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The Star Larvae Hypothesis
Nature's Plan for Humankind
Part 2. Star Larvae

Teleology, the Forms of Function

Science and religion are at odds over whether nature and history participate in a program—whether any particular direction inheres.

God might have a plan for Creation, but science has no recourse to it.

In the scientific view, nature on the grand scale doesn't pursue objectives. There's no grand plan. According to science, the storyline of the world proceeds without the benefit of a plot.

What science rejects, in a word, is teleology. The telos, the unfolding according to a plan, is out of bounds (for the most part) to the theorist of natural science. In extreme cases, scientists can contract telophobia, causing evasive maneuvers in the face of prospective teleology.

Here's an instance of the affliction, from James Lovelock's The Ages of Gaia (Pseudomonads are microorganisms that produce macromolecular nucleation sites around which water droplets condense, producing rain):

"Pseudomonads have an ancient history, and maybe their ice-nucleation trick goes back to the Achaean. If so, were they the rain makers that led the colonization of the land? A question that always arises at this point in speculation is: How did it happen? Surely the bacteria did not decide to make the ice-nucleating substance. At this point, serious–minded microbiologists grow anxious and fear the proximate occasion of teleological heresy. Fortunately, we can easily make a plausible model of the evolution of close coupling between a large-scale environmental effect and the local activity of microorganisms—a model, moreover free of any taint of purpose."

Lovelock goes on to make the case that the ability to freeze water must have benefited the ancestors of today's pseudomonads and that the talent therefore spread from generation to generation of the microorganisms. The effect of rain on later evolution is merely incidental. This is what is known in the evolution biz as a just so story, a term taken from a collection of fanciful tales by Rudyard Kipling. The expression refers to explanations that enjoy the privilege of being as undisprovable as they are unprovable. Lovelock might be more sensitive than most scientists to accusations of "teleological heresy" because early criticism of his Gaia theory targeted the theory’s teleological implications.

In fairness to Lovelock and other telophobes, "purpose" has various interpretations. What is it exactly that Lovelock thinks might make microbiologists uncomfortable with the globally beneficial talents of pseudomonads?

When Does a Code Have a Purpose?

If we ask a computer programmer about a section of code, she might tells us that that section ensures that when a dialog box appears on a user’s screen it pulls data from a particular field in a particular database. So, that’s the purpose of that section of code—to make that data appear in the right place at the right time.

Now, if we ask a geneticist about a section of DNA—genetic code—and he tells us that that section of code ensures that a particular protein contains a particular amino acid at a particular position in the sequence of amino acids, we might be less eager, than in the computer example, to say that that section of code has a purpose, for fear of committing "the teleological heresy."

"The controversy between those who see both our species and our society as a lucky accident, and those who find an immanent teleology in both, is too radical to permit of being judged from some neutral standpoint." -- Richard Rorty Philosophy and Social Hope

Here’s a section of DNA. Look it over carefully. Which segments have purpose?

But both computer and genetic codes direct events toward particular outcomes. Why is purpose granted in the one case; but not in the other?

To add a complication, let’s say that DNA hackers splice a DNA sequence into the genome of a variety of tomato so that the plant (given a suitable environment) yields fruits fortified with caffeine, or sugar, or [insert favorite recreational compound]. In this case, the inserted DNA serves a purpose, but the rest of the plant genome does not? What if the sequence of inserted DNA included some nucleotide sequences from the original tomato genome—then would these sequences be converted from nonpurposeful to purposeful, even though they correspond to the same amino acids after the insertion as they did before?

Alternatively, maybe the proper term is not purpose, but function.

But this angle of attack has its own problems. Is the function of a thing whatever the thing can be observed to do—or only what it is intended to do? The function of a jet engine is to propel a plane. But the engine also produces heat. That is not its function, though the function of some devices is precisely to produce heat. Function seems to be a function of an intending mind. This is a troubling observation, because it means that although we observe nature doing things, nothing in nature, outside of conscious behaviors, has any function whatever. The stomach makes food suitable for passage through the intestine. Do we really want to say in the next breath that stomachs have no function—serve no purpose because they were, in the scientific view, not intentionally designed?

Science's ambivalence toward the vocabulary of teleology, e.g., purpose, meaning, function, code, plan, program, even information, reveals that the seemingly distinct categorical break between natural law and God’s law—between unplanned and planned nature—is a nuanced one.

Ontogeny (far left) and phylogeny (left) are processes of polymorphous descent from a common ancestor. Given the vast explanatory powers attributed to the Darwinian process of natural selection, why does science then stoop to invoking a "genetic program" (or synonymous concept) when it comes to explaining the development of an organism? Both evolution and development—phylogeny and ontogeny—involve descent from a common ancestor, with descendants interdependently competing and cooperating in a shared environment. So, why the need to invoke a ghost in the machine when it comes to ontogeny? Why is variation+selection sufficient to explain only phylogeny? Why isn't it sufficient to account also for the differentiation of cells during ontogeny? What criteria can science articulate to determine when to invoke a program, and, applied even-handedly, do the criteria really disqualify phylogeny? In principle, what sort of observation would establish the presence or absence of underlying instructions that direct either process? It seems to be a matter of theory/doctrine more than of empirical observation.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics and Complex Systems

Although science rejects the idea that ends are imminent in the means of nature, nature nonetheless proceeds in a preferred direction. The second law of thermodynamics asserts that processes tend to change over time specifically in a direction away from organized complexity and toward equilibrium—toward greater entropy. Even though it pulls things, inexorably, in a certain direction, the tendency to converge on maximal entropy does not constitute a teleological program, in the scientific view.

That certain dynamic systems grow in the opposite direction, away from equilibrium, yet operate stably in their disequilibrium, is readily observable. But, according to normal science, these anti-entropic systems, such as biological cells, ecosystems and galaxies, do not rely on teleological programs to arrive at their complex, stable forms. Like systems that devolve toward maximal entropy, anti-entropic systems serve no purpose or function, in the scientific view. They are flukes or, in the context of complexity theory, "emergent" systems of self organization. In any event, normal science does not assign to them teleological aims.

Among these interwoven ideas, most significant for the star larvae hypothesis is the normal scientific view that evolutionary descent—phylogeny—is nonteleological but that development of individuals—ontogeny—is teleological. That is, the former proceeds without the benefit of an inherent direction, but the latter does benefit from inherent direction. The hypothesis challenges this received doctrine.

The hypothesis sees in the violent churning of evolutionary history the metabolic churning of a developing organism. Evolution unfolds according to a developmental plan.

NEXT > Ontophylogeny, or Evelopment

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