At last! Actual scientists are saying what I’ve thought, unauthorized, for years, and stated in sometimes poetic, metaphorical language:
DNA is a brain, and we (living beings) are its dreams.
Maybe DNA is an information storage and manipulation system analogous to a brain, but in a different dimension. Maybe it receives information from the environment through mechanisms other than, and faster than, the birth and death rates [the only drivers of fitness as the theory of evolution by natural selection would have it], and maybe it responds to environmental changes and challenges with variation and even innovation.
Maybe it even has some kind of consciousness associated with it, as material brains do. That question aside, the impression is inescapable that mutation is responsive and the resultant variation . . . inventive. The riot of variation and the intricacy of adaptation could not have been hewn out by so crude an axe as chance mutation, even given infinite time. The concept of an anthropomorphic creator is also far too crude and childish. But that there is intelligence (intelligences?) afoot intrinsic to the molecular processes of life itself is a growing suspicion provoked by scientific evidence.
**UPDATE! One of those “actual scientists” thinks I’m wrong . . . that the “brain” is DNA. See the end of this post!
Thoughts I had well before the first mechanism was discovered by which DNA is, in fact, “informed” of changes in the environment: epigenetics. Some have said epigenetic marks may even bias mutation.
You will NOT find fanciful speculations about molecular “intelligence” at The Third Way of Evolution (at least, not yet; you WILL find hypotheses that the experience and purposive behavior of organisms can influence their evolution, through molecular cascades Lamarck never dreamt of). The site is for credentialed scientists and scholars only, and contributors are by invitation only.
The goal is to focus attention on the molecular and cellular processes which produce novelty without divine interventions or sheer luck.
Evolution is a complex subject, and projections and hypotheses will need to be based on documented empirical results. This site will make it easier for all those interested in evolution to find new hypotheses, theoretical arguments, and well-documented observations. The site provides a resource for those who wish to explore experimental research and theories that do not fit easily or at all into current mainstream thinking. . . .
Membership to the site is by invitation only. . . . The site is open to established scholars in the sciences, philosophy, history and related humanities who have published work related to THE THIRD WAY. . . .
We intend to make it clear that the website and scientists listed on the web site do not support or subscribe to any proposals that resort to inscrutable divine forces or supernatural intervention, whether they are called Creationism, Intelligent Design, or anything else.
But some of the molecular and evolutionary evidence, and some of the systems- and computation-informed hypotheses it has generated, are pretty wild in their own sober way. Here are some of the heavy hitters involved in aspects of the new thinking, For example:
With neither natural selection nor creation by a higher intelligence offering a sensible answer to evolution, [Raju Pookottil] tries to offer a hypothesis to how organisms could effectively design themselves over many generations. . . . [u]sing emergence, swarm intelligence and signal networks. [His book is] BEEM: Biological Emergence-based Evolutionary Mechanism: How Species Direct Their Own Evolution.
It’s still early days. But the techniques of scientific discovery have been outpacing theory, and now theory is beginning to rise to the challenge. The “binary” in which you either “believe in” (note those words) neo-Darwinism or you are a supernatural creationist is being shattered by the evidence itself.
**Raju Pookottil e-mailed me:
He also let me know there’s a forthcoming meeting at the Royal Society in London on “New trends in evolutionary biology,” November 7 through 9, 2016.