Darwin, Design and the Devil
is in the details
by J. V. Siry
Darwin | Darwinism | The Man | The Revolution
Mete
The measure of a thing, to take the points and determine the boundary of something.
A meaningful measure of extent.
• Noun and verb: the measure of and to measure.
Mete is the acronym for the four points of this essay, which is also a talk you may listen to.
M
Materialism, our focus is on substance: bones, shells, rocks and stuff; the stuff conceived and born in the fusion of stars. Otherwise known as "bodies" in the 17th century, quarks, atoms, molecules, tissues, organs, organisms and species.
Evidence, we desire to account for the pieces of information both relevant to and descriptive of some larger process that can -- mindful of Occam's razor-- explain the necessary and sufficient reasons for the living world in all its variation.
Theory, drawn from all of the evidence, including anomalies, this formulation must be subject to negation; that is we should be able to disprove it now or any time in the future with sufficient evidence to the contrary. This means that by discovering necessary contradictions that shed some light on the methods we have to explain the inexplicable variances from the rule, all theories in science are allowed to be disproved.
Essence, the essential quality of life that accounts for change, variation and mutation. With respect to all living things we refer particularly to a molecule that is at once self replicating and able to change and recognize different versions of other molecules. This is RNA, or ribonucleic acid.
Within every cell of the human body and within some organellesof these cells, like the cells of all organisms there exists three ingredients: DNA, RNA and proteins. Life is an amalgam of the work of all three of these highly variable molecules in that all three must be present in sufficient mass to enable the miracle of life to persist.
These three ingredients, together, may be thought of as a dance troupe in that the DNA is the choreography (a sort of script
describing where and when the steps are taken),or choreographic script. The RNA is the choreographer and the dancer who can demonstrate and arrange how the steps come together recognizing from time to time when a misstep occurs to correct the error. Proteins are assembled by the RNA from the DNA recipe or script, hence the proteins are the performers the dance troupe if you will. The proteins, as assembled by RNA are informed by DNA.
They both are responsible the performances we see all around us which we call the processes of life. Three together these pieces have the capacity to design proteins that regulate life, construct parts of living cells, and reuse in endless variety the many sources of materials life needs to persist.
Choreography means the study of the art of dance and the actual written descriptions of how a dance is to be performed, like sheet music for a musician.
Choreographer, like a director, is the one responsible for interpreting and altering when needed the recipe for the dance, or the script.
Performance is the actual creation of what is choreographed by the director as based on the script, or recorded patterns of the dance.
The vital parts in the dance of life.
Charles Darwin labored long
, lovingly and laconically over his specimens collected from all over England and around the world from his experience on a Royal Navy survey ship, the H.M.S. Beagle, from 1833 until 1836. He had upon his departure believed that the world was a manifestation of the wisdom of God manifest in the flesh and blood of the thousands of living, chirping, crawling and seething beings that daily buildup, maintain, redesign and destroy the various parts of our living planet.
He remained a believer that nature was the manifestation of God's wisdom, but he profoundly altered his depth of understanding of exactly how detailed and precisely how mysteriously the creator God had sculpted the living world. As he stepped ever more distantly from a simplistic and superficial comprehension of
scripture, Darwin discovered that all life arose from common ancestry, that it was based on populations, not some typology of forms, and that deep in the geological past there --harbored in the rocks of ages-- were the necessary, if not sufficient, pieces of a vast puzzle that could be used to explain his assumptions.
His assumptions were based on findings that any examination of present living species could also reveal; he sensed a powerful force for alteration. Darwin knew from reading that over an immense span of time --a span far longer than even physicists then acknowledged-- the Earth had nourished a variety of life. He now speculated from the evidence he saw, collected and shared with specialists in the Linnean Society that all life on Earth was forever in a constant state of variation.
