Just a quick note to say that I have apparently once again been "moderated" off of the threads at Uncommon Descent. Apparently my comments were cutting a little too close to the bone. One could almost say I'd been Expelled (No intelligence Allowed)...
And to Timaeus and others from UD: I will be indirectly responding to some of the posts at Uncommon Descent here (time and weather permitting, of course).
Analogies, Metaphors, and Inference in Science
Mike Gene, the pseudonymous founder of Telic Thoughts and the author of The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues has written the following about metaphors and their application to the detection of intelligent design:
Metaphors such as “fear”, “cost”, “abhor” and “angry”, commonly share the projection of consciousness onto the world. Metaphors such as these represent the human tendency to view the world through anthropomorphic glasses. However, the metaphors employed by molecular biologists are not of this type.
...
Metaphors typically break down when we begin to take them literally.
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[but] The design terminology that is used in the language of molecular biology does not break down when interpreted literally
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[T]here is a basic and literal truth to the use of design terminology in molecular biology–these technological concepts are just too useful. Metaphors are certainly useful when explaining concepts to other human beings, yet the design terminology often goes beyond pedagogy–it provides true insight into the molecular and cellular processes. An understanding of our own designed artifacts, along with the principles required to make them, can guide the practice of molecular biology.
Metaphors are a special case of analogies (the other being similes). I have written extensively on the subject of the use of analogies and metaphors in science, and especially in the evolution/design debate here, here, and here. The fundamental question in this ongoing debate is, how do we know an analogy really exists? For example, do we have any objective way to determine if one rock is analogous with another? Or whether an anatomical feature (or a protein/substrate binding site) is analogous to another?
As in the case of agency detection, we think we can do this very easily (just as we can easily identify what looks like design), but I would argue that this is because both "finding" analogies and "finding" design and purpose are capabilities of the human mind (and the nervous system that supports it) that have conferred enormous adaptive value on our ancestors. As in the case of our hypothesized "innate agency/design/purpose detector" (which first becomes active in very early infancy), our "analogy detector" also appears to become active at a very early age, and operates entirely in the background. That is to say, we are almost totally unaware of its operation, and concentrate only on its output.
Our ability to detect (and construct) analogies is, IMO, the core of our intelligence, as demonstrated by the fact that identifying analogies has been traditionally used as one of the most sensitive gauges of general intelligence in intelligence tests (such as the Miller Analogies Test).
In the context of Mike Gene's ideas about metaphors, doing engineering (and especially mathematics) is essentially the construction of highly compact analogies, in which numerical (and sometimes physical) relationships are expressed in the form of abstract symbols. A blueprint is simply a metaphor for a building, just as a chemical formula is a metaphor for the product of the chemical reaction, and a recipe for a cake is a metaphor for the cake. Indeed, many mathematical relationships (especially in the natural sciences) are expressed as equations, which are quite literally metaphors expressed in symbolic form. For example, Newton's equation for force:
F = ma
is a metaphor linking the concept of force with the concepts of mass and acceleration.
In molecular biology we encounter once again the concept of metaphors, for what is the genome of an organism but a highly abstract metaphor for the fully embodied and operating organism itself? I agree with those (and I expect Mike Gene would number himself among them) who assert that the encoding of "life" into a string of nucleotides is indeed the crucial difference between biological "metaphors" and physical "direct necessities". Gravity isn't "encoded" in anything, but proteins are, and so are cells, tissues, organs, organ systems, organisms, and (at least at some level) their behaviors.
So, is there a way to verify if an analogy or metaphor is "real"? In the case of some analogies in biological systems we have an independent double-check on our identification of analogies. This is based on the evolutionary concept of homology, or derivation from a common ancestor. If two structures on two different organisms (say a small bone of the jaw of a reptile and the even smaller bone in the middle ear of a mammal) appear to be analogous (on the basis of size, location, relationship to other bones, etc.) there are at least two different, though related, methods of verifying that these structures are indeed analogous (and not just accidentally similar).
One way is by means of comparative paleoanatomy, in which a series of fossils of known age are compared to determine if there is a connection between the evolutionary pathways of derivation of the structures. If such a pathway can be empirically shown to exist, this would be strong evidence for both the analogous and homologous nature of the objects.
Alternatively one could compare the nucleotide sequences that code for the structures to determine if they are sufficiently similar to warrant a conclusion of homologous derivation. In both cases, evidence for homology, combined with our intuitive "identification" of analogous structure and/or function, both point to the same conclusion: that the two structures are both analogous and homologous.
This is why structures that appear to be analogous, but for which there is no convincing evidence of homology (as in the wings of birds and insects) can present a serious problem to evolutionary biologists, and especially those engaged in biological classification. Such apparent similarities (technically called homoplasies) can either be the result of "true" (i.e. partial) analogy at the functional (and/or structural) level (and therefore assumed to be the result of convergent evolution) or they can be completely accidental. Simple inspection is often insufficient to separate these two hypotheses, and lacking either fossil or genomic evidence, conclusions about the validity of such analogies can be extremely difficult to draw. However, if there is fossil and/or genomic evidence and it points away from homology (i.e. descent from a common ancestor), then the structures can be considered to be analogous, but not homologous.
One of the dangers in invoking analogies and metaphors is overusing the concept of analogy to mean almost anything. Indeed, it is essential in discussions such as these that we be as precise as possible about our definitions, as imprecision can only lead to confusion (at best) and unsupportable conclusions (at worst).
Perhaps the most essential distinction to be made in this regard is between "analogies of description" (which could also be called "semantic analogies") and "analogies of function/structure" (which could also be called "natural analogies"). The former (i.e. "semantic analogies") are merely artifacts of the structure of human cognition and language, as happens whenever we describe an analogy that we have perceived.
By contrast, the latter (i.e. "natural analogies") are the actual similarities in function/structure that we are describing (i.e. that resulted in our identification and description in the first place). As in the Zen koan about the roshi and the novice in the moonlit garden, much of the confusion about which of the two types of analogies we are discussing seems to stem from confusion between the moon that illuminates the garden and the finger pointing at the moon.
In the brief example from Mike Gene's The Design Matrix posted at the head of this thread, the implication is that the analogies we perceive between biological systems and those engineered by humans are "natural analogies"; that is, they are real analogies, and not simply a form of linguistic convenience. However, there is nothing about the finding of an analogy that necessarily verifies that the analogy is "natural" (i.e. "real"), as opposed to "semantic" (i.e. "imaginary"). This would be the case even if one found repeated analogies between complex systems engineered by humans and biological systems that evolved by natural selection. To verify that an analogy is "natural" requires an independent source of validation for the assertion that the analogy is "real" and not merely "semantic". At this stage in my reasoning about this subject I am not at all sure how one would go about this.
However, one thing I am sure of is that simply asserting over and over again that one has perceived an analogy, and that this is all that is necessary to validate the analogy, is not sufficient. Even I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.
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As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed!
--Allen
Should Embryonic Stem Cells be Used for Medical Research?
On Monday 9 March 2009 President Obama signed an executive order reversing the Bush administration's ban on the use of Federal funding for embryonic stem cells for medical research (and presumably for any medical treatments that might eventually be developed as the result of that research). This policy change has raised a storm of controversy among right-to-life- advocates, and also among "intelligent design" supporters. This controversy has centered on the ethics of science, and whether scientists should be allowed to pursue their research wherever it leads.
Currently, most embryonic stem cells are derived from human egg cells that have been fertilized in vitro (that is, outside of the body of the egg-donor mother) as part of the process of in vitro fertilization (IVF) whereby childless couples can conceive of a baby using their own genetic material.
IVF clinics generally fertilize multiple donor eggs and then let them
divide by mitosis until the blastula stage is reached. During this process the inner cell mass is formed inside the blastula, from which embryonic stem cells are derived. The point to this process is not to produce the embryonic stem cells in the inner cell mass, but rather to produce viable blastulas, which can then be implanted in the uterus of the egg donor (or, in rare cases, a surrogate).
The way this process is carried out necessarily produces multiple unused blastula-stage embryos for every one that is implanted. These unused blastula-stage embryos are usually frozen in liquid nitrogen, in case the egg donor requires a repeat implantation.
Currently, there are almost half a million such blastula-stage embryos frozen in liquid nitrogen in IVF clinics in the United States, which leads to the first ethical question:
What becomes of the unused frozen embryos, and who decides?
Here is what generally happens:
Any embryos that you do not use in your first IVF attempt can be frozen for later use. This will save you money if you undergo IVF a second or third time. If you do not want your leftover embryos, you may donate them to another infertile couple, or you and your partner can ask the clinic to destroy the embryos. Both you and your partner must agree before the clinic will destroy or donate your embryos. [source]
So, should the "parents" (i.e. the egg and sperm donors) have the right to decide that their unused blastula-stage embryos be destroyed? Despite some political efforts to deny them this right, there is no legal jurisdiction in the U.S. in which this right has been abrogated (yet).
One way to solve this particular ethic dilemma is to "adopt" the frozen embryos by having them implanted in an "adoptive" mother. There is an organization that advocates this, Nightlight Christian Adoptions, and has arranged for some of these frozen embryos (which the organization calls "snowflakes") to be "adopted" by implantation in "adoptive" mothers who are medically infertile (and married).
According to data at that website, the current number of successful "snowflake adoptions" is approximately 202 since the program was started in 1997. That works out to around 17 per year, or 0.0034% of the current half-million "snowflake backlog". At that rate, all of the frozen embryos currently in cryogenic suspended animation will be "adopted" by the year 31421.
However, this grossly underestimates how long this backlog will persist, as it assumes that no new "snowflakes" are generated by new IVF procedures. Currently, the rate of production of new frozen blastula-stage embryos at IVF clinics in the US is approximately 18,000 per year. The current rate of "snowflake adoption" is approximately 20 per year, so unless IVF is permanently stopped, it is mathematically impossible for the current "snowflake backlog" to eventually be "adopted".
One way to avoid the use of embryonic stem cells taken from frozen blastula-stage human embryos is to use adult stem cells instead. There are many different tissues in adult humans that qualify as pluripotent stem cells (that is, cells that can continue to divide by mitosis). Recent research has made it possible to "regress" adult stem cells almost to the embryonic stem cell stage, which raises the possibility of using adult stem cells instead of embryonic stem cells.
Personally, I strongly hope that adult stem cells can be used for all of the scientific and technical uses that most scientists originally thought only embryonic stem cells could be used for. However, this will then lead to two new, unforseen ethical dilemmas:
What will be done with the "snowflakes" that are currently frozen at IVF clinics, if they are not used for stem cell research and medical treatment?
and
What will be done with the adult stem cells that have been regressed to the embryonic stem cell stage, since these would then qualify genetically and developmentally as "snowflakes" themselves?
Clearly, one irony of the development of adult stem cell regression will be that the "snowflakes" now frozen in liquid nitrogen in all of those IVF labs will now almost certainly be disposed of (I suppose they defrost and incinerate them), rather than contributing to the advance of medical technology and human welfare.
The other irony, of course, is that by regressing adult stem cells to the embryonic stem cell stage, there would be many more "snowflakes", rather than fewer, thereby necessitating the destruction of many more "potential human beings" than is currently the case.
There are two other solutions, both of which avoid the ethical dilemmas outlined above. One alternative would be:
To consider that neither embryonic stem cells nor adult stem cells are "human beings" until they are implanted into a mother and are born as human babies.
This, of course, would require defining "human life" as beginning at birth, rather than "conception" (regardless of where that "conception" took place).
Another alternative would be:
To consider that all stem cells are "human beings", which would require that all stem cell research and treatment and all forms of in vitro fertilization be declared unethical, and presumably outlawed.But this would also require that we outlaw all developmental research, because somewhere along the line some researcher somewhere might find out how to regress any human cell to the embryonic stem cell stage, and then simply scratching your head or drinking a cup of too-hot coffee would be equivalent to murder.
As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed!
--Allen
"Can Natural Selection Produce New Information?"
Here's another in a series of responses to some common assertions/misunderstandings of evolutionary biology by creationists and "intelligent design" supporters. One of the most common arguments against the theory of evolution is that natural selection cannot produce genuinely new information:
"Natural selection does not produce new information. On the contrary, it only reduces existing genetic information. Evolutionary biologists shouldn't invoke mutations as a source of new information, because all known mutations involve a net loss of information."
This viewpoint demonstrates a basic misunderstanding of the process of evolution bynatural selection. According to Darwin (and virtually all evolutionary biologists), natural selection has three prerequisites:
1) Variety, generated by the "engines of variation";
2) Heredity, mediated by the transfer of genetic material (either vertically - from parents to offspring - or horizontally - via viral transduction, retrotranscription, etc.); and
3) Fecundity, that is, reproduction, usually at a rate that exceeds replacement (according to Malthus).
Given these three prerequisites, the following outcome is virtually inevitable:
4) Demography: Some individuals survive and reproduce more often than others. Ergo, the heritable variations of such individuals become more common over time in populations of those organisms.
Natural selection is synonymous with #4; it is an outcome of the three processes listed as prerequisites, not a "mechanism" in and of itself.
Ergo, the real dispute between evolutionary biologists and "intelligent design" supporters is not over natural selection per se, but rather the properties and capabilities of the "engines of variation". I have written extensively about these here and here.
Yes, natural selection (i.e. #4, above) is conservative not creative. It produces no new genetic nor phenotypic information, which is why Darwin eventually came to prefer the term "natural preservation" rather than "natural selection". However, it is also clear that the "engines of variation" - that is, the processes the produce phenotypic variation among the members of populations of living organisms - are both extraordinarily creative and extraordinarily fecund. The real problem in biology is therefore not producing new variation, but rather limiting the production of new variation to the point that the "engines of variation" do not cause the inevitable disintegration of living systems.
As just one example of this problem, the genetic elements known as transposons generate a huge amount of new genetic variation, much of which is either phenotypically neutral or deleterious to the organism. There are biochemical mechanisms by which cells can monitor the incidence of transposition in themselves, and limit its consequences (up to and including the active self-destruction of the cell via apoptosis).
At the same time, there is very good evidence in the genomes of many organisms that retrotransposition events mediated by transposons have occasionally produced genetic changes that have resulted in increased survival and reproduction of the organisms in which such events have taken place. There is a large and growing literature on this phenomenon, all of which points to the inference that retrotransposition via transposons both creates new genetic and phenotypic variation, and that in some cases such variation can provide the raw material for evolutionary adaptations, which are preserved via natural selection.
So, if someone really wants to find out where the Intelligent Designer might create new variations, they should follow the lead of Darwin's good friend, Asa Gray, and look for the telltale evidence (if any) for such intervention in the "engines of variation". Of course, they would have to show pretty conclusively (using empirical investigations and statistical analysis) that such "creation events" are not the result of purely natural, unguided processes. If they can do this, they will undoubtedly win a Nobel Prize and a Crafoord Prize (plus a MacArthur or two).
Notice that this will involve looking carefully into the mechanisms by which new variations are produced, rather than pointing to the outcomes of such processes (i.e. natural selection) and simply asserting that "you can't get here from there". Simply asserting (without empirical evidence) that something can't happen isn't "doing science" at all. In fact, it's doing just the opposite...
...it's doing ID the way it's always been done up until now; by press release, rather than by empirical research.
As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed!
--Allen
"Why Do We Have The Senses That We Have?"
A common debating tactic used by creationists and ID supporters is to ask, "why do we have the senses that we have, and not some other ones"? The answer they usually provide is something like, "because that's the way the Intelligent Designer intended them to be".
The question of why we have the senses that we do is a very interesting one. As just one example, consider the sense of sight. As a type G2V yellow dwarf star, the sun gives off a relatively narrow range of electromagnetic radiation, including (from longest wavelength to shortest) radio waves, infrared radiation, “visible (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple) light", and ultraviolet light. Almost all of these wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation can penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere (although the shorter wavelengths of ultraviolet light are somewhat attenuated by absorption by ozone/O3 in the upper atmosphere).
So, which wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation can we perceive? The answer depends on who you define as “we". Vertebrates have visual pigments in the cone cells of the retina that can absorb only three of these wavelengths: red (absorbed by the rhodopsin protein erythrolabe, which absorbs sunlight in the range of 564–580 nanometers), green (absorbed by the rhodopsin protein chlorolabe, which absorbs sunlight in the range of 534–545 nanometers), and blue (absorbed by the rhodopsin protein cyanolabe, which absorbs sunlight in the range of 420–440 nanometers). So, we vertebrates can only directly perceive red, green, and blue light (that’s why color computer monitors generate only red, green, and blue pixels).
However, most insects (including honey bees) have different visual pigments, and so see very different colors than we do. They do not have a visual pigment that corresponds to vertebrate erythrolabe, and so cannot perceive the color we call “red". However, they have a visual pigment vertebrates do not have, which can absorb light in the near ultraviolet range. Hence, insects can see colors (including ultraviolet) that we cannot see, and so the world appears very different to them.
So far, no organism on Earth has been discovered that can perceive the radio waves given off by the sun. This is probably because to do so would require absorptive structures several meters in length (the wavelength of most radio waves).
So, one answer to the creationist's question is that, taken as a whole, living organisms can perceive (or at least absorb) a range of light from the far infrared to the near ultraviolet, but lack receptors for most of the electromagnetic spectrum (such as radio waves, gamma radiation, etc). In other words, the range of electromagnetic radiation that can be perceived by living organisms matches quite closely the range of electromagnetic radiation given off by the sun and transmitted through the Earth’s atmosphere (with the exception of radio waves, which are too long to by absorbed by any known biological molecule).
That this is the case is exactly what one would expect to have evolved by natural selection, which can only work with what is available. Furthermore, it illustrates one of the basic ideas of evolutionary descent with modification: that the solutions to evolutionary problems vary from group to group as the result of historical contingency. Vertebrates see red, green, and blue, while insects see green, blue, and ultraviolet because two of our visual pigments (chlorolabe and cyanolabe) evolved before the divergence of insects and vertebrates from our common ancestor, while the third visual pigment evolved independently in the two groups, resulting in two different sets of perceived colors.
Compare this to the answer that ID provides: vision is the way it is because that’s how the Intelligent Designer intended it to be. Which of these answers to the creationist's query involves detailed empirical scientific investigation, and which simply relies on unsupported assertions?
As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed!
--Allen
Teleology vs Teleonomy: Can a "Program" Exist Before Its "Programmer"?
This post is a follow-up to the previous post on the subject of the "randomness" in the processes that generate the variation that is necessary for biological evolution.
Can a "program" exist before its "programmer" (and therefore bring it into being)? This seems to be the core of the disagreement between ID supporters and mainstream scientists. The former (which include Charles Darwin's very close friend, Asa Gray) advocate the idea that the variation upon which natural selection and other evolutionary processes work is neither random nor unintentional. The latter (which include Darwin and his intellectual heirs) do not disagree with the idea that such variation is not "random". What they disagree with is the idea that there is some "intention" or "plan" guiding the variation that occurs, so that certain outcomes (including, but not limited to, the origin of humans) are more likely than others.
To answer the question that stands at the head of this post, I think it's essential to emphasize (as I did in the original blogpost) that the terms “foresighted” and “goal-oriented” are not equivalent, nor are the processes to which they are applied. As I have pointed out in many posts, there is no inherent contradiction between a process being purely "natural" (i.e. the result of the operation of purely natural processes) and being "goal-oriented".
Ernst Mayr (surely no advocate of "intelligent design") argued forcefully (and, in my opinion, convincingly) that biological organisms are indeed "goal-oriented". That is, their genomes provide a program, the function of which is to bring about a particular state of affairs: the survival and reproduction of the organism via its interactions with its environment.
The origin of the genome (i.e. the "program" itself) is an entirely different situation, however. Ever since Darwin it has been a standard assumption that the evolutionary processes by which the genetic "programs" that direct the assembly and operation of living organisms are not goal-oriented. These evolutionary processes – natural selection, sexual selection, founder effects, genetic bottlenecks, neutral "drift" in deep evolutionary time, exaptation, heterochronic development, changes in homeotic development, interspecific competition, species-level selection, serial endosymbiosis, convergence/divergence, hybridization, phylogenetic fusion, background and mass extinction/adaptive radiation, and internal variance – do not require any kind of "goal orientation" to produce the living entities and processes we observe around and within us. And, since such processes do not require goal-orientation or intentionality, these are not included in evolutionary explanations. Some, but not all, evolutionary biologists extend this idea to the assumption that goal-orientation or intentionality do not exist in nature, in the absence of pre-existing genomic "programs").
The main reason for this assumption has been that it is extremely problematic to agree on how one would go about showing that the aforementioned evolutionary processes have indeed been goal-oriented. The most serious objection to this idea is that there seems to be nowhere for such a "directing agency" to exist in material form, nor any natural means by which its goals could be impressed upon physical organisms.
The genomes of organisms are physical/chemical "stuff", which is translated via physical/chemical "machinery" into biological entities and processes. That is, there is a physical/chemical "vehicle" in which the information for assembling and operating organisms is carried and expressed.
The same would not the case for the putative source of the "evolutionary program" which might direct the evolution of the genomes of living organisms. Since such an "evolutionary program" would cause the evolution of the "genomic programs" which direct the assembly and operation of living organisms, such a program would necessarily have to exist before the origin and evolution of biological genomes, as it would be necessary for it to do so to direct their coming into being.
This presents two serious problems:
• By what mechanism(s) would such an "evolutionary program" cause "genomic programs" to come into existence, and
• Precisely where in the physical universe would such a pre-existing "evolutionary program" itself exist?
We seem to have two direct logical contradictions in terms:
• How can a non-natural "evolutionary program" cause a natural "genomic program" to come into existence, and
• How can a programmer pre-exist the program which brings itself into existence?
There is a proposed answer to these two questions, but one which most ID supporters seem loathe to invoke:
• That the "pre-existing program" that directs the evolution of the genomic programs of living organisms is woven into the structure of physical reality itself.
This is the line of inquiry pursued by Ilya Prigogine and Stuart Kauffman (among others), but which is rejected out-of-hand by nearly all ID supporters (most notably Michael Behe, William Dembski, and Phillip Johnson), who prefer a purely "supernatural" source for the "pre-existing program" by which evolution has been directed).
As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed!
--Allen
"Are the Mechanisms that Produce Phenotypic Variation "Random"?
Some "intelligent design" supporters have recently asserted that all of the 47+ mechanisms listed in my blog are “random” or “accidental", and therefore the old creationist argument that "RM & NS" doesn't explain the origin and evolution of life is still valid. However, this is simply not the case. On the contrary, a large percentage of these mechanisms are the result of processes that are not “random” by any reasonable definition of that term. I have repeatedly been very careful to point this out, but that clearly has been missed by many "intelligent design" supporters.
It is also not the case that the 47+ processes are not “guided". Indeed they are “guided”, by the various internal and environmental forces that produce both the variations and the various evolutionary mechanisms that operate upon them (i.e. natural selection, sexual selection, founder effects, genetic bottlenecks, neutral “drift” in deep evolutionary time, exaptation, heterochronic development, changes in homeotic development, interspecific competition, species-level selection, serial endosymbiosis, convergence/divergence, hybridization, phylogenetic fusion, background and mass extinction/adaptive radiation, and internal variance).
That said, however, it is also demonstrably the case that none of the mechanisms listed above can be shown empirically to be “foresighted". Indeed, the whole idea of “foresightedness” in natural processes seems to me to violate several very well-established principles of physics, including the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
How can any natural process be empirically shown to be genuinely “foresighted"? Do rocks fall “in order to” reach the ground? Do gas molecules move “in order to” produce the phenomena we describe with Boyle’s Law? Do the electrons in the valence energy shells of hydrogen and oxygen form shared couplets “in order to” produce water? Do particular genetic changes happen “in order to” produce phenotypic changes that have no effects on organisms’ survival and/or reproduction now, but might have in the future? And how can anyone show any of these to be the case?
It is important to note that the terms “foresighted” and “goal-oriented” are not equivalent. The latter term is entirely compatible with both physics in general and evolutionary biology in particular. Indeed, the genomes of all living organisms are “goal-oriented programs” (as most clearly pointed out by Ernst Mayr), in that they organize and control the assembly and operation of the living organisms for which they code.
However, the processes by which such genomes have come into being (i.e. the 47+ mechanisms listed here, operating through the various mechanisms of micro- and macroevolution listed above) have not been empirically shown to be either “foresighted” nor “goal-oriented". It seems to me that this would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to do. What kinds of empirical observations could one conduct that would unambiguously verify today that some component of an existing organism’s genome or phenome was present in that organism now because at some point in the future it might become necessary for that organism’s survival and/or reproduction?
Clearly, once an organism has survived and/or reproduced one can point to its various attributes and say “yes, that attribute appears to have contributed to the organism’s survival/reproduction". However, that is no more evidence of “foresightedness” than a lottery winner saying “I chose these lottery numbers (or bought those particular scratch-off tickets) because I knew they would be winners". This is known as the “fallacy of affirming the consequent” (also called post hoc, ergo propter hoc argumentation) and is logically inadmissible in the natural sciences.
As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed!
--Allen
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