Empirical ID research
From ResearchID.org, a nexus for researching Intelligent Design
By coming to understand intelligent design and its subsidiary views, we can see that commercial research applications and academic research applications already exist, or are developing. This calls for a hypothetical exploration of empirical research applications of intelligent design, also known as ID-empirics.
Empirical research - current
- William Dembski asked, "What if organisms instantiate designs that have no functional significance but that nonetheless give biological investigators insight into functional aspects of organisms? Such second-order designs would serve essentially as an 'operating manual,' of no use to the organism as such but of use to scientists investigating the organism."
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- Reverse engineering has a particularly close relationship with ID-theoretic premises. It also has a particularly close relationship with molecular biology. This is because the living cell is filled with molecular machines that perform various purposeful tasks. At the same time, these biomachines are made of amino acids and proteins, which are derived by direct production from the informational code in the DNA. This yields the cell, its individual parts, and the internal means of production, highly investigable by reverse engineering, which historically is an architectural/engineering/structural method of studying man-made machines and structures.
- Scott Minnich of the University of Idaho employs reverse engineering as part of his molecular and microbiological research.
- A researcher studying fluid dynamics in the brain also sees the advantages of design perspectives in biological investigation, especially reverse engineering and principles of fluid dynamics, which were developed to produce better machines and pumps.
- Jonathon Wells looks at the pair of centrioles in the cell, from an intelligent design (ID) perspective.
- Wells, Jonathan, (2005) "Do Centrioles Generate a Polar Ejection Force?" Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum 98: 37-62.
- Rivista di Biologia abstract
- http://www.genetic-id.com/
- This genetics company is utilizing something akin to the informational aspects of specifications and the Explanatory Filter to identify genetic tampering. The company uses several forms of DNA fingerprinting; either by directly investigating the DNA, or indirectly through the proteins and ribosomes.
- Researching the capabilities and theoretical limits of evolution, mutation, and selection from a design perspective.
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- Michael Behe's proposals of Irreducible Complexity (IC) state that biological structures which show IC cannot evolve from mutations and undirected biological processes. Dr. Behe claims that the bacterial flagellum is one such biological component that exhibits IC. In order test Behe's proposal in the laboratory, scientists are using gene knock-out methods to form a type III system with a missing flagellar component and see if the bacteria, on their own, can assemble the TTS into a functional flagellum. If the flagellum is not irreducibly complex, bacteria should be able to develop one through mass breeding of the bacteria with the disabled flagellum.
- "Can rearrangement of developmental genes produce major, advantageous changes in organisms?" -- from Ralph Seelke's After Darwin’s Black Box
- Measures of phenotypic and genotypic divergence: "What are the genetic differences between organisms that have an unknown 'common ancestor'? What would be needed to change one into another?" -- from Ralph Seelke's After Darwin’s Black Box
- Empirically exploring the correlations between habitability and discoverability has been a very successful research project for Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards. This research has broken new ground in the fields of astrobiology and astrophysics, by grappling with an understanding of what type of environment will aid an intelligent race in becoming scientifically and technologically advanced.
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- Gonzalez, Guillermo, (2005) Habitable Zones in the Universe, Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres (Formerly Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere), Volume 35, Issue 6, Pages 555 - 606
Gonzalez’s lunar research proposals
- Gonzalez published a paper with two other researchers on the idea to search the Moon for Earth meteorites that were blasted off the Earth about 3.9 BYA. The rocks should contain relatively unaltered samples from Earth's distant past. The paper was reviewed in Nature.
- From The Privileged Planet, p319:
- If measurability and discoverability are optimized from our vantage point [Gonzalez and Richards' thesis], however, then we might expect that such information will be preserved somewhere accessible to us. The origin of life is a particularly important question. It would be surprising assuming the correlation, if it could not be investigated. In fact, we might predict that such evidence is available somewhere, if we search diligently enough. It was precisely this prediction that led one of us (Guillermo) to consider the value of lunar exploration for uncovering relatively well-preserved relics of Earthly life from this early period.
- From Witt's IDtheFuture.com post:
- The Privileged Planet hypothesis motivated him to search for and discover the idea about the moon containing the fossilized remains of life on the early Earth. He isn't claiming that there was no other way to happen upon the idea. To take another example, early scientists like Kepler and Newton were motivated by their belief in a rational designer to search out patterns of mathematical order in the movement of the planets. That alone doesn't prove that such a view was absolutely necessary to the breakthroughs they achieved, but it does strongly suggest that it proved very useful to them.
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Neuroscience
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- Jeffrey M. Schwartz, research professor of psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles.
- This research gives indirect scientific support to intelligent design by demonstrating inherent limitations to unguided evolutionary processes.
- Behe, M.J. and Snoke, D.W. (2004), “Simulating Evolution by Gene Duplication of Protein Features That Require Multiple Amino Acid Residues,” Protein Science, 13: 2651-2664.
- In this article, Behe and Snoke show how difficult it is for unguided evolutionary processes to take existing protein structures and add novel proteins whose interface compatibility is such that they could combine functionally with the original proteins. By demonstrating inherent limitations to unguided evolutionary processes, this work gives indirect scientific support to intelligent design and bolsters Behe’s case for intelligent design via Irreducible Complexity in answer to some of his critics.
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- While not undertaken as an ID application, this research utilizes William Dembski and Paul Davies' understanding of Specified Complexity and puts it to practical use as a Native Intelligence Metric (NIM): Exercising a Native Intelligence Metric on an Autonomous On-Road Driving System
Genetics
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- This article examines the role of transposons in the abrupt origin of new species and the possibility of a partly predetermined generation of biodiversity and new species. The authors’ approach is non-Darwinian, and they cite favorably the work of design theorists Michael Behe and William Dembski.
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Conceptually related
Junk DNA
Intelligent design origin of life
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Design Receptivity, design input, and information receptivity
- While not undertaken as an ID application, this kind of research could be modified for the purpose of exploring the malleability and receptivity of organisms to uniquely intelligent processes:
- Chiu, D.K.Y. & Lui, T.H., “Integrated Use of Multiple Interdependent Patterns for Biomolecular Sequence Analysis,” International Journal of Fuzzy Systems, 4(3) (September 2002): 766-775.
- The opening paragraph of this article reads: Detection of complex specified information is introduced to infer unknown underlying causes for observed patterns. By complex information, it refers to information obtained from observed pattern or patterns that are highly improbable by random chance alone. We evaluate here the complex pattern corresponding to multiple observations of statistical interdependency such that they all deviate significantly from the prior or null hypothesis. Such multiple interdependent patterns when consistently observed can be a powerful indication of common underlying causes. That is, detection of significant multiple interdependent patterns in a consistent way can lead to the discovery of possible new or hidden knowledge.”
- Denton, M.J. , Marshall, J.C. & Legge, M., (2002) "The Protein Folds as Platonic Forms: New Support for the pre-Darwinian Conception of Evolution by Natural Law," Journal of Theoretical Biology 219 (2002): 325-342.
- Teleological research studying laws of biological form embedded in nature.
Empirical research - potential
- IC core universality
- IC malleability - how far, genotypically and phenotypically, can we push an IC core before it loses function? How far can we push the contextual concerns of IC, including formative dynamics, before function is lost? Are there gradations of functionality within it's genotypic or phenotypic context?
- IC assembly-dependence
See also
External links
