Metanexus: Views 2002.10.01 3314 words "There seems to be something missing from the picture of the world painted for us by modern science," claims today's columnist, James Barham, in the first installment of his three-part series titled Beyond Darwin and Nietzsche: On the Origin of value in the Music of Cells. Moreover, he adds, that this "something missing" is "something rather important." And in this regard, Barham admits that: "It is hard to say exactly what this something is, but the word value, I think, comes close enough. By this, I do not mean that scientific inquiry ought to be guided by moral values, though that is important. Rather, I mean that the phenomenon of value itself must become a part of our scientific picture of the world. By 'value,' I have in mind something that is closely allied with purpose. For example, when my cat comes to me begging, she has a goal in mind: say, she wants her milk dish to be filled. Why does she want me to fill her dish? Because she likes milk, because it is valuable to her. Why does she value milk? Because it is good for her. The example is homely, but it illustrates well enough the normativity at th= e heart of life. That living things value certain states of affairs and strive to bring them about is one of the plainer facts about the world we live in, and yet this fact cannot be explained by either physics or chemistry as currently understood. Nor--conventional wisdom to the contrary--is biology any help in this regard; biological thought today continues to take normativity for granted, just as it has always done. In short, there is a hole at the heart of science where value should be." And I invite you to join with Barham in examining the dimensions of this "hole at the heart of science". Today's author, James Barham of Lancaster, PA, in speaking of himself, notes: "I was raised a Southern Baptist, was converted to scientific materialism in my teens, and lost my Darwinian faith in my late thirties. = I have always been equally attracted to the sciences and the humanities (I am extravagantly fond of literature and music). As a result, I am seeking a viewpoint this is both consistent with modern science and capable of doing justice to the full range of human moral, aesthetic, and religious experience." --Stacey E. Ake =3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D--=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D Subject: Beyond Darwin and Nietzsche: On the Origin of Value in the Music o= f Cells, Part 1/3 From: James Barham Email: I For many years, I looked forward to reading the New York Times science supplement all week long. Come Tuesday morning, I was sure to learn of som= e intriguing discovery or elegant theory that would set my pulse racing with that rush of pleasure all scholars secretly seek, and which natural science provides in a particularly potent form. Today, I still read the Science Times regularly. Sometimes I even feel a surge of the old excitement. But now, for the most part, the thrill is gone. When Tuesday rolls around, I a= m already discouraged before I open the paper. What new absurdity will it be this week? Another silly story about "the gene" for this or that aspect of human behavior? (If only it were true---then they might come up with a cur= e for my compulsion to read this stuff!) Or will it be another breathless recounting of the idea that ideas are nothing but "viruses of the mind"? (As if this particular idea were using the reporter to replicate itself, instead of the reporter using it to sell newspapers . . . If only it were so---then we might develop a vaccine against journalistic credulity . . .) For the science lover with a genuine affection for the humanities---or merely for human beings---it is all a very depressing business. Worst of all is a fashionable notion that has now spread like a plague across the intellectual landscape. We are told that the only thing that really matters, scientifically speaking---the only value with any claim to objectivity---is reproductive success. According to this doctrine, rape is perfectly natural, just the genes doing their thing. A harsh fact, perhaps= , but then it is the duty of scientists to make humanists face harsh facts. (We are not told what Darwinian advantage there is in this duty.) From thi= s point of view---the point of view of selfish genes---we can see an even mor= e brutal truth. In actuality, cockroaches are far superior to human beings (they will outlast us all, won't they?), and bacteria are the highest life form on the planet! For this insight we are much indebted to the late Stephen Jay Gould, who once wrote, "[I]f an amoeba is as well adapted to it= s environment as we are to ours, who is to say that we are higher creatures?" (Ever Since Darwin 36). This is truly the perfect doctrine for the times, giving postmodern irony the imprimatur of cutting-edge science. Not miserable man, but the microbe, is the paragon of animals! A thought which might have delighted Hamlet in his blackest mood, perhaps, but one which delights not me. Luckily, I have a remedy for these disheartening reflections. All I have t= o do to obtain relief is listen to music. "David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him" (1 Samuel 16.23). I put on something---say, Corelli's Sonate da Chiesa---turn off the light, and lie down. As the bittersweet notes of Enrico Gatti's violin suffuse the darkness around me, I am lifted out of myself and planted on a high peak from which the human condition takes on an entirely different aspect. Up here, the burden of mediocrity under the weight of which I inch along my daily existence falls away, and I breathe freely as an altogether different sort of being---one that lives outside of time and space, where it warms its wings in the eternal radiance of truth, goodness, and beauty. Later, after I have descended again to tha= t estate midway between ecstasy and despair where I mostly dwell, I ask mysel= f the following question: How did this insensate matter, these aimless atoms jostling in the void---which we are assured is all that Arcangelo Corelli was---how did these mindless molecules manage to compose a piece of music capable of making me---another wretched lump of mud---feel like that? There seems to be something missing from the picture of the world painted for us by modern science. Something rather important. It is hard to say exactly what this something is, but the word value, I think, comes close enough. By this, I do not mean that scientific inquiry ought to be guided by moral values, though that is important. Rather, I mean that the phenomenon of value itself must become a part of our scientific picture of the world. By "value," I have in mind something that is closely allied wit= h purpose. For example, when my cat comes to me begging, she has a goal in mind: say, she wants her milk dish to be filled. Why does she want me to fill her dish? Because she likes milk, because it is valuable to her. Why does she value milk? Because it is good for her. The example is homely, but it illustrates well enough the normativity at the heart of life. That living things value certain states of affairs and strive to bring them abou= t is one of the plainer facts about the world we live in, and yet this fact cannot be explained by either physics or chemistry as currently understood. Nor---conventional wisdom to the contrary---is biology any help in this regard; biological thought today continues to take normativity for granted, just as it has always done. In short, there is a hole at the heart of science where value should be. But why do I say that biology is no help? Didn't Darwin explain how the appearance of purpose could arise out of the random variation of biological traits and the selective retention of the ones that just happen to benefit the organism? Isn't that what the "blind watchmaker" metaphor is all about= ? It depends on what you are trying to explain. If all you want to know is how resistance to a new antibiotic spreads through a population of bacteria= , say, then natural selection is an adequate theoretical tool. But if what you want to know is where novel defenses come from, or why bacteria care whether they live or die in the first place, then natural selection is useless because it simply assumes what you wish to explain. As Leon R. Kass, the recently appointed chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, has observed, "Darwin's nonteleological explanation---variation, inheritance, struggle for existence---not only assumes but even depends upo= n the immanent teleological character of organisms. The desire or tendency o= f living things to stay alive and their endeavor to increase their numbers, which are among the minimal conditions of the theory, are taken for granted and are unexplained" (Toward a More Natural Science 261). In other words, to say that cats have been "selected" to like milk explains very little; it is actually much more informative to say that cats like milk because it is good for them. Natural selection cannot explain this sort of goodness because it presupposes it, and no theory can explain its own premises. At issue here is not the validity of the theory of natural selection, but rather its explanatory scope. In the discourse of contemporary popular science, the scope of Darwinism is held to be unlimited---it is called a "universal acid" good for solving every problem under the sun. However, such claims are preposterous, for the reasons cited by Kass and others. If organisms struggle to survive, competing for limited resources, if they reproduce their kind, and if novel and successful methods of surviving aris= e from time to time, then it follows that the best methods will tend to sprea= d through the population. That is the theory of natural selection in a nutshell. But it should be obvious that the three teleological premises ar= e doing all the explanatory work here, not the conclusion that follows from them. And Darwinism leaves these premises utterly mysterious. Therefore, natural selection is not wrong, so much as it is irrelevant. But if natura= l selection is irrelevant to our understanding of purpose and value, then the grandiose pop-Darwinian metaphysics preached from every pulpit of the popular science press these days cannot possibly be true. The Darwinian has a ready reply to this line of criticism: He denies that the theory of natural selection was ever intended to explain the teleology immanent in living things. That is the job of physiology, biochemistry, molecular biology, and so forth, he says. In taking this line of defense, the Darwinian is making explicit a crucial assumption that has been lurking in the background all along---the notion that organisms are at bottom nothing but machines. This idea is the true intellectual foundation upon which Darwinism rests, the real heart of the modern scientific worldview. But is it true? Here is how it is supposed to work. First, we notice that attaining a goal consists in choosing the correct means for bringing about a desired end---this is the essence of what we mean by "intelligence." So far, so good. Next, we learn that this power of adjustment of means to ends is a matter of information, feedback, and cybernetic control. (Recall that a feedback loop is what makes a thermostat work.) These are the principles that seem to endow computers with intelligence. Therefore (so the argument goes), the intelligence of organisms must derive from these same principles= . Certainly, this has been the dominant view in both the scientific and the philosophical communities for quite some time. However, a growing number o= f voices are now arguing that it is fundamentally incoherent.[1] For one thing, this scheme overlooks the fact that the meaning of the symbols in a computer program is extrinsic to the symbols themselves, being arbitrarily assigned to them by human beings. In contrast, the meaning of the "information processing" going on in a brain must arise somehow out of the intrinsic value that it has for the organism the brain serves. Related to this "symbol grounding problem" is a more general and deeper difficulty, which I like to think of as the Rhett Butler problem. The basic trouble with the whole cybernetic approach to intelligence is that, like Rhett, computers and other machines just don't give a damn. What is this supposed to mean? It means that just as purpose presupposes intelligence, so too intelligence presupposes purpose. In order to understand how it is possibl= e for all living beings, including single cells, to behave intelligently, we must recognize that things matter to them in a way that things do not matte= r to machines. The Rhett Butler problem is more than just a metaphor. While we cannot be sure what, if anything, cells are feeling, we can observe what they are doing. And what they are doing at every moment is their very best to stay alive, to preserve their own existence (or, in multicellular creatures, tha= t of the larger organism of which they are a part). All organisms, including single cells, grow; they feed in various ways to fuel that growth; they respond intelligently to the world around them; they learn to do this bette= r in the future than they did in the past; they defend themselves; they heal themselves; they reproduce; and---over many generations and in ways we do not fully understand---they evolve. Although we can mimic some of these behaviors with our computer programs, the fact remains that all living things act spontaneously in these ways, whereas no machine does. What can account for this difference? To try to answer this question, we have to di= g deeper. Inside each of the cells in my body, at every moment, molecules in mind-boggling numbers are coursing to and fro, some by simple diffusion, others guided by active transport, all in a vast, perfectly choreographed dance that is far faster than the liveliest gigue (although at a higher grain of resolution it looks more like a stately sarabande). The purpose o= f all this frenetic activity is to keep the whole thing going; were it to cease for even an instant, the cell would perish. However, all of this exquisite synchronization---this music of the cells far outstripping the ol= d music of the spheres in richness of polyphonic texture---is not under the control of any single conductor. Rather, it is a dynamical process, a self-organizing whole that somehow emerges out of the purposeful activity o= f countless constituent parts, much like the music that emerges from the individual efforts of the players in a leaderless ensemble like the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Cells may be made of nothing but matter, but that matte= r is perpetually harmonizing all its own actions in a purposeful way, constantly adjusting itself to circumstances in an intelligent fashion. This Orpheus principle, as we may call it, is what gives living matter the extraordinary property of valuing its own existence---of giving a damn. Although the Orpheus principle is not understood at present, it is currentl= y under intensive scientific investigation.[2] We may not understand how living matter is capable of caring whether or not it survives, but we understand very well why nonliving matter does not give a damn one way or the other. Machines are oblivious to their own fate because the parts of which they are made have been laboriously assembled by us into a certain shape that we value. Thus, they have no intrinsic tendency to cohere in that particular configuration. Left to themselves, machines inevitably lose their functional organization. Things fall apart. This, of course, is the famous entropy principle---the second law of thermodynamics---at work. It is the reason why we have to phone the plumber, call on the mechanic, and contact tech support. Now, Darwinians are quick to point out that living things do not violate the second law, an= d that is of course true. But it is also disingenuous. It is like saying that birds do not violate the law of gravity. That is true, too, but it does not follow that flying does not require an explanation. On the contrary, bird flight remained a deep mystery until the phenomenon of lift was understood. Similarly, life will remain a mystery until we discover th= e biological equivalent of lift---the deep physical reasons for the Orpheus principle. =20 The machine metaphor has been extraordinarily useful in science---no one ca= n deny that. But it should be obvious by now that there are limits to its usefulness. As the great physiologist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi once said, "2 + 2 > 4 . . . is the basic mathematical equation of biology" (The Living Stat= e 2--3). It is in this emergence of a whole that is not only greater than th= e sum of its parts, but also their raison d'=D6tre, that the secret of the Orpheus principle, and the solution to the Rhett Butler problem, must lie. It remains to be seen whether a theoretical biology of the future---one tha= t is more similar to physics in nature---can unlock this secret; however, it is certain that the reductionist biology of the past and the present will never succeed in doing so. Notes 1 Probably the best known is that of John R. Searle (see his The Rediscover= y of the Mind). In part thanks to Searle's efforts, reservations about computationalism (the doctrine that the brain is a computer) are now beginning to become almost mainstream---witness the recent recantation (entitled "One-Half of a Manifesto") by Jaron Lanier, a prominent player in the information technology revolution of the 1990s. Meanwhile, a number of scientists have been quietly developing an alternative view of the brain based on nonlinear dynamics, condensed matter physics, and other discipline= s (sometimes collectively known as the "sciences of complexity"). See, for example, Sunny Y. Auyang's Mind in Everyday Life and Cognitive Science, Walter J. Freeman's How Brains Make Up Their Minds, Giuseppe Vitiello's My Double Unveiled, and Lawrence M. Ward's Dynamical Cognitive Science. A few thinkers have even begun to extend Searle's critique of computationalism beyond the brain to the cell and to the organism as a whole---see, for example, Robert Rosen's monograph, Life Itself, and his somewhat more accessible collection, Essays on Life Itself. There are now several good popular introductions to many of the scientific issues discussed in this essay; see, for example, Philip Ball's The Self-Made Tapestry, Franklin M. Harold's The Way of the Cell, and Ricard Sol=C4 and Brian Goodwin's Signs of Life. 2 Presumably, the secret of the Orpheus principle lies, if anywhere, in those sciences that study the coherent behavior of matter---the so-called "sciences of complexity" mentioned in Note 1. For an important and insightful discussion, see the recent manifesto entitled "The Middle Way," issued by a team led by Nobel Prize--winning physicist Robert B. Laughlin, which urges a new, concerted effort to study the coherent behavior of livin= g matter. For some ground-breaking, if controversial, attempts to flesh out the physical details of the Orpheus principle, see Mae-Wan Ho's The Rainbow and the Worm, Gerald H. Pollack's Cells, Gels, and the Engines of Life, Giuseppe Vitiello's My Double Unveiled, John G. Watterson's "The Pressure Pixel---Unit of Life?," and F.E. Yates's "Order and Complexity in Dynamical Systems." For further discussion of many of these ideas, as well as additional bibliographical guidance, see my "Biofunctional Realism and the Problem of Teleology" and "Theses on Darwin." =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This publication is hosted by Metanexus Online . The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Metanexus or its sponsors. To comment on this message, go to the browser-based forum at the bottom of all postings in the magazine section of our web site. Metanexus welcomes submissions between 1000 to 3000 words of essays and book reviews that seek to explore and interpret science and religion in original and insightful ways for a general educated audience. Previous columns give a good indication of the topical range and tone for acceptable essays. Please send all inquiries and submissions to Dr. Stacey Ake, Associate Editor of Metanexus at . Copyright notice: Columns may be forwarded, quoted, or republished in full with attribution to the author of the column and "Metanexus: The Online Forum on Religion and Science ". Republication for commercial purposes in print or electronic format requires the permission of the author. Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 by William Grassie.