Thursday, April 1, 2010

What You Think You See is Not What You See

Those textbook diagrams showing the supposed evolution of vision reveal a real blind spot, for there are big problems with this evolutionary narrative. For instance, the biochemistry, even in primitive eyes is numbingly complex. The notion that it evolved is nowhere motivated by the scientific evidence.

Second, the sensing of light signals, alone, does nothing for it needs to be interpreted in the brain. And third, speaking of signals, the signal processing that goes on between the initial signal transduction and the brain is profound. The signal transduction, as phenomenally complex as that is, is only the beginning.

The incoming light is converted into an electrical signal (action potential) and then undergoes massive processing before making its impact on the brain. And new research is revealing new levels of complexity in this processing. If you stare at a horizontal line first, then a circle appears stretched out, like an ellipse. This simple fact was ingeniously used in an experiment to study how the processing deals with the rapidly changing incoming signals.

Our eyes move several times per second. If we were aware of what our eyes were seeing we'd have difficulty making sense of such rapid movements. As it is we don't sense such movements, and one theory held that the signal processing in our vision system deleted certain scenes to keep the image steady in our brains. But when subjects were shown a horizontal line too quickly to be sensed, they nonetheless then saw a circle as an ellipse.

In other words, even those scenes of which we are not aware have an effect on the scenes that we do see. Our vision system is even more complex than we thought, and the evolutionary narrative, that a few mutations created and modified a few genes from which arose fancy new vision capabilities, has become that much more absurd.

15 comments:

  1. It has always amused me that evolutionary story-making seems to deal with bare morphology, in one sense. I can't recall any detailed discussion of how the coordinated neurological development that is required to activate most structures develops in tandem with the morphology. The two subsystems interact intimately, but have to evolve separately (because they are morphologically in separate domains). How is this so...how could this be so in a stochastic system?

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  2. The original source...
    http://vision.rutgers.edu/Publications/watson.cb.2009.pdf

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  3. Cornelius said: "Our vision system is even more complex than we thought, and the evolutionary narrative...has become that much more absurd.

    In the comments section of the 3/30 post Cornelius also said..."Of course I think supernatural causation played a role, because of the science."

    Cornelius has rejected the standard evolutionary explanation for one therefore that involes some form of supernatural causation.

    Could Cornelius therefore please explain how supernatural causation played a part in the formation of the eye?

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  4. "Could Cornelius therefore please explain how supernatural causation played a part in the formation of the eye?"

    Yawn

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  5. Darren said "Yawn".

    Well, Cornelius made the claim, not me. He is asserting a supernatural role (by the Christian God no less). It is not unreasonable therefore to ask 'how'. I suspect I know what the answer will be.

    The issue of course is that there are plausible evolutionary pathways for explaining the eye - yes, not perfect but they exist. Cornelius though has...nothing...

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    1. "the issue of course is that there are plausible evolutionary pathways for explaining the eye."

      Please show the "scientific" work behind your conjecture. Maybe you can. No one, a priori here, in my opinion, is saying you should not have the opportunity to do so. Or can not do so.
      But, please, show us any work that, beyond huge amounts of speculation, would confirm your conjecture.

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  6. timcol62
    Could Cornelius therefore please explain how supernatural causation played a part in the formation of the eye?

    Two points:

    1) Evolution and intelligent design are two different kinds of hypotheses. The hypotheses also differ in scope.

    Evolution attempts to explain all of life's diversity and complexity by a mechanistic, non-intelligent process.

    Intelligent design is a hypothesis that posits that certain features of the natural world owe their existence to an intelligent cause. It is not a hypothesis that depends on mechanism per se, as does evolution. Of course, we all would like to know how that cause operated. Is it even possible to know how that cause operated? It is certainly possible to speculate. I will leave that speculation to the PhDs.

    2) I have a problem with the phrase "the evolution of the eye". Here, I only echo what Dr. Hunter has already said. The eye cannot be treated as a stand-alone component. It is part of a vision system. There are many components in the vision system, and it seems to me that all of them would have to be present at the same time in order to have a functional vision system.

    Even in the simplest organisms, such as those with an eye spot, detecting light is not enough. The detection of light has to be translated into signals that control the organism's movement toward the light.

    Can the eye evolve independently of the signal transduction system? So it would seem if we only talk about the evolution of the eye.

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  8. From this recent paper...
    http://www.neuroquantology.com/journal/index.php/nq/article/viewFile/373/384

    "We propose that quantum theory and quantum information theory, especially through an ontological interpretation, provide an appropriate framework for addressing the neural correlations of cognition and consciousness. In this paper, we investigate the information transfer from the outside world through the eye to the brain from a novel point of view. But, first, we review the three different approaches in this realm which are due to Penrose and Hameroff, Tegmark and Thaheld."


    This hypothesis is a proposed scientific explanation for how vision works.

    A hypothesis for attempting to explain how life evolved this vision includes life being "Front Loaded" to directly use Quantum Mechanics.

    These hypotheses do not take sides in the metaphysical debate.

    The ultimate source could be randomness, God or interconnected quantum effects.

    Here is Dr. Dembski's Expert Witness report he submitted in the Dover case just about five years ago...
    http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.09.Expert_Report_Dembski.pdf

    "How, if at all, does quantum mechanics challenge a purely mechanistic conception of life? The intelligent design community is at the forefront in raising and answering such questions."

    So why isn't it obvious "The intelligent design community is at the forefront in raising and answering such questions"?

    I suggest the grownups in the room know the answer to that.

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  9. Timcol52 said: "Could Cornelius therefore please explain how supernatural causation played a part in the formation of the eye?."

    Cornelius is an empiricist, not a promoter of ID as you expect. Evolution makes claims. It is valid to question those claims regardless of whether there is a vyable alternative. It is enough to say that evolution is false without having to prove an alternate theory.

    If I could take a stab at your question: God zapped it. Take one part infinite energy and one part infinite intelligence, add with a desire to create a creature some of whom are intelligent enough to percieve and appreciate you, and viola; creation of human life. For a sketcy, and a more theological perspective read Genesis 1.

    Another point on the post: multiply the probability of the random chance of an eye evolving by the number of body parts of all living creatures and you have a number infinitely close to 0.


    ~

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  11. Peter: "Cornelius is an empiricist, not a promoter of ID as you expect.

    Then he should resign from the Discovery Institute as he is doing them a disservice in not promoting ID.

    And obviously Cornelius is more than an empiricist because not only does he claim supernatural intervention, he also claims to have identified the designer.

    Peter: "If I could take a stab at your question: "

    Would kind of like Cornelius to take a stab at too - he was the one making the "supernatural causation" claim. If he is not prepared to back up these kinds of assertions he shouldn't make them.

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  12. Timcol62:

    "Then he should resign from the Discovery Institute as he is doing them a disservice in not promoting ID."

    Are you now an advocate for ID? I'm touched at your concern. I think he is doing an excellant job spreading the truth, which is more than I can say for atheist evolutionists.

    "Would kind of like Cornelius to take a stab at too - he was the one making the "supernatural causation" claim. If he is not prepared to back up these kinds of assertions he shouldn't make them."


    If in fact creation was caused by a force outside of the naturally observable universe then how do you suggest creation be explained? There is no way to measure the process.

    .

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  13. Peter: "Are you now an advocate for ID? I'm touched at your concern. I think he is doing an excellant job spreading the truth, which is more than I can say for atheist evolutionists."

    What truth is that? That he thinks evolution is wrong, and that's it?

    Peter: "If in fact creation was caused by a force outside of the naturally observable universe then how do you suggest creation be explained? There is no way to measure the process."

    You tell me - it's the ID community that insists that ID is science...

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  14. Timcol62;

    "What truth is that? That he thinks evolution is wrong, and that's it?"

    And that's it? Is that you analysis of the scientific information? The evidence clearly shows that evolution can not explain the creation of life. Cornelius is kind enough to tell us the truth about the evidence that evolutionists want to bury. Do you have a problem with the science. It is obvious that random chance can not produce complex biological systems. Scientists in labs can't do it, then how can freak accidents build living systems?

    That is the truth. It is enough to know the truth of evolution before you ask how it was done. Evolution did not create life.

    "You tell me - it's the ID community that insists that ID is science..."

    Do you have a better description of life? It was obviously highly engineered to create us. I think human life is important, not a fluke.

    .

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