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Quantum Evolution Poses Challenge to Darwinism
spaceorb writes "In his book, "Quantum Evolution", UK biologist Dr. Johnjoe McFadden asserts that life did not originate from the random movement of particles, simply because it is far too complex. Instead, he argues that evolution is a quantum system - genetic code exists in a quantum multiverse and cells are able to choose advantageous mutations. Click the above link for the story on UniSci; it's worth a read. "
The article you have cited looks familiar to me: remember the guy who made fun of post-modernistic brabble writing an article heavily loaded with serious physic terms taken out of the context? This sounds similar to me: "quantum" is a nice, popular word, and using it out of the context and not in its proper meaning is nothing more then retorics.
As for a biologist, this whole article sounds like cheap boulevard sh*t to me. J. McFadden, OTOH, is a serious evolutionary biologist, publishing in good journals. He works as a theoretical biologist - as far I understand - with transposone mutagenesis. So maybe he did something interesting, and tried to make "a big thing" out of it - and notified some journalists, who got it wrong. There was a similar thing with the "theory of punctuated equilibria", which finally fitted nicely in the "synthetic theory of evolution" or "neodarwinism" (which is to darwinism in as much as quantum physics is to Newton's laws).
I am an evolutionist - and I certainly see possibilities for bacteria to judge which mutation could be better. There are some reasonable hypothetical mechanisms, which have nothing to do with quantum mechanics. Unfortunately, in spite of various tries and much research there are no convincing experiments. In most of the cases either noone could repeat the experiments, or better, easier explanations could have been found. Nevertheless, I do not see anything controversial about directed mutations: after all, the driving force of evolution will still be the natural selection coupled to other evolutionary mechanisms (like genetic drift). You have to have a broader view: most of the organisms try to influence the genes they passed to their offspring: for example, by coupling them to an other set of good genes - when choosing a good mating partner, who can demonstrate that he has good genes (for example, using the handicap strategy). You could say there already exists a kind of directional mutagenesis :-)
So much for the "controversy" of directed mutations. What I wanted to say is that there is no much incoherency with the current evolutionary paradigm (STE) per se. However, there is lot more on "sampling of the quantum space" and so on in the article you have posted here. Well, although I got some kind of introduction in quantum physics I cannot say I am fit in this field. However, I suspect strongly that people who are fit, are, on the other hand, not necessarily skilled in evolutionary sciences and molecular biology. I can't tell at this point: maybe this is something interesting, but to pose a challenge to the current model, a theory has to explain everything the former theory did plus a couple of other things plus do it more cleanly, more simply. I really don't know, but even if there is something in this quantum brabble I do not understand, it is only on the level of simple mutations and a very short time scale. OTOH, natural selection is known to work also on a larger time-scale.
One more thing left: the arousal of life itself. Well, one important point: the biologists have problems to tell how it happened not because they lack an explanation or a model, but because finding evidence for evolving molecules with a time scale of millions of years is unlikely to be found in sediments several billions years old, and unlikely to be demonstrated in an experiment, because such an experiment would take too long. However, it is not at all as unlikely as assembling a 747 by a tornado. Imagine a tornado that works for millions years on a planet covered with intact 747 parts; and if two parts get correctly assembled, they stay assembled and they propagate itself and produce they replica. Does it still sound improbable to you? What I really hate is biologists commenting on quantum physics like they were quantum physicists, physicists commenting on food science, and astronomers commenting on biology. Do I tell you how to program? ("Hey, you over there! C is obsolate! Use VB![*]). There are experiments with evolving and self-replicating RNA molecules; RNA is a nucleic acid which can both contain genetic information and act as an enzyme. Compared to a living cell, it has a very simple biochemic structure. However, chance of finding RNA fossils are, ehm, like building a 747 by a tornado... out of straws :-)
Stephen J. Gould, the co-author of the "punctuated equilibrium theory", which was supposed to dismiss neodarwinism, had to write a book entitled - I'm translating from polish, don't know the english title - "Darwins too-early funeral". Well, let's see what happens to this theory :->
Regards,
January
[*] Disclaimer: I program in C on an AIX.
Yes, this fellow is most likely completely off his rocker. But let's keep something in mind, all right?
1. This theory depends on DNA/RNA molecules being able to perform quantum computations. If DNA/RNA are not efficient chemical "vehicles" for quantum computation, then this theory is completely and utterly wrong.
2. This theory can actually be proven wrong, unlike almost every other evolutionary theory out there. You name the theory -- Punctuated Equilibrium, Red Queen, Designed Evolution... their mechanisms are all-but-unobservable, and cannot be empirically tested in a lab (as best I know). This theory can be tested in a lab; if DNA/RNA isn't good at quantum computation, presto, the theory's wrong.
3. Don't dismiss it because it didn't appear in a scientific journal. Odds are nobody would touch this one with a ten-foot pole; it's so far from conventional science that it's easy to dismiss it as being crackpot. But this fellow has a serious idea, and he's also conveniently provided us with a way to prove him wrong. Don't write him off as a nut and not worth your time just because he's published in a book -- first prove him wrong, and then write him off as a nut. Not before, and certainly not in the reverse order.
4. Dismiss anyone who says "this man doesn't know a thing about quantum mechanics" just because he takes a weird view of the implications of quantum mechanics. His theory, as best as I can tell, depends on the Everett many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. I prefer the Copenhagen interpretation, but you know what? Neither one of them is in the slightest bit scientific.
Quantum mechanics is a fact. It describes observed phenomena, it has successfully predicted phenomena, and it can be proven wrong (not that it ever has been proven wrong -- but if you were to ever successfully measure both the precise location and velocity of a particle, you'd prove QM to be an incorrect theory). The problem is that quantum mechanics is so alien to our idea of the universe that most physicists have to come up with a framework from which quantum mechanics makes some sort of sense.
This gentleman's interpretation of quantum mechanics is no nuttier than the Copenhagen Interpretation, or even an interpretation that the collective farts of all the universe's sentient races causes the weirdness in QM. Any interpretation of QM is metaphysics, not science. It's easy to say "this guy's a crackpot, since his interpretation isn't shared by any other "serious scientist". It's just as easy, and as accurate, to say "a lot of guys are crackpots because they believe in a multiverse which is constantly splitting off from itself, as proposed by Everett."
For all this fellow's failings, I've got to give him credit for coming up with a perfect theory.
(1) It's insane. As Wolfgang Pauli is supposed to have said to a colleague, "We are all divided on whether or not your theory is crazy. I do not believe it is crazy enough." In QM, crazy is good.
(2) It explains observed phenomena.
(3) It predicts future phenomena.
(4) It's empirically testable.
... In other words, it's a hell of a lot better than most evolutionary theories I've seen. It's probably wrong, of course. But it's wrong to dismiss this one out-of-hand.
1) The real world (whatever that is) is, as far as anyone knows, governed by the laws of Quantum Mechanics. Period. So the question is not the applicability of QM, but of Classical Physics which is an approximation of QM in some circumstances (very large distances scales, energies, quantum numbers etc.). So QM could be used to describe buckyballs -if you could do the calculations- and yield a more accurate answer than CM.
2) Getting closer to the topic, this article smells kind of fishy. McFadden doesn't seem to understand Quantum Mechanics. I know, I know. He claims noone does, and on some fundamental level, that may be true. But we do know how to make some pretty damn precise calculations and predictions with it. Which requires at least some understanding.
For example the claims about an electron going in two (or more)different directions: true, but it's somewhat more complicated than that. If you try to observe an electron doing that, you never will. But if you don't check which way the electron went it can look like it went two ways (you can do a double slit intereference experiment with electrons, to invoke Physics 102- depending on how you do the experiment, you get an intereference pattern or not. With the interefence pattern, that means that the electron went both ways in some sense).
Another example: a particle is always in one and only one state at a time, never billions. However one state (say a state of definite energy) can be thought of -for some purposes- as a combination (superposition) of many other states (say states with definite position). But it is really only in one state.
3) The multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics is strongly disfavored (though not discredited) by physicists. Primarily because there is no real way of testing or disproving it. It predicts exactly the same things as the "orthodox" (aka Copenhagen) interpretation, which is simpler.
Ok, that's all I have to say for now.
> No existing religion is willing to continually challenge and dispute itself in this manner.
Au contraire, mon ami. Almost all major religions are consistanty refining and reworking their beliefs to fit new information. Most Christian denominations, for instance, have annual meetings that, among other orders of business, decide on any 'platform' changes or additions. Just like science, some core truths are relatively stable (gravity, the divinity of Christ), some are slowly retired over time (flat earth, flat earth), and some are still in flux (particle physics, the role of women in the church).
Just because religions' criteria for changing truths is not necessarily based on empirical challenging doesn't mean their methods are demonstrably 'wrong.' Unless you're such a believer in the Church of Science's core tenets of demontrability and repeatability that any other scheme is 'heresy.'
>But if everything is True by Decree....
Again, science is a church. Unless you personally go out and demonstrate each and every scientific truth that you believe, for yourself, with strict application of scientific method and a healthy dose of skepticism, a belief in science IS "Truth by Decree," relying on the proclamations of wiser elders for truth, based on a faith in their higher knowledge of and closer contact with The Truth.
"Peer review" isn't an argument against the above, either. Almost all Christian elders, of any denomination and creed, will back each other up on the divinity of Christ, using the tools of their Church. If "peer review" is a criterion for truth, why don't you believe in those alleged truths?
Unless it's that what your argument boils down to is "if it doesn't work the way science says, I won't believe it." Which, to me, sounds like a belief system based in faith.
As a disclaimer, I, myself, am a Church of Science adherant, and not a religious person of any consequence. But I do see that my Church is just a system of ordered beliefs handed down from power structure to power structure, with a core set of unprovable assumptions, occasional attacks from 'fringe breakaway groups' that either succeed or fail, and with millions of amateur adherants that gobble up things that are sound like dogma and pooh-pooh things that don't, with very little except their incomplete understanding and faith to tell the difference. And just like any other Church, science is anxious to differentiate itself from other Churches by argument of how much better and more valid its ideas are.
The fact that the Church of Science has been the in-fashion flavor for the last few hundred years doesn't mean it's any less a Church, no matter how strongly it tries to redefine itself.
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