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New paper casts doubt on Stuart Kauffman’s self-organization theory

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One of the naturalistic theories for the origin of biological information in the origin of life is Stuart Kauffman’s “self-organization” theory. The theory attempts to account for the functional sequences of information in living systems by arguing that the information emerges automatically from a sufficiently diverse pre-biotic soup.

In his book, “At Home in the Universe”, Kauffman writes:

I hope to persuade you that life is a natural property of complex chemical systems, that when the number of different kinds of molecules in a chemical soup passes a certain threshold, a self-sustaining network of reactions—an autocatalytic metabolism—will suddenly appear. Life emerged, I suggest, not simple, but complex and whole, and has remained complex and whole ever since… The secret of life, the wellspring of reproduction, is not to be found in the beauty of Watson-Crick pairing, but in the achievement of catalytic closure.

Doug Axe explains the theory a bit more: (H/T Evolution News)

When chemicals react, they produce different chemicals. So the idea here—call it Kauffman’s conjecture—was that mixtures with a sufficient number of different chemicals are bound to give rise to local compositions that continually replenish themselves through a self-catalyzed network of chemical reactions.  Those special compositions would typically differ from the original mixture, but since they make more of themselves, they should be able to ‘grow’ by establishing themselves repeatedly in local pockets.  The ability to propagate in this way, if proven, would be something like reproduction, only at the low level of chemical composition rather than at the high level of organismal form.

It was clear enough to me why Kauffman and others liked this idea.  If some kind of reproduction and inheritance could conceivably be achieved in systems that are much, much simpler than anything we think of as living, then maybe scientists were making the problem of explaining life much, much harder than it really needed to be.

But now a new peer-reviewed research paper has cast doubt on this naturalistic theory.

Axe explains:

The paper’s title is a diplomatic statement of its main conclusion: Lack of evolvability in self-sustaining autocatalytic networks constrains metabolism-first scenarios for the origin of life.  It becomes clear on reading the paper that the word constrains is here being used euphemistically. After testing the effect of fitness on the evolution of their model compositional assemblies, they report that “some slight relative increases and decreases in their replication-mutation equilibrium frequencies are detected, but the effects are so minor that it is hard to think of any evolutionary relevance.”  The problem is that the behavior of the whole system is almost completely determined by the inherent chemistry, leaving no room for selection to do anything interesting.

The citation is “Lack of evolvability in self-sustaining autocatalytic networks constraints metabolism-first scenarios for the origin of life”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, vol. 107, no. 4, pp. 1470-1475.

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New study confirms that men are losing their leadership role in relationships

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This article from the UK Daily Mail scares me.

First, an anecdote:

One of my male friends is looking to move home, out of the city centre and into the suburbs. I asked where he fancied  –  north, south, east or west. He shrugged. ‘I have no say in it,’ he said. ‘It’s not my decision.’

I pointed out that choosing where to live is one of the biggest decisions we make. Plus, he’d be paying for at least half of it. Surely he had some say? He shook his head. ‘The wife decides.’

This same friend last year kowtowed to his then girlfriend’s desire for a massive wedding with more than 200 guests and costing more than £20,000, even though he admitted that his preference would have been for a much smaller and more intimate affair.

And another anecdote:

One of my friends, a stay-at-home mother to two young children, says she is absolutely ‘the decider’ in her marriage.

‘My husband earns the money and I decide how we spend it,’ she says. ‘I feed and dress us all. I decide where and when we go on holiday. I choose everything for the house and have just decided to get an extension.

‘I even buy my own birthday present from my husband and our children. Actually, I quite often feel as if I have three children, not two. But that’s the way it is.’

She went on: ‘If I had to consult and strive for equality in every decision, we’d never get anything done. It sounds very old-fashioned, but basically my husband is the provider  –  in financial terms  –  and I am in charge of running the show.

‘Some people would no doubt say my husband’s “under the thumb” or that I “wear the trousers”. Although I hate the thought, it’s probably true.’

Then the research:

Studies appear to confirm that women are increasingly the dominant decision-making force in relationships.

A recent report found that by 2020 women will be driving the world economy and will have the final say in the majority of financial decisions in Britain’s homes.

Another study found that women make 80 per cent of all purchasing decisions, and 94 per cent of home furnishing purchases.

The study also found that in nearly half of all relationships men have no share in decision-making in the following four areas: household finances, big home purchases, the location of their homes, shared weekend activities and television viewing.

Does that sound like a good deal for men?

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Polemics

The evidence for the historical Jesus from non-Christian sources

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Here’s a chapter from a book about the historical evidence for Jesus from early non-Christian sources. The book (I’ve read it!) is from historian and debater Gary Habermas.

Here’s a discussion of the Roman historian Tacitus:

Tacitus. Cornelius Tacitus (ca. 55-120 A.D.) was a Roman historian who lived through the reigns of over a half dozen Roman emperors. He has been called the “greatest historian” of ancient Rome, an individual generally acknowledged among scholars for his moral “integrity and essential goodness.”

Tacitus is best known for two works — the Annals and the Histories. The former is thought to have included eighteen books and the latter to have included twelve, for a total of thirty. The Annals cover the period from Augustus’ death in 14 A.D. to that of Nero in 68 A.D., while the Histories begin after Nero’s death and proceed to that of Domitian in 96 A.D.

Tacitus recorded at least one reference to Christ and two to early Christianity, one in each of his major works. The most important one is that found in the Annals, written about 115 A.D. The following was recounted concerning the great fire in Rome during the reign of Nero:

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed.

There’s some real value in this chapter because it surveys reports from other emminent Roman and Jewish historians writing in the first and second centuries. Habermas covers the Roman historian Suetonius, the Jewish historian Josephus, the Roman governor Pliny the Younger, and the Greek satirist Lucian. Something to read about if you’ve never looked into it. You won’t be able to find the whole New Testament in these non-Christian writings, but you can get some broad confirmation of early Christian beliefs.