COVER -> RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT
ON MORPHOGENETICS - Last week I met a woman who believed that the world was created in six days. My feeling was that if there is a God, He or She has given us brains so that we can think for ourselves. As a neurophysiologist, when I think for myself, my conclusion is not that we were created in six days.
Despite its obvious absurdity, creationism is taught in some schools in the US alongside evolution, as if they were rival theories. According to New Scientist, 47% of Americans believe in it, and 16% feel that evolution should not be taught at all in schools.
It seems strange that people who are happy to ignore much of the rest of the Bible, nevertheless believe in the most improbable part of it. However, if one separates out the dross (created in six days) from the rest (created by an intelligent agent) one comes much closer to myths found in many other religions.
On the other side of the fence, we have evolution. Science does a good job of working out rules and applying them sensibly. However, it does a much worse job at finding new rules. When there are gaps in a scientific explanation (as there are in evolution), the tendency is to ignore them, rather than to challenge the rules. One person who has done this, however, is Cambridge scientist Rupert Sheldrake. His work on morphogenetic fields neatly bridges the gap between the scientific explanation and one which relies on God.
According to Sheldrake, when things happen, similar things are more likely to happen. This doesn't sound very exciting, until you consider the implications. If something happens to a certain structure in a particular situation, a morphogenetic field is created, and as a result of this, a similar structure in the same situation is more likely to experience the same events.
A good example of this is that when a new chemical is first synthesized it is difficult to crystallize it. However, when it has been crystallized once, anywhere, the same chemical, everywhere in the world, is easier to crystallize.
The scientific explanation of random mutations and genetic competition provides a moderately credible explanation for the evolution of physical characteristics. However, it comes badly unstuck when it tries to explain animal behavior.
 |
Creating a web is a complex task: the spider has to find a suitable place, build the web and then repair damage appropriately. Since damage cannot be predicted in advance, this means that the animal must have a general concept of what the web is supposed to look like.
However, genes can only code for proteins. A protein could trigger the behavior needed to produce a thread. However, it could hardly code for the mental image which the spider needs to have to create the web from scratch.
A second dilemma for evolution is that there is no way by which lessons learnt during one animal's life can be passed on to the next generation: the chromosomes in the sperm and egg cells are already formed before the individual is born, and these are either passed on to the next generation or they are not. Since there is no direct feedback, this is like constructing a computer program based on trial and error, with no direct way of knowing what effect any part of the program is having.
However, if we accept the idea of morphogenetic fields, the evolution of behavior becomes much easier to explain. Spiders of a particular species are linked into a morphogenetic field for creating a certain kind of web. The morphogenetic field will change, based on the experiences of individual spiders. There is no need for a mechanism within the spider: the field is an emergent property of nature that in this case happens to be associated with the behavior of spiders.
It is also possible that the morphogenetic field formed by all members of a species might develop some kind of distributed consciousness, actively guiding the animals' behavior. This is quite a big step towards the idea of an intelligent organizing principle.
One argument against morphogenetic fields is that they merely substitute one mystery for another one. But unlike the account in Genesis, the idea of morphogenetic fields can be tested. morphogenetic fields give an explanation which is certainly not complete, but which might at least be leading in the right direction.
COMMENTS? QUESTIONS? Go ahead and e-mail Paul Kail.
This week's Poll: A true friend is someone who ...?
PICK OF THE DAY: Dan Gilmor of the San Jose Mercury News ended the year with some great comments about the dot.com scams of the past two years. You can read them here. Enjoy!
