I didn’t know about this conference - and it features Michael Denton too

Tom Heneghan advises, “As Darwin Year ends, some seek to go ‘beyond Darwin,’” (Reuters Faith World: Religion and Ethics, December 14, 2009).

So I was intrigued by a conference held at UNESCO here in Paris recently about scientists who believe in evolution but want to go “beyond Darwin.” Organised by French philosopher of science Jean Staune, its speakers argued that Darwin could not explain underlying order and patterns found in nature. “We have to differentiate between evolution and Darwinism,” said Jean Staune, author of the new book Au-dela de Darwin (Beyond Darwin). “Of course there is adaptation. But like physics and chemistry, biology is also subject to its own laws.”

Well, say it in French or in English, but just say it out loud: “le darwinisme, c’est incroyable;” “Darwinism is unbelievable.”

Still, here is the story in a nutshell: Once a person claims to me that the chimp in the zoo is 99% identical to one of my grandkids, I know I am dealing with an unbelievable belief. Just how to deal with it is a difficult question, especially if the belief is government-funded and supported by all the right people (who don’t think I should have grandkids anyway).

Michael Denton, a geneticist with New Zealand’s University of Otago, said Darwinian “functionalists” believed life forms simply adapted to the outside world while his “structuralist” view also saw an internal logic driving this evolution down certain paths. His view, which he called “extraordinarily foreign to modern biology,” explained why many animals developed “camera eyes” like human ones and why proteins, one of the building blocks of life, fold into structures unchanged for three billion years.

Here’s more from Denton:

Q: What do you think of “intelligent design” now?

I have some sympathy with the intelligent design movement. I can see their point. But in the end, I think natural self-organising matter plus natural selection can probably explain it. I don’t like the attitude of the Darwinian establishment towards intelligent designers because one thing the Darwinist establishment certainly can’t explain is the origin of life. That’s for sure. Probably special creation is better than what they’ve got. That’s almost like confessing a murder, I know, but I don’t mind being quoted on that. Because I personally see so much fitness in the cosmos for the ends of life, then that it is at least compatible with a design hypothesis like Aristotle or Aquinas. I’m quite irritated by the way the Darwinists claim they have all the answers. I don’t think they can explain the fitness of the universe for life. They can’t explain the origin of life. So I think they should be a little bit more humble.

Well, Michael Denton has himself been going beyond Darwin a long time. He has been described as a post-Darwinian, and his views have been vindicated by evidence. His book Nature’s Destiny is a long explanation of why he doesn’t believe the garbage fronted - by law - to publicly funded schools in places where you, gentle readers, probably pay taxes. Merry Christmas - no, not to you, serfs, but to your Darwinist masters, whom you support.

Many of us doubt that Denton’s self-organizing matter can explain the origin of information. That’s like thinking the Scrabble pieces can organize themselves in such a way as when you scatter the pieces they form a perfect, intelligible message. Friends have suggested that Denton read Polanyi and Yockey. Otherwise, he is stuck with “the mother gives birth to herself.”

But I recommend Denton anyway because he understand marsupial mammals, and many North American pundits do not. We have only one known; only the Virginia opossum. I have never seen one in the Toronto area; they are not well furred and apt to suffer from frostbite.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Chaos theory: If order just somehow emerges from chaos, why aren't we all young and beautiful?

And rich and famous?

In "High Mouth-To-Brain Ratios And 'Fact Free' Science", Robert Deyes has helped answer a question I have off and on wondered about: What on earth happened to self-organization theory (sometimes called emergent complexity theory), which was supposed to explain

... everything from the sizes of families in Bangladesh to the origin of the first living cell and the long term, million year stability of animal species.

In short, the idea is that within chaos order emerges spontaneously without intelligence intervening.

That has never happened in any publishing enterprise with which I was associated over the last thirty-five years. Order emerged when intelligence was imposed. Of course, to get results from self-organization, maybe I should give it thirty-five billion years. (The universe is about 13 billion years old, so ... ths can't be a rush project, okay?)

Self-emergence theory is precisely the sort which prompts, at least in me, a fundamental question: If order emerges spontaneously from chaos, why aren't we all rich and famous and eternally young? Shouldn't entropy work backward too?

Well, Deyes offers a bit of history:

1995 was to be a year of celebration for the Santa Fe Institute [self-organization central]. The museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe hosted a dinner to bring together scientists from all over the United States for a celebratory toast of success. This dinner was attended by all the big names of the Institute - Brian Arthur, Chris Langton, Stuart Kauffman and Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Man famous for his work on quarks and particle physics. David Liddle, the chair for the board of trustees, ushered in the celebrations with a speech of much optimism and hope. And yet behind Liddle's introductory note lay a growing restlessness over, "the gap between such rhetoric and reality"

Gap's still there, and wider than ever. And we all grow older and disorder increases.

Actually, Stu Kauffman is now at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, actually. And last I was in touch with him, he was promoting a new book, which sounds interesting.

Welcome to Canada, Stu. For your own safety, don't diss any Professional Grievance Bunnies. Not till we chase them back to their forlorn wilderness of picket signs and plight.

The image is from Chaos Review and you can comment on it here.