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posted 10. October 2004 13:48
The Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture, September 29, 2004
The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories
By: Dr Stephen C. Meyer
From the introduction:
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In order to perform this analysis, and to make it relevant and tractable to systematists and paleontologists, this paper will examine a paradigmatic example of the origin of biological form and information during the history of life: the Cambrian explosion. During the Cambrian, many novel animal forms and body plans (representing new phyla, subphyla and classes) arose in a geologically brief period of time. The following information-based analysis of the Cambrian explosion will support the claim of recent authors such as Muller and Newman that the mechanism of selection and genetic mutation does not constitute an adequate causal explanation of the origination of biological form in the higher taxonomic groups. It will also suggest the need to explore other possible causal factors for the origin of form and information during the evolution of life and will examine some other possibilities that have been proposed.
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More from the article:
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The ease with which information theory applies to molecular biology has created confusion about the type of information that DNA and proteins possess. Sequences of nucleotide bases in DNA, or amino acids in a protein, are highly improbable and thus have large information-carrying capacities. But, like meaningful sentences or lines of computer code, genes and proteins are also specified with respect to function. Just as the meaning of a sentence depends upon the specific arrangement of the letters in a sentence, so too does the function of a gene sequence depend upon the specific arrangement of the nucleotide bases in a gene. Thus, molecular biologists beginning with Crick equated information not only with complexity but also with “specificity,” where “specificity” or “specified” has meant “necessary to function” (Crick 1958:144, 153; Sarkar, 1996:191).3 Molecular biologists such as Monod and Crick understood biological information--the information stored in DNA and proteins--as something more than mere complexity (or improbability). Their notion of information associated both biochemical contingency and combinatorial complexity with DNA sequences (allowing DNA's carrying capacity to be calculated), but it also affirmed that sequences of nucleotides and amino acids in functioning macromolecules possessed a high degree of specificity relative to the maintenance of cellular function.
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Yet the neutral theory requires novel genes and proteins to arise--essentially--by random mutation alone. Adaptive advantage accrues after the generation of new functional genes and proteins. Thus, natural selection cannot play a role until new information-bearing molecules have independently arisen. Thus neutral theorists envisioned the need to scale the steep face of a Dawkins-style precipice of which there is no gradually sloping backside--a situation that, by Dawkins' own logic, is probabilistically untenable.
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See Full Article at the Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture
[ 10. October 2004, 14:39: Message edited by: ISCID News Editor ]
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