The Basic Problem of Biological Form

A new article on the fundamental and severe problem of form in biology, especially Darwinist evolutionary biology and embryology, at http://natureinstitute.org/txt/st/bk/form1.htm .

An example: experimenters excised the normally developed amphibian lens right after it formed. Then they observed that somehow the organism apparently intelligently and creatively proceeded to form a new lens from some of the iris cells (an entirely different type of differentiated cell).

“It is impossible to believe that these complex and intricately coordinated responses to the (experimentally induced) loss of the lens were somehow already physically determined or programmed or otherwise specified in the animal’s one-celled zygote. Nor is it easy to imagine how there could ever have been a sustained and large population of lens-injured amphibians with otherwise functional eyes — a population large enough, that is, to enable a supposedly mindless process of natural selection to evolve a specific, novel solution to the problem of lens regeneration.

The problem of form exists even at the molecular level. The problem of form has long been central to biology…
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…every organism’s stunning achievement of form has become an enigma so profound, and so threatening to the prevailing style of biological explanation, that few biologists dare to focus for long on the substance of the problem.”

The problem of form extends very severely into evolutionary biology, since one of the greatest (unmentionable and embarrassing) inherent problems of Darwinist evolutionary theory is its utter inability to account for the evolution of new, innovative and complex forms.

Rupert Sheldrake’s hypothesized “morphic (or morphogenetic) fields” seem at least on the surface to somewhat account for the embryological mystery covered in the article, but don’t seem to relate too much to the problem with Darwinism and the evident creativity of evolution in rapidly creating complex and ingenious new forms at various points in the process. And I don’t think Sheldrake’s hypothesized biological phenomenon has ever been actually physically detected and studied.

This seems clearly to point once more to the bankruptcy of the reductionist materialist naturalism paradigm of modern science. It doesn’t look too likely that any progress will be made in solving the mystery of form until this paradigm is overthrown. I won’t hold my breath.

Super interesting nb, and thanks for posting.

Would be curious to know if any of our esteemed community members are aware of any intelligent rebuttals to this criticism of Darwinian evolution.

The mystery extends to the biomolecular level. Somehow, within the internal organelles of single cells and in the coordinating systems and subsystems of these organelles (in addition to vastly more complex animals containing many systems and subsystems of countless millions of coordinating cells) words like meaning, purpose, goal, need, coordination, cooperation, memory, ingenuity, creativeness, are all and more very much operative in the living process. Fundamentally unlike any human machines, or human machine-based mechanistic models of organismal function. The science of biology, from molecular to organismal has made incredible strides in understanding the underlying physical mechanisms of function, but the "ghost in the (living) machine" that is obviously somehow directing and coordinating the processes remains totally elusive and unaddressed. Even the existence of this fundamental lack of understanding seems to be so embarrassing it is seldom even mentioned. 

Another quote from the article:

"And so the problem of form, even when we try to approach it at the molecular level, seems intractable from the standpoint of conventional biology. In the case of RNA splicing, we can ask how each of the several hundred molecules cooperating in the activity of splicing is synthesized in the right amount; how each particular molecule is brought to the right place for splicing, and at the right time; how it manages to interact with properly selected molecules among all the other potential partners in the operation, doing so in a carefully choreographed sequence; how the overall cooperation among all the molecules is achieved; and how this cooperation is properly aligned with the needs of the cell at a particular time — a time when one form of the spliced RNA rather than another happens to be called for, requiring the surgery to be performed with unique variations.

Need is not a term of physical science. Further, all this occurs in a fluid or highly plastic medium, with no crucial and precisely machined channels of communication such as those carved in silicon chips at our high-tech factories. The essential mechanistic constraints, such as those required for the operation of our machines, simply are not there in the organism.

Of course, researchers have traced all sorts of molecular syntheses, movements, and interactions. We can be sure that everything in the entire picture proceeds lawfully, and in this very constricted sense every local event looks necessary. And yet we can find no combination of physical laws capable of “enforcing” the proper form of all the different parts of the body of this or that animal. In the case of a wound, there is no purely physical necessity to achieve a given form in the face of unpredictable conditions.

In other words, the mere fact of physical lawfulness does not explain the coordination of events along an extended timeline in the narrative of healing, from infliction of the wound to the final restoration of normalcy. Nor does it explain the narrative of RNA splicing, from the occurrence of an RNA molecule in need of reconfiguration, to the final product of those hundreds of participating molecular “surgeons”. We can “watch” the molecules performing in a way that gives expression to the overall sense, or meaning, of the activity, but we do not have even the barest beginnings of a purely physical explanation for their commitment to that meaning."