ArdLouisRedeemingRea son10Nov06

Thinking Christianly about Biological Complexity: 

Thinking Christianly about Biological Complexity Ard Louis www-louis.ch.cam.ac.uk/postgrad/ Department of Physics University of Oxford

Cross-cultural, broad-brush talk : 

Cross-cultural, broad-brush talk evangelical culture(s) Many scientific sub-cultures culture is often “caught” not “taught”

Biological self-assembly: 

Biological self-assembly http://www.npn.jst.go.jp/ Biological systems self-assemble (they make themselves) Can we understand? Can we emulate? (Nanotechnology)

Virus self-assembly: 

Virus self-assembly Some viruses can be put in a test tube and made to form/dissolve (first shown by Fraenkel-Contrat&Williams 1955- for TMV) Much simpler problem than the flagellum

Design of viruses for self assembly on computer: 

Design of viruses for self assembly on computer Monte-Carlo simulations: stochastic optimisation http://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/user/IainJohnson/

Protein folding: design of final state and pathway: 

Protein folding: design of final state and pathway Levinthal Paradox: 150 amino acids ~10 angles between them ~10150 different states. How does protein find its folded native structure? we used same design principles to make viruses self-assemble

Biological self-assembly: 

Biological self-assembly is amazing!!! If we didn’t observe it, no one would believe that it is possible (think Levinthal) We still know very little We are still very far from “a predictive biology”

Thinking Christianly about biological complexity ....: 

Thinking Christianly about biological complexity .... Wonder and Worship Fearfully and wonderfully made ... Other conclusions are controversial Many “cultural” barriers to constructive Christian engagement. Origins: does where we come from determine who we are and how we should then live? hijacked by many ideologies

Scandal of the Evangelical Mind?: 

Scandal of the Evangelical Mind? Taken together, American evangelicals display many virtues and do many things well, but built-in barriers to careful and constructive thinking remain substantial.

Scandal of the Evangelical Mind?: 

These barriers include an immediatism that insists on action, decision, and even perfection right now, a populism that confuses winning supporters with mastering actually existing situations, an anti-traditionalism that privileges one’s own current judgments on biblical, theological, and ethical issues (however hastily formed) over insight from the past (however hard won and carefully stated), and a nearly gnostic dualism that rushes to spiritualize all manner of bodily, terrestrial, physical, and material realities (despite the origin and providential maintenance of these realities in God). In addition, we evangelicals as a rule still prefer to put our money into programs offering immediate results, whether evangelistic or humanitarian, instead of into institutions promoting intellectual development over the long term. Scandal of the Evangelical Mind?

Scandal of the Evangelical Mind: 

a Scandal because "If evangelicals are the ones who insist most aggressively that they believe in sola scriptura, and if evangelicals are the ones who assert most vigorously the transforming work of Jesus Christ, then it is reasonable to hope that what the Scriptures teach about the origin of creation in Christ, the sustaining of all things in Christ, and the dignity of all creation in Christ-about, in other words, the subjects of learning -- will be a spur for evangelicals to a deeper and richer intellectual life: "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:15-17)." Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

Scandal of the Evangelical Mind?: 

Scandal of the Evangelical Mind? What about the UK? or Europe? or Africa/Asia/South America? “Scandal” is really a description of popular thinking .... Barriers to thinking Christianly about science Immediatism Anti-traditionalism Populism Gnostic dualism

Scandal of the Evangelical Mind?: 

Scandal of the Evangelical Mind? What about the UK? or Europe? or Africa/Asia/South America? “Scandal” is really a description of popular thinking .... Barriers to thinking Christianly about science Immediatism Anti-traditionalism Populism

Immediatism: Newton and the planets: 

Immediatism: Newton and the planets “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent being.” Sir Isaac Newton

Immediatism: Newton and the planets: 

Immediatism: Newton and the planets 18th century Orrery from a London coffee house, used to show the perfection of the orbits, which reflect God’s perfection

Immediatism: Leibnitz objects: 

Immediatism: Leibnitz objects “For, as Leibniz objected, if God had to remedy the defects of his creation, this was surely to demean his craftmanship” John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion, CUP 1991, p147

Immediatism:Laplace and Napoleon: 

Immediatism:Laplace and Napoleon Mécanique Céleste (1799-1825) Napoleon: Why have you not mentioned the creator? Laplace: "Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.”

Immediatism: Chaos and the planets: 

Immediatism: Chaos and the planets Our understanding of the Solar System has been revolutionized over the past decade by the finding that the orbits of the planets are inherently chaotic. In extreme cases, chaotic motions can change the relative positions of the planets around stars, and even eject a planet from a system. The role of chaotic resonances in the Solar System, N. Murray and M. Holman, Nature 410, 773-779 (12 April 2001)

Barriers to Christian thinking about science?: 

Barriers to Christian thinking about science? immediatism anti-traditionalism populism

Roots of Science: 

Roots of Science Science has deeply Christian roots. Uniformity Rationality Intelligibility See e.g. books by Stanley Jaki; R. Hooykaas etc.. Royal Society, the word’s first scientific society. Founded in London July 15, 1662, many were Puritans/Tractarians

Calvin, and the “Humility Principle”: 

Calvin, and the “Humility Principle” “what we find people like Boyle advocating is that we manipulate the natural world, that under special conditions we observe what’s going on, and it’s only under these contrived conditions that we actually see, or get insight into, the various processes. This involves communal observation, it involves accumulation of all sorts of observations under different conditions. Eventually, we come to some conditional conclusions on the basis of this long complicated experimental process. This is a radically new approach to observation.” “... there is a fundamental difference between the Aristotelian assumption that our sensory and cognitive apparatus are designed in such a way that they’ll give us a veridical account of nature, and a Calvinist view that says our cognitive apparatus and our faculties of observation are fallen, imperfect, that they give us the wrong knowledge, they persistently mislead us, ... Peter Harrison (Cambridge 2005) http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/cis/Harrison/Peter%20Harrison%20-%20index.htm We see through a glass darkly (I Cor 13)

Humility Principle?: 

Humility Principle? The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that. -- R.P. Feynman, “Cargo Cult Science” (1974) http://www.physics.brocku.ca/etc/cargo_cult_science.html

Humility Principle?: 

Humility Principle is methodological not personal We are fallen and easily “fool ourselves” Scientific method(s) contain mechanisms to minimise this Many of these mechanisms are communal Peer review Traditions Often “caught” not “taught” Humility Principle?

Critiques of communal nature by sociologists of science: 

Critiques of communal nature by sociologists of science -- science is not essentially self-correcting, but is instead controlled by elites and what is “true” is largely determined on sociological grounds. There is some truth to this on the short term, but on the long term? e.g. the “Science Wars”

Golemizations: 

Golemizations

Case study 2: Relativity: 

Case study 2: Relativity + Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics Quantum Mechanics + Relativity = antimatter

Michaelson-Morley and Aether: 

Michaelson-Morley and Aether

Michaelson-Morley and Aether: 

Michaelson-Morley and Aether published 1887 Einstein 1905 Dayton Miller and others did measure aether wind see 1933 review

Michaelson-Morley and Aether: 

Michaelson-Morley and Aether published 1887 Einstein 1905 Dayton Miller and others did measure aether wind later 1933 review The meaning of an experimental result does not, then, depend on the care with which it is designed and carried out, it depends upon what people are ready to believe. The Golem: what you should know about science Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch (CUP 1993)

The Golemization and Tapestries: 

The Golemization and Tapestries The Golemization of Relativity, David Mermin, Physics Today 49, p11 April 1996 Collins and Pinch took their understanding of the field from textbooks which often misrepresent for pedagogical purposes. Science is a tapestry -- you can pick at a few strings, but that doesn’t break the whole cloth In this case: e.g. Dirac equation, fine-splitting in atomic spectra, anti-matter etc..... .

Tapestry arguments: 

Tapestry arguments May differ from field to field Physics Dirac, Wigner, unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics Observation still key Biology?

Tapesty arguments in biology: 

Tapesty arguments in biology

Aside: Defining Evolution: 

Aside: Defining Evolution Evolution as Natural History the earth is old (+/- 4.5 Billion years) more complex life forms followed from simpler life forms Evolution as a mechanism for the emergence of biological complexity generated by mutations and natural selection (note: most Christians agree that God created this mechanism) Evolution as a “big picture” worldview (scientism) George Gaylord Simpson: "Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned. He is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or remotely to all of life and indeed to all that is material." or Richard Dawkins: "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”

Aside: Is the earth old?: 

Aside: Is the earth old? Science is a tapestry -- you can pick at a few strings, but that doesn’t break the whole cloth Radiometric dating (many overlapping isotopes) ice cores: up to 8000 years -- volcanoes like Vesuvius up to 740,000 years Milankovitch cycles Tree rings All these methods (when used properly) agree. There is no scientific controversy http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

Aside: Is the earth old?: 

Aside: Is the earth old? Milankovitch Cycles: here seen in 420,000 years of ice core data from Vostok, Antarctica research station.

Case study 3: common descent of human & chimp?: 

Divergence of the chimpanzee and human lineages occurred about 6 million years ago; the times of lineage divergence are not to scale News & Views: The chimpanzee and us, Wen-Hsiung Li and Matthew A. Saunders, Nature 437, 50-51 (1September 2005) . Case study 3: common descent of human & chimp?

tapestry arguments in biology: chromosomal banding:: 

tapestry arguments in biology: chromosomal banding: The origin of man: a chromosomal pictorial legacy. J.J Yunis and O. Prakash, Science 215, 1525 (1982) Humans have 46 (2 X 23) chromosomes Apes have 48 (2 X 24) chromosomes chromosome 2: Human, Chimp, Gorilla, Orang-utan

tapestry arguments in biology: fusion of chromosome 2?: 

tapestry arguments in biology: fusion of chromosome 2? chromosome 2: Human, Chimp, Gorilla, Orang-utan

tapestry arguments in biology: evidence from the human genome: 

tapestry arguments in biology: evidence from the human genome Chromosome 2 is unique to the human lineage of evolution, having emerged as a result of head-to-head fusion of two acrocentric chromosomes that remained separate in other primates. The precise fusion site has been located in 2q13−2q14.1 (ref. 2; hg16:114455823−114455838), where our analysis confirmed the presence of multiple subtelomeric duplications to chromosomes 1, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 19, 21 and 22 (Fig. 3; Supplementary Fig. 3a, region A). During the formation of human chromosome 2, one of the two centromeres became inactivated (2q21, which corresponds to the centromere from chimp chromosome 13) and the centromeric structure quickly deterioriated [42]. Generation and annotation of the DNA sequences of human chromosomes 2 and 4, L.W. Hillier et al., Nature 434, 724 (2005).

endogenous retroviruses: 

endogenous retroviruses In humans endogenous retrovirus sequences make up about 1% of the genome. Lebedev, Y. B., et al. (2000) "Differences in HERV-K LTR insertions in orthologous loci of humans and great apes." Gene 247: 265-277. HERV-K insertions

tapestry arguments in biology: more threads of evidence : 

tapestry arguments in biology: more threads of evidence Genetic threads SINEs (Alu ) LINEs Retroviral insertions pseudo genes chromosomal inversions Phenotypal similarities Fossils The tapestry for: do humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor? seems to me almost unbreakably strong for physicists, mathematicians and engineers -- these arguments may still seem foreign and vague; where is the “proof”?, how do you know? --- communities talk past each other

tapestry arguments in biology: 

tapestry arguments in biology “But others [biologists], I soon came to realize, regarded logical arguments as suspect. To them, experimental evidence, fallible as it might be, provided a far surer avenue to truth than did mathematical reasoning. .... Their implicit assumption seemed to be: How could one know one’s assumptions were correct? Where, in a purely deductive argument, was there room for the surprises that nature might offer, for mechanisms that might depart altogether from those imagined in our initial assumptions? Indeed for some biologists, the gap between empirical and logical necessity loomed so large as to make the latter seem effectively irrelevant. Evelyn Fox Keller, in “Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines, HUP, (2002) You can’t ask those kinds of questions!!!! (Biologist to AAL at “Protein-Protein Interaction Conf”, June 2004) “Where are the equations” -- a physicist might ask

Tapestry arguments: 

Tapestry arguments Basic scientific principles are shared across fields But what is considered “necessary” or “sufficient” for a (self-organised) tapestry varies from field to field (often unwritten) cultural iceberg, above and below waterline evidence: grant or paper review demarkation problems mathematics->physics->chemistry->biology->medicine->engineering Differences --in spite of apparent epistemic laxity ... it still works! Christian evaluation needs communities of scholars

Barriers to Christian thinking about science?: 

Barriers to Christian thinking about science? immediatism scientific progress can be slow, surprising, unexpected anti-traditionalism understanding the strength of a tapestry requires communal effort populism

Populism and Paley: 

Populism and Paley that couldn’t have happened by “natural means”

Populism and Paley: 

Populism and Paley God only present through interventions? God present in the whole thing? - (providence - sustains all things ... Col 1:15) - BioLogos (see The Language of God, (2006) Francis Collins)

History of life on earth: 

History of life on earth earth forms from accretion disk Grandeur of God? humans -- last 2 seconds of 24 hr day not unlike astronomy: the heavens declare the Glory of God - Psalm 19 What is man that you are mindful of him? Psalm 8

Aside:Emergence of Humans?: 

Aside:Emergence of Humans? Advice from C.S. Lewis When the author of Genesis says that God made man in His own image, he may have pictured a vaguely corporeal God making man as a child makes a figure out of plasticine. A modern Christian philosopher may think of the process lasting from the first creation of matter to the final appearance on this planet for an organism fit to receive spiritual as well as biological life. Both mean essentially the same thing. Both are denying the same thing -- the doctrine that matter by some blind power inherent in itself has produced spirituality. (C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock Eerdmans (1970), p 46) See also: Can we believe Genesis today,IVP (UK) Ernest Lucas http://www.ivpbooks.com/product/1844741206.htm see also www.cis.org.uk/resources/books/books.shtml In the Beginning : The Opening Chapters of Genesis, Henri Blocher, Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, (1984). e.g. at what age is a child spiritually responsible to God? John Stott on “Homos Divinus”

Advice from Billy Graham: 

Advice from Billy Graham "I don't think that there's any conflict at all between science today and the Scriptures. I think that we have misinterpreted the Scriptures many times and we've tried to make the Scriptures say things they weren't meant to say, I think that we have made a mistake by thinking the Bible is a scientific book. The Bible is not a book of science. The Bible is a book of Redemption, and of course I accept the Creation story. I believe that God did create the universe. I believe that God created man, and whether it came by an evolutionary process and at a certain point He took this person or being and made him a living soul or not, does not change the fact that God did create man. ... whichever way God did it makes no difference as to what man is and man's relationship to God.” - Billy Graham quoted by David Frost Source: Book - Billy Graham: Personal Thoughts of a Public Man (1997, p. 72-74)

Language: Random or stochastic?: 

Language: Random or stochastic? Random mutations and natural selection... Stochastic optimisation e.g. used to price your stock portfolio .....

Lego blocks or play-doh?: 

Lego blocks or play-doh? Evo-Devo Lego Blocks: pax6 sonic-hedgehog shaven-baby tinman Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom. S.B. Carroll (Blackwell Science 2005)

Gene language: 

Gene language Why are there so few genes? complexity comes from the interactions gene networks systems biology transcriptional network for yeast: Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Gene language: 

Gene language [Genes] swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. Richard Dawkins -- The Selfish Gene (1976) [Genes] are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy that we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence. Denis Noble -- The Music of Life: Biology Beyond the Genome (OUP 2006)

Contingency v.s.``deep structures’’: 

Contingency v.s.``deep structures’’ Rerun the tape of evolution again... S.J. Gould: “Wonderful Life”; (W.W. Norton 1989) Simon Conway Morris “Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe”; (CUP, 2003)

Convergent Evolution?: 

Convergent Evolution? Convergent evolution in mechanical design of lamnid sharks and tunas Jeanine M. Donley, et al. Nature 429, 61-65 (6 May 2004)

Convergent Evolution?: 

Convergent Evolution? Enormous number of examples ... from proteins to vision up to societies to intelligence. Are rational conscious beings an inevitable outcome? “

Summary: 

Summary Cultural barriers to Christian thought Scandal: Immediatism, anti-traditionalism populism Science humility principle tapestry argments BioLogos - God in the whole thing self-assembly and bio-complexity language of evolution e.g. stochastic optimisation convergence and inevitable humans?

-- thanks for listening: 

-- thanks for listening www-louis.ch.cam.ac.uk/postgrad/