Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to ID the Future, a podcast about intelligent design and evolution.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hello, I'm Eric Anderson, and on today's episode of Id the Future, I'm pleased to be joined again by Doctor Michael Denton. Doctor Denton is author of groundbreaking books, including Evolution, a theory and Crisis, and nature's Destiny. Today we're back to continue discussing his latest book in the privileged species series, the Miracle of the Cell. Welcome back, Mike.
[00:00:33] Speaker C: Great to be back again.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Actually, Eric, I guess one of the silver linings of the current crisis is that we've got you captive working from home in Australia with nowhere to go. So if our listeners are like me, we'd love to just hear you talk for hours about this fantastic new book.
[00:00:48] Speaker C: Well, I can talk for quite a long time. I don't know what hours, but yes.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: We won't keep you quite that long. But I am looking for to jumping into a few more details in this second conversation. So thanks for being with us. We ended our last conversation talking about the remarkable fitness of the elements for life, and also about complexity and the fact that we keep uncovering layer after layer of complexity. Some critics might argue that there's nothing special about complexity. After all, the asteroids crashing and jostling into each other in the asteroid belt might be viewed as a complex system of pieces and particles and elements. But Mike, you refer to cells as organized and fit to fulfill a particular role. What is it about the kind of complexity found in a cell that makes it noteworthy?
[00:01:35] Speaker C: Yeah, well, jostling asteroids. Unlike the complexity of jostling asteroids, where the jostling serves no adaptive end or purpose, the parts of the cell exhibit what is often termed organized or adaptive complexity. So what's that?
[00:01:51] Speaker B: I.
[00:01:52] Speaker C: Well, that's the type of complexity witnessed in a watch or other complex artifact, where the various parts of the artifact or watch work together like the cogs in a watch, to serve some end. In the watch, it's to tell the time. Whereas if you turn to the cell in a cell, it might be the parts of a ribosome which work together to serve the end of protein synthesis. Or it could be the parts of the transcriptional apparatus, which work together to direct the expression of a particular gene. So it's complexity. It's means to end complexity. Complexity to serve an end. The jostling asteroids, as far as I'm aware, don't serve any end. They just jostle. They just jostle.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Yeah, they just jostle complexity toward a purpose and end.
[00:02:33] Speaker C: Yep. Yeah.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Okay. So when I was a child, my parents bought me a construction set with a huge array of metal beams and rods and screws and pulleys. And I spent hours using the part to construct all kinds of different apparatus.
You refer to cells as the universal constructor set of life on earth. And you note that cells appear perfectly adapted to their assigned task of creating a biosphere, replete with multicellular organisms like ourselves. Tell us a little more about that.
[00:03:03] Speaker C: Well, I think it's perfectly clear on any reflection about the nature of cells that their constructional ability is simply peerless. There's nothing remotely in the cosmos like the living cell. It's unique. It is through the efforts, as you just mentioned, of these wondrous nano constructors, that every biological structure on earth has been built, from protozoans to hundred meter tall coast redwoods, from blue whales to hummingbirds.
Simply put, there is no other tiny particle of matter, natural or artificial, remotely comparable.
No tiny particle of matter can do anything like this. Their transcendent abilities depend as well on the possession of a unique set of talents. And these tons are only found in the cell. They include their ability to move and crawl, to change shape, to move towards chemical targets, to measure the passage of time, to detect chemical and physical changes in their immediate environment, to communicate with adjacent cells by physical and chemical means, and to respond in diverse ways to the various chemical and physical messages they pick up from their environment. Simply put, nothing comes close to the living cell. It's absolutely unique. And mind you, it represents what is effectively the organized complexity of a jumbo jet in an invisible speck of matter. Yeah. More than a jumbo jet.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Capabilities you've got there, right? Yeah. A jumbo jet doesn't make a copy of itself. Right?
[00:04:29] Speaker C: For one thing, it doesn't make a copy of itself. Yeah, it certainly doesn't.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: In chapter two, you provide a helpful, brief history about the vitalist notion that there was something special in organic chemistry. This view was seriously challenged later with Friedrich Wooler's synthesis of urea in 1828. And yet, you seem to be suggesting, in an almost ironic twist, that we have indeed discovered something special about organic chemistry, not in a vitalist sense, but in terms of the chemical fitness of the key elements. Is that right?
[00:05:00] Speaker C: That's right. And it is quite ironic. The unique properties of organic matter, as you mentioned just now, were once thought to be the result of special vital forces and living systems. And amazingly, sometimes these forces were even considered to be an indwelling intelligence, a sort of tiny homunculus in the cell, able to assemble atoms of the inorganic world into organic molecules.
After Frederick Wooler's synthesis of urea. As more and more organic compounds were synthesized in the lab, it became increasingly apparent that the unique complexity and diversity of the substance of life arise from the unique fitness of the carbon atom and its three partners, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogenous, to form a vast inventory of hugely complex molecules of astonishingly diverse chemical and physical properties. No other domain of chemistry comes close. The vital force was, in a sense, replaced by the unique fitness of carbon chemistry. One way of putting it is to think of the magical wonder worker in the cell being replaced by a far greater wonder worker, a cosmic wonder worker who fashioned from the moment of creation the properties of atoms for the carbon based cell. So what happened was the carbon atom and carbon chemistry proved very special indeed. Not quite special in the way vitalists had conceived of it, but special because of this unique properties of the atoms of the organic realm.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: Right, right. So, just so our listeners are clear, my understanding is that you're not arguing for a strictly material explanation for all phenomena we see in biology. For example, we might argue that it remains an open question whether things like sentience or mind or consciousness will ever be adequately explained in terms of the underlying molecules and solely on the basis of physics and chemistry. But what I think I do hear you saying is that when we do look at these molecules, when we do consider the physics and the chemistry, we see a striking set of properties that seem to be pointing toward life. Am I understanding that right?
[00:07:02] Speaker C: Yes, that's basically what I'm getting at. Yeah, that's basically true. I do think that the phenomena you cite, such as mind, sentience, and consciousness, may never be explained in terms of our current understanding of the properties of matter. To account for the relationship between mind and matter might well necessitate an entirely new revolutionary science, something we can't conceive of at present. And although, yes, I do think that the unique properties of living things, excepting mind and sentience, can be largely explained by the unique fitness of nature for life, including the properties of the 20 or so essential atoms out of which the cell is constructed. I would still not call myself a materialist, because I do think the fine tuning is best explained in terms of intelligent agency, rather than as the outcome of some blind, undirected, unintelligent mechanism.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: And I know some materialists have argued that the discovery of specific biochemical functions in the cell undermines the need for guiding intelligence. James Watson and Daniel Dennett, for example, have argued that there's nothing special about the chemistry found in living organisms, and that there's no mysterious extra ingredient? How would you respond to that?
[00:08:12] Speaker C: Well, I think they may be right about there being no special ingredient. We have learned an immense amount about how the cell operates over the past few decades. And although we have still much to learn these days, we typically don't think in terms of a special agency in the cell that imparts the essence of life, as the vitalist thought. But I think there are miles off in insisting that there's nothing special about the chemistry of life. As the miracle of the cell shows, there is a fantastic amount of fine tuning in the properties of matter which makes possible the life of the cell. And no matter how unfashionable, the intelligent fine tuning in nature, especially for the cell, is simply so astonishing that it's hard to escape the conception of an intelligent wonder worker who finely tuned the fabric of nature for life on earth.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: Right. So it sounds like some of the early ideas, the vitalist ideas, have been replaced by a better understanding of how the cell actually functions. But that understanding has given us a more well grounded wonder, we might say, about what's needed for the workings of the cell and for living organisms.
[00:09:16] Speaker C: Yep, that's correct. Nicely put. Yes, the more we learn about the cell, the more we learn about living systems, the more the impression grows that the laws of nature have been fine tuned with extraordinary precision for life.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Now, let me play devil's advocate for just a minute, Mike. Some critics might argue that the argument for fine tuning is a post hoax argument based on hindsight. For example, if life were based on, say, silicon instead of carbon, then we might be sitting here talking about the amazing fitness of silicon for life rather than carbon. How would you respond to that kind of criticism? And what is it about the argument you're making that can help us increase our confidence that we're not just making a post hook argument, but we're really looking objectively at the evidence?
[00:10:00] Speaker C: Well, Eric, I've been hearing about silicon life for 50 years, but it never seems to emerge.
It seems to be never really making it. My feeling is that the notion of silicon life is proposed mainly by ardent secularists who wish to undermine the notion of the uniqueness of carbon based life, which they see as edging us back towards some sort of teleological framework, towards a universe specially designed for life as it exists on earth, which, in my opinion, it is doing. It is edging us towards a teleological framework.
Actually, there is a massive evidence, based on a careful assessment of the chemical properties of the atoms, which incline the vast majority of researchers in this area to the view that complex living systems remotely comparable to those on earth can only be built out of carbon compounds. That's why NASA, in looking for life, extraterrestrial life, life in space, looks for carbon based life and they do something, what is famous phrase, they follow the water, which of course is the ideal matrix for carbon based life. So NASA look for the carbon atom and follow the water.
The silicon atom, the only other atom that is sometimes cited as a possible alternative to carbon, is far inferior as an alternative to carbon in many respects. Firstly, it does not form stable bonds with itself and does not form the long chains of silicon atoms, analogous to the long chains of carbon atoms found in so many organic compounds. Secondly, the strength of the covalent bond silicon forms with itself and other nonmetals are weaker than those of carbon. And thirdly, silicon does not readily form multiple bonds, which was considered a fatal defect by Nobel laureate George Walden. This greatly impoverishes the complexity and diversity of silicon chemistry.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. And this reminds me, you mentioned follow the water, reminds me of your other book, the wonder of water. So these two things together, water and carbon based chemistry, seem to be a real key.
[00:12:03] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
That's the mutual fitness of carbon chemistry. And water is at the heart of carbon based life in our biosphere. It's a fundamental, fundamental relationship. Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: So let's focus just a little bit more on carbon. How is carbon uniquely fit for life?
[00:12:21] Speaker C: Well, for one thing, carbon possesses the ability, more than any other atom in the periodic table of bonding firmly with itself. This confers on carbon something I've just mentioned, the unique capacity to form compounds consisting of long strings and complex rings of carbon atoms. And carbon, unlike the great majority of atoms, including silicon, is capable of forming stable double and triple bonds with itself and other atoms. Carbon is also tetravalent, capable of forming a maximum of four covalent bonds with other atoms, while its immediate atomic neighbors in period two, nitrogen can form only three, oxygen only two. It is the conjunction of this set of unique properties which confer on carbon its unique ability to form a vast, unequal inventory of complex compounds with unequal diversity of chemical and physical properties. So there's nothing ad hoc lacking in objectivity about the claim that carbon possesses unique properties for building living systems like we have on earth.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: Right. There's a wonderful quote from Alfred Russel Wallace, who's considered the co founder with a co discoverer, I should say, with Darwin, of the theory of evolution by natural selection. I want to quote just one thing he said, and get your reaction. Wallace said the chemical compounds of carbon are far more numerous than those of all the other chemical elements combined, and the marvel is still further increased when we consider that the innumerable diverse substances produced by plants and animals are all formed out of the same three or four elements. Wallace then gives a few examples of these, and he concludes, if this were not indisputably proved, it would scarcely be credited, which which is an old way of saying it would scarcely be believed. So he seems to be suggesting that this state of affairs is noteworthy, perhaps even in surprising in some sense, and that was a little over 100 years ago. Do you think Wallace was right to be amazed by the many chemical compounds of carbon, and do you think our current scientific understanding diminishes or highlights that sense of amazement?
[00:14:23] Speaker C: Wallace was 100% correct, and absolutely nothing since Wallace penned those lines has in any way undermined his claims. As he mentioned, even when he was writing, there were more carbon compounds than the compounds of all the other atoms combined. And this is still true today. It's still true today that, in fact, the total number of carbon compounds is far greater than the total number of all other compounds of all other atoms combined.
[00:14:49] Speaker B: Yeah, that's remarkable.
You mentioned that the strength of organic bonds, the bonds that hold the molecules together in the cell, is situated in a goldilocks zone, neither too strong nor too weak, but just right. And that Goldilocks statement reminds me of the description of Earth's favorable conditions discussed by Guillermo Gonzalez and J. Richards in the privileged planet, which many of our listeners will be familiar with. How are molecular bonds another kind of Goldilocks situation?
[00:15:17] Speaker C: Well, yeah. The reason they're in a Goldilocks zone is because, on the one hand, the bonds of organic compounds are strong enough to maintain the chemical structures of organic matter, which makes up the substance of the body in the ambient temperature range. It's the temperature range that exists on the surface of the planet at the moment over most of the earth. That's why the organic substances of the body persist relatively unchanged for long periods of time, which is lucky for us.
It's because of the strength of those bonds that organisms can be more than mere transient assemblages of matter. But on the other hand, the bonds are not so strong that they can't be subject to controlled manipulation by living systems and broken by the energy imparted by molecular collisions in the ambient temperature range. So, yes, they do occupy a metastable Goldilocks zone, strong enough to maintain organic substances in stable forms for long periods of time, but not so strong that they can't be manipulated and broken by the enzymic machinery of the cell.
[00:16:20] Speaker B: So, speaking of the privileged planet and your own work in your book, the wonder of water, I was amazed, as I was reading, to learn that this function range of organic bonds just so happens to coincide with the temperature range of liquid water on earth. Why is this important for biology? And what went through your mind when you first learned about this?
[00:16:39] Speaker C: Well, actually, everybody knows about it anyway. It's one of these truths that's sort of hiding in plain sight. When I saw the truth of this, this amazing coincidence, for me personally, it was a minor epiphany. I realize the significance of the coincidence. I mean, it's truly amazing and absolutely amazing that in fact, the fluid, ideally, and I would say uniquely fit to form the matrix of the cell and the medium of blood, and fit in innumerable additional ways, should exist as a liquid in the temperature range, just right for the biochemistry of life, just right where those bonds are metastable. Recall the temperature range in the cosmos. I mean, it extends over an unimaginably vast range from the heat in the center of stars to the intense cold of interstellar space.
This coincidence surely is one of the most remarkable examples of nature's fitness for life on earth.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: Wow. It sounds like another incredible example of fine tuning at work.
Well, thanks, Mike. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today. But I appreciate you being here, and we look forward to having you back to share more about this great new book.
[00:17:43] Speaker C: Okay, it's a pleasure. I'd be happy to.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to this episode of id the future. To find out more about the incredible fine tuning revealed in the very atoms that make up life, get your copy of the miracle of the cell today in paperback or ebook format at online retailers like Amazon and Barnes and noble. Until next time for id the future, I'm Eric Anderson.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: This program was recorded by Discovery Institute's center for Science and Culture. Id the future is copyright Discovery Institute. For more information, visit intelligentdesign.org and idthefuture.com.
