As Daniel Witt and David Klinghoffer recently wrote, Oxford University biologist Denis Noble had a nice interview published last month at Variable Minds titled “Science Is Reconsidering Evolution.” It’s getting a lot of attention because he says quite squarely, “The fact is I think neo-Darwinism is dead.” We’ve covered Noble’s views in the recent past and it’s worth noting some highlights from this video.
Denying the Selfish Gene
Noble strongly disagrees with Richard Dawkins’s ideas about “selfish genes” where “genes created us — body and mind” and “from the genome you’d be able to make” an entire person. Noble thinks this is wrong — because he opposes “scientific reductionism.” Noble notes that in an epilogue to the 40th edition of The Selfish Gene, Dawkins writes, “In some ways I would like to find ways to recant the central message of The Selfish Gene.” Noble believes this is a fundamental reason why, in his words, “Neo-Darwinism is dead” — “because we’re not our genes and can’t be reduced to our genes,” as host Andréa Morris affirms. The problem Noble identifies is that we’re created by much more than just DNA — for example we’re also created by information carried in the mother’s egg cell outside the DNA.
Taking a Holistic View
Noble notes that developmental biology reveals some unexpected traits — where developmental gene networks are robust and sometimes you can remove a gene and the body will use a different gene to perform that function. This requires a “holistic view” where, as the video says, “parts exist for and by means of the whole.” According to Noble, “the purpose of the individual molecules and genes comes from understanding the whole.”
Now when we ID proponents hear language like this, we might think “This sounds goal-directed, and goals only come from intelligent agents. So this sounds like organisms were designed.” But Noble is quite explicitly not an ID proponent. So how does he think such a top-down design (what else should we call it?) of living organisms arose without intelligent design? I’m still not exactly sure. But his position is a lot more friendly to ID than the standard neo-Darwinian view.
Yet if there’s any doubt that Noble is not an ID proponent, consider what he says subsequently in the interview.
“You Can Only Get Life from Life”?
At one point Noble is asked, “If genes are not the blueprint, what is the blueprint?” He says, “There isn’t one” because “You can only get life from life.”
Stop the presses! That naked statement on its own would seem to suggest that a naturalistic origin of life is impossible. Noble is aware of this and he doesn’t want to make this admission. So he adds:
Let me qualify that. I’m not opposing the idea … that somehow it’s a natural process for life to emerge on a planet. That seems to me perfectly the way to go and to work out what are the conditions in which autocatalytic sets can start, and in which membranes can exist, and once all of that’s happened, bang, you’re off and life is developing. Evolution then will take you the rest of the way. Not opposed to any of that story at all.
So then Noble does not, after all, support the idea that “You can only get life from life.” Whatever the answer, he believes that purpose and goals can emerge from blind chemistry. He states:
What I am saying though is this: Once life has taken off, to ask the question where does the purpose of the living system come from, where does its agency, its ability to go this way rather than that way, to choose how to find its food, how to mate, and all the rest of it? … It doesn’t make sense to say, “How on earth does something like purpose arise from simple chemistry?” I’m saying that something like that you can take as a whole. It’s the whole that gives the purpose to the parts.
At this point, after all of Noble’s talk about “purpose” arising from “simple chemistry,” the host looks a bit confused. She asks, “How does that derive from evolution? I mean, this is such a basic question that, you know, I think we just take for granted because we are purposive beings, but how would purpose be a function of an organism?”
The host seems to appreciate at some level that evolution is blind and blind processes don’t lead to purpose. But now Noble wants to argue that this is in fact precisely what happened: “It’s a process that has evolved, wasn’t there before. … Functions are emergent properties.”
Expecting Resistance from Neo-Darwinians
For his part, Noble seems to appreciate that some evolutionary thinkers will resist seeing organisms as purposive, but he rightly says we must accept the obvious fact that organisms are purposive: “Is it correct to regard organisms as purposive? And it seems utterly incredible that anybody should say that they’re not. Evolution has generated purpose. And that’s what neo-Darwinists do not like at all.”
And why don’t they like it? Here’s Noble’s reasoning:
To them it seems to give wind to their creationist opponents which of course is a form of theism.
This comment is reminiscent of a 2014 comment by a paper in Nature which said that many evolutionary scientists will suppress criticisms of neo-Darwinism because of fear of lending credence to intelligent design:
Too often, vital discussions descend into acrimony, with accusations of muddle or misrepresentation. Perhaps haunted by the spectre of intelligent design, evolutionary biologists wish to show a united front to those hostile to science.
In other words, sometimes scientists don’t want to admit problems with their models — here, the existence of purpose — not because of the state of the evidence but simply because they fear lending credence to intelligent design. The host gets the point as she later says, “It goes to show that bias that we attribute to religious belief can be just as applicable to skepticism if you’re not open-minded about evidence.” And Noble agrees with this saying, “Exactly so. Yes.”
Purpose Without Design?
But are neo-Darwinists crazy to have these fears that purpose implies design? Noble seems to think they are — he sees no inherent tension between an ultimately materialistic model of evolution and the development of purpose. But the host did not seem to be completely buying it — she seems to see why the existence of purpose could pose a problem for strictly blind and unguided models of materialistic evolution. She asks:
If evolution can act on an organism top-down and develop purpose, and it’s not subject to reductionism, it almost seems like you could take a step back and have a teleological explanation for evolution.
The video then superimposes a definition of “teleological” as follows: “Teleological: human existence is progressing towards an intrinsic goal or meaning.” Though oddly human-centric, that’s not a terrible definition of “teleological” but many standard definitions of the word reference design or ultimate ends:
- Merriam-Webster: “exhibiting or relating to design or purpose especially in nature”
- Wikipedia: “a branch of causality giving the reason or an explanation for something as a function of its end, its purpose, or its goal”
- Brittanica: “explanation by reference to some purpose, end, goal, or function”
- Vocabulary.com: “starting from the end and reasoning back, explaining things based on their end purpose”
- Dictionary.com: “of or relating to teleology, the philosophical doctrine that final causes, design, and purpose exist in nature.”
As you can see, according to these definitions, teleology and design are often (though not always) closely related. But Noble’s next words seem to betray such an implication of teleology — as he says, “No, the purpose has evolved. It’s as simple as that. You don’t have to suppose the purpose was there before the organisms existed. The purpose is itself an evolution.”
Noble further disavows any greater purpose beyond that of the organism and its will to survive. He defines a “final cause” as “organisms now can anticipate the future” and he makes comments like:
- “Purpose is the use of chance to explore strategies for the future” where you’ve got an “array of options” and then you test different options to see which ones work.”
- “Purpose can be given a very simple scientific definition. It doesn’t have to rely on some kind of spiritualist or religious notion of purpose.”
- “Once you start to admit that organisms have purpose the religious side will start to say ‘But there you are then, where did that purpose come from?’ I would say it came from me. It came from me as an organism. … I have no difficulty with attributing purpose to an organism like myself, or to the cat, or to the mouse.”
The host asks: “So your view doesn’t concern itself with a creator or intelligent designer?” and Noble answers clearly: “No, not at all, no.”
Noble is entitled to his view that you can have purpose and top-down goal-oriented functions in organisms without any intelligent design. But a lot of people in the scientific community — including both ID proponents and evolutionists of various stripes — are going to find this a bit difficult to accept. Andréa Morris who hosted the interview even sounded a bit skeptical at times.
I respect Denis Noble and in disagreeing with him I do not mean to slight his deep insights into how biology works. I sincerely hope he continues in his work. But there’s an inherent tension between systems biology and any model that claims that life is ultimately the result of strictly blind and undirected material causes. That’s because in our normal experience, when we see purpose, function, and top-down design, this happens because it was emplaced by an intelligent mind who was there to give purpose to the system. In our experience, purpose does not arise by blind mechanism, or by accident. Denis Noble may disagree with me, but I suspect a lot of people — both friends and foes of intelligent design — won’t.