On the bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birthday in February 2009, biology and medicine find themselves in crisis. The promise of stem cell therapy has the potential to dramatically improve healthcare and a patient's well being, but it risks destroying human dignity. At the core of this is the ethical issue of the sanctity of life. Darwinism and modern biology insist that life is the result of DNA's randomness, yet reported anomalies in evolution point to the necessity of a major paradigm shift. To solve this ethical dilemma, the questions we need to ask are: What preconditions must be fulfilled to start a new paradigm? What principles of scientific research need to be abandoned?
To successfully describe biological phenomena reported as scientific anomalies we need to understand teleology (not to be confused with theology) as the study of purpose and design in nature. We also need to understand one of the most common arguments used against Darwinism, William Paley's watchmaker analogy. Using a manufactured article as an analogy for wild animals, he asks what could we conclude if we found an abandoned watch? Except for one detail his answer is conclusive, we should believe the watch has a designer, and we should also accept its origin is a watchmaker. Unfortunately William Paley's conclusion is based on intuition. Yet, his metaphor points in the right direction. In other words, to disprove Darwinism it is necessary to frame a similar argument and reach a conclusion based on reason, and therefore, acceptable to science.
A first attempt to frame such argument was Intelligent Design, it rejects Darwin’s assertion that genotype is the result of a random process; it structures its beliefs on the Theological Argument and calls for the end of Natural Methodology. Intelligent Design’s central tenet is that irreducible
complexity necessitates divine intervention. In Kitzmiller vs. Dover's ruling, Judge John Jones stated irreducible complexity cannot be falsified, and therefore, Intelligent Design cannot be considered science.
To re-frame William Paley's argument we must refer to Aristotle’s treaty “On the parts of animals” where he ascribes teleology to living beings’ adaptation: “Nature adapts the organ for the function, and not the function for the organ”. The term function should be understood in terms of a living being's constant struggle to adapt and survive, it should also be understood from the point of view of anatomy, where an organ's function is determined in relation to a context. Aristotle’s understanding of adaptation implies that for an organ to adapt to its function, the function or its ultimate design must exist ahead of the organ. Based on a similar reflection in Critique of Teleological Judgment, Immanuel Kant observed that the different organs subsist for the living being, and the living being subsist for its organs, he concludes living organisms are except from mechanical materialistic explanations and nature is inseparable from teleology.
Teleology can be seen in countless natural phenomena; Darwin himself was aware that changes in a peacock's plumage altered its mating biology. The influence of a peacock's exuberant plumage is known as sexual selection with positive feedback. This reaction is what causes certain species to acquire exuberant ornaments on their phenotype; by adapting to its function, a peacock's plumage confirms Aristotle and Kant's observations. Unfortunately, any time a debate about Darwinism's veracity starts to turn against biologists, the debate's emphasis is immediately changed, and implications are made that trying to disprove Darwinism is an attempt to disprove evolution. It should be clear that Darwinism and Evolution are not synonyms, and for biologists to switch one term for the other during a debate is unethical. The following paragraphs will show different phenomena, or anomalies, disproving Darwinism.
One of Darwinism’s fundamental principles holds that adaptation should be gradual. Two major anomalies observed in the fossil record contradict gradual adaptation, the Cambrian explosion and phenotype stasis. After life first appeared most species remained few in number and mostly undifferentiated for 3 billion years, but at the end of the Cambrian explosion, after a period of time of fifty million years, less than two percent, most modern phyla appeared for the first time fully formed. Due to this transformation, the Cambrian explosion has also been called a Big Bang. The second anomaly is the stability, or phenotype stasis, exhibited by species in the fossil record. Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould writes in Punctuated Equilibrium, stasis is a well-known phenomenon and after a species appears, most of them remain in stasis until extinction.
Survival of the fittest and natural selection have become ingrained in popular culture, for decades liberal economics captured our imagination. It is no wonder that people easily accept some of Darwin's ideas. As a consequence, accurately describing natural selection becomes crucial. It is defined as a process, whereby fit organisms or living beings live longer and produce abundant and fit offspring. The study of genetic congenital disorders by modern medicine specifically contradicts natural selection's definition. Albinism and, in some cases, autism are caused by recessive genes. Animals that reproduce sexually have two copies of the same gene one inherited from each parent; Darwinism fails to describe recessive disease genes.
These arguments confirm the need for a new theory that better describes adaptation of wild, sexually reproducing animals. However, for the scientific community to accept a paradigm shift, it is necessary for the new paradigm to be compatible with modern biology. It is possible to start structuring a new paradigm with an analogy between Information Technology and genetics. Information in the Internet is stored as bits, bytes, ASCII characters, words, sentences, literature and poetry, and in the case of living beings, genetic information exists as C, T, G, A bases, A-T and C-G pairs, DNA, genes, proteins, cells, genome and phenotype. The analogy can be taken one step further with the interfaces each have. In the case of cybernetic information, video-RAM renders magnetic fields stored on a hard disk drive into an image displayed on a computer screen. Living beings use RNA to translate information stored inside genes into proteins; the information transcribed into proteins and cells is then able to interact with its environment.
With this analogy, we can understand information's role in adaptation. For an organ to adapt to a function, adaptation itself must work in tandem with teleology. Therefore for an organ to successfully adapt, it must acquire a new structure, and the process should not violate the principle of increased entropy. Numerous reasons should trigger this phenomenon, and for a sexually reproducing animal living in the wilderness to be able to inherit new adaptations, the genes of its offspring must acquire new structure as well. All these characteristics of adaptation lead to define information as a catalyst for matter to acquire structure. In the case of computers and the Internet, cybernetic information is an enabler for matter to acquire structure.
By estimating the amount of information accumulated in a species genome and performing regressions against different mating-biology parameters, it could be possible to elucidate the changes different species perform to counteract the exponential effect of positive feedback. Species like the mayfly, with very little adaptations, have few genes, species with exuberant ornaments, the peacock, for example, have a lot more genetic information in their genome. The
mating biology and the amount of information in each species genome can help describe the effect of teleology on genotype and show the direction for new definitions of the adaptation of wild animals. Claiming that DNA randomness is the driving principle of adaptation is like claiming that the outcome of gambling at a casino is random.
We should all have compassion for those who suffer, receiving healthcare with compassion is a Universal Human Right. Only after scientific research abandons Natural Methodology can bioethical dilemmas be solved. Biologists need also realize that Charles Darwin probably had in mind the very definition of his theory when he named his most famous book. The theory of evolution by natural selection has not been accepted, by non-scientists. We need a new paradigm that merges modern biology and teleology. Nothing less than abandoning Darwinism and Natural Methodology will be needed to perform a successful paradigm shift.
