a company called Liquid AI and there's another one. I don't believe that they're using microfluidics, but it doesn't matter because microfluidics could be the next paradigm for the basis of CPUs. So we could talk about that. And if you see that as a way forward for AI,
The third one that I want to talk about is you mentioned the circulatory system and having a purpose and because it had a purpose, it allowed someone to make a prediction which was then tested. But this word purpose to me, in that case, it sounds like the word function could have been replaced there. How do we know we're not conflating function with purpose and how can one distinguish between an organism simply doing something and an organism doing something for a purpose?
Yes, that's an issue that we deal with in the little book that I highlighted in the talk, Understanding Living Systems, and you're quite right to ask the question. I think, and it's what we say in the little book, that organisms are definitively purposive, meaning they are the origin and initiators of purposive action.
Intentionally so. Now, no doubt there are chemical and physical processes underlying our ability as chemical and physical systems to be able to do that. But I think that is achieved precisely by harnessing the stochasticity within us.
By harnessing, I mean something similar to what the immune system does. So let me just pursue the analogy and then I'll explain what the difference is between attributing purpose to a thing and attributing purpose to an intentional agent. Please. The idea that we present in understanding living systems
Is as I said that organisms are definitively purposive and now it gets a little bit technical and we published the articles in the relevant journals of philosophy to explain what we've got in mind and it goes back to an idea that was also formulated about 40 years ago
by the discoverer of the way in which the immunoglobulins are created in the immune system. It's a man called Edelman and he published a book way back then called Neural Darwinism. His idea was very simple. It is that if the immune system can harness stochasticity within itself as a system,
Surely the nervous system even more complicated than the immune system can harness stochasticity within itself. Now the interesting thing is that that can be demonstrated because when you record from individual neurons in the nervous system they show vast amounts of stochasticity. As a physiologist I sometimes listen to this
flopping around of the voltage in a living nervous cell and it's going all over the place and eventually something fires and an action potential arises and communication occurs. The point I'm making is this. I think Edelman was on to a very interesting idea which is that a similar process could occur in the nervous system such that we can align
Our choices of which behavior to use in particular circumstances to be aligned with the values we accept as human beings in terms of what we should do and what it is good to do.
And there has to be some kind of alignment of that kind. Otherwise, why do we teach our children moral values? Why do we think that it matters? And surely the reason is that the social values that people hold matter to the way their nervous systems work. And I think it's possible to see how alignment between the nervous system processes
can give you what is needed to allow our actions to be aligned with our values. Otherwise you've got a major problem. How on earth does it happen? Because it's clear we do align our actions with our values most of the time. And then this one is, what's the word I want, an inherent criminal
Most people, most of the time, are behaving according to the values of society. So somehow it's got to be possible that the nervous system can, like the immune system, can align its choice with what is needed to attack the virus. Our nervous systems must be able to align our repertoire of behavior
generated of course by our nervous systems to be aligned with the values we subscribe to if you don't suppose that i think you've got a problem because if you don't suppose that then all human beings are criminals because they're incapable of aligning their actions with their social values very clearly that is not true so
I think the challenge for science is to explain that as carefully as it can and what I've tried to do in my work is to see ways in which by analogy with the way the immune system acquires its purpose of action you can see our nervous systems doing something very similar
I can't claim that the moment I can pinpoint exactly where in your brain or my brain the right choice is being made. But what I can say is that it clearly does work like that.
And therefore it's a valid question for scientists to try to study how that happens, just as we worked out in the immune system how that happens. So I think that's another one of the big challenges I would like to put out.
Whether that would win a Nobel Prize, I don't know. But then I don't decide the Nobel Prizes despite my name.
So, okay, this is super interesting because there's someone named Lovelock. I don't know if you know Lovelock's hypothesis about Gia.
Yes, indeed, the Gaia hypothesis. Yes, yes. Where I was going with this is that if you have an alignment of human values at the city level, then at the country level, then at the Western level versus Eastern, then at both Western and Eastern and the collection higher and higher, does it then lead to Lovelock's hypothesis? And what are your thoughts on Lovelock? I suppose on a strict Gaia hypothesis, the Earth would be able to somehow adjust
to the huge amount of co2 we're pouring into the atmosphere and somehow recreate a form of equilibrium the question though is this could that happen in a rapid enough way for humans to survive and i'm not sure we know the answer to that question in fact i think we don't know the answer to that question you see the
If you study the climate changes that have occurred over many thousands and millions of years, there have clearly been absolutely enormous changes in the past. At one time the earth was like a snowball, effectively iced all over. At other times it's been relatively hot.
Is undergone other major changes the early earth did not have oxygen oxygen rose through the microbes that produced it in other words it was life on earth created all the oxygen and we couldn't live if we were trying to do in the earth as it was say.
Three billion years ago, before the production of that huge amount of oxygen by the microbes, there wasn't a possibility of life of the kind we have and we wouldn't therefore exist. So I think the Gaia hypothesis, if I've understood it correctly, it probably
works over very long time scales and clearly the earth has adjusted to huge variations of temperature, huge variations in the gases in the environment, but those changes have taken hundreds of millions of years. We humans don't have that time scale.
If we are to survive, and that's why I make this plea at the end of the little book, you know, to the next generation to try to solve these problems. If we are to survive as a species, I think we probably have to intervene ourselves in what we're doing. And that means doing the best we can to stop the runaway forms of climate change that could occur. But the point I'm making here is
Yes, I think the Lovelock ideas are very important. The extent to which the Earth system as an Earth can self correct itself is an important question. I don't doubt that. And we must be grateful to Lovelock for raising the whole issue. But is it something that can occur over the lifetimes
Let's say a few generations of humans, or is it only processes that can occur over the course of the odd few millions or billions of years? You see that matters enormously. It matters to us as a species. So I think the practical question is not so much whether the Gaia idea is correct or not, but
Could it be that it can't come to our rescue given the threats we've got? That's the much more important issue at the moment. So there are a certain set of people, some are anti-natalists and some are human extinction advocates who say, well, look, humans are a cancer on the earth. We should die. It's good for us to die.
To be clear for those of you who are interested, actually an antinatalist is a philosophical position that argues against procreation for various reasons.
Some is that people believe bringing new humans into the earth is morally wrong due to the suffering to that child and also due to the environmental impact it causes. Then there's something else called the voluntary human extinction movement, which is a movement advocating for the voluntary cessation of human reproduction to eventually lead to the gradual extinction of humanity, again aiming to reduce the human impact on earth. And then there are also people who are called eco-extremists,
who are environmentalists that believe drastic measures, including the reduction, potentially even the elimination of the human population, is necessary to protect the environment, and that the environment should be prioritized over us. We should die. It's good for us to die. What would you say to that? Well, from which point of view? I mean, from the
point of view of the dinosaurs they probably didn't want to be eliminated but they were and from the point of view of other organisms it was a good thing so from the point of view of the tiny mammals who are running around
At the time the dinosaurs lived, it was a huge opportunity for them to develop into the species we now call humans. So it all depends on your point of view. I think life will survive. That's what I strongly believe.
Life has a living system not necessarily a human system survives in the most extraordinary circumstances there are bacteria that can survive in the thermal vents of the earth where the temperature can reach way over a hundred degrees yes it doesn't boil that depth in the earth because of the pressure on it the point i'm making is nevertheless correct
These are very special bacteria and other microbes that can survive at temperatures way beyond what we could survive in. And what are called the tardigrades, these are tiny mite-like organisms. They are multicellular organisms and they can walk around. They can become completely desiccated, completely dried.
And they will survive in vacuum of space and they can be taken on the surface of a spaceship and they survive. They will live again once water is available.
well and of course plants have had this ability for a long time their seeds are almost completely desiccated it's only when water enters into them that they germinate and life returns so i think the answer to your question is what's in whose interest is it that humans survive
And I think the only certainty you can have is in our interests to survive, whether it's in the interests of the earth that we should survive, I think is a very open question. I think if we disappear, the earth will continue to be a place with living organisms on it. It just won't be us.
Now, if that doesn't worry you, so be it. If it does worry you, we better do something about it. That's my way of looking at this. So as we talk about choosing to survive, let's talk about free will. What are your views on free will? Where does it fit into your theories or your framework? Right. Now,
I'm reasonably well known to be a bit of a philosopher as well as a scientist. And a physiologist. That's right. I think what I said earlier is the key here. I think what organisms are doing and certainly humans are doing is to harness vast amounts of stochasticity within ourselves as
Bunches of chemicals, including, of course, the chemical that provides the solute in which everything else is dissolved and that is water. And I think that the question, are we fully determined by those molecules or are we as living agents capable of directing the way
In which that stochasticity is used, I think the answer clearly favors the idea that we use it. That's what we do with our immune systems when we harness the stochastic variations in the B cells that generate the immunoglobulins.
And the choice is then made as to which then are given the message to reproduce and those will only be the ones that managed to produce the immunoglobulin that attacks the virus. And I think in a similar way, our nervous systems are built in such a way and out of water systems, not silicon systems,
that there is huge amounts of stochasticity that can be harnessed. Now you can ask the question but you know if you knew enough about that stochasticity couldn't you just reproduce it with a computer and you would then be able to predict what Dennis Noble will do or what Kurt will do or whoever you want to take. Well the question then is
What kind of free action are you looking for? You see, I think there is what the philosophers call the only form of free will worth having. And that form of free will is how we are determined by our social interactions and in particular the values we subscribe to
I mean, that's why by and large, most of us are not criminals. That's why most of us conform to the values of society. And it's the stochasticity of our interactions with society as we develop from being a baby through to being a youngster and then growing up into an adult that somehow channels our
Behavior into conforming to the principles of society
Now, some philosophers say, well, but that's still determined. You know, Denis Noble is determined by the values that he's inherited from the social interactions he's had over the course of his lifetime. I would say, yes, and long may be so. Now, if you want to say that's not free will because you're determined by your social interactions, so be it. If you don't want to call it free will, that's fine by me. What I think is that it is
Never the less the process by which we become responsible agents as we grow up and we need that social process of interacting with others because without that we wouldn't be the social animals we are.
So I think the question of free will is a very deep one but it isn't simply answered on the basis of asking could a chemical system have free will. I think it has to be answered in terms of talking about the social interactions but then that becomes a more deeply philosophical issue rather than a purely scientific one. It's
To what extent do we conform to the values of our society? And I think it's evident that most of us do. Otherwise it'd be chaos in human society. Sir, can you tell me more about the concept of harnessing stochasticity? So for instance, how does it differ from traditional accounts of random mutation and natural selection? Yes, it's a very simple idea.
Of course the new darwin is just return to them for the moment they also admit that stochasticity occurs no question about that is what they call the random variations in our DNA and they then think that.
an exceedingly slow process of natural selection weeds out the bad mutations and keeps the very few good mutations and that's the process of natural selection. I argue that sure that must occur but I think much more than that is occurring because
Clearly that's not how our immune systems manage. They're not waiting for us to die. They're actually trying to prevent us dying. You see natural selection between individuals in a species. It works by who dies young and doesn't reproduce and who lives in order to reproduce and the stronger ones survive
Hi,
Processes that living systems have themselves evolved can go faster than standard natural selection. That's why I think that more occurs than just natural selection. It clearly does so within the lifetimes of our own bodies and I think it does so in the life cycles of species too. If you ask the question how
Do species sometimes react quite rapidly to changes in the conditions in which they exist, like changes in climate and so on? Of course, the first changes will be epigenetic. If you are birds that are trying to fly at a high altitude, you will eventually evolve the hemoglobins that can capture oxygen in the thin oxygen
Concentration that occurs at high altitude and they do that not just by waiting simply for natural selection because you can show that the process in different birds different species has used stochasticity at the DNA level in totally different ways arriving at the same
End result, which is the ability to capture oxygen even at high altitude. The point I'm making is that epigenetics changes the game because when there's a big environmental change, most of the population will react epigenetically to that well before any random mutations could enable them to react. And then the question is,
How can those epigenetic changes be assimilated into the genome? Well, Waddington, the famous developmental biologist in the 1950s, 1960s passed away, I think a bit later in the 1970s. He showed how that could be achieved. He did it in fruit flies and showed that epigenetic changes could be assimilated into the DNA.
I published a paper with a young scientist called Daniel Phillips in the Journal of Physiology just last year, 2023, explaining how I think epigenetic change in a species can lead to speciation and therefore to branching evolution. And it all relies on the concept
Now, that was a part of a focused issue on the physiology of evolution published by the Journal of Physiology. Actually, its full publication only occurred this year in 2024. But the publication that I'm talking about by Noble and Phillips was precisely on this question. How could epigenetic changes speed up
and facilitate speciation. And I think that's a very important issue. When I hear the words that evolution works faster than random mutation, and also I hear the word purpose, it reminds me of Stephen Meyer. I don't know if you know who Stephen Meyer is. But for context, he's an advocate of intelligent design. I've heard of him and I don't know his work. Okay, yeah. Well, then I can skip right. So how about another individual?
Rupert Sheldrake. Are you aware of Rupert Sheldrake's work? Yes, or indeed, I've interacted with Rupert Sheldrake in some of the debates in the Institute of Art and Ideas, which is the big cultural festival here in the United Kingdom. Yes. No, I do understand quite a bit where Rupert Sheldrake is coming from. He's another major critic, incidentally, of the neo-Darwinist view
He has an idea called Morphic Resonance.
Well, look, it's not actually crazy. I know what most people think about Rupert Sheldrake, which is he's all over the place and you don't know whether anything he says has any significance. He's actually a very well-trained chemist and biochemist from Cambridge University. He thought very deeply about these issues.
And I think the idea of resonance shouldn't be dismissed. Can you explain that idea? Yes. Right. Oh, yes. OK. Well, actually, it might be best for me to just explain the little book that I published nearly 20 years ago, The Music of Life. Yes, sure. I use the analogy of music for a very particular reason.
It proved to be a useful metaphor for many life processes like, for example, the happen to be almost as many genes
underlying the making of proteins in our bodies as there are organ pipes in the biggest organ in the world which is in the is the Wanamaker organ in Philadelphia and not surprisingly in the United States and I draw the analogy that of course it's not the organ itself that creates the music it's Bach who wrote his fugues and the player who plays the notes which would be the equivalent
of the genes here but i have thought further about this question of resonance it seems to me that quite a number of oscillatory processes in the body that processes that go up and down like this in a rhythm the heart rhythm the respiratory rhythm the circadian rhythm the monthly rhythms that humans show
and even rhythms over many years that certain species show indicate that there are associations between one type and the other. Let me give one very good example. As I breathe in and out
If somebody was recording the frequency of my heartbeat, you'd find the variations in the frequency of the heartbeat in synchrony with my breathing in and out. This is incidentally how long-term meditators manage to bring their heart rates down, because when you breathe like this in a meditative way, in quickly, out very slowly,
There are physiological processes we don't need to go into the technical detail which actually create that slowing down of the heart rate. Now the point I'm making here is that we already know their associations between
some processes occur very rapidly like the heartbeat and other processes occur more slowly like the breathing respiratory process and then others occur even more slowly a daily rhythm or a monthly rhythm or whatever it might be so the idea of morphic resonance and morphic just means the shape of something the
What it manifests in what it shows, it is the shape. The idea of morphic resonance in Sheldrake's view is simply the idea that such was the word I want.
Such entrainment that's the word i think i'm off right of one rhythm by another so that there are associations between the two is proven that's not in doubt now how deep all of this goes.
And whether his idea that somehow most of the cells of our body have morphic resonance with the other cells, I don't know. I've not done the physiology to work that out. But it's not totally crazy. All cells pour out these vesicles we were discussing earlier that can pass to the germ line. All cells communicate with other cells in the body through the extracellular vesicles. I'm pretty certain
That that is one of the ways in which a multicellular organism like us can survive because unless individual cells recognize that they are part of a tissue that cooperates, we get cancer. What is cancer? It is cells going off on their own and doing their own thing and very much to the disadvantage of us as an organism.
The point I'm making here is that I think the idea that cells talk to each other in this kind of way certainly would be a medium through which certain kinds of resonance could be created. But I'm not proving anything at the moment on that. I'm just simply saying the ideas of morphic resonance shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. They just need good further experimentation to work out
What are the ways in which the different cyclic processes in the body entrain each other and influence each other? That they do we already know. The extent to which they do it, I think, remains open for further thought and investigation.
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This is interesting because in Chinese medicine, there's also an emphasis on holism, even though we didn't use that word recently. Holistics has its threads throughout this conversation. Indeed it is. And I agree with the word holism. It is
But let me also say something about holism. I know the neo-Darwinists particularly will dismiss me as completely off my head when I talk about holism. They will think it is all terribly vague. Actually, it's a mathematical necessity. And this may surprise people about
Well, let me see now. It's 2016, so it's now about eight years ago. I published a book called Dance to the Tune of Life. I'll send the details of that to you. But I published a book. Sure. How does it subtitle biological relativity? Biological relativity. Biological relativity is the idea that there is no privileged level of causation within a biological system.
Now, that is a mathematical necessity for the following reasons, and I can illustrate it best with how I modeled the heartbeat. Oh, over 60 years ago now, when I was a research student, I was looking at ion channels in the heart cells, characterizing those so that we could fit equations to characterize their physical properties.
And then you can work out how that influences the overall electrical potential in the heart cell, because the heart rhythm is an electrical process. The voltage on the cell literally goes up and down like that. Now, what I showed there was that you could not explain the rhythm from the molecular elements alone.
If you take those proteins and you put them in a solution with no membrane around them, in other words not in a cell, they will not oscillate. There's no rhythm. If therefore you remove the cell membrane and its electrical potential, it doesn't work.
Incidentally, that's also true of mitochondria, our energy factories in our bodies. If you remove the electrical potential across the membranes, the system no longer works. So that's not itself a new discovery. Now, what I then came up with is a very simple point.
You can fit differential equations. Sorry to be technical for a moment. Sorry to interrupt. Just so you know, Dennis, my background's in mathematical physics. Yes. And this podcast, the audience members are researchers in physics, math, philosophy, biology, and so on. So you can be technical. Don't worry. OK. So they won't find differential equations being referred to. Yes. That's very good to know. I'm delighted. Anyway, the point is very simple. However many
details you put into the equations for the differential equations and the functions used in those equations you need the boundary conditions otherwise there's no solution to those equations every mathematician knows that
Where do those boundary conditions come from? Well, in a sense, the word gives it away, doesn't it? In the case of a cell, it's what the membranes constrain the molecules to do. Those are the boundary conditions. So holistic view is simply the enumeration of the boundary conditions in a differential equation model. So that's why I call it a mathematical necessity.
And I think that your listeners who would understand the mathematics here will readily understand when I say that there's no solution to a set of differential equations without the boundary conditions being put in. Those are the influence from the higher levels of organization, because it's those higher levels of organization that constrain what the molecules themselves are doing.
Think of how life must have emerged long ago in, we don't know exactly where, perhaps in the minute fissures and cracks in thermal vents, who knows, but until the living system, the networks of interactions that were forming autocatalytic sets, meaning
chemical reactions that could continue indefinitely until they were enclosed within membranes they would have just dispersed so somehow or another that constraint the forming of a membrane around a catalytic set would have been a key element in any form
of evolution of what we call life. So right from the very beginning, the boundary conditions by the structure in which the molecules are to be found are critical element in determining how they behave. And so there's nothing terribly surprising in that the principle of biological relativity is simply that you will always need the boundary conditions as well as the differential equations.
So that's extremely interesting. Are you making an analogy between the evolution laws and reductionism and the boundary conditions and holism? I am saying that the boundary conditions are what give the system its whole. Yes, that's right. If what you're referring to as the whole is the structure of the system, then it is that structure
That creates the boundary conditions cells are packed with structures that do that. The molecules are not free to move easily from one compartment to another. They're they're restricted to various compartments. That is itself a structural imposition of
constraint on the molecules involved. All I'm saying is that all molecules in living systems are constrained in the same kind of way. So yes, if you want to say that holism is the existence of boundary conditions from structure, then I think that's absolutely right. But then you've got to look at the whole to see the structure. If you look at just the individual pixels in the message, you won't understand the message.
Is the same point isn't yes and you can't understand the movements of individual molecules in a system without understanding the constraints produced by the whole system which means the structure of the system.
So professor, if we're going to say, hey, we're not rejecting reductionism entirely, it's a valuable tool, it's we understand biological mechanisms, you need reductionism as well. If we're going to say that, and then at the same time, we need a holistic perspective to understand how those mechanisms interact and give rise to emergent properties, etc. Then is that a dualistic view, where the holes and the parts exist as separate entities?
Not sure that I fully get the question there. Can you put that in? So if you have a separate set of laws for the whole and the parts, do you see that as a form of dualism? Oh, OK. Oh, right. A form of dualism. Yes, I like that question very much. I could go on for ages about dualism. I would try and be brief. In one sense,
Yes, because what we're saying is reductionism alone is not enough to describe a system that is functional. You need the constraints which form the boundary conditions for the behavior of the molecular components. That much is very obvious. I don't know whether one really wants to call that dualism. I mean, here we come to the history of
dualistic interpretations of life and of course inevitably we're back to Descartes and his what I regard as the huge mistake of thinking that he had to invent some ghostly thing here that interacts with the brain. I don't think we need that at all. What it seems to me is
The deep issue here is does, and I think the question you're asking, does a form of dualism come back in the sense that there's an interaction between the whole and its parts? Well, if you want to say that is true, I don't think I'd want necessarily to disagree with you because saying it that way that the whole
Is constraining the parts gets the point i'm making about biological relativity and there being no privileged level of organization for causation but this is not dualism in the sense of postulating a very different kind of thing from the physical structure that we know because
What is forming that structure is itself the molecules that form the thing, right? So I, I'm not sure that it's bringing, it's certainly not bringing dualism back in the sense that Descartes was using that word. Um, and I think therefore we need to trade very carefully here. The trouble is that dualism has a philosophical history to it too, doesn't it? It isn't as it were.
Free to suddenly make up in a different way. I'm just I suppose what I'm saying is I'm a little unhappy With the idea that because we need an interaction between the whole and the parts that we're bringing back a form of dualism We're not bringing back a form of dualism in the sense that Descartes meant that much I think is clear so if it's the case then that the whole is
made up of the parts and so they're a part of the same underlying substance so we don't have a dualism in terms of substance we could the whole is made up of the parts absolutely right yeah is that not then a statement of reductionism let me just be clear there's a couple different kinds of reductionism so there's an ontological reductionism which will stay yes all of
The entities at some higher level are made up of the entities at a lower level and then there's a theoretical reductionism which says you can't make sense of say a financial system in terms of electrons because they're at different levels.
No, I understand. The problem with reductionism applied to biology is that it's much more plausible to think that a biological system is just its molecules than to think that a banking system is
is just the molecules of which the buildings and computers that the banking system uses consist. Absolutely right. Yes, the problem with reductionism in relation to biology is how far it is taken, taken to the extent of saying that, well, if we knew enough about all the molecules, we could predict exactly what will happen.
Well, I would say you'd probably need to build a computer out of more than the solar system to enable you to do that. Oh, okay. I misspoke then when I said there are two types of reductionism, there are at least three types. So there's the ontological reductionism, then there's the theoretical and then there's the epistemic reductionism, which says that we can't in practice predict
Exactly. So are you saying that epistemic reductionism is, is incorrect, but ontological reductionism is correct? Well, it might be. Um, but then we need to ask a deeper question. Don't we then is the universal open system or not? Hmm. So you can't be reductionist about open system. And I don't think we know the answer to that question. Interesting.
Very important. If the universe is an open system, meaning there is no limit, we can just go on finding more and more stuff, more and more things, then I don't know what the difference between ontological and epistemological reductionism would amount to.
the universe is a closed system, then I suppose in some sense it must be possible to imagine computing it and being able to predict its future behavior to any degree of accuracy. Whether you'd need more material to make the computers to do that than the universe itself contains, I don't know the answer to that question. I strongly
Combinatorial explosion in biology is a phenomenal problem. Just take 20,000 genes, about the number we think we've got of real protein making DNA in our genomes. I once did a calculation about 20 years ago now, how many combinations of those functions could there be
It turns out to be a number approximately 10 to the 70,000. There are only 10 to the 80 or 82, depends on your view of the universe, particles in the whole universe. So it's easy to show that the possible
combinations functional combinations that could occur even just between 20 000 genes let alone all the other processes epigenetic and so on that occur in living organisms means that you've got a combinatorial explosion problem way beyond anything we can cope with so i think it's
In my view, very unlikely that the difference between ontological and epistemological will ever matter to us. That I think is what I draw as a conclusion from this part of our discussion. It is as though epistemologically
Restricted in knowing whether the ontological possibility can even exist. I know it's a funny way of trying to put it, but I think it's the best I can do. Directly after this podcast, I emailed Dennis because I had a question about the open nature of the universe. I'll read it and then I'll read his comments. Dear Dennis, in our podcast you posited that the universe may be an open system,
However, this prompts the question, what exactly is the universe open to? We need to clarify what's meant by the quote-unquote universe. If we're referring to the observable universe as an open system, then that's a more straightforward assertion. However, if we consider the universe with the capital U as the totality of all that exists, then this claim becomes less clear.
The universe with a capital U, defined as the collection of everything that exists, which could also be considered reality. If we were to discover something external to our current understanding of the lowercase U universe, we would naturally incorporate it into this larger framework, thereby expanding our conception of the capital U universe.
So given this definition, one could argue that the capital U universe is a necessarily closed system. If there is something beyond or interacting with what we currently define as the universe, then it implies that our initial definition is incomplete. We would then revise our understanding to include whatever this new component is, thus maintaining that the capital U universe, by its definition, encompasses everything, all that there is, and interacts with nothing outside itself.
Dear Kurt, good question. I think it will all depend on what metaphysical stance we adopt. If we think
that the universe may be infinite, then anything we see will be open to everything we cannot see, even though that may be infinite. Of course, people may prefer a finite universe as with the current model. I can't see how we can, with our present knowledge, know which metaphysical view is correct. I incline towards the view that the current model is deficient.
We have two places we can go. We can go to multicellularity or we can go to the hard problem of consciousness. Which one do you want to go?
It might be, it might be a good idea to take multicellularity. I think we can say more about. Yes. Yes. Yes. Multicellularity is of course something that emerged. Well, we don't know exactly, but possibly a very long time ago, even bacteria will form films and cooperate within the film.
There'll be millions of bacteria in any given film on the surface, for example, of water or rocks or whatever it might be. And they communicate with each other to determine how frequently they divide. So there's a kind of
Multi-cellularity even in a colony of. Supposedly completely free unicellular organisms and maybe do the same.
The amoeba dextilium is a very interesting example of this. It starts life as single spores which contain enough DNA and proteins to when mixed with water for the spores to germinate and what emerges is an amoeba like unicellular organism that can freely move around, feed,
and grow divide and so on and at certain stages in its life cycle particularly when water is becoming more scarce the individual amoeba congregate into a kind of slug almost like a mollusk that creeps through the environment looking for whatever food it can find
And then as the desiccation occurs even further, and the environment becomes even drier, the slug grows a stalk, which sticks out like the stalk of a plant. And at the top of the stalk, it grows a cat, which is full of the future spores that start the life cycle again. This organism, Dictostelium, therefore goes
at different stages in its life all the way through all stages a spore that develops into a unicellular organism that under the right environmental conditions will start to congregate to form a slug that moves as a complete multicellular organism that again under the right conditions will generate a stalk like a plant
With spore containing caps which then eventually open the wind blows them away and the whole process starts again. Now what is the organism here? Is it the individual amoeba like single cell crawling around? Is it the slug? Is it the fruiting body that grows the spores? Um,
Seems to me there's no simple answer to that question. There's no doubt that is a colony that becomes effectively a multicellular organism under the right conditions
Behaves like a multicellular organism in the sense that there's specialization between the different parts of the system, particularly in the fruiting body as it's called, which then liberates the spores. So I would imagine that multicellularity probably began in that kind of way and how it then emerged to become the kind of multicellularity that
Expanded enormously at the time of the Cambrian explosion roughly 500 million years ago who knows but that is exactly what happened. Now there was a critical evolutionary development that made that possible because the big problem and here again I speak as a physiologist for a multicellular organism is how does it get enough energy
to support all of its cells you see the ones near the center of a body will need to be provided with oxygen and that requires a circulation which comes back to the need for a circulatory process now all of that requires enormous amounts of energy the earliest organisms on earth did not have that that arose
through a particular kind of bacterium fusing with another microorganism to form the mitochondria. Wait, just a moment. Sorry, professor. I don't see why it's a problem. Why is it a problem that a cell on the inside of a multicellular organism needs some resource, say oxygen, and that it would be difficult to transport that oxygen to it when we already know that if you have a membrane and you have tubulin. So we already established that the tubulin can transport
Signals extremely quickly. So why would it be within a cell? Yes. So extracellular is different. Yeah, where extracellular is different. Yes, you've got it in a nutshell. Once you've got multicellular organisms, you've got an extracellular space. Now communication within the extracellular space requires a circulation. In other words, it requires something to flow to enable the products that the
Individual cells can use to create energy, in our case oxygen, to flow between them otherwise they will just die.
Inside a cell, intracellular, it's like a city that's connected with the subway system and roads, but in between cells, so extracellular, it's far slower as if there's carrier pigeons as the communication process. Yes, it is. It's a circulation problem. And we call railways and roads and so on as circulatory systems. Yes, it is analogous. There's no question about that.
Now that was all dependent on a very particular event in evolution which is the fusion of a bacterium with another kind of prokaryote that's the simple cells before the kinds of cells we have and that bacterium brought the ability in its chemical reactions to generate 10 times more ATP
That's adenosine triphosphate, which is the energy contributing molecule in living systems to create 10 times as much ATP for the same amount of oxygen being used. That was a huge jump in energy production. Without that happening, I think we can state categorically multicellular organisms like us would not be possible.
That's why I think that evolutionary stage, which was a symbiogenesis between two totally different species of unicellular organism, one a bacterium, the other a different kind of prokaryote. I think that was a critical stage in the evolution of life. Now, does this have any bearing on your third way of evolution?
Well, yes, because you will not find much said about this in the evolutionary biology textbooks. Around four, is it, three to four years ago, James Shapiro and I published an article in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology asking the question, out of the
Textbooks that we consulted and popular books too, because we took for tumors textbook called evolution, which is the standard by far. It is published by Oxford University Press, an enormous volume for tumor. And I think his collaborators, either Fitzpatrick or Kirkpatrick. I don't remember the name now. Anyway, we looked at around 40
Major discoveries, including symbiogenesis, that we think are important in 20th century biology. How many of those occurred in Fatuma's book, in the books published by Richard Dawkins, and there were one or two other books that we looked through? The answer is very few. Not more than around three or four out of 40.
All of those 40 are referred to in papers published by members of the Third Way of Evolution. So we've already done the obvious test, which is, do evolutionary biologists who claim as neo-Darwinists that there's nothing new in what the Third Way people are saying? Well, we've demonstrated that there is in the sense that very major discoveries have been ignored.
Just taking one or two, Barbara McClintock, she found the ability of organisms to rearrange their chromosomes and therefore their genes way back in the 1940s and 1950s published in the journal Genetics in the 1950s. She was ignored almost entirely until 30 years later,
Around 1982 or 3, I think it was, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of mobile genetic elements. Now, will you see that highlighted in the books I've just referred to? No, not there at all. Why not? Well, I don't know. I suppose the one answer would be
Well, it's not supposed to happen that organisms can rearrange their DNA. They have to wait on the standard theory. They have to wait until a mutation occurs. Do you think it could also be because you had mentioned this was the standard introductory text. So in the same way you don't teach general relativity at first year, even though general relativity is correct, you teach Newtonian and special relativity. Do you think it's akin to that? Or that
No, I see the idea. Yes, you teach the basics. This is what Richard Dawkins will say. Oh, Dennis, let's teach the basics first. And then we can go on to the complexities like epigenetics and mobile genetic elements and so on.
Up to a point true, except what I said in my presentation, which is that four of the major assumptions made by the neo-Darwinist modern synthesis are simply not true.
So there's something here much more important than whether it is an extension which comes after you've learnt the fundamentals. These are the fundamentals. If you think that DNA does not self-replicate
If you think that organisms can change their genomes and if you also think that the central dogma does not prevent organisms from doing that then you're not agreeing with the fundamentals of that form of biology.
It isn't a matter of extension. It's a matter of fundamentals. Though even that case could be made in the physics sense because general relativity disagrees in the fundamentals with Newtonian mechanics and even special relativity. Well, that's an interesting question and is a very deep one, of course, for the physics experts to try to deal with. And I sympathize with the dilemma
But it's not really comparable, I think. Our problem with relativity and quantum mechanics is that it, as I understand it, it requires a synthesis at the moment we can't even outline. And I know people are trying very hard to find ways in which string theory and related theories might eventually give
a solution to that problem. But that's a solution to a theoretical problem. I'm saying that in relation to biology, the problem isn't a theoretical problem. It is the experimental fact that those foundations don't any longer get supported by the experimental molecular biology. So I think we're in a very different situation in biology.
The experimental facts are already clear and they don't support the modern synthesis view. I wrote an article called the illusions of the modern synthesis in 2021. Well, what I did in that article was to outline the four, the reasons for in detail
the four foundations that I think have not been supported by the molecular biology. There's never been an answer to that paper from the neo-darwinists and I don't see how there could be. There is no doubt about the fact that you need a living system to enable DNA to replicate faithfully. There's no doubt about the fact that
organisms can change genomes happen during the pandemic and it happens all the time and there's no serious argument about whether DNA can self replicate it can't it needs a living system to do so so i think i repeat what i said earlier on these are not disagreements over
creates problem in physics is a disagreement over what the facts show. And I stand by the facts and I think they show that the foundations have already crumbled. So before we wrap up, I would like to know, does your theory have any explanation for how evolution would produce something that's maladaptive? Maladaptive is doing that all the time.
That's just an observation. Very many maladaptive organisms arise and of course generally speaking natural selection will make sure they don't survive beyond their own lifetime. Does my view create any particular insight there?
I'm not sure that it does other than to say that I think once you accept that epigenetic changes can be assimilated into the genome, you can evolve much more rapidly than by pure natural selection. And incidentally, this was a point that Darwin appreciated too.
In his lifetime, he worried many times over the question. My book was given the title, or I chose the title, The Origin of Species. Well, actually, it's slightly different. It's on the origin of species. But he puzzled for many years over whether natural selection could really be
Full explanation for the origin of species and he was quite certain towards the end of his life when he wrote his later books that he could not be and his argument was very simple. He invented the idea natural selection as distinct from artificial selection, meaning of course the choice of breeders of animals, plants or whatever.
to choose the forms of organism that they want to develop. And that is clearly not natural selection. Now there's something very interesting about that distinction and which Darwin himself fully appreciated. That process has not, over the many tens of thousands of years for which we've done it, it's never produced yet a new species. It's produced
Fantastic variety in the variations, but by and large the organisms can still interbreed. Yes. Now that raises a very big question. The artificial selection breeders know this so well that they have to prevent interbreeding for their new varieties to be given a chance to develop.
So Darwin naturally asked the question, OK, in the Galapagos Islands, it's not too difficult to see how there was reproductive isolation just through species being on different islands. They don't communicate, so they don't reproduce together. What happens in vast spaces where there aren't islands?
and he knew that something in addition to natural selection was needed and it was his collaborator George Romanis who collaborated with him in the last 10 years of his life who led the way on that. Now he didn't know about epigenetics but I think if he'd known about it he would have used
the epigenetic route. This relates of course to the question whether natural selection alone could have been responsible for the origin of species. What I'm saying is very simple. It is that Darwin towards the end of his life was not convinced that natural selection alone would have done it. His neo-Darwinist opponents Alfred Russell Wallace and
August Weissman disagreed with him and thought that natural selection could explain the origin of species. That is what the paper that I've done with Daniel Phillips in the recent edition of the Journal of Physiology tackles as a question. We resurrect what Darwin and his collaborator George Romanes were working on at the time when Darwin passed away.
And we think they were on the right lines. So I think the important thing here is to reiterate what I said much earlier on in our discussion, which is that Darwinism is not neo-Darwinism. My problem is with neo-Darwinism, not so much at all with what Darwin supported as ideas on evolution.
Would you be willing to have a conversation with Dawkins on this channel, Richard Dawkins? Absolutely. So if he would agree, absolutely. I enjoy talking with Richard, actually. I've done so for more than 56 years, because long before he wrote The Selfish Gene, we interacted in Oxford. I was his thesis examiner. Oh, well, that's an interesting little historical tidbit.
At the beginning of the debate or conversation as we agreed to describe it when it occurred last year at the Institute of Art and Ideas,
He started with a very amusing comment to the audience. He said, I'm feeling a bit nervous today because that man over there, all those years ago, he was my thesis examiner and of course had the audience in uproar of laughter. Anyway, I tell you one thing that I think is very good about that discussion, although I don't think Richard himself ever properly answered the points I was making.
It was a very courteous debate. If ever you're losing in that debate, you can retroactively take away his PhD and remove all his credentials. I would be only too happy to welcome a discussion between the two of us on your channel. OK, so sorry, you were giving an anecdote about the time that you were speaking with Richard. Yes. Well, well, what is it that I can say here?
Anybody who studies the debate or conversation that we agreed to have in Hay on Why two years ago will see that to the very detailed molecular biological points that I made about DNA not being a self-replicator, about vesicles passing from the body to the germline and the epigenetic changes that that could
produce that can be transgenerational. I think the feeling I had about that debate was that he's an extremely good debater. What he will do is to move off in another direction rather than deal with the issue. And that's what he did time and time again. You don't have to trust me on that. There's a transcript of the whole debate.
I can send you the link for that too. You feel like there are rhetorical tricks being played? He is a rhetorician, yes. He's a very clever debater. I think he doesn't know the detailed molecular biology that I was referring to. And so I think he went off in a different direction. Let me give just one example of that.
Yes, I pointed out that his test for whether a gene was causal or not was to measure its association with whatever it is thought to be the cause of. So if you think you've got a gene which produces cancer, you ask how well strongly associated is that gene with cancer? And I said, look, the problem with that, Richard, is that you're using
A word cause in a different sense. Because you're you're talking or giving the impression that it's an active cause in the sense that molecules bumping into each other actively interact with each other. There are many other forms of cause DNA is not an active cause was my point.
And the reason is that it isn't like proteins. Proteins are active causes. They actually do things. They are enzymes. They make reactions occur that would otherwise not occur. DNA does none of that. It's simply a form. It is a pattern, if you like, which gets used by the protein making machinery of the body to create a protein.
It doesn't actually itself actively do that. It's the ribosome in the cell together with all the various processes there that enable proteins to be made that interprets that form. Now, many years ago, over 2000 years ago, one of the earliest Greek philosophers, Aristotle, made this point. There are fundamental differences between causation by shape
Causation by form, causation by physical interaction and causation by final cause. Those are at least four forms of causation. They're all fundamentally different. Now, I don't know why, but you know, he didn't seem to see that where he just simply said, well, but Dennis, they are active causes. You know, I'd already made the point that
A form is not a cause in the same sense the molecules bumping into each other. There are different forms of causation. We come back now, of course, to boundary conditions and differential equations. The differential equations are like the mechanics. The boundary conditions are like the form. And Aristotle would have agreed with that immediately. I don't know why, but he doesn't seem to see this distinction.
But I'd welcome the opportunity to take it all up again with him. Yes, and I may be coming to the UK at some point in the next couple of months, so it may even be possible to arrange this in person. Indeed, indeed. We'll talk about that off air. So now before we end, the last couple of questions are just on purpose. What is a formal definition of purpose that is amenable to scientific investigation? Purpose one, not intentional purpose.
Yes, I think the formal definition, very good question Kurt, thank you. No, the formal definition I would give would be the ability of an agent to harness stochasticity to make it useful. In other words, to give purpose to something that it creates.
And we can investigate that because you can measure the stochasticity and as in the case of the immune system, you can work out how it enables it to be purposive through issuing instructions to some cells to reproduce to others to die. And that's exactly how the immune system manages to select out of the stochastic variations, the ones that work.
So I would say that any organism or any process that is capable of doing that is purposive. And I think that would be my scientific definition of purposive. I noticed that you use the word purposive instead of purposeful. Now, is there a reason for that? Can one just make that substitution? Well, I'm purposive avoids
The implication of purposeful, which is that there's a kind of thing that is the purposeful thing. I think that's a philosophical mistake, just as with consciousness.
The nest in that word gives the idea that somehow consciousness is a thing it isn't it's a process and we make a fundamental error if we think that you can be identified. Francis crick before he died.
Um, worked a lot on the issue of consciousness and he was, he was looking for a place in the brain where he thought consciousness actually arises. I don't think that's even a sensible question to ask. It's a process of the entire system. And so I'm, I try to avoid words that reify is the philosophical term for it, isn't it?
create a thing out of a process, because I think it's best to leave them as processes that we investigate, rather than thinking that in some way we can, as it were, grab hold of it as a thing. That that's the basic point between purposive and purposeful. Purposive emphasizes the process involved. Okay, now the ontological status of purposive is
That it's a fundamental property, that it's an emergent property, or that it's a descriptive concept. Well, it's certainly descriptive because as I said earlier on, you can produce a definition that enables you to investigate it scientifically. The harnessing of stochasticity to produce function. I think that will do it. Now, ontological, this raises huge questions that I don't think I can tackle.
Incidentally, the ending of my book on biological relativity does to the tune of life. The final chapter is called the Relativity of Epistemology precisely because I think there are limits to what our knowledge can manage to cope with and I live with that fact. I don't find it a problem to live with it. But the coming to the question whether
purposefulness yes or purposeive so how do you want to put it is an ontologically necessary feature of the universe i've no idea and i understand why it asks the question it's obviously of deep significance to religious thinkers but i freely admit i'm not in that category i'm not a theologian i'm not
I'm not even qualified to deal with those kinds of questions. I'm not opposed incidentally to people using metaphysics to clarify their ideas. We do that all the time. We do it in mathematics too. Has anybody ever met the square root of minus one?
Well, no, there's no way you can point to say, but is it useful? My God, is it useful? When I discovered as a young student, how useful the forms of mathematics that use the square root of minus one to get you a solution where, of course, in the end, it falls out of the solution. So you haven't got it left at the end. I mean, it's just amazing what can be done.
And I think of metaphysics as not dissimilar in the sense that it enables us to
Clarify possibilities that possibly we can never empirically investigate. That's super interesting because you see it as an intermediate step. So akin to a painter who traces at first with pencil and you don't see that in the end because the painting is over it. But if you were to remove it, the quality of the painting would suffer. Yeah, that's right.
That's why I use the analogy with the square root of minus one, because that's a bit similar, isn't it? You use it and eventually it disappears. Yes. No, I think I'd like to be fairly straightforward on this. I think there probably are metaphysical speculations about which we will never know what to say. Like, is the universe open or not or closed?
I have no idea how we would ever answer that question, but my goodness, it's a very important question. I have no doubt about that. Last question. You've touched on this briefly in your previous talk, which will again be included in the description for people who are wondering. Dennis Noble gave the inaugural lecture on rethinking the foundations of biology centered around the question of what lies beyond Darwin. You should watch it. It's quite succinct. It's only 35 minutes or so in length.
What advice do you have for young people entering the field? Advice given to young people. The world is your oyster because if I'm right, there's a huge amount of biology still to be discovered. Processes well beyond what you'll find in the textbooks today. So I think coming into biology at the present time is a very good time to come into it.
The other piece of advice I give to young people is what I quoted from the ending of my little book with my brother Ray Noble.
Professor, thank you for spending three hours with me in total. That's perfectly okay. Right. Bye bye for now then.
Firstly, thank you for watching, thank you for listening. There's now a website, curtjymungle.org, and that has a mailing list. The reason being that large platforms like YouTube, like Patreon, they can disable you for whatever reason, whenever they like.
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▶ View Full JSON Data (Word-Level Timestamps)
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"text": " As a Toe Listener, you get a special discount. Head over to Economist.com slash TOE to subscribe. That's Economist.com slash TOE for your discount. Close your eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax."
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"text": " And let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-CONTACTS. Oh my gosh, they're so fast! And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-CONTACTS.COM today to save on your first order."
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"text": " Climb right, there's a huge amount of biology still to be discovered. Processes well beyond what you'll find in the textbooks today. The experimental facts are already clear. Neo-Darwinism is dead. Does the claim that neo-Darwinism is quote-unquote dead overstate, accurately state or understate your position?"
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"text": " Well, he more or less accurately states it, I think. The fact is that there are four major foundations of the neo-Darwinist position that DNA is a self-replicator. It isn't."
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"text": " that the vicin barrier protects the eggs and sperm from being affected by the body really doesn't. We've shown that information can travel from the body to the germ line and that the central dogma as it's called which is that DNA is used to make proteins but proteins are never used to make DNA doesn't prevent"
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"text": " I'm organisms when they need to to change their DNA know those are the basic assumptions of the new darwin is to view of modern biology and i'm afraid they've all crumbled is there you got the foundations of a subject and they've gone."
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"text": " So no, I don't apologize for using rather strong language. I think as a theory, it is now dead by any criteria. If you show the foundations are incorrect, then the theory is not worthwhile. Furthermore, the obvious test of it is the information you get from the molecular"
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"text": " Processes like the DNA sequence and so on which we can measure is that really useful in predicting disease and the only major study that's being done on that has failed to show significant success because there are almost as many false predictions as correct predictions if you had a drug and"
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"text": " put forward by a pharmaceutical company and ask the FDA the Food and Drug Administration would like you to approve this drug they'd use precisely this test how good is it that"
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"text": " Curing the disease and if it doesn't then you don't allow it to be sold and the same test was put for the ability of DNA sequencing to predict what diseases you would suffer from and it doesn't work. It's very simple."
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"text": " It seems like your framework still relies on core Darwinian principles like variation, inheritance, selection. So would you say that this is more a statement about neo-Darwinism being incomplete or that this is some radical departure and not just an expansion on an existing theory? You're asking a very interesting question, Kurt. You know that I refer to neo-Darwinism because I am not saying that Darwin was wrong."
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"text": " Interesting okay that is a fundamental fact darwin never accepted the idea that there was a barrier between what the body could do and is germ cells the future egg and sperm."
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"text": " He supposed even formulated a theory for how it would be possible for the body to communicate with the future egg and sperm. He called the particles that he postulated gemmules. We now call them extracellular vesicles but they perform exactly the function that Darwin outlined. So I think we need to make a very fundamental distinction between"
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"text": " Darwin and his theories of evolution and the neo-Darwinist interpretation of that which is a great restriction on what Darwin himself supposed and in particular he would not have accepted the existence of the Weismann barrier, the idea that the future eggs and sperm can't be influenced by the body during its lifetime. So"
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"text": " I think the answer to your question is neo-Darwinism is the problem. That's what is not supported by the molecular biological information that I've been researching for around 20 years or so now. And I think it's that that is dead. Darwinism as a theory that evolution has happened, that"
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"text": " doesn't disprove that at all. So I think we've got to distinguish between the original Darwin theory and the successes today creating the neo-Darwinist interpretation. Now why is that important? It's important for this reason. You see, we as living organisms, humans, have what we call values. We"
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"text": " like to think that we're making those choices through the social values that we accept, whether they be straightforward values that we just inherit from our parents or whether it's because of religious belief or whatever it may come from. Now, if the theory is that you are born selfish, that's a quote from Richard Dawkins, the selfish gene,"
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"text": " And that you can't help that you've got to be taught to be cooperative. Well, you do need to do that. You to teach children a cooperation. Of course you do. Right. But the point I'm making is that there is no restriction on our ability to choose and therefore our ability to have moral values and values that matter in society."
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"text": " There's no restriction on that from our genetic makeup. And so it's incorrect to say that genes created as body and mind. Again, that's a quote from the selfish gene. You've stated that Richard Dawkins may not fully grasp your arguments. Do you think this could be due to say differences in definitions of some key terms like selfishness or purpose?"
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"text": " Well, it's muddling, I'm afraid, because he uses the word selfish applied to a gene and then confuses it by saying, we are born selfish. That's a direct quote from his book, The Selfish Gene."
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"text": " No i think he's confused you cannot attribute selfishness to a chemical it is a chemical can only do what a chemical can do it will you know if he's got the right energies it will bind with this molecule or that one but it can't be given any sense in which he's got freedom to choose to go one way rather than another is buffeted around by the"
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"text": " Rest of the chemical environment. So no, I'm afraid it's a fundamental misunderstanding. Now you could say therefore it's a confusion of language, but I think that doesn't get the essence of my argument. It is that the fundamental assumptions of biology itself don't support the gene centric view."
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"text": " So I'm saying much more than it's a matter of what words you use and what definitions you use. Yes, there is a model over the definition of selfishness and what it really means. But over and above that, there are these straightforward assumptions, dogmas, I call them of modern biology that just are no longer correct. Yes."
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"text": " The central dogma does not exclude the possibility of organisms changing their genomes. We were doing that during the pandemic. Our immune systems were doing that. It doesn't mean that the DNA itself self replicates. And so I can go on. So I think it's much more than a matter of definitions of words. It's also true to say in my view that"
},
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"text": " The molecular biological information on which the neo-darwinist interpretation of biology relied doesn't support what they claim it does support. It's as simple as that. It's not just definition of words, therefore. What if someone or Dawkins responds and says, hey, this still sounds like an example of natural selection."
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"text": " operating at a different level, because how does it differ from traditional accounts of semantic hypermutation or clonal selection in the immune system? Yes. Kurt, I like your questions. Absolutely true. Thank you. When the immune system changes the DNA, it performs natural selection. You couldn't have got it more accurate. Of course it does."
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"text": " But the point is it does it within the organism. It doesn't wait for natural selection determining the death or life of me and other organisms. It happens within our body within this lifetime."
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"text": " so yes it is using natural selection of the immune system cells the B cells as they're called that generate the immunoglobulins and generate many different forms of immunoglobulins and what the immune system does is to choose the ones that are successful in producing the result that is natural selection within our bodies but notice that it's directed"
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"text": " Because it's functional. Only the ones that succeeded are told to reproduce, to produce more of that immunoglobulin. The rest are told to die. That is not natural selection. That is a directed functional process. Our immune systems, thank goodness, are very functional. They are not just random."
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"text": " They use randomness. That's the way I would put it. I call it the harnessing of stochasticity, the use of random changes that generate directed function to generate purposive response. So it generates purposive response. It doesn't have a purpose itself. Good question. And that's an interesting one."
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"text": " It sort of does, let me put it this way, if you, we have things that have purposes, we have knives, we have forks and we know how to eat with them. Now you can say if the knife and fork they have purpose, if the purpose has been given to them by the makers of knives and forks. Now that's one sense of purpose and I think the immune system has precisely that kind of purpose."
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"text": " That is, it's generated within our bodies. We inherit all of that, of course, from our parents. And it is purposive in that sense, just in the same way as tools that organisms use have purpose because they're given that purpose by those who create them. But it's deeper than that because I think it's also correct to say that we as humans have intentional purpose."
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"text": " And that depends on conscious intentionality. It's not dependent on purely chemical processes. So I think that over and above the question of whether individual systems within our body like the immune system can be said to have purpose. Those can be said to have purpose just as tools do."
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"text": " But over and above that, we have the ability to consciously choose what we wish to do. And incidentally, this is another respect in which Darwin disagreed with the neo Darwinists. Darwin gave organisms birds as an example, the ability to choose who they"
},
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"text": " cooperate with who they mate with he asked the question why does the peacock have this extraordinary display which he shows when he's trying to attract a mate a pea hen who might mate with him well his argument was very simple it is it's developed all of that as part of"
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"text": " the process of making sure that he mates with the best peahen or the peahen chooses the best peacock but the point he made and he emphasized this in his book in 1871 that's after he published on natural selection and he said this is conscious intentional choice he didn't mince the words at all hmm so he was attributing"
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"text": " to birds and other organisms by implication, exactly the same kind of ability that we ourselves have. Now, of course, he was running counter to a very important tradition in science ever since Descartes. Descartes way back in the 17th century said, well, animals don't have this ability. They're machines. They're just mechanical processes."
},
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"text": " Well, Darwin would have fundamentally disagreed with that. It's another reason why I say that the neo-Darwinists are not true to Darwin's original theory. He allowed what you call sexual selection, it's a form of social selection if you like, who will cooperate with who in a population. That, he accepted, involved intentionality."
},
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"text": " Is it possible for a chemical to have purpose in this sense, not intentional purpose, but the other form, a biochemical? Well, a chemical can be a tool. Yes, I see what you're getting at. And it's a very good question. Obviously, in one sense, the DNA has"
},
{
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"start_time": 1010.572,
"text": " It has purpose that has evolved in the sense that its purpose, if you wish, is to transmit the information for making proteins from one generation to another. That's a tool which the living system uses, but that's not purpose in the sense of being anything other than a tool."
},
{
"end_time": 1059.923,
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"start_time": 1031.954,
"text": " It's not purpose in the sense in which you and I and other organisms have purposive intentional behavior. So what if there's Dawkins here? Somehow Dawkins became constructed right beside me and he says to you, he says, Dennis, let us bridge this semantic gap. We can have a productive dialogue. You're saying biochemicals like DNA can't be selfish. I'm watering down the usage of the word selfish, but"
},
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"end_time": 1082.295,
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"text": " Can I not claim the same about you and the word purpose? That I'm just a bunch of molecules and that therefore I don't really have the sense or I don't have the reality of having free choice and purposive behavior. Well, I think I would ask him, look, Richard,"
},
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"end_time": 1110.947,
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"text": " Have a look at what humans are capable of you are capable of writing a brilliant book I always call it brilliant because I think it is the selfish gene is a terrifically well-written book I envy his ability to communicate in the way that he does But is nevertheless incorrect and so I would say well you intended to write that book And you want to tell me you didn't"
},
{
"end_time": 1139.087,
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"start_time": 1111.271,
"text": " That you, just your chemicals made you do it. I just don't believe you Richard. That would be my answer to him I think. At Capella University, learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get support from people who care about your success. Like your enrollment specialist who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus,"
},
{
"end_time": 1165.52,
"index": 46,
"start_time": 1139.224,
"text": " Career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella.edu. So tell me and the audience how is purpose? Well, we have to distinguish between the two types of purpose. So let's say purpose one is the one that you referred to. Yes, we do the purpose given to things and the purpose"
},
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"text": " that we have as individual agents. Yes. A very important question, incidentally, because... So the former, the purpose given. Exactly. It's at the heart of the arguments over artificial intelligence. Exactly. Very important indeed. Can you explain how purpose given can be measurable and testable? Well, let me first of all say that interpreting processes in life"
},
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"end_time": 1223.353,
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"start_time": 1194.206,
"text": " purposefully, in the sense that they have purpose, has proven extremely effective in medical research. Ask the question, how did William Harvey, when in the 17th century he worked out that the blood circulates, doesn't just ebb and flow, it circulates, he gave a purposive account of the circulation."
},
{
"end_time": 1253.695,
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"start_time": 1223.985,
"text": " The function of the blood is to circulate through the body, but he then realized, okay, if we give it that purpose, there must be connections between the arteries and veins in the periphery. He couldn't see anything that would correspond to that. So he invented a term. He called them porosities. Well, actually he was writing his book in Latin, but in those days, many people did."
},
{
"end_time": 1276.459,
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"start_time": 1253.985,
"text": " Porosities. Porosities meaning some way in which the veins and arteries can communicate. Now 30 or 40 years later when the first microscopes were introduced, one of the first uses of those microscopes was to find capillaries and so"
},
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"end_time": 1306.357,
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"start_time": 1277.022,
"text": " Harvey's prediction based on his attributing purpose to the circulation was correct. There are capillaries that connect the arteries and the veins in the periphery of the circulation. That's just one example. The other example I often take is Darwin's hypothesis about how the body communicates to the germline. He had a very similar problem which is he couldn't see"
},
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"end_time": 1324.104,
"index": 52,
"start_time": 1307.039,
"text": " tiny particles that could contain the messages that he thought must exist to pass between the body and the germ cells. So he admitted, look I can't see them but I think they're there. Well 150 years later we've proven him right."
},
{
"end_time": 1347.415,
"index": 53,
"start_time": 1324.411,
"text": " You see, what happened there was that a prediction, and he admitted it was a prediction, with the microscopes you could use in the 19th century, it was not possible to visualize these very tiny particles that all cells in the body pour out to communicate with other cells in the body. But we now can do that. Again,"
},
{
"end_time": 1377.108,
"index": 54,
"start_time": 1348.2,
"text": " His purposive explanation that this is to transmit to the next generation some of the characteristics of this generation led to a very valuable hypothesis which we've now confirmed. So the first point I would make in response to that very deep question is purposive explanations actually satisfy the main scientific test. Do they work? Do they make successful predictions?"
},
{
"end_time": 1405.93,
"index": 55,
"start_time": 1377.398,
"text": " I have many more examples of that kind, but I think you're asking a deeper question than the one of giving purpose to something like a knife and a fork and having the ability to choose. Now, this is at the heart, it seems to me, of the big argument today over what it is that artificial intelligence can do because it looks"
},
{
"end_time": 1432.722,
"index": 56,
"start_time": 1406.493,
"text": " Let's try to give the best account we can of what AI thinks or the AI creators think they can create in their wilder moments. They think they'll replace us and no doubt for some purpose of building a car doesn't really require a human. A robot could do it and a very intelligent robot"
},
{
"end_time": 1459.787,
"index": 57,
"start_time": 1432.978,
"text": " would be even better than one that isn't because it would be able to watch when something doesn't quite work and then adjust it and so and so be reactive. I go along with the AI people who think that that's going to transform our ability in industry and in the way in which we conduct our lives. No doubt about that. But then I asked the following question."
},
{
"end_time": 1489.957,
"index": 58,
"start_time": 1460.981,
"text": " What is it that organisms use to create all the stochasticity in their bodies that enable them to be so creative? Now ask the question what is AI built from? It's built from silicon. Silicon is a kind of crystal, it's solid. The molecules within"
},
{
"end_time": 1519.701,
"index": 59,
"start_time": 1490.538,
"text": " The silicon don't move. They can vibrate, as all molecules do, but they are fixed. We are not made like that. We are made, well, what is it, about 80 to 90% of us is water. Now, I think that's fundamental. You see, way back in the beginning of the 19th century, 1827, a man called Brown"
},
{
"end_time": 1550.657,
"index": 60,
"start_time": 1521.067,
"text": " Watch what happened when he ground pollen grains, already very tiny, but he ground them up into even tinier particles, pollen dust if you wish, and he sprinkled under a microscope, he sprinkled that pollen dust on the surface of water. And what he found was fascinating. The particles are moving around the whole time in all kinds of stochastic ways."
},
{
"end_time": 1578.848,
"index": 61,
"start_time": 1551.766,
"text": " and our cells are just like that. All the particles suspended including the DNA, including our proteins, including our iron channels and so on, they're all being buffeted around because the reason for that movement as Einstein showed about 70 or 80 years later is that the water molecules themselves are bumping in to the suspended molecules."
},
{
"end_time": 1608.848,
"index": 62,
"start_time": 1579.309,
"text": " So that gives us humans and other organisms built of water systems an enormous amount of stochasticity. Now, the AI people will tell you, well, that's not a problem. We just introduce randomness into our simulations. That's fine, except that I think the degree to which we have that ability to"
},
{
"end_time": 1631.476,
"index": 63,
"start_time": 1609.189,
"text": " Harness our stochasticity is vastly greater than an AI system will because as I said earlier on it's made from silicon and the silicon does not itself have inherent stochasticity. It has a little bit the vibrations but not enough not in the way that we as humans"
},
{
"end_time": 1661.34,
"index": 64,
"start_time": 1632.022,
"text": " So I sometimes put the following question to the AI people. When are you going to make computers made of water? And they look at me as though I must have come from some planet way out there where people ask very silly questions. When are you going to make a computer out of water? And I say, well, you know, nature took about four billion years to do it, but it did it. Are you going to try and do it?"
},
{
"end_time": 1690.998,
"index": 65,
"start_time": 1662.09,
"text": " Obviously, it is in some ways a slightly absurd question, but it shows what the challenge is. I believe that to get the kind of creativity that humans have probably would require that you harness the ability to make computers out of water. I don't see that happening very soon. So there's quite a plenitude that was said there."
},
{
"end_time": 1721.084,
"index": 66,
"start_time": 1691.408,
"text": " Let's see, there's three directions I could go. So number one is choice. You mentioned choice and I do want to ask about free will at some point. So let's put that aside. I'm just putting that in your head right now. And then liquid systems versus solid systems. So there is a company called Liquid AI and there's another one. I don't believe that they're using microfluidics, but it doesn't matter because microfluidics could be the next paradigm for the basis of CPUs. So we could talk about that. And if you see that as a way forward for AI,"
},
{
"end_time": 1751.032,
"index": 67,
"start_time": 1721.732,
"text": " The third one that I want to talk about is you mentioned the circulatory system and having a purpose and because it had a purpose, it allowed someone to make a prediction which was then tested. But this word purpose to me, in that case, it sounds like the word function could have been replaced there. How do we know we're not conflating function with purpose and how can one distinguish between an organism simply doing something and an organism doing something for a purpose?"
},
{
"end_time": 1781.852,
"index": 68,
"start_time": 1752.21,
"text": " Yes, that's an issue that we deal with in the little book that I highlighted in the talk, Understanding Living Systems, and you're quite right to ask the question. I think, and it's what we say in the little book, that organisms are definitively purposive, meaning they are the origin and initiators of purposive action."
},
{
"end_time": 1810.862,
"index": 69,
"start_time": 1782.176,
"text": " Intentionally so. Now, no doubt there are chemical and physical processes underlying our ability as chemical and physical systems to be able to do that. But I think that is achieved precisely by harnessing the stochasticity within us."
},
{
"end_time": 1837.892,
"index": 70,
"start_time": 1811.408,
"text": " By harnessing, I mean something similar to what the immune system does. So let me just pursue the analogy and then I'll explain what the difference is between attributing purpose to a thing and attributing purpose to an intentional agent. Please. The idea that we present in understanding living systems"
},
{
"end_time": 1863.933,
"index": 71,
"start_time": 1838.558,
"text": " Is as I said that organisms are definitively purposive and now it gets a little bit technical and we published the articles in the relevant journals of philosophy to explain what we've got in mind and it goes back to an idea that was also formulated about 40 years ago"
},
{
"end_time": 1890.964,
"index": 72,
"start_time": 1864.377,
"text": " by the discoverer of the way in which the immunoglobulins are created in the immune system. It's a man called Edelman and he published a book way back then called Neural Darwinism. His idea was very simple. It is that if the immune system can harness stochasticity within itself as a system,"
},
{
"end_time": 1920.043,
"index": 73,
"start_time": 1891.92,
"text": " Surely the nervous system even more complicated than the immune system can harness stochasticity within itself. Now the interesting thing is that that can be demonstrated because when you record from individual neurons in the nervous system they show vast amounts of stochasticity. As a physiologist I sometimes listen to this"
},
{
"end_time": 1948.473,
"index": 74,
"start_time": 1921.067,
"text": " flopping around of the voltage in a living nervous cell and it's going all over the place and eventually something fires and an action potential arises and communication occurs. The point I'm making is this. I think Edelman was on to a very interesting idea which is that a similar process could occur in the nervous system such that we can align"
},
{
"end_time": 1965.077,
"index": 75,
"start_time": 1949.258,
"text": " Our choices of which behavior to use in particular circumstances to be aligned with the values we accept as human beings in terms of what we should do and what it is good to do."
},
{
"end_time": 1993.456,
"index": 76,
"start_time": 1965.503,
"text": " And there has to be some kind of alignment of that kind. Otherwise, why do we teach our children moral values? Why do we think that it matters? And surely the reason is that the social values that people hold matter to the way their nervous systems work. And I think it's possible to see how alignment between the nervous system processes"
},
{
"end_time": 2019.514,
"index": 77,
"start_time": 1993.729,
"text": " can give you what is needed to allow our actions to be aligned with our values. Otherwise you've got a major problem. How on earth does it happen? Because it's clear we do align our actions with our values most of the time. And then this one is, what's the word I want, an inherent criminal"
},
{
"end_time": 2045.469,
"index": 78,
"start_time": 2020.316,
"text": " Most people, most of the time, are behaving according to the values of society. So somehow it's got to be possible that the nervous system can, like the immune system, can align its choice with what is needed to attack the virus. Our nervous systems must be able to align our repertoire of behavior"
},
{
"end_time": 2069.445,
"index": 79,
"start_time": 2046.152,
"text": " generated of course by our nervous systems to be aligned with the values we subscribe to if you don't suppose that i think you've got a problem because if you don't suppose that then all human beings are criminals because they're incapable of aligning their actions with their social values very clearly that is not true so"
},
{
"end_time": 2093.012,
"index": 80,
"start_time": 2069.753,
"text": " I think the challenge for science is to explain that as carefully as it can and what I've tried to do in my work is to see ways in which by analogy with the way the immune system acquires its purpose of action you can see our nervous systems doing something very similar"
},
{
"end_time": 2108.541,
"index": 81,
"start_time": 2093.592,
"text": " I can't claim that the moment I can pinpoint exactly where in your brain or my brain the right choice is being made. But what I can say is that it clearly does work like that."
},
{
"end_time": 2125.401,
"index": 82,
"start_time": 2108.865,
"text": " And therefore it's a valid question for scientists to try to study how that happens, just as we worked out in the immune system how that happens. So I think that's another one of the big challenges I would like to put out."
},
{
"end_time": 2141.578,
"index": 83,
"start_time": 2126.51,
"text": " Whether that would win a Nobel Prize, I don't know. But then I don't decide the Nobel Prizes despite my name."
},
{
"end_time": 2171.425,
"index": 84,
"start_time": 2142.5,
"text": " So, okay, this is super interesting because there's someone named Lovelock. I don't know if you know Lovelock's hypothesis about Gia."
},
{
"end_time": 2200.964,
"index": 85,
"start_time": 2171.732,
"text": " Yes, indeed, the Gaia hypothesis. Yes, yes. Where I was going with this is that if you have an alignment of human values at the city level, then at the country level, then at the Western level versus Eastern, then at both Western and Eastern and the collection higher and higher, does it then lead to Lovelock's hypothesis? And what are your thoughts on Lovelock? I suppose on a strict Gaia hypothesis, the Earth would be able to somehow adjust"
},
{
"end_time": 2230.794,
"index": 86,
"start_time": 2201.647,
"text": " to the huge amount of co2 we're pouring into the atmosphere and somehow recreate a form of equilibrium the question though is this could that happen in a rapid enough way for humans to survive and i'm not sure we know the answer to that question in fact i think we don't know the answer to that question you see the"
},
{
"end_time": 2256.186,
"index": 87,
"start_time": 2231.34,
"text": " If you study the climate changes that have occurred over many thousands and millions of years, there have clearly been absolutely enormous changes in the past. At one time the earth was like a snowball, effectively iced all over. At other times it's been relatively hot."
},
{
"end_time": 2279.565,
"index": 88,
"start_time": 2257.056,
"text": " Is undergone other major changes the early earth did not have oxygen oxygen rose through the microbes that produced it in other words it was life on earth created all the oxygen and we couldn't live if we were trying to do in the earth as it was say."
},
{
"end_time": 2305.657,
"index": 89,
"start_time": 2279.94,
"text": " Three billion years ago, before the production of that huge amount of oxygen by the microbes, there wasn't a possibility of life of the kind we have and we wouldn't therefore exist. So I think the Gaia hypothesis, if I've understood it correctly, it probably"
},
{
"end_time": 2329.48,
"index": 90,
"start_time": 2307.875,
"text": " works over very long time scales and clearly the earth has adjusted to huge variations of temperature, huge variations in the gases in the environment, but those changes have taken hundreds of millions of years. We humans don't have that time scale."
},
{
"end_time": 2357.995,
"index": 91,
"start_time": 2329.804,
"text": " If we are to survive, and that's why I make this plea at the end of the little book, you know, to the next generation to try to solve these problems. If we are to survive as a species, I think we probably have to intervene ourselves in what we're doing. And that means doing the best we can to stop the runaway forms of climate change that could occur. But the point I'm making here is"
},
{
"end_time": 2385.094,
"index": 92,
"start_time": 2358.78,
"text": " Yes, I think the Lovelock ideas are very important. The extent to which the Earth system as an Earth can self correct itself is an important question. I don't doubt that. And we must be grateful to Lovelock for raising the whole issue. But is it something that can occur over the lifetimes"
},
{
"end_time": 2411.954,
"index": 93,
"start_time": 2385.486,
"text": " Let's say a few generations of humans, or is it only processes that can occur over the course of the odd few millions or billions of years? You see that matters enormously. It matters to us as a species. So I think the practical question is not so much whether the Gaia idea is correct or not, but"
},
{
"end_time": 2436.391,
"index": 94,
"start_time": 2413.353,
"text": " Could it be that it can't come to our rescue given the threats we've got? That's the much more important issue at the moment. So there are a certain set of people, some are anti-natalists and some are human extinction advocates who say, well, look, humans are a cancer on the earth. We should die. It's good for us to die."
},
{
"end_time": 2446.391,
"index": 95,
"start_time": 2436.715,
"text": " To be clear for those of you who are interested, actually an antinatalist is a philosophical position that argues against procreation for various reasons."
},
{
"end_time": 2475.503,
"index": 96,
"start_time": 2446.698,
"text": " Some is that people believe bringing new humans into the earth is morally wrong due to the suffering to that child and also due to the environmental impact it causes. Then there's something else called the voluntary human extinction movement, which is a movement advocating for the voluntary cessation of human reproduction to eventually lead to the gradual extinction of humanity, again aiming to reduce the human impact on earth. And then there are also people who are called eco-extremists,"
},
{
"end_time": 2500.026,
"index": 97,
"start_time": 2475.503,
"text": " who are environmentalists that believe drastic measures, including the reduction, potentially even the elimination of the human population, is necessary to protect the environment, and that the environment should be prioritized over us. We should die. It's good for us to die. What would you say to that? Well, from which point of view? I mean, from the"
},
{
"end_time": 2516.152,
"index": 98,
"start_time": 2500.333,
"text": " point of view of the dinosaurs they probably didn't want to be eliminated but they were and from the point of view of other organisms it was a good thing so from the point of view of the tiny mammals who are running around"
},
{
"end_time": 2536.152,
"index": 99,
"start_time": 2516.237,
"text": " At the time the dinosaurs lived, it was a huge opportunity for them to develop into the species we now call humans. So it all depends on your point of view. I think life will survive. That's what I strongly believe."
},
{
"end_time": 2565.691,
"index": 100,
"start_time": 2536.459,
"text": " Life has a living system not necessarily a human system survives in the most extraordinary circumstances there are bacteria that can survive in the thermal vents of the earth where the temperature can reach way over a hundred degrees yes it doesn't boil that depth in the earth because of the pressure on it the point i'm making is nevertheless correct"
},
{
"end_time": 2593.046,
"index": 101,
"start_time": 2565.811,
"text": " These are very special bacteria and other microbes that can survive at temperatures way beyond what we could survive in. And what are called the tardigrades, these are tiny mite-like organisms. They are multicellular organisms and they can walk around. They can become completely desiccated, completely dried."
},
{
"end_time": 2611.749,
"index": 102,
"start_time": 2593.643,
"text": " And they will survive in vacuum of space and they can be taken on the surface of a spaceship and they survive. They will live again once water is available."
},
{
"end_time": 2633.575,
"index": 103,
"start_time": 2611.971,
"text": " well and of course plants have had this ability for a long time their seeds are almost completely desiccated it's only when water enters into them that they germinate and life returns so i think the answer to your question is what's in whose interest is it that humans survive"
},
{
"end_time": 2655.009,
"index": 104,
"start_time": 2634.172,
"text": " And I think the only certainty you can have is in our interests to survive, whether it's in the interests of the earth that we should survive, I think is a very open question. I think if we disappear, the earth will continue to be a place with living organisms on it. It just won't be us."
},
{
"end_time": 2678.217,
"index": 105,
"start_time": 2655.418,
"text": " Now, if that doesn't worry you, so be it. If it does worry you, we better do something about it. That's my way of looking at this. So as we talk about choosing to survive, let's talk about free will. What are your views on free will? Where does it fit into your theories or your framework? Right. Now,"
},
{
"end_time": 2708.831,
"index": 106,
"start_time": 2679.172,
"text": " I'm reasonably well known to be a bit of a philosopher as well as a scientist. And a physiologist. That's right. I think what I said earlier is the key here. I think what organisms are doing and certainly humans are doing is to harness vast amounts of stochasticity within ourselves as"
},
{
"end_time": 2738.336,
"index": 107,
"start_time": 2709.292,
"text": " Bunches of chemicals, including, of course, the chemical that provides the solute in which everything else is dissolved and that is water. And I think that the question, are we fully determined by those molecules or are we as living agents capable of directing the way"
},
{
"end_time": 2761.135,
"index": 108,
"start_time": 2739.155,
"text": " In which that stochasticity is used, I think the answer clearly favors the idea that we use it. That's what we do with our immune systems when we harness the stochastic variations in the B cells that generate the immunoglobulins."
},
{
"end_time": 2786.596,
"index": 109,
"start_time": 2761.613,
"text": " And the choice is then made as to which then are given the message to reproduce and those will only be the ones that managed to produce the immunoglobulin that attacks the virus. And I think in a similar way, our nervous systems are built in such a way and out of water systems, not silicon systems,"
},
{
"end_time": 2814.582,
"index": 110,
"start_time": 2787.005,
"text": " that there is huge amounts of stochasticity that can be harnessed. Now you can ask the question but you know if you knew enough about that stochasticity couldn't you just reproduce it with a computer and you would then be able to predict what Dennis Noble will do or what Kurt will do or whoever you want to take. Well the question then is"
},
{
"end_time": 2843.865,
"index": 111,
"start_time": 2815.009,
"text": " What kind of free action are you looking for? You see, I think there is what the philosophers call the only form of free will worth having. And that form of free will is how we are determined by our social interactions and in particular the values we subscribe to"
},
{
"end_time": 2872.022,
"index": 112,
"start_time": 2844.599,
"text": " I mean, that's why by and large, most of us are not criminals. That's why most of us conform to the values of society. And it's the stochasticity of our interactions with society as we develop from being a baby through to being a youngster and then growing up into an adult that somehow channels our"
},
{
"end_time": 2880.043,
"index": 113,
"start_time": 2872.858,
"text": " Behavior into conforming to the principles of society"
},
{
"end_time": 2910.35,
"index": 114,
"start_time": 2880.52,
"text": " Now, some philosophers say, well, but that's still determined. You know, Denis Noble is determined by the values that he's inherited from the social interactions he's had over the course of his lifetime. I would say, yes, and long may be so. Now, if you want to say that's not free will because you're determined by your social interactions, so be it. If you don't want to call it free will, that's fine by me. What I think is that it is"
},
{
"end_time": 2928.353,
"index": 115,
"start_time": 2910.35,
"text": " Never the less the process by which we become responsible agents as we grow up and we need that social process of interacting with others because without that we wouldn't be the social animals we are."
},
{
"end_time": 2954.787,
"index": 116,
"start_time": 2929.104,
"text": " So I think the question of free will is a very deep one but it isn't simply answered on the basis of asking could a chemical system have free will. I think it has to be answered in terms of talking about the social interactions but then that becomes a more deeply philosophical issue rather than a purely scientific one. It's"
},
{
"end_time": 2985.538,
"index": 117,
"start_time": 2955.742,
"text": " To what extent do we conform to the values of our society? And I think it's evident that most of us do. Otherwise it'd be chaos in human society. Sir, can you tell me more about the concept of harnessing stochasticity? So for instance, how does it differ from traditional accounts of random mutation and natural selection? Yes, it's a very simple idea."
},
{
"end_time": 3002.346,
"index": 118,
"start_time": 2986.442,
"text": " Of course the new darwin is just return to them for the moment they also admit that stochasticity occurs no question about that is what they call the random variations in our DNA and they then think that."
},
{
"end_time": 3028.439,
"index": 119,
"start_time": 3002.688,
"text": " an exceedingly slow process of natural selection weeds out the bad mutations and keeps the very few good mutations and that's the process of natural selection. I argue that sure that must occur but I think much more than that is occurring because"
},
{
"end_time": 3057.108,
"index": 120,
"start_time": 3029.07,
"text": " Clearly that's not how our immune systems manage. They're not waiting for us to die. They're actually trying to prevent us dying. You see natural selection between individuals in a species. It works by who dies young and doesn't reproduce and who lives in order to reproduce and the stronger ones survive"
},
{
"end_time": 3077.039,
"index": 121,
"start_time": 3057.363,
"text": " Hi,"
},
{
"end_time": 3107.056,
"index": 122,
"start_time": 3078.029,
"text": " Processes that living systems have themselves evolved can go faster than standard natural selection. That's why I think that more occurs than just natural selection. It clearly does so within the lifetimes of our own bodies and I think it does so in the life cycles of species too. If you ask the question how"
},
{
"end_time": 3134.821,
"index": 123,
"start_time": 3107.619,
"text": " Do species sometimes react quite rapidly to changes in the conditions in which they exist, like changes in climate and so on? Of course, the first changes will be epigenetic. If you are birds that are trying to fly at a high altitude, you will eventually evolve the hemoglobins that can capture oxygen in the thin oxygen"
},
{
"end_time": 3159.821,
"index": 124,
"start_time": 3135.145,
"text": " Concentration that occurs at high altitude and they do that not just by waiting simply for natural selection because you can show that the process in different birds different species has used stochasticity at the DNA level in totally different ways arriving at the same"
},
{
"end_time": 3187.824,
"index": 125,
"start_time": 3160.23,
"text": " End result, which is the ability to capture oxygen even at high altitude. The point I'm making is that epigenetics changes the game because when there's a big environmental change, most of the population will react epigenetically to that well before any random mutations could enable them to react. And then the question is,"
},
{
"end_time": 3216.766,
"index": 126,
"start_time": 3188.285,
"text": " How can those epigenetic changes be assimilated into the genome? Well, Waddington, the famous developmental biologist in the 1950s, 1960s passed away, I think a bit later in the 1970s. He showed how that could be achieved. He did it in fruit flies and showed that epigenetic changes could be assimilated into the DNA."
},
{
"end_time": 3243.729,
"index": 127,
"start_time": 3217.398,
"text": " I published a paper with a young scientist called Daniel Phillips in the Journal of Physiology just last year, 2023, explaining how I think epigenetic change in a species can lead to speciation and therefore to branching evolution. And it all relies on the concept"
},
{
"end_time": 3272.381,
"index": 128,
"start_time": 3244.258,
"text": " Now, that was a part of a focused issue on the physiology of evolution published by the Journal of Physiology. Actually, its full publication only occurred this year in 2024. But the publication that I'm talking about by Noble and Phillips was precisely on this question. How could epigenetic changes speed up"
},
{
"end_time": 3302.705,
"index": 129,
"start_time": 3272.858,
"text": " and facilitate speciation. And I think that's a very important issue. When I hear the words that evolution works faster than random mutation, and also I hear the word purpose, it reminds me of Stephen Meyer. I don't know if you know who Stephen Meyer is. But for context, he's an advocate of intelligent design. I've heard of him and I don't know his work. Okay, yeah. Well, then I can skip right. So how about another individual?"
},
{
"end_time": 3331.852,
"index": 130,
"start_time": 3303.422,
"text": " Rupert Sheldrake. Are you aware of Rupert Sheldrake's work? Yes, or indeed, I've interacted with Rupert Sheldrake in some of the debates in the Institute of Art and Ideas, which is the big cultural festival here in the United Kingdom. Yes. No, I do understand quite a bit where Rupert Sheldrake is coming from. He's another major critic, incidentally, of the neo-Darwinist view"
},
{
"end_time": 3347.824,
"index": 131,
"start_time": 3332.244,
"text": " He has an idea called Morphic Resonance."
},
{
"end_time": 3372.346,
"index": 132,
"start_time": 3348.234,
"text": " Well, look, it's not actually crazy. I know what most people think about Rupert Sheldrake, which is he's all over the place and you don't know whether anything he says has any significance. He's actually a very well-trained chemist and biochemist from Cambridge University. He thought very deeply about these issues."
},
{
"end_time": 3401.578,
"index": 133,
"start_time": 3372.346,
"text": " And I think the idea of resonance shouldn't be dismissed. Can you explain that idea? Yes. Right. Oh, yes. OK. Well, actually, it might be best for me to just explain the little book that I published nearly 20 years ago, The Music of Life. Yes, sure. I use the analogy of music for a very particular reason."
},
{
"end_time": 3417.568,
"index": 134,
"start_time": 3402.892,
"text": " It proved to be a useful metaphor for many life processes like, for example, the happen to be almost as many genes"
},
{
"end_time": 3447.978,
"index": 135,
"start_time": 3418.49,
"text": " underlying the making of proteins in our bodies as there are organ pipes in the biggest organ in the world which is in the is the Wanamaker organ in Philadelphia and not surprisingly in the United States and I draw the analogy that of course it's not the organ itself that creates the music it's Bach who wrote his fugues and the player who plays the notes which would be the equivalent"
},
{
"end_time": 3477.637,
"index": 136,
"start_time": 3447.978,
"text": " of the genes here but i have thought further about this question of resonance it seems to me that quite a number of oscillatory processes in the body that processes that go up and down like this in a rhythm the heart rhythm the respiratory rhythm the circadian rhythm the monthly rhythms that humans show"
},
{
"end_time": 3497.995,
"index": 137,
"start_time": 3477.995,
"text": " and even rhythms over many years that certain species show indicate that there are associations between one type and the other. Let me give one very good example. As I breathe in and out"
},
{
"end_time": 3527.705,
"index": 138,
"start_time": 3499.138,
"text": " If somebody was recording the frequency of my heartbeat, you'd find the variations in the frequency of the heartbeat in synchrony with my breathing in and out. This is incidentally how long-term meditators manage to bring their heart rates down, because when you breathe like this in a meditative way, in quickly, out very slowly,"
},
{
"end_time": 3545.213,
"index": 139,
"start_time": 3528.08,
"text": " There are physiological processes we don't need to go into the technical detail which actually create that slowing down of the heart rate. Now the point I'm making here is that we already know their associations between"
},
{
"end_time": 3569.548,
"index": 140,
"start_time": 3545.657,
"text": " some processes occur very rapidly like the heartbeat and other processes occur more slowly like the breathing respiratory process and then others occur even more slowly a daily rhythm or a monthly rhythm or whatever it might be so the idea of morphic resonance and morphic just means the shape of something the"
},
{
"end_time": 3586.357,
"index": 141,
"start_time": 3569.548,
"text": " What it manifests in what it shows, it is the shape. The idea of morphic resonance in Sheldrake's view is simply the idea that such was the word I want."
},
{
"end_time": 3603.507,
"index": 142,
"start_time": 3587.09,
"text": " Such entrainment that's the word i think i'm off right of one rhythm by another so that there are associations between the two is proven that's not in doubt now how deep all of this goes."
},
{
"end_time": 3631.118,
"index": 143,
"start_time": 3603.916,
"text": " And whether his idea that somehow most of the cells of our body have morphic resonance with the other cells, I don't know. I've not done the physiology to work that out. But it's not totally crazy. All cells pour out these vesicles we were discussing earlier that can pass to the germ line. All cells communicate with other cells in the body through the extracellular vesicles. I'm pretty certain"
},
{
"end_time": 3658.558,
"index": 144,
"start_time": 3631.391,
"text": " That that is one of the ways in which a multicellular organism like us can survive because unless individual cells recognize that they are part of a tissue that cooperates, we get cancer. What is cancer? It is cells going off on their own and doing their own thing and very much to the disadvantage of us as an organism."
},
{
"end_time": 3688.08,
"index": 145,
"start_time": 3659.224,
"text": " The point I'm making here is that I think the idea that cells talk to each other in this kind of way certainly would be a medium through which certain kinds of resonance could be created. But I'm not proving anything at the moment on that. I'm just simply saying the ideas of morphic resonance shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. They just need good further experimentation to work out"
},
{
"end_time": 3705.657,
"index": 146,
"start_time": 3688.473,
"text": " What are the ways in which the different cyclic processes in the body entrain each other and influence each other? That they do we already know. The extent to which they do it, I think, remains open for further thought and investigation."
},
{
"end_time": 3735.572,
"index": 147,
"start_time": 3706.834,
"text": " This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast? Smart move. Being financially savvy? Smart move. Another smart move? Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state."
},
{
"end_time": 3751.203,
"index": 148,
"start_time": 3736.647,
"text": " This is interesting because in Chinese medicine, there's also an emphasis on holism, even though we didn't use that word recently. Holistics has its threads throughout this conversation. Indeed it is. And I agree with the word holism. It is"
},
{
"end_time": 3775.282,
"index": 149,
"start_time": 3751.476,
"text": " But let me also say something about holism. I know the neo-Darwinists particularly will dismiss me as completely off my head when I talk about holism. They will think it is all terribly vague. Actually, it's a mathematical necessity. And this may surprise people about"
},
{
"end_time": 3805.333,
"index": 150,
"start_time": 3775.896,
"text": " Well, let me see now. It's 2016, so it's now about eight years ago. I published a book called Dance to the Tune of Life. I'll send the details of that to you. But I published a book. Sure. How does it subtitle biological relativity? Biological relativity. Biological relativity is the idea that there is no privileged level of causation within a biological system."
},
{
"end_time": 3834.735,
"index": 151,
"start_time": 3806.374,
"text": " Now, that is a mathematical necessity for the following reasons, and I can illustrate it best with how I modeled the heartbeat. Oh, over 60 years ago now, when I was a research student, I was looking at ion channels in the heart cells, characterizing those so that we could fit equations to characterize their physical properties."
},
{
"end_time": 3862.415,
"index": 152,
"start_time": 3835.469,
"text": " And then you can work out how that influences the overall electrical potential in the heart cell, because the heart rhythm is an electrical process. The voltage on the cell literally goes up and down like that. Now, what I showed there was that you could not explain the rhythm from the molecular elements alone."
},
{
"end_time": 3882.398,
"index": 153,
"start_time": 3862.79,
"text": " If you take those proteins and you put them in a solution with no membrane around them, in other words not in a cell, they will not oscillate. There's no rhythm. If therefore you remove the cell membrane and its electrical potential, it doesn't work."
},
{
"end_time": 3904.309,
"index": 154,
"start_time": 3882.841,
"text": " Incidentally, that's also true of mitochondria, our energy factories in our bodies. If you remove the electrical potential across the membranes, the system no longer works. So that's not itself a new discovery. Now, what I then came up with is a very simple point."
},
{
"end_time": 3934.667,
"index": 155,
"start_time": 3904.667,
"text": " You can fit differential equations. Sorry to be technical for a moment. Sorry to interrupt. Just so you know, Dennis, my background's in mathematical physics. Yes. And this podcast, the audience members are researchers in physics, math, philosophy, biology, and so on. So you can be technical. Don't worry. OK. So they won't find differential equations being referred to. Yes. That's very good to know. I'm delighted. Anyway, the point is very simple. However many"
},
{
"end_time": 3952.312,
"index": 156,
"start_time": 3935.282,
"text": " details you put into the equations for the differential equations and the functions used in those equations you need the boundary conditions otherwise there's no solution to those equations every mathematician knows that"
},
{
"end_time": 3979.991,
"index": 157,
"start_time": 3953.029,
"text": " Where do those boundary conditions come from? Well, in a sense, the word gives it away, doesn't it? In the case of a cell, it's what the membranes constrain the molecules to do. Those are the boundary conditions. So holistic view is simply the enumeration of the boundary conditions in a differential equation model. So that's why I call it a mathematical necessity."
},
{
"end_time": 4009.787,
"index": 158,
"start_time": 3980.333,
"text": " And I think that your listeners who would understand the mathematics here will readily understand when I say that there's no solution to a set of differential equations without the boundary conditions being put in. Those are the influence from the higher levels of organization, because it's those higher levels of organization that constrain what the molecules themselves are doing."
},
{
"end_time": 4032.858,
"index": 159,
"start_time": 4010.128,
"text": " Think of how life must have emerged long ago in, we don't know exactly where, perhaps in the minute fissures and cracks in thermal vents, who knows, but until the living system, the networks of interactions that were forming autocatalytic sets, meaning"
},
{
"end_time": 4053.968,
"index": 160,
"start_time": 4033.456,
"text": " chemical reactions that could continue indefinitely until they were enclosed within membranes they would have just dispersed so somehow or another that constraint the forming of a membrane around a catalytic set would have been a key element in any form"
},
{
"end_time": 4083.865,
"index": 161,
"start_time": 4054.138,
"text": " of evolution of what we call life. So right from the very beginning, the boundary conditions by the structure in which the molecules are to be found are critical element in determining how they behave. And so there's nothing terribly surprising in that the principle of biological relativity is simply that you will always need the boundary conditions as well as the differential equations."
},
{
"end_time": 4113.148,
"index": 162,
"start_time": 4084.548,
"text": " So that's extremely interesting. Are you making an analogy between the evolution laws and reductionism and the boundary conditions and holism? I am saying that the boundary conditions are what give the system its whole. Yes, that's right. If what you're referring to as the whole is the structure of the system, then it is that structure"
},
{
"end_time": 4135.077,
"index": 163,
"start_time": 4113.353,
"text": " That creates the boundary conditions cells are packed with structures that do that. The molecules are not free to move easily from one compartment to another. They're they're restricted to various compartments. That is itself a structural imposition of"
},
{
"end_time": 4163.404,
"index": 164,
"start_time": 4135.657,
"text": " constraint on the molecules involved. All I'm saying is that all molecules in living systems are constrained in the same kind of way. So yes, if you want to say that holism is the existence of boundary conditions from structure, then I think that's absolutely right. But then you've got to look at the whole to see the structure. If you look at just the individual pixels in the message, you won't understand the message."
},
{
"end_time": 4180.913,
"index": 165,
"start_time": 4163.746,
"text": " Is the same point isn't yes and you can't understand the movements of individual molecules in a system without understanding the constraints produced by the whole system which means the structure of the system."
},
{
"end_time": 4210.213,
"index": 166,
"start_time": 4181.305,
"text": " So professor, if we're going to say, hey, we're not rejecting reductionism entirely, it's a valuable tool, it's we understand biological mechanisms, you need reductionism as well. If we're going to say that, and then at the same time, we need a holistic perspective to understand how those mechanisms interact and give rise to emergent properties, etc. Then is that a dualistic view, where the holes and the parts exist as separate entities?"
},
{
"end_time": 4239.974,
"index": 167,
"start_time": 4211.22,
"text": " Not sure that I fully get the question there. Can you put that in? So if you have a separate set of laws for the whole and the parts, do you see that as a form of dualism? Oh, OK. Oh, right. A form of dualism. Yes, I like that question very much. I could go on for ages about dualism. I would try and be brief. In one sense,"
},
{
"end_time": 4268.848,
"index": 168,
"start_time": 4241.22,
"text": " Yes, because what we're saying is reductionism alone is not enough to describe a system that is functional. You need the constraints which form the boundary conditions for the behavior of the molecular components. That much is very obvious. I don't know whether one really wants to call that dualism. I mean, here we come to the history of"
},
{
"end_time": 4296.903,
"index": 169,
"start_time": 4269.548,
"text": " dualistic interpretations of life and of course inevitably we're back to Descartes and his what I regard as the huge mistake of thinking that he had to invent some ghostly thing here that interacts with the brain. I don't think we need that at all. What it seems to me is"
},
{
"end_time": 4327.807,
"index": 170,
"start_time": 4299.053,
"text": " The deep issue here is does, and I think the question you're asking, does a form of dualism come back in the sense that there's an interaction between the whole and its parts? Well, if you want to say that is true, I don't think I'd want necessarily to disagree with you because saying it that way that the whole"
},
{
"end_time": 4354.753,
"index": 171,
"start_time": 4328.148,
"text": " Is constraining the parts gets the point i'm making about biological relativity and there being no privileged level of organization for causation but this is not dualism in the sense of postulating a very different kind of thing from the physical structure that we know because"
},
{
"end_time": 4384.889,
"index": 172,
"start_time": 4355.094,
"text": " What is forming that structure is itself the molecules that form the thing, right? So I, I'm not sure that it's bringing, it's certainly not bringing dualism back in the sense that Descartes was using that word. Um, and I think therefore we need to trade very carefully here. The trouble is that dualism has a philosophical history to it too, doesn't it? It isn't as it were."
},
{
"end_time": 4414.292,
"index": 173,
"start_time": 4385.179,
"text": " Free to suddenly make up in a different way. I'm just I suppose what I'm saying is I'm a little unhappy With the idea that because we need an interaction between the whole and the parts that we're bringing back a form of dualism We're not bringing back a form of dualism in the sense that Descartes meant that much I think is clear so if it's the case then that the whole is"
},
{
"end_time": 4440.384,
"index": 174,
"start_time": 4414.77,
"text": " made up of the parts and so they're a part of the same underlying substance so we don't have a dualism in terms of substance we could the whole is made up of the parts absolutely right yeah is that not then a statement of reductionism let me just be clear there's a couple different kinds of reductionism so there's an ontological reductionism which will stay yes all of"
},
{
"end_time": 4456.254,
"index": 175,
"start_time": 4440.589,
"text": " The entities at some higher level are made up of the entities at a lower level and then there's a theoretical reductionism which says you can't make sense of say a financial system in terms of electrons because they're at different levels."
},
{
"end_time": 4472.995,
"index": 176,
"start_time": 4456.834,
"text": " No, I understand. The problem with reductionism applied to biology is that it's much more plausible to think that a biological system is just its molecules than to think that a banking system is"
},
{
"end_time": 4502.415,
"index": 177,
"start_time": 4473.404,
"text": " is just the molecules of which the buildings and computers that the banking system uses consist. Absolutely right. Yes, the problem with reductionism in relation to biology is how far it is taken, taken to the extent of saying that, well, if we knew enough about all the molecules, we could predict exactly what will happen."
},
{
"end_time": 4529.497,
"index": 178,
"start_time": 4503.131,
"text": " Well, I would say you'd probably need to build a computer out of more than the solar system to enable you to do that. Oh, okay. I misspoke then when I said there are two types of reductionism, there are at least three types. So there's the ontological reductionism, then there's the theoretical and then there's the epistemic reductionism, which says that we can't in practice predict"
},
{
"end_time": 4558.643,
"index": 179,
"start_time": 4529.684,
"text": " Exactly. So are you saying that epistemic reductionism is, is incorrect, but ontological reductionism is correct? Well, it might be. Um, but then we need to ask a deeper question. Don't we then is the universal open system or not? Hmm. So you can't be reductionist about open system. And I don't think we know the answer to that question. Interesting."
},
{
"end_time": 4584.855,
"index": 180,
"start_time": 4559.343,
"text": " Very important. If the universe is an open system, meaning there is no limit, we can just go on finding more and more stuff, more and more things, then I don't know what the difference between ontological and epistemological reductionism would amount to."
},
{
"end_time": 4613.456,
"index": 181,
"start_time": 4585.162,
"text": " the universe is a closed system, then I suppose in some sense it must be possible to imagine computing it and being able to predict its future behavior to any degree of accuracy. Whether you'd need more material to make the computers to do that than the universe itself contains, I don't know the answer to that question. I strongly"
},
{
"end_time": 4640.401,
"index": 182,
"start_time": 4613.592,
"text": " Combinatorial explosion in biology is a phenomenal problem. Just take 20,000 genes, about the number we think we've got of real protein making DNA in our genomes. I once did a calculation about 20 years ago now, how many combinations of those functions could there be"
},
{
"end_time": 4661.357,
"index": 183,
"start_time": 4641.323,
"text": " It turns out to be a number approximately 10 to the 70,000. There are only 10 to the 80 or 82, depends on your view of the universe, particles in the whole universe. So it's easy to show that the possible"
},
{
"end_time": 4682.671,
"index": 184,
"start_time": 4661.749,
"text": " combinations functional combinations that could occur even just between 20 000 genes let alone all the other processes epigenetic and so on that occur in living organisms means that you've got a combinatorial explosion problem way beyond anything we can cope with so i think it's"
},
{
"end_time": 4704.889,
"index": 185,
"start_time": 4683.985,
"text": " In my view, very unlikely that the difference between ontological and epistemological will ever matter to us. That I think is what I draw as a conclusion from this part of our discussion. It is as though epistemologically"
},
{
"end_time": 4729.599,
"index": 186,
"start_time": 4705.486,
"text": " Restricted in knowing whether the ontological possibility can even exist. I know it's a funny way of trying to put it, but I think it's the best I can do. Directly after this podcast, I emailed Dennis because I had a question about the open nature of the universe. I'll read it and then I'll read his comments. Dear Dennis, in our podcast you posited that the universe may be an open system,"
},
{
"end_time": 4751.408,
"index": 187,
"start_time": 4729.889,
"text": " However, this prompts the question, what exactly is the universe open to? We need to clarify what's meant by the quote-unquote universe. If we're referring to the observable universe as an open system, then that's a more straightforward assertion. However, if we consider the universe with the capital U as the totality of all that exists, then this claim becomes less clear."
},
{
"end_time": 4770.845,
"index": 188,
"start_time": 4751.408,
"text": " The universe with a capital U, defined as the collection of everything that exists, which could also be considered reality. If we were to discover something external to our current understanding of the lowercase U universe, we would naturally incorporate it into this larger framework, thereby expanding our conception of the capital U universe."
},
{
"end_time": 4801.049,
"index": 189,
"start_time": 4771.118,
"text": " So given this definition, one could argue that the capital U universe is a necessarily closed system. If there is something beyond or interacting with what we currently define as the universe, then it implies that our initial definition is incomplete. We would then revise our understanding to include whatever this new component is, thus maintaining that the capital U universe, by its definition, encompasses everything, all that there is, and interacts with nothing outside itself."
},
{
"end_time": 4829.309,
"index": 190,
"start_time": 4801.357,
"text": " Dear Kurt, good question. I think it will all depend on what metaphysical stance we adopt. If we think"
},
{
"end_time": 4857.073,
"index": 191,
"start_time": 4829.565,
"text": " that the universe may be infinite, then anything we see will be open to everything we cannot see, even though that may be infinite. Of course, people may prefer a finite universe as with the current model. I can't see how we can, with our present knowledge, know which metaphysical view is correct. I incline towards the view that the current model is deficient."
},
{
"end_time": 4880.52,
"index": 192,
"start_time": 4857.449,
"text": " We have two places we can go. We can go to multicellularity or we can go to the hard problem of consciousness. Which one do you want to go?"
},
{
"end_time": 4910.128,
"index": 193,
"start_time": 4880.913,
"text": " It might be, it might be a good idea to take multicellularity. I think we can say more about. Yes. Yes. Yes. Multicellularity is of course something that emerged. Well, we don't know exactly, but possibly a very long time ago, even bacteria will form films and cooperate within the film."
},
{
"end_time": 4931.067,
"index": 194,
"start_time": 4910.896,
"text": " There'll be millions of bacteria in any given film on the surface, for example, of water or rocks or whatever it might be. And they communicate with each other to determine how frequently they divide. So there's a kind of"
},
{
"end_time": 4946.817,
"index": 195,
"start_time": 4931.92,
"text": " Multi-cellularity even in a colony of. Supposedly completely free unicellular organisms and maybe do the same."
},
{
"end_time": 4976.971,
"index": 196,
"start_time": 4947.688,
"text": " The amoeba dextilium is a very interesting example of this. It starts life as single spores which contain enough DNA and proteins to when mixed with water for the spores to germinate and what emerges is an amoeba like unicellular organism that can freely move around, feed,"
},
{
"end_time": 5006.664,
"index": 197,
"start_time": 4977.346,
"text": " and grow divide and so on and at certain stages in its life cycle particularly when water is becoming more scarce the individual amoeba congregate into a kind of slug almost like a mollusk that creeps through the environment looking for whatever food it can find"
},
{
"end_time": 5034.957,
"index": 198,
"start_time": 5007.312,
"text": " And then as the desiccation occurs even further, and the environment becomes even drier, the slug grows a stalk, which sticks out like the stalk of a plant. And at the top of the stalk, it grows a cat, which is full of the future spores that start the life cycle again. This organism, Dictostelium, therefore goes"
},
{
"end_time": 5061.391,
"index": 199,
"start_time": 5036.118,
"text": " at different stages in its life all the way through all stages a spore that develops into a unicellular organism that under the right environmental conditions will start to congregate to form a slug that moves as a complete multicellular organism that again under the right conditions will generate a stalk like a plant"
},
{
"end_time": 5087.278,
"index": 200,
"start_time": 5061.732,
"text": " With spore containing caps which then eventually open the wind blows them away and the whole process starts again. Now what is the organism here? Is it the individual amoeba like single cell crawling around? Is it the slug? Is it the fruiting body that grows the spores? Um,"
},
{
"end_time": 5104.872,
"index": 201,
"start_time": 5088.473,
"text": " Seems to me there's no simple answer to that question. There's no doubt that is a colony that becomes effectively a multicellular organism under the right conditions"
},
{
"end_time": 5134.94,
"index": 202,
"start_time": 5105.213,
"text": " Behaves like a multicellular organism in the sense that there's specialization between the different parts of the system, particularly in the fruiting body as it's called, which then liberates the spores. So I would imagine that multicellularity probably began in that kind of way and how it then emerged to become the kind of multicellularity that"
},
{
"end_time": 5165.367,
"index": 203,
"start_time": 5135.435,
"text": " Expanded enormously at the time of the Cambrian explosion roughly 500 million years ago who knows but that is exactly what happened. Now there was a critical evolutionary development that made that possible because the big problem and here again I speak as a physiologist for a multicellular organism is how does it get enough energy"
},
{
"end_time": 5195.486,
"index": 204,
"start_time": 5165.828,
"text": " to support all of its cells you see the ones near the center of a body will need to be provided with oxygen and that requires a circulation which comes back to the need for a circulatory process now all of that requires enormous amounts of energy the earliest organisms on earth did not have that that arose"
},
{
"end_time": 5224.667,
"index": 205,
"start_time": 5195.862,
"text": " through a particular kind of bacterium fusing with another microorganism to form the mitochondria. Wait, just a moment. Sorry, professor. I don't see why it's a problem. Why is it a problem that a cell on the inside of a multicellular organism needs some resource, say oxygen, and that it would be difficult to transport that oxygen to it when we already know that if you have a membrane and you have tubulin. So we already established that the tubulin can transport"
},
{
"end_time": 5254.787,
"index": 206,
"start_time": 5225.23,
"text": " Signals extremely quickly. So why would it be within a cell? Yes. So extracellular is different. Yeah, where extracellular is different. Yes, you've got it in a nutshell. Once you've got multicellular organisms, you've got an extracellular space. Now communication within the extracellular space requires a circulation. In other words, it requires something to flow to enable the products that the"
},
{
"end_time": 5266.749,
"index": 207,
"start_time": 5255.213,
"text": " Individual cells can use to create energy, in our case oxygen, to flow between them otherwise they will just die."
},
{
"end_time": 5296.783,
"index": 208,
"start_time": 5267.125,
"text": " Inside a cell, intracellular, it's like a city that's connected with the subway system and roads, but in between cells, so extracellular, it's far slower as if there's carrier pigeons as the communication process. Yes, it is. It's a circulation problem. And we call railways and roads and so on as circulatory systems. Yes, it is analogous. There's no question about that."
},
{
"end_time": 5327.227,
"index": 209,
"start_time": 5297.466,
"text": " Now that was all dependent on a very particular event in evolution which is the fusion of a bacterium with another kind of prokaryote that's the simple cells before the kinds of cells we have and that bacterium brought the ability in its chemical reactions to generate 10 times more ATP"
},
{
"end_time": 5353.046,
"index": 210,
"start_time": 5327.483,
"text": " That's adenosine triphosphate, which is the energy contributing molecule in living systems to create 10 times as much ATP for the same amount of oxygen being used. That was a huge jump in energy production. Without that happening, I think we can state categorically multicellular organisms like us would not be possible."
},
{
"end_time": 5377.483,
"index": 211,
"start_time": 5353.746,
"text": " That's why I think that evolutionary stage, which was a symbiogenesis between two totally different species of unicellular organism, one a bacterium, the other a different kind of prokaryote. I think that was a critical stage in the evolution of life. Now, does this have any bearing on your third way of evolution?"
},
{
"end_time": 5406.732,
"index": 212,
"start_time": 5378.319,
"text": " Well, yes, because you will not find much said about this in the evolutionary biology textbooks. Around four, is it, three to four years ago, James Shapiro and I published an article in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology asking the question, out of the"
},
{
"end_time": 5434.855,
"index": 213,
"start_time": 5407.193,
"text": " Textbooks that we consulted and popular books too, because we took for tumors textbook called evolution, which is the standard by far. It is published by Oxford University Press, an enormous volume for tumor. And I think his collaborators, either Fitzpatrick or Kirkpatrick. I don't remember the name now. Anyway, we looked at around 40"
},
{
"end_time": 5463.422,
"index": 214,
"start_time": 5435.333,
"text": " Major discoveries, including symbiogenesis, that we think are important in 20th century biology. How many of those occurred in Fatuma's book, in the books published by Richard Dawkins, and there were one or two other books that we looked through? The answer is very few. Not more than around three or four out of 40."
},
{
"end_time": 5494.189,
"index": 215,
"start_time": 5464.292,
"text": " All of those 40 are referred to in papers published by members of the Third Way of Evolution. So we've already done the obvious test, which is, do evolutionary biologists who claim as neo-Darwinists that there's nothing new in what the Third Way people are saying? Well, we've demonstrated that there is in the sense that very major discoveries have been ignored."
},
{
"end_time": 5523.626,
"index": 216,
"start_time": 5494.974,
"text": " Just taking one or two, Barbara McClintock, she found the ability of organisms to rearrange their chromosomes and therefore their genes way back in the 1940s and 1950s published in the journal Genetics in the 1950s. She was ignored almost entirely until 30 years later,"
},
{
"end_time": 5552.824,
"index": 217,
"start_time": 5524.189,
"text": " Around 1982 or 3, I think it was, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of mobile genetic elements. Now, will you see that highlighted in the books I've just referred to? No, not there at all. Why not? Well, I don't know. I suppose the one answer would be"
},
{
"end_time": 5581.408,
"index": 218,
"start_time": 5553.729,
"text": " Well, it's not supposed to happen that organisms can rearrange their DNA. They have to wait on the standard theory. They have to wait until a mutation occurs. Do you think it could also be because you had mentioned this was the standard introductory text. So in the same way you don't teach general relativity at first year, even though general relativity is correct, you teach Newtonian and special relativity. Do you think it's akin to that? Or that"
},
{
"end_time": 5605.111,
"index": 219,
"start_time": 5581.852,
"text": " No, I see the idea. Yes, you teach the basics. This is what Richard Dawkins will say. Oh, Dennis, let's teach the basics first. And then we can go on to the complexities like epigenetics and mobile genetic elements and so on."
},
{
"end_time": 5619.121,
"index": 220,
"start_time": 5605.64,
"text": " Up to a point true, except what I said in my presentation, which is that four of the major assumptions made by the neo-Darwinist modern synthesis are simply not true."
},
{
"end_time": 5637.159,
"index": 221,
"start_time": 5619.684,
"text": " So there's something here much more important than whether it is an extension which comes after you've learnt the fundamentals. These are the fundamentals. If you think that DNA does not self-replicate"
},
{
"end_time": 5652.654,
"index": 222,
"start_time": 5637.159,
"text": " If you think that organisms can change their genomes and if you also think that the central dogma does not prevent organisms from doing that then you're not agreeing with the fundamentals of that form of biology."
},
{
"end_time": 5681.578,
"index": 223,
"start_time": 5652.654,
"text": " It isn't a matter of extension. It's a matter of fundamentals. Though even that case could be made in the physics sense because general relativity disagrees in the fundamentals with Newtonian mechanics and even special relativity. Well, that's an interesting question and is a very deep one, of course, for the physics experts to try to deal with. And I sympathize with the dilemma"
},
{
"end_time": 5712.005,
"index": 224,
"start_time": 5682.449,
"text": " But it's not really comparable, I think. Our problem with relativity and quantum mechanics is that it, as I understand it, it requires a synthesis at the moment we can't even outline. And I know people are trying very hard to find ways in which string theory and related theories might eventually give"
},
{
"end_time": 5739.462,
"index": 225,
"start_time": 5712.346,
"text": " a solution to that problem. But that's a solution to a theoretical problem. I'm saying that in relation to biology, the problem isn't a theoretical problem. It is the experimental fact that those foundations don't any longer get supported by the experimental molecular biology. So I think we're in a very different situation in biology."
},
{
"end_time": 5760.896,
"index": 226,
"start_time": 5740.162,
"text": " The experimental facts are already clear and they don't support the modern synthesis view. I wrote an article called the illusions of the modern synthesis in 2021. Well, what I did in that article was to outline the four, the reasons for in detail"
},
{
"end_time": 5786.544,
"index": 227,
"start_time": 5761.237,
"text": " the four foundations that I think have not been supported by the molecular biology. There's never been an answer to that paper from the neo-darwinists and I don't see how there could be. There is no doubt about the fact that you need a living system to enable DNA to replicate faithfully. There's no doubt about the fact that"
},
{
"end_time": 5815.367,
"index": 228,
"start_time": 5786.732,
"text": " organisms can change genomes happen during the pandemic and it happens all the time and there's no serious argument about whether DNA can self replicate it can't it needs a living system to do so so i think i repeat what i said earlier on these are not disagreements over"
},
{
"end_time": 5842.807,
"index": 229,
"start_time": 5815.811,
"text": " creates problem in physics is a disagreement over what the facts show. And I stand by the facts and I think they show that the foundations have already crumbled. So before we wrap up, I would like to know, does your theory have any explanation for how evolution would produce something that's maladaptive? Maladaptive is doing that all the time."
},
{
"end_time": 5871.408,
"index": 230,
"start_time": 5843.797,
"text": " That's just an observation. Very many maladaptive organisms arise and of course generally speaking natural selection will make sure they don't survive beyond their own lifetime. Does my view create any particular insight there?"
},
{
"end_time": 5901.578,
"index": 231,
"start_time": 5872.022,
"text": " I'm not sure that it does other than to say that I think once you accept that epigenetic changes can be assimilated into the genome, you can evolve much more rapidly than by pure natural selection. And incidentally, this was a point that Darwin appreciated too."
},
{
"end_time": 5926.34,
"index": 232,
"start_time": 5901.8,
"text": " In his lifetime, he worried many times over the question. My book was given the title, or I chose the title, The Origin of Species. Well, actually, it's slightly different. It's on the origin of species. But he puzzled for many years over whether natural selection could really be"
},
{
"end_time": 5956.544,
"index": 233,
"start_time": 5926.869,
"text": " Full explanation for the origin of species and he was quite certain towards the end of his life when he wrote his later books that he could not be and his argument was very simple. He invented the idea natural selection as distinct from artificial selection, meaning of course the choice of breeders of animals, plants or whatever."
},
{
"end_time": 5986.749,
"index": 234,
"start_time": 5957.858,
"text": " to choose the forms of organism that they want to develop. And that is clearly not natural selection. Now there's something very interesting about that distinction and which Darwin himself fully appreciated. That process has not, over the many tens of thousands of years for which we've done it, it's never produced yet a new species. It's produced"
},
{
"end_time": 6013.916,
"index": 235,
"start_time": 5987.039,
"text": " Fantastic variety in the variations, but by and large the organisms can still interbreed. Yes. Now that raises a very big question. The artificial selection breeders know this so well that they have to prevent interbreeding for their new varieties to be given a chance to develop."
},
{
"end_time": 6040.964,
"index": 236,
"start_time": 6015.486,
"text": " So Darwin naturally asked the question, OK, in the Galapagos Islands, it's not too difficult to see how there was reproductive isolation just through species being on different islands. They don't communicate, so they don't reproduce together. What happens in vast spaces where there aren't islands?"
},
{
"end_time": 6063.131,
"index": 237,
"start_time": 6042.005,
"text": " and he knew that something in addition to natural selection was needed and it was his collaborator George Romanis who collaborated with him in the last 10 years of his life who led the way on that. Now he didn't know about epigenetics but I think if he'd known about it he would have used"
},
{
"end_time": 6092.21,
"index": 238,
"start_time": 6063.456,
"text": " the epigenetic route. This relates of course to the question whether natural selection alone could have been responsible for the origin of species. What I'm saying is very simple. It is that Darwin towards the end of his life was not convinced that natural selection alone would have done it. His neo-Darwinist opponents Alfred Russell Wallace and"
},
{
"end_time": 6120.486,
"index": 239,
"start_time": 6092.346,
"text": " August Weissman disagreed with him and thought that natural selection could explain the origin of species. That is what the paper that I've done with Daniel Phillips in the recent edition of the Journal of Physiology tackles as a question. We resurrect what Darwin and his collaborator George Romanes were working on at the time when Darwin passed away."
},
{
"end_time": 6144.497,
"index": 240,
"start_time": 6120.759,
"text": " And we think they were on the right lines. So I think the important thing here is to reiterate what I said much earlier on in our discussion, which is that Darwinism is not neo-Darwinism. My problem is with neo-Darwinism, not so much at all with what Darwin supported as ideas on evolution."
},
{
"end_time": 6171.92,
"index": 241,
"start_time": 6144.599,
"text": " Would you be willing to have a conversation with Dawkins on this channel, Richard Dawkins? Absolutely. So if he would agree, absolutely. I enjoy talking with Richard, actually. I've done so for more than 56 years, because long before he wrote The Selfish Gene, we interacted in Oxford. I was his thesis examiner. Oh, well, that's an interesting little historical tidbit."
},
{
"end_time": 6184.667,
"index": 242,
"start_time": 6172.363,
"text": " At the beginning of the debate or conversation as we agreed to describe it when it occurred last year at the Institute of Art and Ideas,"
},
{
"end_time": 6216.357,
"index": 243,
"start_time": 6186.937,
"text": " He started with a very amusing comment to the audience. He said, I'm feeling a bit nervous today because that man over there, all those years ago, he was my thesis examiner and of course had the audience in uproar of laughter. Anyway, I tell you one thing that I think is very good about that discussion, although I don't think Richard himself ever properly answered the points I was making."
},
{
"end_time": 6244.087,
"index": 244,
"start_time": 6216.647,
"text": " It was a very courteous debate. If ever you're losing in that debate, you can retroactively take away his PhD and remove all his credentials. I would be only too happy to welcome a discussion between the two of us on your channel. OK, so sorry, you were giving an anecdote about the time that you were speaking with Richard. Yes. Well, well, what is it that I can say here?"
},
{
"end_time": 6272.824,
"index": 245,
"start_time": 6244.394,
"text": " Anybody who studies the debate or conversation that we agreed to have in Hay on Why two years ago will see that to the very detailed molecular biological points that I made about DNA not being a self-replicator, about vesicles passing from the body to the germline and the epigenetic changes that that could"
},
{
"end_time": 6300.435,
"index": 246,
"start_time": 6272.892,
"text": " produce that can be transgenerational. I think the feeling I had about that debate was that he's an extremely good debater. What he will do is to move off in another direction rather than deal with the issue. And that's what he did time and time again. You don't have to trust me on that. There's a transcript of the whole debate."
},
{
"end_time": 6330.213,
"index": 247,
"start_time": 6300.759,
"text": " I can send you the link for that too. You feel like there are rhetorical tricks being played? He is a rhetorician, yes. He's a very clever debater. I think he doesn't know the detailed molecular biology that I was referring to. And so I think he went off in a different direction. Let me give just one example of that."
},
{
"end_time": 6359.07,
"index": 248,
"start_time": 6330.35,
"text": " Yes, I pointed out that his test for whether a gene was causal or not was to measure its association with whatever it is thought to be the cause of. So if you think you've got a gene which produces cancer, you ask how well strongly associated is that gene with cancer? And I said, look, the problem with that, Richard, is that you're using"
},
{
"end_time": 6385.623,
"index": 249,
"start_time": 6360.009,
"text": " A word cause in a different sense. Because you're you're talking or giving the impression that it's an active cause in the sense that molecules bumping into each other actively interact with each other. There are many other forms of cause DNA is not an active cause was my point."
},
{
"end_time": 6414.906,
"index": 250,
"start_time": 6386.22,
"text": " And the reason is that it isn't like proteins. Proteins are active causes. They actually do things. They are enzymes. They make reactions occur that would otherwise not occur. DNA does none of that. It's simply a form. It is a pattern, if you like, which gets used by the protein making machinery of the body to create a protein."
},
{
"end_time": 6445.589,
"index": 251,
"start_time": 6415.657,
"text": " It doesn't actually itself actively do that. It's the ribosome in the cell together with all the various processes there that enable proteins to be made that interprets that form. Now, many years ago, over 2000 years ago, one of the earliest Greek philosophers, Aristotle, made this point. There are fundamental differences between causation by shape"
},
{
"end_time": 6473.012,
"index": 252,
"start_time": 6446.049,
"text": " Causation by form, causation by physical interaction and causation by final cause. Those are at least four forms of causation. They're all fundamentally different. Now, I don't know why, but you know, he didn't seem to see that where he just simply said, well, but Dennis, they are active causes. You know, I'd already made the point that"
},
{
"end_time": 6499.309,
"index": 253,
"start_time": 6473.473,
"text": " A form is not a cause in the same sense the molecules bumping into each other. There are different forms of causation. We come back now, of course, to boundary conditions and differential equations. The differential equations are like the mechanics. The boundary conditions are like the form. And Aristotle would have agreed with that immediately. I don't know why, but he doesn't seem to see this distinction."
},
{
"end_time": 6528.336,
"index": 254,
"start_time": 6499.974,
"text": " But I'd welcome the opportunity to take it all up again with him. Yes, and I may be coming to the UK at some point in the next couple of months, so it may even be possible to arrange this in person. Indeed, indeed. We'll talk about that off air. So now before we end, the last couple of questions are just on purpose. What is a formal definition of purpose that is amenable to scientific investigation? Purpose one, not intentional purpose."
},
{
"end_time": 6549.787,
"index": 255,
"start_time": 6528.524,
"text": " Yes, I think the formal definition, very good question Kurt, thank you. No, the formal definition I would give would be the ability of an agent to harness stochasticity to make it useful. In other words, to give purpose to something that it creates."
},
{
"end_time": 6577.978,
"index": 256,
"start_time": 6551.971,
"text": " And we can investigate that because you can measure the stochasticity and as in the case of the immune system, you can work out how it enables it to be purposive through issuing instructions to some cells to reproduce to others to die. And that's exactly how the immune system manages to select out of the stochastic variations, the ones that work."
},
{
"end_time": 6607.278,
"index": 257,
"start_time": 6578.353,
"text": " So I would say that any organism or any process that is capable of doing that is purposive. And I think that would be my scientific definition of purposive. I noticed that you use the word purposive instead of purposeful. Now, is there a reason for that? Can one just make that substitution? Well, I'm purposive avoids"
},
{
"end_time": 6625.947,
"index": 258,
"start_time": 6608.882,
"text": " The implication of purposeful, which is that there's a kind of thing that is the purposeful thing. I think that's a philosophical mistake, just as with consciousness."
},
{
"end_time": 6645.026,
"index": 259,
"start_time": 6626.476,
"text": " The nest in that word gives the idea that somehow consciousness is a thing it isn't it's a process and we make a fundamental error if we think that you can be identified. Francis crick before he died."
},
{
"end_time": 6673.507,
"index": 260,
"start_time": 6645.555,
"text": " Um, worked a lot on the issue of consciousness and he was, he was looking for a place in the brain where he thought consciousness actually arises. I don't think that's even a sensible question to ask. It's a process of the entire system. And so I'm, I try to avoid words that reify is the philosophical term for it, isn't it?"
},
{
"end_time": 6701.391,
"index": 261,
"start_time": 6673.831,
"text": " create a thing out of a process, because I think it's best to leave them as processes that we investigate, rather than thinking that in some way we can, as it were, grab hold of it as a thing. That that's the basic point between purposive and purposeful. Purposive emphasizes the process involved. Okay, now the ontological status of purposive is"
},
{
"end_time": 6731.834,
"index": 262,
"start_time": 6701.834,
"text": " That it's a fundamental property, that it's an emergent property, or that it's a descriptive concept. Well, it's certainly descriptive because as I said earlier on, you can produce a definition that enables you to investigate it scientifically. The harnessing of stochasticity to produce function. I think that will do it. Now, ontological, this raises huge questions that I don't think I can tackle."
},
{
"end_time": 6759.735,
"index": 263,
"start_time": 6732.312,
"text": " Incidentally, the ending of my book on biological relativity does to the tune of life. The final chapter is called the Relativity of Epistemology precisely because I think there are limits to what our knowledge can manage to cope with and I live with that fact. I don't find it a problem to live with it. But the coming to the question whether"
},
{
"end_time": 6789.275,
"index": 264,
"start_time": 6760.179,
"text": " purposefulness yes or purposeive so how do you want to put it is an ontologically necessary feature of the universe i've no idea and i understand why it asks the question it's obviously of deep significance to religious thinkers but i freely admit i'm not in that category i'm not a theologian i'm not"
},
{
"end_time": 6810.452,
"index": 265,
"start_time": 6789.462,
"text": " I'm not even qualified to deal with those kinds of questions. I'm not opposed incidentally to people using metaphysics to clarify their ideas. We do that all the time. We do it in mathematics too. Has anybody ever met the square root of minus one?"
},
{
"end_time": 6838.2,
"index": 266,
"start_time": 6810.776,
"text": " Well, no, there's no way you can point to say, but is it useful? My God, is it useful? When I discovered as a young student, how useful the forms of mathematics that use the square root of minus one to get you a solution where, of course, in the end, it falls out of the solution. So you haven't got it left at the end. I mean, it's just amazing what can be done."
},
{
"end_time": 6846.049,
"index": 267,
"start_time": 6838.797,
"text": " And I think of metaphysics as not dissimilar in the sense that it enables us to"
},
{
"end_time": 6869.087,
"index": 268,
"start_time": 6846.852,
"text": " Clarify possibilities that possibly we can never empirically investigate. That's super interesting because you see it as an intermediate step. So akin to a painter who traces at first with pencil and you don't see that in the end because the painting is over it. But if you were to remove it, the quality of the painting would suffer. Yeah, that's right."
},
{
"end_time": 6898.951,
"index": 269,
"start_time": 6869.667,
"text": " That's why I use the analogy with the square root of minus one, because that's a bit similar, isn't it? You use it and eventually it disappears. Yes. No, I think I'd like to be fairly straightforward on this. I think there probably are metaphysical speculations about which we will never know what to say. Like, is the universe open or not or closed?"
},
{
"end_time": 6928.985,
"index": 270,
"start_time": 6899.36,
"text": " I have no idea how we would ever answer that question, but my goodness, it's a very important question. I have no doubt about that. Last question. You've touched on this briefly in your previous talk, which will again be included in the description for people who are wondering. Dennis Noble gave the inaugural lecture on rethinking the foundations of biology centered around the question of what lies beyond Darwin. You should watch it. It's quite succinct. It's only 35 minutes or so in length."
},
{
"end_time": 6958.558,
"index": 271,
"start_time": 6929.343,
"text": " What advice do you have for young people entering the field? Advice given to young people. The world is your oyster because if I'm right, there's a huge amount of biology still to be discovered. Processes well beyond what you'll find in the textbooks today. So I think coming into biology at the present time is a very good time to come into it."
},
{
"end_time": 6969.343,
"index": 272,
"start_time": 6958.848,
"text": " The other piece of advice I give to young people is what I quoted from the ending of my little book with my brother Ray Noble."
},
{
"end_time": 6993.848,
"index": 273,
"start_time": 6969.565,
"text": " Professor, thank you for spending three hours with me in total. That's perfectly okay. Right. Bye bye for now then."
},
{
"end_time": 7009.292,
"index": 274,
"start_time": 6994.258,
"text": " Firstly, thank you for watching, thank you for listening. There's now a website, curtjymungle.org, and that has a mailing list. The reason being that large platforms like YouTube, like Patreon, they can disable you for whatever reason, whenever they like."
},
{
"end_time": 7035.64,
"index": 275,
"start_time": 7009.292,
"text": " That's just part of the terms of service. Now, a direct mailing list ensures that I have an untrammeled communication with you. Plus, soon I'll be releasing a one-page PDF of my top 10 toes. It's not as Quentin Tarantino as it sounds like. Secondly, if you haven't subscribed or clicked that like button, now is the time to do so. Why? Because each subscribe, each like helps YouTube push this content to more people like yourself"
},
{
"end_time": 7052.927,
"index": 276,
"start_time": 7035.64,
"text": " Plus, it helps out Kurt directly, aka me. I also found out last year that external links count plenty toward the algorithm, which means that whenever you share on Twitter, say on Facebook or even on Reddit, etc., it shows YouTube, hey, people are talking about this content outside of YouTube."
},
{
"end_time": 7082.363,
"index": 277,
"start_time": 7053.166,
"text": " which in turn greatly aids the distribution on YouTube. Thirdly, there's a remarkably active Discord and subreddit for theories of everything where people explicate toes, they disagree respectfully about theories and build as a community our own toe. Links to both are in the description. Fourthly, you should know this podcast is on iTunes. It's on Spotify. It's on all of the audio platforms. All you have to do is type in theories of everything and you'll find it. Personally, I gained from rewatching lectures and podcasts."
},
{
"end_time": 7102.329,
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"text": " I also read in the comments"
},
{
"end_time": 7128.49,
"index": 279,
"start_time": 7102.329,
"text": " and donating with whatever you like. There's also PayPal. There's also crypto. There's also just joining on YouTube. Again, keep in mind it's support from the sponsors and you that allow me to work on toe full time. You also get early access to ad free episodes, whether it's audio or video, it's audio in the case of Patreon video in the case of YouTube. For instance, this episode that you're listening to right now was released a few days earlier. Every dollar helps far more than you think."
},
{
"end_time": 7157.022,
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"text": " Either way, your viewership is generosity enough. Thank you so much. Think Verizon, the best 5G network is expensive? Think again. Bring in your AT&T or T-Mobile bill to a Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal. Now what's it do with your unwanted bills? Ever seen an origami version of the Miami Bull?"
},
{
"end_time": 7175.213,
"index": 281,
"start_time": 7157.5,
"text": " Jokes aside, Verizon has the most ways to save on phones and plans where you can get a single line with everything you need. So bring in your bill to your local Miami Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal."
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]
}No transcript available.