Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

Yeah. Thanks. Hopefully my post adds some useful info about Marshall.

Near as I can tell, the third way people are avoiding "intelligence" lest they be perceived as tending towards creationism. Eva Jablonka, IIRC, was at pains to point out at the Royal Society conference on Evolution recently that the third way didn't imply God.

If third wayers are tending towards considering intelligence,
I think they might be looking at it from the panpsychic viewpoint where consciousness is likely another property of matter rather than being fundamental, as Hoffman is postulating. I hope you can get a little time to read his paper (again, it's here) because, whilst he says he's not promulgating Idealism -- Conscious Realism being somewhat different -- he shares with Idealists the idea of consciousness being fundamental. Anyone who starts off with that axiom is someone I find interesting and take seriously.

There are no if's. 

It has come to our attention that THE THIRD WAY web site is wrongly being referenced by proponents of Intelligent Design and creationist ideas as support for their arguments. 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.

http://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/

 True Stories: Ted's Evolution
It's not easy being a molecular immunologist. Australian Ted Steele's career has taken more twists and turns than an episode of Batmanas he has battled scientific establishment villains all over the world, trying to prove that Darwin didn't get it all right with his theory of evolution.
Not that Steele, a likeable, knockabout kind of molecular immunologist, believes that God created the world in seven days. As this clever Film Australia documentary (10pm, ABC) narrated by Michael Caton explains, Steele favours the theory first espoused by Jean Baptiste de Lamarck, well before Darwin, that animals inherit characteristics acquired from their parents. The classic example: the giraffe that stretches its neck to reach the higher branches has offspring with longer necks.
That's all very well, but, late in the 19th century, August Weismann announced that it was impossible. He proposed a genetic barrier that became known as the Weismann barrier, which blocks body cells from messing with reproductive sex cells.
His proof that animals can't inherit "acquired characteristics" such as stretched necks involved chopping the tails off hundreds of mice. Breeding 22 generations of these grimly abbreviated rodents failed to produce even one mouse born without a tail.

That satisfied pretty well everybody that Lamarck had got it all wrong and that the Weismann barrier was impenetrable.
In the late 1970s, however, Steele noticed work in his field of immunology that made sense if Lamarck were right, and he spent two decades trying to convince us, and the scientific establishment, of his case.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/0...38279.html

I believe it is David B who often questions how proteins can spontaneously arise. Here's an article showing it does happen

Steve - How do respond to someone like me, who would wrinkle his forehead, when you imply that that every novel protein ever generated followed a natural electro-chemical pathway - was some kinda knock in support of NS + RM = bioevolution.  Every physical event in materials science has physical causes.  Likewise, my primary point is: that ever event also must satisfy all infomational constraints.  RM + NS is as silly as is the perceptual evidence for a flat earth.  The Weismann barrier and his sick attacks on mice; being a classic example.

Novel protein synthesis is not about chemistry, as much as bioinformatic system functionality!  The only proteins that matter are the ones that function organically and whose outcome within a living organism's system can be selected because of its role in the informational environment, as prescribed by the specific organism's DNA/RNA/Ribosome's work space.

Steele favours the theory first espoused by Jean Baptiste de Lamarck, well before Darwin, that animals inherit characteristics acquired from their parents. The classic example: the giraffe that stretches its neck to reach the higher branches has offspring with longer necks.
That's all very well, but, late in the 19th century, August Weismann announced that it was impossible. He proposed a genetic barrier that became known as the Weismann barrier, which blocks body cells from messing with reproductive sex cells.
His proof that animals can't inherit "acquired characteristics" such as stretched necks involved chopping the tails off hundreds of mice. Breeding 22 generations of these grimly abbreviated rodents failed to produce even one mouse born without a tail.

That satisfied pretty well everybody that Lamarck had got it all wrong and that the Weismann barrier was impenetrable.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/0...38279.html

Lamarckism does seem to have some major problems. One would be that it would require that the organism embody some sort of backward mapping function that would compute what DNA changes are necessary to produce the life-acquired physiological changes. This would be a huge task, well beyond present molecular biology. Another problem would be the many (or even majority) of cases where the needed innovation is entirely new, with no existing organs or organelles that can even partially achieve it. This problem would start with the need for new or novel protein folds in things like enzymes. The Lamarckian mechanism would seem to be required to respond to intention or desire on the part of the organism. It's even harder to see how such a response to desire or intention could apply to single cells.

The Lamarckian mechanism would seem to be required to respond to intention or desire on the part of the organism.

This is something which would not be tested by chopping off the tails of mice.

Steve - How do respond to someone like me, who would wrinkle his forehead, when you imply that that every novel protein ever generated followed a natural electro-chemical pathway - was some kinda knock in support of NS + RM = bioevolution.  Every physical event in materials science has physical causes.  Likewise, my primary point is: that ever event also must satisfy all infomational constraints.  RM + NS is as silly as is the perceptual evidence for a flat earth.  The Weismann barrier and his sick attacks on mice; being a classic example.

Novel protein synthesis is not about chemistry, as much as bioinformatic system functionality!  The only proteins that matter are the ones that function organically and whose outcome within a living organism's system can be selected because of its role in the informational environment, as prescribed by the specific organism's DNA/RNA/Ribosome's work space.

Let me see if I understand your position. You espouse the idea that information is the template matter follows for self assembly? To put it another way: Information pre-exists and matter follows those rules. Is this correct?

Lamarckism does seem to have some major problems.

The Lamarckian mechanism would seem to be required to respond to intention or desire on the part of the organism. It's even harder to see how such a response to desire or intention could apply to single cells.

Exactly - desire, intention and goal-oriented behavior become primary factors.  Switching away from my personal viewpoint and back to the current thinking of the folks involved with the third way:

1/ Darwinism, as espoused by C. Darwin incorporated Lamarckian elements.
2/ Regulation implies a target state to which positive and negative feedback is the primary means to maintaining stasis.  Epigenetics is a regulatory system and feedback is part of information theory as cybernetics.
3/ Darwin used the term induction as the effectual means for how the minds of animals changed aware behavior into instinct.  Note the following wording:

 The new synthesis advanced by Jablonka and Lamb makes clear that induced and acquired changes also play a role in evolution.After discussing each of the four inheritance systems in detail, Jablonka and Lamb "put Humpty Dumpty together again" by showing how all of these systems interact.  ibid Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/0...38279.html

Lamarckism does seem to have some major problems. One would be that it would require that the organism embody some sort of backward mapping function that would compute what DNA changes are necessary to produce the life-acquired physiological changes. This would be a huge task, well beyond present molecular biology. Another problem would be the many (or even majority) of cases where the needed innovation is entirely new, with no existing organs or organelles that can even partially achieve it. This problem would start with the need for new or novel protein folds in things like enzymes. The Lamarckian mechanism would seem to be required to respond to intention or desire on the part of the organism. It's even harder to see how such a response to desire or intention could apply to single cells.

Why?
Why?
How about necessity to change? Intention and desire are loaded words. I would consider  lack of necessity ( survival advantage) is the reason mice did not grow back their tails.
A very recent article:

Great Tits May Be Evolving Bigger Beaks. Here's Why

Setting up a bird feeder is one of the easiest ways to interact with wildlife. But could this seemingly innocent pastime be changing the very shape of our backyard birds?
It’s still too early to say for sure, says Lewis Spurgin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.
But he and his colleagues have discovered some truly fascinating clues that a bird called the great tit may be evolving longer beaks to access bird feeders.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017...ion-beaks/

On bird beaks: epigenetics.

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-ani...igenetics/

On Darwinism and Lamarckism:

https://aeon.co/essays/on-epigenetics-we...s-theories