Chapter 3: Organism and Machine
The Flawed Analogy
Michael Denton asserts that the most basic vital characteristics of organisms, such as self-replication, morphing, self-regeneration, self-assembly and the holistic nature of biological design, cannot be achieved with machines. If this is the case, then how will consciousness ever be instantiated in a "spiritual machine"?, asks Denton.
Originally published in print June 18, 2002 in Are
We Spiritual Machines? Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong AI
by the Discovery
Institute. Published on KurzweilAI.net on June 18, 2002.
The dream of instantiating the properties and characteristics of
living organisms in non-living artificial systems is almost as old
as human thought. Even in the most primitive of times the magician’s
model or likeness upon which the rituals of sympathetic magic were
enacted was believed to capture some essential quality of the living
reality it represented. The magician’s likeness, Vaucanson’s
famous mechanical duck, which was able to eat and drink and waddle
convincingly and was one of the wonders of the Paris salons in the
eighteenth century, the Golem or artificial man who would protect
the Jews of medieval Prague, HAL the life-like computer in the film
2001: A Space Odyssey, all testify to mankind’s eternal fascination
with the dream to create another life and to steal fire from the
gods. Ray Kurzweil’s book The Age of Spiritual Machines represents
only one of the latest manifestations of the long-standing dream.
At the outset I think it is important to concede that if living
organisms are analogous in all important respects to artificial
mechanical systems and profoundly analogous to machines—as
mechanists since Descartes have always insisted—then in my
view there are no serious grounds for doubting the possibility of
Kurzweil’s “Spiritual Machines.” The logic is compelling.
Conversely if living things are not machine-like in their basic
design—if they differ in certain critical ways from machines
as the vitalists have always maintained—then neither artificial
life, artificial intelligence nor any of the characteristics of
living organisms are likely to be instantiated in non-living mechanical
systems.
My approach, therefore, is to question the validity of the machine/organism
analogy upon which the whole mechanistic tradition is based. I intend
to critique the very presuppositions on which Kurzweil’s strong
AI project is based, rather than offer detailed analysis of his
argument—a task amply provided by other contributors to this
volume. Here I am going to argue that there is no convincing evidence
that living organisms are strictly analogous to artificial/mechanical
objects in the way the mechanist claims and that while certain aspects
of life may be captured in artifacts there remains the very real
possibility, I would say a near certainty, that elusive, subtle,
irreducible “vital” differences exist between the two
categories of being the “organic” and the “mechanical.”
And I would like to suggest that some of the “vital” properties
unique to organic systems, which could well include “human
intelligence” and perhaps other aspects of what we call “human
nature” may never find exact instantiation in artificial manmade
systems—a likelihood which would render impossible any sort
of “spiritual machine.”
The emergence of the modern mechanistic view of nature and of the
idea that organisms are analogous in every essential way to machines—the
ultimate source of the thinking of Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Dennett,
Ray Kurzweil and of other supporters of strong AI—coincided
roughly with the birth of science in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.
One of its first and most influential exponents was the great French
philosopher Rene Descartes, for whom the entire material universe
was a machine—a gigantic clockwork mechanism. According to
this view all of nature—from the movement of the planets to
the movements of the heart—worked according to mechanical laws,
and all the characteristics of every material object both living
and nonliving could be explained in its entirety in terms of the
arrangement and movement of its parts. In his own words from his
Treatise on Man:
I suppose the body to be nothing but a machine . . . We
see clocks, artificial fountains, mills, and other such machines
which, although only man made, have the power to move on their own
accord in many different ways . . . one may compare the nerves of
the machine I am describing with the works of these fountains, its
muscles and tendons with the various devices and springs which set
them in motion . . . the digestion of food, the beating of the heart
and arteries . . . respiration, walking . . . follow from the mere
arrangement of the machine’s organs every bit as naturally
as the movements of a clock or other automaton follow from the arrangements
of its counterweights and wheels.
And in his Principles of Philosophy he explicitly states:
I do not recognize any difference between artifacts and
natural bodies . . .
Despite occasional set backs ever since, Descartes’ biological
science has followed by and large along mechanistic lines and nearly
all the major advances in knowledge have arisen from its application.
Today almost all professional biologists have adopted the mechanistic/reductionist
approach and assume that the basic parts of an organism (like the
cogs of a watch) are the primary essential things, that a living
organism (like a watch) is no more than the sum of its parts, and
that it is the parts that determine the properties of the whole
and that (like a watch) a complete description of all the properties
of an organism may be had by characterizing its parts in isolation.
The traditional vitalistic alternative has virtually no support.
Nowadays few biologists seriously consider the possibility that
organic forms (unlike watches) might be natural and necessary parts
of the cosmic order—as was believed before the rise of the
mechanistic doctrine. Few believe that organisms might be more than
the sum of their parts, possessing mysterious vital non-mechanical
properties, such as a self-organizing ability or a genuine autonomous
intelligence, which are not explicable in terms of a series of mechanical
interactions between their parts.
Over and over again the vitalist presumption—that organisms
possess special vital powers only manifest by the functioning vital
whole—has fallen to the mechanist assault. In the early nineteenth
century Wöhler synthesized urea, showing for the first time
that organic compounds, previously considered to require living
protoplasm for their manufacture, could be assembled artificially
outside the cell by non-vital means. Later in the nineteenth century
enzymologists showed that the key chemical reactions of the cell
could be carried out by cell extracts and did not depend on the
intact cell. The triumphant march of mechanism has continued throughout
the twentieth century and its application has led to spectacular
increases in biological knowledge particularly over the past four
decades.
There is no longer any doubt that many biological phenomena are
indeed mechanical and that organisms are analogous to machines at
least to some degree.
Having achieved so much from the mechanistic approach it is not
surprising that the metaphysical assumption of mechanism—that
organisms are profoundly analogous to machines in all significant
characteristics—is all-pervading and almost unquestioned in
modern biology.
On top of the undeniable fact that many biological phenomena can
be explained in mechanical terms, the credibility of the organism/machine
analogy has been reinforced over the past few centuries by our ability
to construct increasingly life-like machines.
For most of human history man’s tools or machines bore no
resemblance to living organisms and gave no hint of any analogy
between the living and the artificial. Indeed through most of history,
through the long intermittent colds of the Paleolithic, the only
machines manufactured by man were primitive bone or wooden sticks
and the crudely shaped hand axes—the so-called eoliths or dawn
stones. Primitive man was only capable of manufacturing artifacts
so crudely shaped that they were hardly distinguishable from natural
flakes of rock or pieces of wood and bone. So it is hardly likely
that primitive man—although perhaps as intelligent as modern
man—would have perceived any analogy between his crudely shaped
artifacts and the living beings that surrounded him. Certainly he
would never have dreamt of “spiritual machines.”
It was not until 10,000 years after the end of the Paleolithic
era, following the development of metallurgy, the birth of agriculture
and the founding of the first civilizations that humans first manufactured
complex artifacts such as ploughs and wheeled vehicles, consisting
of several interacting parts. By classical times many artifacts
were quite sophisticated, as witness the famous Alexandrian water
clock of Ctesibus, Archimedes’ screw and the Roman military
catapult. Heron of Alexandria wrote several treatises on the construction
of lifting machines and presses. The famous device found in a shipwreck
off the island of Antiketheria—the Antiketheria computer—contained
a gear train consisting of 31 gears compacted into a small box about
the size of a laptop computer. This “computer” was probably
a calendrical device for calculating the position of the sun, moon
and planets.
Although the technological accomplishments of classical times were
quite sophisticated, it was not until the seventeenth century and
the beginning of the modern era that technology had advanced to
the stage when machines began to take on life-like characteristics.
Ten years before the century opened in 1590, the compound microscope
was invented. The telescope was invented in 1608 by the Dutchman
Lipershay, shortly afterwards Galileo invented the thermometer,
one of his pupils Toricelli the barometer, and in 1654 Guericke
invented the air pump. Over the same period clocks and other mechanisms
were being vastly improved. At last machines, such as the telescope
and microscope with their lens and focusing devices, analogous to
that of the vertebrate eye, or hydraulic pumping systems, which
were analogous to the action of the heart, began crudely to exhibit
some of the characteristics and properties of living things. The
fantastic engineering drawings of Leonardo Da Vinci, envisaging
futuristic flying and walking machines, lent further support to
the machine organism analogy.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries also saw the first successful
attempts at constructing life-like automata. Vaucanson’s duck,
for example, which was constructed in about 1730, had over 1,000
moving parts and was able to eat and drink and waddle convincingly.
It became one of the wonders of the eighteenth century Parisian
salons and represented a forerunner of the robots of today and the
androids of science fiction. Such advances raised the obvious possibility
that eventually all the characteristics of life including human
self- reflective intelligence might find instantiation in mechanical
forms.
Since the days of Descartes technology has of course advanced to
levels that were simply unimaginable in the seventeenth century.
At an ever-accelerating rate one technological advance has followed
another. And as machines have continually grown in complexity and
sophistication especially since the seventeenth century the gap
between living things and machines seems to have continually narrowed.
Every few decades machines have seemed to grow more life-like until
today there seems hardly a feature of complex machines does not
have some analogue in living systems. Like organisms, machines use
artificial languages and memory banks for information storage and
retrieval. To decode these languages machines, like organisms, use
complex translational systems. Modern machinery utilizes elegant
control systems regulating the assembly of parts and components,
error fail-safe devices and proofreading systems are utilized for
quality control, assembly processes utilize the principle of prefabrication.
All these phenomena have their parallel in living systems. In fact,
so deep and so persuasive is the analogy that much of the terminology
we use to describe the world of the cell is borrowed from the world
of late twentieth century technology.
From stone axe-head to modern technology mankind has journeyed
far, very far since the long colds of the Paleolithic dawn. And
given the increasing “life-likeness” of many modern artifacts
it seems likely, or so the mechanist would have us believe, that
eventually all the phenomena of life will be instantiated in mechanical
forms. Surely the day of Spiritual Machines can hardly be that far
away?
Organic Form: Vital Characteristics
Yet despite the obvious successes of mechanistic thinking in biology
and the fact that many biological phenomena can be reduced to mechanical
explanations, and despite the fact that machines have grown ever
more life-like as technology has advanced—it remains an undeniable
fact that living things possess abilities that are still without
any significant analogue in any machine which has yet been constructed.
These abilities have been seen since classical times as indicative
of a fundamental division between the vital and mechanical modes
of being.
To begin with, every living system replicates itself, yet no machine
possesses this capacity even to the slightest degree. Nor has any
machine—even the most advanced envisaged by nanotechnologists—been
conceived of that could carry out such a stupendous act. Yet every
second countless trillions of living systems from bacterial cells
to elephants replicate themselves on the surface of our planet.
And since life’s origin, endless life forms have effortlessly
copied themselves on unimaginable numbers of occasions.
Living things possess the ability to change themselves from one
form into another. For example, during development the descendants
of the egg cell transform themselves from undifferentiated unspecialized
cells into wandering amoebic cells, thin plate-like blood cells
containing the oxygen-transporting molecule hemoglobin, neurons—cells
sending out thousands of long tentacles like miniature medusae some
hundred thousand times longer than the main body of the cell.
The ability of living things to replicate themselves and change
their form and structure are truly remarkable abilities. To grasp
just how fantastic they are and just how far they transcend anything
in the realm of the mechanical, imagine our artifacts endowed with
the ability to copy themselves and—to borrow a term from science
fiction—“morph” themselves into different forms.
Imagine televisions and computers that duplicate themselves effortlessly
and which can also “morph” themselves into quite different
types of machines—a television into a microwave cooker, or
a computer into helicopter. We are so familiar with the capabilities
of life that we take them for granted, failing to see their truly
extraordinary character.
Even the less spectacular self re-organizing and self regenerating
capacities of living things—some of which have been a source
of wonderment since classical times—should leave the observer
awestruck. Phenomena such as the growth of a complete tree from
a small twig, the regeneration of the limb of a newt, the growth
of a complete polyp, or a complex protozoan from tiny fragments
of the intact animal are again phenomena without analogue in the
realm of mechanism. To grasp something of the transcending nature
of this remarkable phenomenon, imagine a jumbo jet, a computer,
or indeed any machine ever conceived from the fantastic star ships
of science fiction to the equally fantastic speculations of nanotechnology,
being chopped up randomly into small fragments. Then imagine every
one of the fragments so produced (no two fragments will ever be
the same) assembling itself into a perfect but miniaturized copy
of the machine from which it originated—a tiny toy-sized jumbo
jet from a random section of the wing—and you have some conception
of the self regenerating capabilities of certain microorganisms
such as the ciliate Stentor. It is an achievement of transcending
brilliance, which goes beyond the wildest dreams of mechanism.
And it is not just the self-replicative, “morphing” or
self-regenerating capacity which has not been instantiated in mechanical
systems. Even the far less ambitious end of component self-assembly
has not been achieved to any degree. This facility is utilized by
every living cell on earth and is exhibited in processes as diverse
as protein folding, the assembly of viral capsules and the assembly
of cell organelles such as the ribosome. In these processes tens
or hundreds of unique and individually complex elements combine
together, directed entirely by their own intrinsic properties without
any external intelligent guidance or control is an achievement without
any analogue in modern technology in spacecraft, in computers, or
even in the most outrageous speculations of nanotechnologists. Imagine
a set of roughly hewn but quite unfinished components of a clock—several
dozen ill-fitting cogs, wheels, axles, springs and a misshapen clock
face completely incapable of fitting together to make a clock in
their current “primary” unfinished state, so out of alignment
and so imperfectly hewn, so different in form from their final state
and purpose that the end they are intended to form could never be
inferred. Now imagine the set to be animated by some magic force
and beginning to come together piece by piece, this cog and that
cog, this wheel and this axle. Imagine that as they interact together
each changes or more properly reshapes its neighbor so that they
both come to fit perfectly together; and so through a series of
such mutual self-forming activities the whole animated set of components
is transformed, again, as if by magic, into the form of a functioning
clock. It is as if the original parts “knew” the end for
which they were intended and had the ability to fashion themselves
towards that end, as if an invisible craftsman were fashioning the
parts to their ordained end. It is not hard to see how Aristotle
came to postulate an entelechy or soul as the immanent directive
force organizing matter to its ordained end.
Such an animated self-assembly process, like the formation of a
whole protozoan from a tiny fragment of the cell, is another vital
capacity of transcending brilliance absolutely unparalleled in any
mechanical system.
Finally I think it would be acknowledged by even ardent advocates
of strong AI like Kurzweil, Dennett and Hofstadter that no machine
has been built to date which exhibits consciousness and can equal
the thinking ability of humans. Kurzweil himself concedes this much
in his book. As he confesses: “Machines today are still a million
times simpler than the human brain. Their complexity and subtlety
is comparable to that of insects.” Of course Kurzweil believes,
along with the other advocates of strong AI that sometime in the
next century computers capable of carrying out 20 million billion
calculations per second (the capacity of the human brain) will be
achieved and indeed surpassed. And in keeping with the mechanistic
assumption that organic systems are essentially the same as machines
then of course such machines will equal or surpass the intelligence
of man. My prediction would be that such machines will be wonderfully
fast calculators but will still not possess the unique characteristics
of the human brain, the ability for conscious rational self-reflection.
In his book Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hofstader—himself a believer
in the possibility of strong AI—makes the point explicitly
that the entire AI project is dependent on the mechanistic or reductionist
faith.
Although the mechanistic faith in the possibility of strong AI
still runs strong among researchers in this field, Kurzweil being
no exception, there is no doubt that no one has manufactured anything
that exhibits intelligence remotely resembling that of man.
It is clear then that living systems do exhibit certain very obvious
characteristics including intelligence, the capacity for self-replication,
self-assembly, self-reorganization and for morphological transformations
which are without analogy in any human contrivance. Moreover, these
are precisely the characteristics which have been viewed since classical
times as the essential defining characteristics of the vital or
organic realm.
Organic Form: A Unique Holistic Order
In addition to possessing the unique abilities discussed above,
it is also evident that the basic design of organic systems from
individual macromolecules to embryos and brains exhibits a unique
order which is without analogy in the mechanical realm. This unique
order involves a reciprocal formative influence of all the parts
of an organic whole on each other and on the whole in which they
function.
The philosopher Immanuel Kant clearly recognized that this “reciprocal
formative influence of the parts on each other” is a unique
characteristic of organic form. In his famous analysis of organic
form in Critique of Teleological Judgment he argues that an organism
is a being in which “the parts . . . combine themselves into
the unity of a whole by being reciprocally cause and effect of their
form. . . . (and this unity) may reciprocally determine in its turn
the form and combination of all the parts.” He continues:
. . . In such a natural product as this every part is
thought as owing its presence to the agency of all the remaining
parts and also as existing for the sake of the others and of the
whole . . . the part must be an organ producing the other parts,
each consequently reciprocally producing the others.
He then contrasts the reciprocal formative influence of the parts
of organisms with the non-formative relationships between parts
in mechanical wholes:
In a watch, one part is the instrument by which the movement
of the others is affected, but one wheel is not the efficient cause
of the production of the other. One part is certainly present for
the sake of another, but it does not owe its presence to the agency
of that other. For this reason also the producing cause of the watch
and its form is not contained in the nature of this material. Hence
one wheel in the watch does not produce the other and still less
does one watch produce other watches by utilizing or organizing
foreign material. Hence it does not of itself replace parts of which
it has been deprived.
Kant concludes with an insightful definition of organisms as beings
“in which every part is both means and end, cause and effect.”
In his view such “ an organization has nothing analogous to
any causality known to us.” He refers to it as an “impenetrable
property” of life.
Perhaps no organic forms illustrate this unique order more clearly
than the simplest of all organic forms, the vital building blocks
of all life—the proteins. Proteins are the very stuff of life.
All the vital chemical functions of every cell on earth are all
in the last analysis dependent on the activities of these tiny biological
systems, the smallest and simplest of all the known systems of organic
nature. Proteins are also the basic building blocks of life for
it is largely by the association of different protein species that
all the forms and structures of living things are generated.
It is immediately obvious even to someone without any previous
experience in molecular biology or without any scientific training
that the arrangement of the atoms in a protein is unlike any ordinary
machine or any machine conceived. Indeed the protein is unlike any
object of common experience. One superficial observation is the
apparent illogic of the design and the lack of any obvious modularity
or regularity. The sheer chaos of the arrangement of the atoms conveys
an almost eerie other-worldly non-mechanical impression.
Interestingly a similar feeling of the strangeness and chaos of
the arrangement of atoms in a protein struck the researchers at
Cambridge University after the molecular structure of the first
protein, myoglobin, had been determined in 1957 (using the technique
of X-ray crystallography). Something of their initial feelings are
apparent in Kendrew’s comments at the time (reported by M.
Perutz in the European Journal of Biochemistry 8 (1969):
455-466:
Perhaps the most remarkable features of the molecule are
its complexity and its lack of symmetry. The arrangement seems to
be almost totally lacking in the kind of regularities which one
instinctively anticipates, and it is more complicated than had been
predicted by any theory of protein structure.
In the late fifties, as the first three-dimensional structures
of proteins were worked out, it was first assumed—in conformity
with mechanistic thinking—that each amino acid made an individual
and independent contribution to the 3D form of the protein. This
simplifying assumption followed from the concept of proteins as
“molecular machines” in the literal sense. This implied
that their design should be like that of any machine, essentially
modular, built up from a combination of independent parts each of
which made some unique definable contribution to the whole.
It soon became apparent, however, that the design of proteins was
far more complex than scientists first assumed. In fact, the contribution
of each individual amino acid to the tertiary configuration of a
protein was not straightforward but was influenced by subtle interactions
with many of the other amino acids in the molecule. After thirty
years of intensive study it is now understood that the spatial conformation
adopted by each segment of the amino acid chain of a protein is
specified by a complex web of electronic or electro-chemical interactions,
including hydrogen bonds and hydrophobic forces, which ultimately
involve directly via short range or indirectly via long range interaction
virtually every other section of the amino acid chain in the molecule.
It might be claimed with only slight exaggeration that the position
of each one of the thousands of atoms is influenced by all the other
atoms in the molecule and that each atom contributes via immensely
complex co-operative interactions with all the other atoms in the
protein, something to the overall shape and function of the whole
molecule.
The universal occurrence in proteins of various structural motifs
such as alpha helices and beta sheets conveys the impression that
they represent independent or relatively independent components
or separable modules. On the contrary, the stability and form of
such motifs is determined by a combination of short-range interactions
within the motif and the microchemical environment which it occupies
within the molecule which is in turn generated by the global web
of interactions between all the constituent atoms of the protein.
This is evidenced by the fact that the same amino acid sequence
often adopts quite different secondary structural conformations
in different proteins. The form and properties of each component
or part of a protein or group of atoms—whether it is a major
structural motif or a small twist in the amino acid chain—is
dependent on its chemical and physical context or environment within
the protein. This context is itself generated by the summation of
all the chemical and physical forces, which make up the whole undivided
protein itself.
There is no doubt then that proteins are very much less modular
than machines, which are built up from a set of relatively independent
modules or compartments. Remove the cog from a watch and it still
remains a cog, remove the wheel from a car and it remains a wheel.
Remove a fragment of a protein and its form disassembles. What a
protein represents is an object in which all the “parts”
are in a reciprocal formative relationship with each other and with
the whole. The parts of the final whole are shaped and finished
by reciprocal interaction with each other.
In the four decades since researchers determined the 3D atomic
configuration of the first protein (myoglobin), we have learned
much about the molecular biology of these remarkable molecules.
Although still widely described in the biological literature as
molecular machines, proteins transcend mechanism in their complexity,
in the intense functional integration and interdependence of all
their components, in the holistic way that the form and function
of each part is determined by the whole and vice versa and in the
natural formative process by which the amino acid chain is folded
into the native function. In these ways, they resemble no structure
or object constructed or conceived by man.
What is true of proteins is also true of the other class of large
macromolecules in the cell—the RNA molecules. These too fold
into complex three-dimensional forms in which all the parts in the
final form are shaped by similar reciprocal formative interactions
with the other parts of the molecule. Again the distinctive shapes
and forms of the constituent parts only exist in the whole. When
removed from the whole, they take on a different form and set of
properties or disassemble into a random chain.
The next level of biological complexity above the individual protein
and RNA molecules are the multiprotein complexes that make up most
of the cell’s mass and carry out all the critical synthetic,
metabolic and regulatory activities on which the life of the cell
depends. These include complexes such as the ribosome (the protein-
synthesizing apparatus), which contains more than 55 different protein
molecules and three RNA molecules, the transcriptional apparatus
which makes the mRNA copy of the gene, which again consists of more
than 20 individual proteins, and a variety of higher order structural
complexes including the cytoskeleton system, which consists of a
highly complex integrated set of microtubules, microfilaments and
intermediate fibers.
It is true of virtually all these multimolecular assemblies that
the parts in their final form—just like the parts of a protein—have
a reciprocal formative influence on each other. So again, in a very
real sense the parts do not exist outside the whole. The ribosome
illustrates. The assembly of the ribosome takes place in a number
of stages involving the stepwise association of the 55 proteins
with each other and with the three RNA molecules. As the assembly
progresses the growing RNA-protein complex undergoes conformational
changes, some relatively minor and some major, until the final mature
functional form of the ribosome is generated. The process is cooperative,
with all parts of the growing particle having a formative influence
on all other parts either directly, because the “parts”
are adjacent, or indirectly through global influences.
The next readily recognizable level we reach as we ascend the organic
hierarchy is the living cell. Again the parts of a cell, like those
of a protein or a ribosome, are existentially dependent on their
being “parts” of the greater whole—the totality of
dynamic activities which make up the life of the whole cell. Take
them out of the cell and eventually all will die and disintegrate,
even if some of their activities may persist long enough for in
vitro experimental analyses. Every process, every structure exists
only as a result of the dynamic interaction of the whole cell in
which they function.
The reciprocal formative relationship between parts and between
parts and whole which is observed in proteins, multimolecular systems
and cells is also characteristic of all higher order organic structures—including
organs like the brain and whole developing embryos. Again, in all
cases the parts are existentially dependent on being part of the
whole in which they function.
Organic Form: The Failure of Reduction
It is primarily because of the unique holistic order of organic
form, in which parts are existentially dependent on their being
in the whole and have no real existence outside the whole, that
the mechanist goal of providing a complete explanation of the behavior
and properties of organic wholes from a complete characterization
of the parts in isolation is very far from being achieved.
From knowledge of the genes of an organism it is impossible to
predict the encoded organic forms. Neither the properties nor structure
of individual proteins nor those of any higher order forms—such
as ribosomes and whole cells—can be inferred even from the
most exhaustive analysis of the genes and their primary products,
linear sequences of amino acids. In a very real sense organic forms
from proteins to the human mind are not specified in the genes but
rather arise out of reciprocal self-formative interactions among
gene products and represent genuinely emergent realities which are
ever- present—at least in potential—in the order of nature.
And it is precisely because of the impossibility of prediction
and design of organic form from below, that engineering new biological
forms is fantastically difficult. In these days of genetic engineering
we hear so much about “transforming life” and “re-designing
organisms” that it comes as something of a surprise to learn
that not even one completely new functional protein containing only
100 subunits (amino acids) has been designed successfully, let alone
something as complex as a new type of virus or a cellular organelle
like a ribosome, objects containing on the order of 10,000 subunits
(amino acids and nucleotides).
The total failure of reductionism in the realm of the organic and
the total failure to engineer new forms, contrasts markedly with
the situation in the realm of the mechanical. In the case of machines
from jumbo jets to typewriters, the properties and behavior of the
whole can be predicted entirely and with great accuracy from below,
that is, from an exhaustive characterization of their parts in isolation.
It is because the parts of machines do not undergo complex reciprocal
self-formative interactions but have essentially the same properties
and form in isolation as they do in the mechanical whole that makes
their design possible. Machines are no more than the sum of their
parts in isolation. And this is why we have no trouble assembling
complex artifacts like space shuttles or jet airliners that contain
more than a million unique components. Yet no artifact has ever
been built, even one consisting of only 100 components (the same
number of components as in a simple protein), which exhibits a reciprocal
self-formative relationship between its parts. This unique property,
as we have seen above, is the hallmark of organic design.
Organic design is essentially a top-down reality. As we have seen,
organic forms are essentially nonmodular wholes and their order
is intrinsic to, and only manifest in, the functioning whole. Success
in engineering new organic forms from proteins up to organisms will
therefore require a completely novel approach, a sort of designing
from “the top down.” Because the parts of organic wholes
only exist in the whole, organic wholes cannot be specified bit
by bit and built up from a set of relatively independent modules;
consequently the entire undivided unity must be specified together
in toto.
If proteins and other higher order organic forms had been built
up mechanically out of modules, each of which had the same form
in an isolated state that it has in the final form—rather like
the parts of a machine, the cogs of a watch or pieces in a child’s
erector set such as Legos—then the problem of predicting organic
form would have been solved years ago. By now the world would be
full with all manner of new “artificial life forms”
The Organic and the Mechanical: Two Distinct Categories of Being
From the evidence discussed above it is clear that the machine/organism
analogy is only superficial. Although organisms do exhibit mechanical
or machine-like properties they also possess properties which no
machine exhibits even to a minor degree. In addition, the design
of life exhibits a “holistic” order which is without parallel
in the realm of the mechanical and which cannot be reduced to or
explained in mechanical terms. Consequently, no new organic form
has been engineered to date. There is self-evidently a gulf between
the organic and the mechanical, which has not been bridged.
The picture of organic form that has emerged from recent advances
in biology is surprisingly consistent with the pre-mechanistic holistic/vitalistic
model, which was first clearly formulated by the Greeks and specifically
by Aristotle. According to their view, each organic whole or form
was believed to be a unique integral whole or indivisible unity.
This whole—in effect a self-sufficing soul or entelechy—regulated,
organized and determined the form, properties and behavior of all
of its component parts. Taken to its logical conclusion this model
implied that only wholes have any real autonomous existence and
that the parts of wholes have no independent existence or meaning
outside the context of the whole.
Aristotle expressed this concept in The Parts of Animals:
When any one of the parts or structures, be that which
it may, is under discussion, it must not be supposed that it is
its material composition to which attention is being directed or
which is the object of the discussion, but the relation of such
part to the total form. Similarly, the true object of architecture
is not bricks, mortar, or timber, but the house; and so the principal
object of natural philosophy is not the material elements, but their
composition, and the totality of the form, independently of which
they have no existence.
For the Greeks all natural objects including organic forms were
an integral part of the world order, or Cosmos. Each organic whole
or form was therefore an eternal unchangeable part of the basic
fabric of the universe. Each was “a potential awaiting actualization”
“animated by an immanent finality,” in the words of Genevieve
Rodis -Lewis. Its design, the purposeful arrangement of parts to
wholes, was internal to the organism itself—an outcome of the
“inner developmental force which impelled it towards the realization
of its form,” [Rodin-Lewis G (1978). “Limitations of the
Mechanical Model in the Cartesian Conception of the Organism,”
in Descartes, ed. M. Hooker (Baltimore: John Hopkins University
Press, Pp. 152- 170.)] Or in the words of the Cambridge Companion
to Aristotle the organic form is “an internal structural principle
striving to actualize itself as the fully mature individual.”
(Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, Ed. J Barnes, 1995). As Jonathon
Lear puts it in his Aristotle: The Desire to Understand: Natural
organisms “are foci of reality and self-determination . . .
possessing…an inner life of their own organisms occupying a
fundamental ontological position: they are among the basic things
that are.”
This is not the place for a detailed exposition or defense of the
Greek conception of the organism. Suffice to say that for the Greeks
organisms were a totally different type of being to that of lifeless
artifacts. If we leave out the soul we are left with a holistic
model of the organic world, which is very close to that revealed
by modern biological science.
In my view the fact that organisms and machines belong to different
categories of being is beyond dispute, even if the final nature
of this fundamental difference is not yet clearly defined. And surely
the existence of this “vital” difference raises profound
doubts as to the validity of Kurzweil’s claim. For, if we are
incapable of instantiating in mechanical systems any of the “lesser”
vital characteristics of organisms such as self-replication, “morphing,”
self-regeneration, self-assembly and the holistic order of biological
design, why should we believe that the most extraordinary of all
the “vital characteristics”—the human capacity for
conscious self-reflection—will ever be instantiated in a human
artifact?
And it is not just Kurzweil’s claims that are in doubt. If
the traditional vitalist position is true, and organic forms are
integral parts of the cosmic order, each being in essence an indivisible
self-sufficing unity possessing properties and characteristics beyond
those possessed by any machine, properties which might include for
example intelligent self-organizing capabilities, then all nature
becomes re-enchanted. The whole mechanistic framework of modern
biology would have to be abandoned, along with many key doctrines,
including the central dogma of genetic determinism, the concept
of the “passivity and impotence” of the phenotype and
the spontaneity of mutation. Moreover all theories of the origin
and evolution of life and biological information would have to be
re-formulated in conformity with vitalistic principles and all explanations
based on the mechanistic concept of organisms as fundamentally lifeless
contingent combinations of parts—including contemporary Darwinism—would
have to be revised. Even certain traditional design arguments such
as Paley’s would have to be reconsidered, since they presume
that organisms are analogous to artifacts, being in essence contingent
and unnecessary, and thus, like human artifacts, require an artificer
or craftsmen for their assembly.
Copyright ' 2002 by the Discovery
Institute. Used with permission.
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