In the history of
the universe extremely improbable things seem to happen very
frequently, to a degree that seems to defy conventional explanations.
There are various ways commonly used to describe such wonders. One
way is to talk about fine-tuning of the universe. Another is to talk
about complexity emergence. But there's an interesting rarely-used
type of description that we can use to describe a very wide range of
phenomena, from the ultra-large to the ultra-small. We can describe
such phenomena by saying: natural things often behave as if they knew
things they never learned.
Let's start at an
extremely large scale, and consider galaxies. Scientists have not
adequately explained either the formation of spiral galaxies, or
their persistence over billions of years. The revolution of galaxies
every 200 million years or so should cause the spiral arms of spiral
galaxies to “unwind,” which should cause galaxies to lose their
spiral arms in less than a billion years. Instead, galaxies keep
their beautiful spiral shapes for as long as 10 billion years or
longer. One way to describe these facts is to say that is as if
protogalaxies (clouds of gas and dust that form into galaxies) know
how to form spiral galaxies, and it is as if spiral galaxies know how
to keep their spiral structure preserved.
Galaxies are made
mainly of stars, stars that burn brightly for billions of years.
There are a large number of requirements for stars like the sun, and
you can describe the appearance of stars like ours by discussing
fine-tuning requirements. But an alternate narrative is to say: very
large masses of matter somehow knew how to perform the difficult
trick of performing thermonuclear fusion, and they also knew how to
keep doing this at a slow, steady rate continuing for billions of
years. This is a very precise balancing act, because if it is not
done just right, a star will either burn up its nuclear fuel quickly,
or collapse in on itself because of its own gravitational
contraction.
In order to have
planets and life, you need atoms – not just hydrogen atoms, but
more complicated atoms such as carbon atoms and oxygen atoms. Every
carbon atom is a little system consisting of 18 parts: 6 neutrons, 6
protons, and 6 electrons organized in a particular way. They can't
just clump all together into a dense ball, as that would not allow
carbon atoms to connect to other carbon atoms in such a way so that
complicated molecules can be formed. You can describe the
organization of something like a carbon atom as being the product of
various complicated laws and forces, but a simpler way to describe it
is just say that is as if protons, neutrons and electrons knew how to
form into the systems we call atoms.
The origin of life
is an unsolved mystery. For reasons discussed here and here, for life
to appear from non-life seems to involve almost miraculous luck. One
way to describe such a thing is to say: it is as if non-life knew how
to turn into life.
After life appears,
it seems to undergo an astonishing series of progressions. One way to
describe such progressions is to hypothesize that simple prokaryotic
cells knew how to turn into complex eukaryotic cells, that aquatic
life knew how to change into land-based life, and that land-based
life knew how to change into air-based life.
At a certain time
perhaps 100,000 years ago or earlier, we see an astonishing
transformation that we cannot explain. Humans started using language,
the origin of which is still unexplained. We could describe this by
saying humans who did not know how to speak somehow knew how to start
building languages they had never been taught. A similar description
might be applied to the beginning of agriculture, mathematics, and
city building. It is as if humans somehow acquired all kinds of
skills they had never been taught.
Are these cases of
“natural objects that seem to know things they were never taught”
all cases in the past? No, we seem to see continued examples of such
a thing, and our existence depends on it. One dramatic example seems
to be morphogenesis, the process by which a newly fertilized
speck-sized egg progresses to become a full human baby. How this
happens is a great unsolved scientific mystery.
It is not at all
correct to say that what is going on is simply that some
list of instructions is being read from DNA. DNA is written in a
bare-bones “poor man's” language consisting of 20 nouns (all
amino acids), and no more than a handful of verbs (such as the
equivalent of “start,” “stop,” and “use.”) Contrary to
the unwarranted claims of some, there is in DNA no list of
instructions of the steps to follow to progress from a fertilized egg to a full baby, nor is there any blueprint laying out a
three-dimensional body plan of humans. So in describing the
mysterious progression from a fertilized egg to a human baby, we can
again say that it as if a natural object seems to know something that
it never learned.
There is still
another dramatic example on which our existence depends: protein
folding. Proteins are made of
amino acids, and the linear sequence of amino acids that make up a
protein is specified by DNA. But proteins have very elaborate
three-dimensional shapes, and their functionality depends on them
having such shapes. DNA has no capability for specifying
three-dimensional shapes. What happens is that somehow protein
molecules are able to form into intricate three-dimensional shapes
through what is called protein folding.
How this happens is
a mystery that scientists have been struggling to learn for decades,
with very little success. It does not seem to be true that the mere
linear arrangement of amino acids in DNA is sufficient to specify the
three-dimensional shape of a protein molecule. One way to describe
the situation is as follows: linear polypeptide sequences of amino
acids seem to act as if they know how to form themselves into suitable
three-dimensional protein molecules, even though we can't explain how
such knowledge was acquired.
When we study the
mysterious subject of instincts, we seem to find many other examples
of natural things that seem to know things they never learned. Bees
know how to make hives; birds know how to fly with other birds in
perfectly synchronized formations; beavers know how to build dams;
and so on. Most of the more dramatic cases of instinct cannot be
explained by a mother animal teaching a child. Nor can we properly
explain animals having instincts by appealing to DNA, which uses
merely a minimal language for expressing the contents of proteins,
not the infinitely more sophisticated language needed to state
behavioral rules. These cases of instinctive skills in animals seem
to be further cases of natural things acting as if they knew things
they never learned.
Another example of
natural things that seem to know things they never learned is what
occurs when a young child first learns to speak. We take this for
granted, but it seems quite the little miracle. How does a very young
child pick up the rules that are needed to form sentences, rules that
can never be explained to the child until the child has first learned
how to speak? Again, we have a case where it is as if a natural thing
(the child) knew something it had never learned: the rules of grammar
and language.
When we study
savants, we find many dramatic examples of people who seemed to
somehow know things they never learned. There are many examples of
people with dramatic deficiencies (such as very low IQ, blindness,
autism, or birth defects) who displayed astonishing musical
abilities, drawing abilities or calculation abilities. In Darold A.
Treffert's excellent book Extraordinary People: Understanding
Savant Syndrome, we hear of quite a few cases of savants who
picked up skills almost instantly: piano playing, first-rate artistic
skills, or esoteric mathematical calculation skills. Acquisition of
skills so rapidly seems inexplicable in people with normal bodies,
and seems doubly inexplicable in people with dramatic handicaps.
Treffert describes some examples in this online essay. Below is an excerpt:
Leslie
Lemke is a musical virtuoso even though he has never had a music
lesson in his life. Like “Blind
Tom” Wiggins a century before him, his musical genius erupted
so early and spontaneously as an infant that it could not possibly
have been learned. It came ‘factory installed’. In both cases
professional musicians witnessed and confirmed that Lemke and Wiggins
somehow, even in the absence of formal training, had innate access to
what can be called “the rules” or vast syntax of music.
To explain some of
these anomalies, Treffert proposes an idea of what he calls “genetic
memory.” He seems to think that perhaps our genes are storing all
kinds of secret elaborate instructions, and suggests that maybe
savants are able to somehow access such instructions. Treffert has
done some great work in documenting savants, and I recommend his
books on the topic. But this hypothesis doesn't work.
DNA and genes are
basically just instructions specifying the ingredients of proteins.
DNA is written in a minimalist language in which the nouns are only
the names of amino acids. So DNA couldn't store something like rules
of musical proficiency. Nor can we explain how it is that such rules
could possibly have come to be stored in DNA, certainly something
that would not have any survival value or Darwinian explanation. And
if we were to explain some of the cases I have discussed by imagining
some mysterious “genetic memory,” it would still leave most of
the cases I have discussed unexplained, as most of these cases
involve things that don't have DNA.
To reasonably
account for all of the very many ways in which natural things act as
if they knew skills they have never learned, we would need to break
out of the straight-jacket of mechanistic and materialistic thinking,
and consider explanations involving one or more things that have
unreasonably been declared taboo by our mainstream professors: things
such as teleology, a cosmic life force, or mysterious spiritual or
psychic drivers of cosmic phenomena.
Postscript: A new scientific study tells us that protein folding is "surprisingly more complex than previously known." We are told, "The JILA team identified 14 intermediate states—seven times as many as previously observed—in just one part of bacteriorhodopsin, a protein in microbes that converts light to chemical energy and is widely studied in research." So look at my visual above, and imagine not a single transition, but something like a 14-step process going on, which happens in seconds. How does a mere chain of amino acids know how to do such choreography culminating in an elaborate 3D form, like some origami sculpture? The answer can't be in DNA alone. We have no explanation for what is going on here. It's as astonishing as someone throwing a bucket of sand on the ground, and then watching it self-assemble into a sand castle.
Post-postscript: In this post I was not trying to suggest any theory that very small things have consciousness. It is possible, though, that such things have a kind of programming. A piece of software is not itself conscious.
Postscript: A new scientific study tells us that protein folding is "surprisingly more complex than previously known." We are told, "The JILA team identified 14 intermediate states—seven times as many as previously observed—in just one part of bacteriorhodopsin, a protein in microbes that converts light to chemical energy and is widely studied in research." So look at my visual above, and imagine not a single transition, but something like a 14-step process going on, which happens in seconds. How does a mere chain of amino acids know how to do such choreography culminating in an elaborate 3D form, like some origami sculpture? The answer can't be in DNA alone. We have no explanation for what is going on here. It's as astonishing as someone throwing a bucket of sand on the ground, and then watching it self-assemble into a sand castle.
Post-postscript: In this post I was not trying to suggest any theory that very small things have consciousness. It is possible, though, that such things have a kind of programming. A piece of software is not itself conscious.
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