In this and three subsequent posts on the science of purpose, I propose to offer a unified theory of emergence and specified irreducible complexity (SIC). Emergence, in a biological context, is often called upon to explain, or explain away, the observation of SIC. I will demonstrate that emergence and SIC are not two sides of an opposing duality, as they may seem. Instead they comprise a complementarity, an instance where two contrasting theories are necessary to fully explain an otherwise inscrutable phenomenon. Unified in this way, they substantiate a logical framework for incorporating purpose into the science of biology. In the course of this demonstration, I will argue that one of the fundamental pillars of scientism, the structure-function dualism, is false.
This may all sound imposingly abstract. However, we are all familiar with the duality — structure and function — from both technology and biology. In human engineering, the structure-function relationship (SFR) is straightforward and essential. For example, in aeronautics, to produce lift with an airfoil, a wing must have a curved upper surface, resulting in a differential airflow upon movement compared with the flat bottom surface. That is what produces lift: the structure of the wing results in the desired function. Further examples are beyond count, including the structure or shape of propellers, pistons, radiators, arches, pulleys, antennae, footballs, rockets, parachutes, balloons, etc.
In biology, at the very beginning of the study of organisms, credited to Aristotle, structure-function relationships were quite self-evident in an organism’s anatomy. Again, innumerable examples are available, including wings, flippers, eyes, ears, limbs, beaks, claws, teeth, etc. In fact, it was the study of the asymmetry of the surfaces of bird wings that inspired the “invention” of airplane wings.
Removed from Abstraction
When this subject is removed from abstraction, it is easy to understand structure-function relationships. For airplane wings to create lift, the wing structure must be designed to confer that vital function. And in order for white sharks to be able to devour seals, the structure of shark teeth must be hard and sharp enough to perform the function of tearing flesh, just as the teeth of ruminants, from elephants to cows to camels, must have a far different, grindstone-like structure, to confer the necessary function of masticating plant fiber into a digestible, easy-to-swallow slurry.
As the study of biology progressed from simple anatomy to organ and cellular physiology, it became clear that virtually every physical part of an organism is a structure that confers a function. That holds true from hearts that pump to kidneys that filter to capillaries that deliver to alveoli that transfer, all the way down to the structure of biomolecules, such as enzymes whose “active site” must possess a very precise structure to perform the function of molecular catalysis, upon which all life depends.
The Mistaken Hypothesis of Laplace
Centuries before anyone knew about enzymes or alveoli, Pierre-Simon Laplace concluded that the natural world was reducible to Newtonian mechanics. He thereby took leave of what Stephen Meyer calls the God Hypothesis. However, it wasn’t until Charles Darwin “explained” how life itself could be similarly reduced that the scientific world eventually followed, replacing faith with scientism.
The structure-function dualism is profoundly significant because it sits at the heart of science itself. The fathers of modern science — Newton, Descartes, Bacon, et al. — invoked the reality of the structure-function duality to create the epistemological framework of science. Nascent though that framework was, it succeeded beyond all initial expectations, and it perseveres to this day. The problem is that, as Meyer explains in Return of the God Hypothesis, the mistaken hypothesis of LaPlace was the crucial point of departure for modern-day scientific atheism from what had previously been at the heart of all human ontology.
To deconstruct the structure-function dualism, it is necessary to go to the root of the concept in order to redirect the trajectory from that erroneous departure. In this post, I have described the basics of the structure-function duality, how it originated, and how it was corrupted. In later posts, I will further explore why the duality is false, and then describe how to replace it with an ontology that has the potential to overcome the impasses that it itself has created, most importantly SIC and its concomitant “mysterium,” emergence.
The Foundation of Science
Returning to Newton, it is astonishing to consider that the formalisms derived by that reclusive mathematician 350 years ago could still lie at the foundation of 21st century science. Such an accomplishment had to be preliminary and incomplete, generated as it was under such primitive circumstances. Indeed, a hundred years ago, both Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger endeavored to replace Newtonian mechanics. And yet, to this day, those same mechanics, based on structure-function relationships, still form the basis for almost everything in mechanical engineering.
For the purpose of explaining living systems, these engineering principles are in common use as well. And it is in living systems most particularly that these same principles reach their theoretical limit. When applied to life, the science of mechanics leads inexorably to the impasse of specified irreducible complexity as described by Michael Behe, such that emergence must be invoked to overcome it. As we will see at the completion of this series, both emergence and specific irreducible complexity can be unified. Their separation is unnecessary and profoundly misleading.
While the structure-function relationships of anatomy, physiology, and molecular biology describe much, they fail to explain the most important aspect fundamental to the SFR: their origin. Charles Darwin famously theorized an answer, the gradual evolution of organisms via the randomness-selection hypothesis. But over the past half century, our knowledge of the complexity of organisms has exploded. So much so that Darwin’s explanation for the genesis of SFRs, challenged by specified irreducible complexity, utterly fails.
A Revolution in Paradigm
A similar problem faced physics in 1900, when black-body radiation seemed inexplicable. But it was that very problem that motivated Einstein, Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, and others to totally reimagine the laws of physics. And it was on this basis that Schrödinger himself realized that a similar revolution in paradigm was necessary to resolve the impasse in biology, which he recognized fifty years earlier than others did. In his famous book — What Is Life? — he called for “new laws” quite beyond those of Newton:
What I wish to make clear is that from all we have learnt about the structure of living matter, we must be prepared to find it working in a manner that cannot be reduced to the ordinary laws of physics….The state of affairs is not only not plausible but most exciting because it is unprecedented… We must not be discouraged by the difficulty of interpreting life by the ordinary laws of physics…. We must be prepared to find a new type of physical law prevailing in it. Or are we to term it a non-physical not to say a super-physical law?
It is to that question, posed by Schrödinger, that I will turn our attention in my next post.