Intelligent Design: a theory in crisis

[Apos]

Reading some of the work of prominent Intelligent Design theorists, it struck me that their coyness about what ID involves is unwarranted. ID theorists repeatedly invoke "intelligence" with knowing smiles about how intelligence could have solved all sorts of design and physical problems, offering this as a simple, easy alternative to figuring out some complex historical sequence that natural selection might have played out.

They further argue that they have no obligation to be more specific about what this intelligence is (what its motives are, what sort of being with what sort of capabilities it has, and so forth). Most critics of intelligent design have from here theistic solution. But in thinking about the problem, I realized that there is another reason to be coy about invoking "intelligence" as a solution to the origin of complex functionality.

It is because you can't invoke a word and not have it mean anything. Either by "intelligence" ID theorists are invoking some known concept of what it means to be and operate as an intelligent being in a design setting, or they are simply using "intelligence" as semantic sheild for total ignorance of what sort of thing/process they are talking about.

Allow me to supply them with their missing model: a very general sketch of how an idealized intelligence would approach the task of designing some creature or new function for an existing creature. All intelligences we are familiar with, it seems to me, even in our imaginations, would operate along the following general steps.

First of all, they need to collect information from a given environment or physical system: the one into which they want to place their creation or even their modification of an existing creature. They need as much information as possible, and it needs to be accurate: there may be many different interlocking chains of potential cause and effect to take into account.

Next, an intelligence needs to model. Here is where intelligence shows its power: instead of actually trying out each and every possibility in the real world, it figures it out in the abstract, simplifying key elements of a design and thinking about how they might work in practice, measured against the information it collected. This is how virtually any form of intelligent thought that we can concieve of operates: without it, it would be hard to know what was meant by "thinking" or "thoughtful design" at all.

However, as any actual intelligent designer knows, this modeling process is almost never sufficient on the first run through. The abstract can never capture the subtlties of the real, and very minor causal elements or imperfections that might have escaped notice can blow up into serious and unexpected flaws that have to be worked back into and corrected for in the revised model.

Because the intelligent designer must now somehow transfer the lessons concieved back into some real physical structure, hoping that the modeling process has been accurate, that the original information gathered captured enough of the situation to avoid unexpected flaws, and so on. Almost always, it isn't, requiring many different prototypes and revisions. Finally, the desired functionality can be hit upon, and intelligent design has done its work.

Contrast this "intelligent" method to natural selection, and you'll notice that it doesn't measure up very well.

As process, natural selection does away with almost all of the troublesome steps here, most importantly those having to do with information. You might remember that intelligent design theorists make a lot of hay about information: they are deeply incredulous about how it comes to be naturally, how it manages to be preserved, how it becomes modified in ways that increase rather than decrease functionality, and so on. So you'd expect that any ID alternative would offer some sort of ingenious information creation, transfer, and management features over a dumb, accumulative process like natural selection.

Instead, quite the opposite is true. In natural selection, there isn't anywhere near the sort of convoluted back and forth shuffling of information. The creation of information is a remarkably straightforward event.

Continually accumulating trait variety in a given gene pool provides ambiguity. Natural selection then operates simply by more definitively resolving portions of this ambiguity, non-randomly favoring those traits which happen to increase reproductive fitness within a given environment. In doing so, information about the environment is transferred to gene pool, leaving the individual genomes of the next generation on average better suited to survive and reproduce in the local environment.

That's it. And yet the process is so powerful that scientists can actually look at a given genome and read out information about the primitive environments the genome's ancestors had passed through (for instance, that the recent ancestors of mammals were primarily adapted to a nocturnal lifestyle).

In a sense, all that natural selection shares with intelligence is the trial and error aspect, except that this step doesn't involve the immense information challenges, and it doesn't take place by juggling both the abstract AND real world applications. Everything happens directly in the real world, interfacing directly with all the subtle elements of the real world rather than having to worry about translation problems.

In short, the information challenges that face evolution via natural selection look, on any fair comparison, to be far less demanding and absurd than those that an even idealized intelligent process faces. If there is any sort of "second law" of information, then the operation of an intelligence violates it many many more times over than natural selection, and in far grosser and sloppier ways.

Could this be why ID theorists refuse to probe very much deeper into the potential operation of their explain-all?

A final addendum: ID theorists might object that an intelligence might not operate by the idealized means I describe. My response is that, well, I've at least drawn up a description of how an intelligence works that at least has a legitimate and meaningful claim to the word. If they aren't going to supply some alternative, then they might as well be declaring that it was done by magic, and they have no right to appeal to "intelligence" as their explanation.

I'd appreciate comments, even from other critics of intelligent design, as to how to make this argument stronger or clearer.

[Saintly Loser]

Originally Posted by Apos

All intelligences we are familiar with, it seems to me, even in our imaginations, would operate along the following general steps.

First of all, they need to collect information from a given environment or physical system: the one into which they want to place their creation or even their modification of an existing creature. They need as much information as possible, and it needs to be accurate: there may be many different interlocking chains of potential cause and effect to take into account.

Next, an intelligence needs to model.

The ID proponents won't accept this argument. They're positing an omniscient and perfect intelligence that doesn't need to model, because it knows how its design will turn out. And it doesn't need to collect information because it has all information. It being the creator of the universe, it already knows everything about everything in the universe, including all interlocking chains of potential cause and effect.

You, on the other hand, are talking about human intelligence. Not the same thing at all.

[Darwin's Finch]

A major problem with Intelligent Design, from my own perspective, is that while it's fine and well to say, "this is the product of an intelligent creator", it still doesn't answer the fundamental question of "how?". How does the intelligent design actually manifest itself? Are molecules psychically manipulated? Does sheer force of will temporarily alter the laws of physics (it is claimed, after all, that such features cannot arise through purely naturalistic means, so there must be some violation of natural laws in order to bring these changes about)? Are probabilities skewed by "arranging" for two molecules to come into contact with one another which, if left alone, would never have done so?

Because Intelligent Design proponents actually admit that evolution functions at some scale, the questions regarding how, when, and why nature needs a "push" to continue evolving along certain trends becomes rather important. Mere appeals to complexity are insufficient, as step-wise alterations can easily proceed from "simple" to "complex".

Intelligent Design, then, is not a mechanism for biological change. At best, it is an attempt to discern between intelligent and natural designs. But without the ability to identify specific conditions under which intervention is necessary, as well as the means by which this intervention occurs, it fails even at that task. The result is something more akin to technobabble than to anything resembling science.

[Voyager]

I love your title - except, to quibble, I wouldn't give ID the status of theory. But I know why you used it.

I don't see how ID goes against any natural laws, and I don't think your information argument is one against it. The main problems with ID is that it "creates" a designer where none is needed, since all structures can be explained by evolution, and that it posits a designer when there is no evidence for one. In addition, it does not say anything about when the design events happened, how often they happened, the intereraction of them with evolution and natural selection, etc. LMM, there is no requirement the designer be the Creator - the Raelians are IDists and think space aliens did it. I'd love to see the reaction of the religious IDers to the proposal that ID be taught, but the Raelian version!

We can't disprove or invalidate ID until they come up with some sort of falsifiable hypothesis. I'm not holding my breath. Until they do, we can ignore it.

[Fiver]

Originally Posted by Darwin's Finch

A major problem with Intelligent Design, from my own perspective, is that while it's fine and well to say, "this is the product of an intelligent creator", it still doesn't answer the fundamental question of "how?". How does the intelligent design actually manifest itself? Are molecules psychically manipulated? Does sheer force of will temporarily alter the laws of physics (it is claimed, after all, that such features cannot arise through purely naturalistic means, so there must be some violation of natural laws in order to bring these changes about)? Are probabilities skewed by "arranging" for two molecules to come into contact with one another which, if left alone, would never have done so?

If I remember my reading of Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box correctly, he supposed that the genetic potential for all subsequent life was contained in the genomes of the earliest living cells. Even he admitted this was purely supposition.

Elsewhere in the same book, of course, he (correctly) stated that currently-unused systems in an organism are bred away, since it's maladaptive for an organism to spend energy maintaining a system that isn't being used.

The contradiction seems to be lost on him.

[Apos]

Originally Posted by LMM

The ID proponents won't accept this argument. They're positing an omniscient and perfect intelligence that doesn't need to model, because it knows how its design will turn out. And it doesn't need to collect information because it has all information. It being the creator of the universe, it already knows everything about everything in the universe, including all interlocking chains of potential cause and effect.

You, on the other hand, are talking about human intelligence. Not the same thing at all.

This is exactly the power of my argument. I pin them down: the concept of "intelligence" is one that must have some sort of functional meaning: when they smirk about how easily intelligence solves design problems, there has to be some sort of content there to justify the smugness.

If they make the theist point, however, they have already lost on at least two counts. First of all, they've admitted what they've been denying: that it's god and only god that they've really been talking about all along. That isn't very interesting to me though. What's interesting are the contortions necessary to describe the operation of the creator of the universe as intelligent in any way that we can legitimately use that word.

I didn't add this part into the OP, but think about it. What does it mean that the creator "already knows" everything? What does it mean to know things? To try and work that into any sort of idea of intelligence, any sort of thought process, and we are left with a model in which reality is perfectly duplicated within a mind! The operation of intelligence as we know it is to concieve of things: model them in ways that strip them back to their key elements in order to make them easier to grasp and thus to do thought experiments in lieu of carrying them out in the real world, hopefully saving time and effort. But a perfect mind which does not do this saves no time and effort: the operation of its thoughts duplicate reality exactly. Indeed, one might well ask what is the purpose of reality when thoughts make it redundant (or vice-versa)? A perfect mind might as well trial and error in the real world as opposed to in its thoughts. And worse, if the being needs no trial and error, even in thought, then in what sense is it intelligent or thinking at all? In what sense is it thoughtfully designing anything? To simply instantly choose correct _specific_ mechanisms without any consideration or modeling isn't any sort of thinking or intelligence that deserve those words. It's nothing less than inexplicable, unintelligible magic.

[Apos]

Originally Posted by Fiver

Elsewhere in the same book, of course, he (correctly) stated that currently-unused systems in an organism are bred away, since it's maladaptive for an organism to spend energy maintaining a system that isn't being used.

The contradiction seems to be lost on him.

But not on Kenneth Miller, one of his harshest critics.

Though, it isn't quite energy reuqirements that causes the degredation of unused informatin, it's the fact that natural selection won't be able to weed out maladaptions if they are never expressed. Mutations can simply accumulate without the gene pool "knowing" it because they are never expressed.

[Apos]

Originally Posted by Voyager

I don't see how ID goes against any natural laws, and I don't think your information argument is one against it.

My issue was more that ID proponents wrongly appeal to intelligence as if it simplified the problem of information, rather than compounded it to a rather absurd degree. Even if we _didn't_ have to explain the origin of an intelligence, we can still see pretty clearly by my example how information intensive the operation of intelligence is: how many back and forth transfers are necessary, and so on.

The fact is, natural selection provides an exceedingly elegant and efficient solution as to how information can be added to a natural system. Intelligence, on the other hand, is a messy, inefficient, and roundabout method prone to sloppiness and reality-to-thought-to-reality translation problems.

[Loopydude]

Originally Posted by Darwin's Finch

...while it's fine and well to say, "this is the product of an intelligent creator"...

Not really. The biggest problem with the ID "theorists" is their fundamental dishonesty. Whenever they get called on specific claims of "irreducible complexity" manifested in some structure or system, and ID is convincingly shown to be wanting, they change the definition of what is IDed to either focus on some "core" element of the same subject, or by completely changing the focus to some different subject that hasn't been sufficiently scrutinized yet to discount their claims to their unreasonable satisfaction. It's a creationist shell game, with a heaping helping of smoke-and-mirrors, pure and simple. At any rate, since the "theory" is completely untestable, I don't see how, in any even, be the ID proponents honest or not, it would be "well and fine" to discuss ID in the context of scientific discourse. It's pseudoscience, through-and-through, and was in crisis the moment it was dreampt up. Well-formulated refutation is almost superfluous, but for an impressionable public desirious of evidential "proof" of their God.

[Apos]

The fact is, I don't think we should hedge all our bets on the expectation that ID can never be formulated as a meaningful theory. While I think, for instance, that Dembski's approach is absurd, there is nothing unscientific about trying to develop a method to distinguish intelligent design from natural means (provided that, unlike dembski's approach, it doesn't rely upon simply absurdly restricting what "natural" means are). Nor do I think that ID proponents are entirely without a leg to stand on when they argue that they need not specify exactly what mechanisms ID beings used. It's true that this leaves them without testable predictions in terms of specific elements of biological history. But they can still get by noting that there are things we know that intelligence can do, leaving it the _likely_ means to solve various informational hurdles. This is why they need to be nailed down not on the elements where they can waffle (particular physical mechanisms), but on those that would be core to any claim that "intelligence" was in operation and is a superior or more plausible mechanism than natural selection or other natural processes.

[Loopydude]

I don't see how a theory that makes untestable predictions in any circumstance can be called scientific.

[Apos]

They don't always make untestable predictions. IC is a testable prediction, even if it isn't by itself really a meaningful component of a larger ID theory. But the basic idea: that a true IC system would be characteristic of an intelligent being rather than natural selection, isn't un-apt. It's just finding and proving an IC system that has proven to be elusive.

[David Simmons]

I'll add this post to the mix about ID.

[Loopydude]

Originally Posted by Apos

IC is a testable prediction...

IC isn't even, and probably can't be, defined. One is able, in principal, to demonstrate convincingly that complex biogenic structures or systems can arise in the absense of ID by natural selection. Can one prove IC without total knowledge? I rather doubt it.

[Apos]

It suggests itself to me, however, that if we want to describe natural selection as a specific process that produces things in characteristic ways, then it doesn't hurt to be able to distinguish things that have arisen from ID from those whom have been shaped by natural selection. No doubt in our future, we will enounter both sorts of creations and wish to distinguish between them. In a certain way, defining ID helps better delineate natural selection so that it is less an "explain-all" and more of a specific process that we can show operated here on earth.

[Loopydude]

What is a defining characteristic of IC? Dembski's own qualifications (a system has IC if it cannot be missing pieces, and no simpler system can can be shown to achieve the same function) effectively destroys his definition through empirical self-negation, so what is left that is operative? The only characteristic I can think of using to describe the converse in a system, emergent biogenic complexity, is its demonstrable phylogeny, which, thus far, has always been available by some or other means, at least in principle. Perhaps the only truly operative definition of IC I've ever seen amounts to claims of undemonstrable phylogeny, which have always proven spurious thus far.

About the only recorse to lack-of-evidence the ID folks have left is natural abiogenesis, and even that is theoretically testable. ID can always claim to jump back a step, and hence cannot be disproven.

[Apos]

You're right that in practice, it is very hard to prove that a system cannot have had functional intermediaries, especially when those intermediaries could have had different functions or even "scaffolding" that later went away. Remember though: the extent to which we cannot find ways to distinguish natural selection from ID is what keeps the waters murky.

But if it could be shown that, for instance, all parts of a complex system DID come together all at once, that would be well beyond any mechanism of mutation, let alone natural selection, to explain. The major problem for proving IC is that there is no clear historical record of how certain systems came to be: did they occur because of gradual additions (consistent with natural selection taking advantage of random mutation), or did they come about all at once (consistent with design)?

[Darwin's Finch]

Originally Posted by Loopydude

At any rate, since the "theory" is completely untestable, I don't see how, in any even, be the ID proponents honest or not, it would be "well and fine" to discuss ID in the context of scientific discourse.

I would disagree for the following reason: at some point in our future, I feel it is inevitable that we are able to partake in some "intelligent design" of our own. Already, we are able to modify the genome and create organisms which, had our hand been absent, would likely never have appeared. Certainly, then, there is some merit to identifying intelligent design, as we do know it exists (what we do not know is whether God, a god, or an alien species has been performing similar experiments on our genomes). Ultimately, that should be the focus of inquiry for IDists, if they really wanted to be scientific: can we, as humans, distinguish our own handiwork from that of nature's? Can we readilly distinguish the "genetically modified" corn from the "natural" corn (of course, we had a hand in the "natural" part too, which probably complicates things, but you get the idea), without prior knowledge of which is which? If even that much can be accomplished, then ID could be legitimately scientific.

It is the underlying premise of "God as creator" that turns ID into pseudo-science. Detached from the politics of creationism, ID theory could become relevant.

[Bryan Ekers]

Even disregarding the minutiae of genetics, the system fails as soon as you ask who designed the designer. On the assumption that the designer of the designer (designer₂ if you like) is greater than that which it creates, and capable of knowing absolutely all potential problems and flaws, why design a perfect (by human standards) designer (designer₁) which then turns around and designs life on Earth, which even to our puny human mortal eyes has numerous flaws?

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by Apos

My issue was more that ID proponents wrongly appeal to intelligence as if it simplified the problem of information, rather than compounded it to a rather absurd degree. Even if we _didn't_ have to explain the origin of an intelligence, we can still see pretty clearly by my example how information intensive the operation of intelligence is: how many back and forth transfers are necessary, and so on.

The fact is, natural selection provides an exceedingly elegant and efficient solution as to how information can be added to a natural system. Intelligence, on the other hand, is a messy, inefficient, and roundabout method prone to sloppiness and reality-to-thought-to-reality translation problems.

I still don't see it. It's not as if natural selection produces elegant results - look at the species that have gone extinct, our blind spot, etc. That's one of the arguments for NS - if a designer did it, it must have been a piss poor one.

Information is a red herring. IDers and creationists invent information conservation laws that don't exist. The amount of information in the genome is exactly the same no matter how it got there.

I think you are talking about the efficiency of the design process. I have seen many examples of GAs applied to areas I know of. They have the advantage of being easy to code and sometimes finding solutions in the solution space not found by deterministic algorithms. However the algorithms always beat them in terms of time to find a solution and effectiveness of the solution.

The designer would have to do the things you mention, but he might have very effective simulators, and might have done it before on other worlds, thus being skilled in design. No doubt he'd have to tape out animal rev 1 for testing, but that might get introduced to a bringup lab before being released to the wild. It might take more steps, but it would be faster. Considering the number of bugs in our genome, it appears that the designer never did a third tape out and issued an errata sheet instead.

No, if there was a designer I'd expect a higher quality result. NS explains the slowness and messiness of evolution much better. So I agree with your conclusion, but for the opposite reason.

[Bryan Ekers]

Originally Posted by Voyager

No, if there was a designer I'd expect a higher quality result.

Thinking litigation?

[Apos]

Originally Posted by Voyager

I still don't see it. It's not as if natural selection produces elegant results - look at the species that have gone extinct, our blind spot, etc. That's one of the arguments for NS - if a designer did it, it must have been a piss poor one.

That's the price you pay for trial and error with no foresight. But I really was addressing the question of information. And natural selection is an amazingly efficient mechanism for adding information to gene pool, whereas intelligence is an exceedingly wasteful and costly method.

Information is a red herring. IDers and creationists invent information conservation laws that don't exist.

It's not that simple. Entropy and information are closely connected, and figuring out how so much information, so specific to all sorts of complex adpatations, got together is no mean feat.

I think you are talking about the efficiency of the design process. I have seen many examples of GAs applied to areas I know of. They have the advantage of being easy to code and sometimes finding solutions in the solution space not found by deterministic algorithms. However the algorithms always beat them in terms of time to find a solution and effectiveness of the solution.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm not familiar with what you are talking about.

The designer would have to do the things you mention, but he might have very effective simulators, and might have done it before on other worlds, thus being skilled in design. No doubt he'd have to tape out animal rev 1 for testing, but that might get introduced to a bringup lab before being released to the wild. It might take more steps, but it would be faster. Considering the number of bugs in our genome, it appears that the designer never did a third tape out and issued an errata sheet instead.

In terms of information efficiency, this process is way out of control. And remember: the more effective your simulators (and for creating natural creatures with parts that are small enough to even operate on the quantum level, they'd have to be so effective that they basically recreate reality!) the more demanding the collection and manipulation of information becomes. Natural selection never needs to bother with ANY of that!

No, if there was a designer I'd expect a higher quality result. NS explains the slowness and messiness of evolution much better. So I agree with your conclusion, but for the opposite reason.

Right: natural selection gives us what we see in the fossil record: gradual changes leading in directions that were ultimately never anticipated when the direction first began. Designers, for instance, if they wanted flying creatures would create all sorts of prototypes of birds and wings that might not work very well. But why would a designer create running, then hopping, then short gliding, then controled gliding, then indefinate and propulsive flying? Why not get to the point?

[Loopydude]

Originally Posted by Apos

But if it could be shown that, for instance, all parts of a complex system DID come together all at once, that would be well beyond any mechanism of mutation, let alone natural selection, to explain.

And where would those parts have come from? Would the individual parts not be irreducibly complex, but the sum of the parts would be? Perhaps I misread, but that sounds similar to Behe's claim about the bacterial flagellum.

A single mutation could, in principle, cause a novel assemblage of some number of other proteins if the mutation had a profound enough effect on the structure of the protein encoded by the mutated gene in quesiton. It would be highly unlikely (though far from impossible, given the time scales and numbers of permutations we're dealing with on the species scale), but such a novel complex could confer a selective advantage. And if a sequence coding a functional motif from one protein is swapped through random recombination in frame into another gene, a completely new, naturally-arising fusion protein can be generated that can link disparate functions and associations together into one entity. Subsequent mutation, coupled with drift and/or selection, can scramble the evidence over many generations sufficiently to make deconvoluting the evolutionary history of a particular protein quite challenging. It may appear, at first glance, to have come almost from out of nowhere. It is this gap of uncertainty into which ID typically rushes, but as genomic data builds, and computers get faster, those gaps are rapidly closing.

To briefly summarize, what exactly does it take before I know something is sufficiently complex to rule out natural selection? All sorts of things fall under the heading of "presently unexplained", but they don't provide proof by themselves of ID. If incomplete knowledge always places natural selection in serious doubt, then it's reasonable to conclude that only complete knowledge can restore confidence in it. But this is an absurd requirement to place on any scientific theory. Simply saying "It's too complex" doesn't show anything; you have to demonstrate this somehow. By what means? It's the sort of argument creationists make when they claim evolution is disproven by gaps in the archeological record, the supposed lack of "missing links". Well, what is proven by such a gap, that we lack complete knowledge, or that we have knowledge of volitive and instant complexity? The fact that natural selection can survive despite myriad such gaps is there's so much other supportive evidence in other analogous examples, in addition to evidence provided by other disciplines. So far as I can tell, ID has no supportive "evidence" except the gaps, and as any theist will be happy to remind us, absense of evidence is not evidence of absense.

As it is, ID explains nothing, and provides no way to predict anything such that we can test it. If we synthesize living orgamisms ourselves, we'll effectively have complete knowledge about them; but only God has the kind of knowledge to justify a verdict of ID in its current form. God is assumed by the ID "theorists", so at present it seems their position is hopelessly circular.

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by Apos

That's the price you pay for trial and error with no foresight. But I really was addressing the question of information. And natural selection is an amazingly efficient mechanism for adding information to gene pool, whereas intelligence is an exceedingly wasteful and costly method.

What is your cost function? If you are measuring direct designer involvement, you're right. If you are measuring time until you get to a result, time is cheaper. Genetic methods take a long time to converge, but they are simple. Design methods take less time, but are more complex.

It's not that simple. Entropy and information are closely connected, and figuring out how so much information, so specific to all sorts of complex adpatations, got together is no mean feat.

That is another argument against ID. Since the environment changes, you'd either have to go back and patch your design, or let evolution change it to match the new environment. So, evolution happens anyway. Information in this sense is really the number of "bits" of info in the genome. Assuming a sufficiently advanced technology, assembling a gene should be simple. Designing one would be harder, but you'd assume they'd have a cookbook of genes and pathways and the other, more complicated, stuff the human genome project is revealing. Information is independent of how it was assembled. The amount of Shannon information in a message is independent of you tossing it off in five minutes or a team of 20 wordsmithed it for a week.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm not familiar with what you are talking about.

Let's say you are generating a test for a bunch of logic in a circuit. Programs exist to parse the circuit, and use algorithms to create a set of ones and zeros at the inputs to detect all the faults inside. Genetic algorithms have been written that start with a random pattern of 1s and 0s, determine its coverage, and then mutate it in several ways. Each of the mutant children are graded, the best kept and the worst discarded. Given enough cycles, you eventually get to a good test without understanding the design. These things work, and are simpler than the algorithmic approach, but usually don't get as good coverage and take longer to run.

In terms of information efficiency, this process is way out of control. And remember: the more effective your simulators (and for creating natural creatures with parts that are small enough to even operate on the quantum level, they'd have to be so effective that they basically recreate reality!) the more demanding the collection and manipulation of information becomes. Natural selection never needs to bother with ANY of that!

Only if they were after an optimal result. If they were trading off time or effort for quality, they can make do with simpler simulations and heuristics. Considering the inefficiency of the result, I don't think you can say they took the time to do an optimal job. That pretty much rules out the God hypothesis, since God could do an optimal job with no effort.

Right: natural selection gives us what we see in the fossil record: gradual changes leading in directions that were ultimately never anticipated when the direction first began. Designers, for instance, if they wanted flying creatures would create all sorts of prototypes of birds and wings that might not work very well. But why would a designer create running, then hopping, then short gliding, then controled gliding, then indefinate and propulsive flying? Why not get to the point?

Now that I agree with. A designer wouldn't have taken so long to go through the intermediate steps, nor would there be any reason to release them in the wild assuming they were even necessary. Since the designer would know how to design for flight, why develop a glider? This is another good argument against ID.

[Apos]

To re-iterate, my point was that if we have evidence of mutational saltation: huge and improbable all-at-once multi-dimensional jump in functionality, then that certainly wouldn't be evolution at work. While Behe goes wrong when he argues that any final product we find that appears to require a whole host of complex parts must be intelligently designed, I'd certainly be willing to concede some sort of intervention if we had evidence that all the parts of such a system simply jumped into being in a single generation. That's all I'm saying.

[Loopydude]

BTW, regarding quantum mechanics and life, I've yet to see a convincing argument for the need for quantum anything, except that that's ultimately how atoms and molecules stick together. Magic velcro might work just as well. You don't need to perfeclty simulate molecular orbitals and hydrogen bonds to model biochemistry. Largely classical approximations work very well for computational purposes; and as it is these classical models get intractably complex very quickly. Even relatively small molecules like glucose display negligible quantum weirdness in the temperatures and densities in which we find life, so there's little justification at this point to posit a need for such weirdness to explain biological systems. Stickyness and complexity do the job pretty well without biologists getting physics envy.

[Loopydude]

Originally Posted by Apos

To re-iterate, my point was that if we have evidence of mutational saltation: huge and improbable all-at-once multi-dimensional jump in functionality, then that certainly wouldn't be evolution at work. While Behe goes wrong when he argues that any final product we find that appears to require a whole host of complex parts must be intelligently designed, I'd certainly be willing to concede some sort of intervention if we had evidence that all the parts of such a system simply jumped into being in a single generation. That's all I'm saying.

Perhaps I lack imagination, but I can't imagine what such a beast would be, or what reliable test I could use to conclusively demonstrate design, lacking complete knowledge. For example, if I came across a complex-looking fossil in some stratum of rock that I am asurdly confident predates any known instance of multicellular life, what do I now know? Well, maybe it was designed; or maybe complex life is older than I thought; or maybe aliens put it there; or maybe its ancestors rode a chunk of ejecta lofted from an impact on Mars three billion years ago. In any event, perhaps this line was outcompeted by simpler Terran organsims, and hence its a chance one-off. If I don't find any other such fossils on Earth or Mars, and no aliens either, I still don't have any proof of a designer. All I know is I've got something I can't yet explain.

If you could give me a specific example of something you think I might be forced to conclude is a product of ID, I then might be able to evaluate that. All I'm aware of, or can think of, are the extant examples cited in claims made by ID theorists, which all have been quite conclusively debunked, so far as I know.

[Apos]

Mutations can involve quantum "weirdness:" most commonly by tunneling (protons go from one site to another, changing the chemical bond). And it may be involved in a whole host cellular processes like enzymes.

[Meatros]

Originally Posted by Fiver

If I remember my reading of Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box correctly, he supposed that the genetic potential for all subsequent life was contained in the genomes of the earliest living cells. Even he admitted this was purely supposition.

Elsewhere in the same book, of course, he (correctly) stated that currently-unused systems in an organism are bred away, since it's maladaptive for an organism to spend energy maintaining a system that isn't being used.

The contradiction seems to be lost on him.

I actually emailed Behe a few weeks ago, I'll post some of the relevant bits below (I'm not posting the whole email):

Originally Posted by Meatros

Again, I'm no expert, but it seems to me that the position of of Intelligent Design is one of extreme pessimism. Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but why assume that we can't/won't ever find how these complex systems evolved?

Behe wrote:

Originally Posted by Behe

I don't think ID is pessimistic at all. It just claims that we are using the wrong framework to think about things, and proposes one that seems to fit the data better. Let me give you an analogy. In the 1920s most physicists thought the universe was unchanging, but then the big Bang theory was proposed to explain the apparent relative motion of galaxies away from each other. Was it pessimistic to propose that a different idea --- the Big Bang --- might explain the data better than the old eternal universe model?

I had also written:

Originally Posted by Meatros

Also, and this is one thing that has confused me about ID from it's inception; how does intelligent design work? IE, what is the mechanism that the Intelligent Designer uses to form new features? From what I know, evolution has a mechanism (a few, if I recall correctly), natural selection-but what does intelligent design have? I'm curious because if intelligent design get's accepted by the mainstream I can't envision how it actually explains how life arises and how evolution occurs. I figure I've probably missed the explanation somewhere in your book or in other author's works.

To which Behe also had responded:

Originally Posted by Behe

ID does not have a proposed mechanism. But that's not unique for a new theory in science. The Big Bang when it was forst proposed had no mechanism that could explain a universe exploding into existence. Even Newton's theory of gravity proposed no mechanism.

FTR-The exchange was actually quite civil and nice actually, although I don't agree with him.

For those who are interested: Here's the entire exchange, it's on my 'myspace' blog.

[Meatros]

Hm...You know what, I'm actually wondering if posting a private email on the next (either via myspace or here) is a good thing to do...I hadn't really thought about it until literally right now.

I can see why it could be a bad thing to do, but the communication that I've had with Behe (which is very very little) doesn't reflect badly on him, I don't think...

Can someone give me some input on whether or not posting this sort of thing is a bad move?

Thanks,

[Bryan Ekers]

Originally Posted by Meatros

Can someone give me some input on whether or not posting this sort of thing is a bad move?

Ask Behe's permission. Be sure to tell him that you'll post the exchange unedited, and be ready to follow through on that promise.

[Meatros]

Originally Posted by Bryan Ekers

Ask Behe's permission. Be sure to tell him that you'll post the exchange unedited, and be ready to follow through on that promise.

That's a good idea, I'm going to take the exchange down from myspace until then.

[Meatros]

Mods-can you remove my first post to this thread? The one with the exchange.

Thanks,

[Loopydude]

Originally Posted by Apos

Mutations can involve quantum "weirdness:" most commonly by tunneling (protons go from one site to another, changing the chemical bond). And it may be involved in a whole host cellular processes like enzymes.

You can't get mutations through various processes of deamination and alkylation? Ionizing radiation? Reactive oxygen species? It has to be proton tunneling? Keto-enol tautomerization is a more pedestrian process by which the nucleotide base can spontaneously rearrange itself and become mismatched, I think, and does indeed involve a reconfiguration of electrons that can only be explained comprehensively by quantum mechanics. Actually, everything I discussed above inovles chemistry, so it ultimately involves the reconfiguration of molecular orbitals, and of course that's a process only completely described by quantum mechanics. What I'm saying is that's fundamental. Nothing is "explained" about life except that the stuff it's composed of sticks together this way. It's not clear to me that you couldn't get life if things stuck together differently, nor is it clear to me that you need a comprehensive description of every electron and nucleus in a molecule to model it well enough. Computational chemistry and biochemistry would be pretty much impossible if that were true, because accurately simulating even simple atomic orbitals in atoms much bigger than hydrogen is an intractable computational problem at present.

[David Simmons]

Originally Posted by Apos

To re-iterate, my point was that if we have evidence of mutational saltation: huge and improbable all-at-once multi-dimensional jump in functionality, then that certainly wouldn't be evolution at work.

Isn't this questionable? The mutation of a control gene such as that discovered by Walter Gehrig's group at the University of Basel for the eye, has a drastic effect on how eyes function.

I agree this isn't the creation of a new species in one jump (saltation) but it certainly is an "all at once change" in a major component.

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by Apos

To re-iterate, my point was that if we have evidence of mutational saltation: huge and improbable all-at-once multi-dimensional jump in functionality, then that certainly wouldn't be evolution at work. While Behe goes wrong when he argues that any final product we find that appears to require a whole host of complex parts must be intelligently designed, I'd certainly be willing to concede some sort of intervention if we had evidence that all the parts of such a system simply jumped into being in a single generation. That's all I'm saying.

Wouldn't a big difference in the DNA of two species that are closely related otherwise be such an indicator? My understanding is that if you compute something like the Cartesian distance between the DNA of species, it varies proportionately to the distance between these species on the evolutionary bush. If you found a species that was an outlier - that is seemed closely related in the fossil record and in many characteristics, but far apart genetically, you might have a candidate. Of course you'd have to confirm that the apparent relationship is real, but ID doesn't seem to include a complete redesign.

You might have a section of the bush distinguishable from the rest, which would indicate that the common ancestor of that session got ID'ed.

No such beasties that I know of, but that is the kind of thing IDers should be looking for.

[Loopydude]

Originally Posted by Voyager

If you found a species that was an outlier - that is seemed closely related in the fossil record and in many characteristics, but far apart genetically, you might have a candidate.

Sounds like you are describing convergent evolution, which is easily accounted for, and in fact quite elegantly explained, by natural selection.

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by Loopydude

Sounds like you are describing convergent evolution, which is easily accounted for, and in fact quite elegantly explained, by natural selection.

Like I said, you have to confirm the relationship. You can genetically identify the true relatives of a convergent species in this case, if there was ID you would not be able to.

[Apos]

Originally Posted by Loopydude

You can't get mutations through various processes of deamination and alkylation? Ionizing radiation? Reactive oxygen species? It has to be proton tunneling?

It isn't a question of "can't" but that quantum weirdness is one of the things that contributes to mutation (as well as, perhaps, the operation of a number of subcellular structures) and our understanding of mutation would be incomplete without it.

Keto-enol tautomerization is a more pedestrian process by which the nucleotide base can spontaneously rearrange itself and become mismatched, I think, and does indeed involve a reconfiguration of electrons that can only be explained comprehensively by quantum mechanics.

Actually, KE tautomerization is just a fancy case of quantum tunneling, I believe.

Nothing is "explained" about life except that the stuff it's composed of sticks together this way. It's not clear to me that you couldn't get life if things stuck together differently, nor is it clear to me that you need a comprehensive description of every electron and nucleus in a molecule to model it well enough. Computational chemistry and biochemistry would be pretty much impossible if that were true, because accurately simulating even simple atomic orbitals in atoms much bigger than hydrogen is an intractable computational problem at present.

True, but again, there may well be subtlties that we have yet to appreciate, and I wouldn't want to hang my hat on the idea that none exist with any relevance to evolutionary history.

[Apos]

Originally Posted by David Simmons

Isn't this questionable? The mutation of a control gene such as that discovered by Walter Gehrig's group at the University of Basel for the eye, has a drastic effect on how eyes function.

LOL! Did you note how the editor of the piece must have added the [ness] to the bit about "eyeless[ness]." The biologist was referring to the gene "eyeless' in fruit flies, but the editor must not have realized it and thought it was a gramatical error that needed correction! Pretty amusing.

I agree this isn't the creation of a new species in one jump (saltation) but it certainly is an "all at once change" in a major component.

To be fair, I don't think this is an example of what I was talking about at all. Control genes don't actually involve a single mutational leap that creates all sorts of complex interworking structures.

I was thinking more along the lines of something like mammalian blood clotting. Behe thinks it sufficient to show that such a system is such that removing a part breaks the system: it is a remarkable Rube Goldberg setup where all the parts are necessary. Unfortunately for Behe, there are actually plenty of plausible ways that the clotting system could have evolved gradually. My point, instead, was that of Behe could show that something like the system of blood clotting wasn't just complex and interlocking, but rather that it arose all at once rather than gradually, THEN he might have something.

[David Simmons]

Originally Posted by Apos

To be fair, I don't think this is an example of what I was talking about at all. Control genes don't actually involve a single mutational leap that creates all sorts of complex interworking structures.

I was thinking more along the lines of something like mammalian blood clotting. Behe thinks it sufficient to show that such a system is such that removing a part breaks the system: it is a remarkable Rube Goldberg setup where all the parts are necessary. Unfortunately for Behe, there are actually plenty of plausible ways that the clotting system could have evolved gradually. My point, instead, was that of Behe could show that something like the system of blood clotting wasn't just complex and interlocking, but rather that it arose all at once rather than gradually, THEN he might have something.

I agree that what I asked about isn't exactly like blood clotting. However, it does involve the mechanics of the eye, plus the optic nerves and the manner in which the optical information is processed to bring sight to whatever creature has the highly modified eye.

[Apos]

Originally Posted by Loopydude

Perhaps I lack imagination, but I can't imagine what such a beast would be, or what reliable test I could use to conclusively demonstrate design, lacking complete knowledge. For example, if I came across a complex-looking fossil in some stratum of rock that I am asurdly confident predates any known instance of multicellular life, what do I now know? Well, maybe it was designed; or maybe complex life is older than I thought; or maybe aliens put it there; or maybe its ancestors rode a chunk of ejecta lofted from an impact on Mars three billion years ago. In any event, perhaps this line was outcompeted by simpler Terran organsims, and hence its a chance one-off. If I don't find any other such fossils on Earth or Mars, and no aliens either, I still don't have any proof of a designer. All I know is I've got something I can't yet explain.

If you could give me a specific example of something you think I might be forced to conclude is a product of ID, I then might be able to evaluate that. All I'm aware of, or can think of, are the extant examples cited in claims made by ID theorists, which all have been quite conclusively debunked, so far as I know.

The issue is this: what we DON'T want from a scientific theory is for it to be able to explain absolutely everything: any condition, any circumstance. If evolution is to be useful, to be meaningful, it should have clear boundaries past which it doesn't make sense to apply it.

Here is a challenge I often pose to Intelligent Design theorists who claim that they have a test to detect design. Would your mechanism register "design" in any complex and specifically functional object found in any possible universe? Could a God create a universe in which such objects exist, but there was no internal evidence of design in them? If the answer to the first question is yes, then we have to have serious doubts about whether their mechanism is really detecting anything other than its own biases: it doesn't seem to be making any specific statements about the particular _character_ of these special complex objects, but rather simply assuming that they are all designed, no matter what their particular character.

Likewise, I think that evolution, if it is to be useful as a descriptive theory to be applied to creatures we might encounter (whether on our planet, or new life elsewhere), has to imply a particular character that demonstrates that it came about via evolution and NOT some other process (whether ID or some other unknown process). We can't fall into the habit of just using evolution as an explain-all.

I do, of course, think that biological life on this planet shows the particular character of things which have evolved rather than been designed. But that IS because of their particular character, and NOT out of an assumption that all such things must have evolved.

[Apos]

Originally Posted by David Simmons

I agree that what I asked about isn't exactly like blood clotting. However, it does involve the mechanics of the eye, plus the optic nerves and the manner in which the optical information is processed to bring sight to whatever creature has the highly modified eye.

I just don't see that there is any evidence here that all these things DID evolve purely in one step. Control genes aren't necessarily like that, just because they happen to be fundamental or turn whole systems on and off.

[Twoflower]

I have to admit I haven't paid much attention to ID, under the presumption that it is just creationism in disguise.

One question: is there any peer-reviewed, published research in support of ID? Seems to me the first step if ID proponents want to claim to be doing actual science is that they demonstrate a willingness to expose their theories to the actual scientific process. It would seem that some sort of testable hypothesis would be essential to that. Perhaps a significant, complex development that could be shown to have occurred in one step, and which required mulitple, concurrent, and separate mutations. Complex effects from a control gene clearly would not meet this standard, since they can be traced to a single cause.

Then there's this problem:

Originally Posted by LMM

The ID proponents won't accept this argument. They're positing an omniscient and perfect intelligence that doesn't need to model, because it knows how its design will turn out. And it doesn't need to collect information because it has all information. It being the creator of the universe, it already knows everything about everything in the universe, including all interlocking chains of potential cause and effect.

I take this as a clear sign that they are working backwards from a preferred result, rather than inferring results from the data. Show me that an intelligent design has occurred, then we can talk about ferreting out information about the designer.


I have to add that I see no problem with religious believers choosing to see intelligent design in the world as a means of reconciling their beliefs with scientific knowledge. My problem is with those who insist that science somehow proves intelligent design, but rely on bogus science to do so.

There was a recent "debate" at UC Davis that claimed to be an honest discussion of ID. It was sponsored by a Christian group, and the ground rules included restricting the opponents to only asking questions of the proponents, and presenting no arguments of their own. Some "science".

[Loopydude]

Originally Posted by Apos

Actually, KE tautomerization is just a fancy case of quantum tunneling, I believe.

Did I say it wasn't tunneling? I said it's more pedestrian than something like diproton transfer, and is a manifestation of electron resonance.

Originally Posted by Apos

True, but again, there may well be subtlties that we have yet to appreciate, and I wouldn't want to hang my hat on the idea that none exist with any relevance to evolutionary history.

Again, as all chemistry relies on the motion and configuration of electrons, it's rather bleedingly obvious that quantum mechanics provides the most fundamental description of how the building blocks of life assemble and interact. It's also essential to describing the assembly of rocks, which are not alive. So what is it that really distinguishes a rock from an amoeba? Could it be complexity? So do I need quantum mechanics for life, or complexity? And if I can model life by introducing stochastic elements which do not rely upon embedding realistic simulations of the behavior of sub-atomic particles, might that not be sufficient for the time being, until we can show some clear evidence that we need some "quantum magic" to breath life into matter? I tend to think so. Those who are working on the simulations must agree, or they would still be waiting for Deep Thought and the Pentium 10¹⁰⁰.

[Loopydude]

Originally Posted by Apos

Likewise, I think that evolution, if it is to be useful as a descriptive theory to be applied to creatures we might encounter (whether on our planet, or new life elsewhere), has to imply a particular character that demonstrates that it came about via evolution and NOT some other process (whether ID or some other unknown process). We can't fall into the habit of just using evolution as an explain-all.

I'm sure when someone encounters something alive, the existence of which defies any attempt at explanation by natural selection and/or genetic drift, other alternatives will be considered. Given the indisputable successes of neo-Darwinian evolution, it would take something quite remarkable to make a case for abandoning it. So remarkable, in fact, that apparently we can't think of specific characteristics such an entity might have. A confoundingly high level of complexity is proof of nothing except that it confounds us. The defining quality of the "unevolved" is that it cannot have arisen from a process of random mutation and natural selection; that it is impossible to show its emergence via stochastic processes. I think the demonstrable power of evolution as a theory of life rather demands that we test it thoroughly before eliminating its applicability. Behe and his ilk give up far too early; but then, they're not motivated to do otherwise.

[Apos]

Originally Posted by Loopydude

I'm sure when someone encounters something alive, the existence of which defies any attempt at explanation by natural selection and/or genetic drift, other alternatives will be considered.

For many people, unfortunately, I'm not sure how they would come to the conclusion that something defies evolutionary mechanisms at all. I'm having a hard enough proposing ANY basic description of something that would seem to imply a non-darwinian process. That's not the way it should be.

Given the indisputable successes of neo-Darwinian evolution, it would take something quite remarkable to make a case for abandoning it.

True. But it _shouldn't_ take anything remarkable to explain what a counter-example to a good, well-defined process theory is. I sometimes think (and am arguing now) that too many defenders of evolution speak of the theory as too-all-powerful. What we need to be clear about is that it is not all-powerful, that it is a very specific process, and simply that the life we know on earth bears all the hallmarks of what we could expect from that _particular_ process, as opposed to any other one of which we can think of.

[Apos]

Originally Posted by Twoflower

I have to admit I haven't paid much attention to ID, under the presumption that it is just creationism in disguise.

Unfortunately, it's creationism with a wide appeal to the otherwise well-educated, which was often creationism's stumbling block when trying to get elites on its side.

One question: is there any peer-reviewed, published research in support of ID?

Sort of. Stephen Meyer, I believe it was, got a literature review article about the ID take on the Cambrian explosion published. They are trying to publish, which is better than the creationists ever did (they made up ophony journals!), albiet this first article requiring a bit of subterfuge.

Seems to me the first step if ID proponents want to claim to be doing actual science is that they demonstrate a willingness to expose their theories to the actual scientific process. It would seem that some sort of testable hypothesis would be essential to that. Perhaps a significant, complex development that could be shown to have occurred in one step, and which required mulitple, concurrent, and separate mutations. Complex effects from a control gene clearly would not meet this standard, since they can be traced to a single cause.

Agreed on all counts. As Finch says, ID as a science could have some legitimate applications. But almost every single one of the major ID people is some falvor of activist Christian trying to find work for God to do.

I take this as a clear sign that they are working backwards from a preferred result, rather than inferring results from the data. Show me that an intelligent design has occurred, then we can talk about ferreting out information about the designer.

That is how they work: this system could not have been evolved, it must have ben designed. Who is the designer? How was it done? Oh, don't ask us! We don't know! (ITS GOD, GOD GOD GOD GOD GOD GOD GOD)

There was a recent "debate" at UC Davis that claimed to be an honest discussion of ID. It was sponsored by a Christian group, and the ground rules included restricting the opponents to only asking questions of the proponents, and presenting no arguments of their own. Some "science".

Hmmm. I've now heard of such debates on several colleges throughout the nation. Interesting.

[Apos]

Originally Posted by Loopydude

Again, as all chemistry relies on the motion and configuration of electrons, it's rather bleedingly obvious that quantum mechanics provides the most fundamental description of how the building blocks of life assemble and interact. It's also essential to describing the assembly of rocks, which are not alive. So what is it that really distinguishes a rock from an amoeba? Could it be complexity? So do I need quantum mechanics for life, or complexity? And if I can model life by introducing stochastic elements which do not rely upon embedding realistic simulations of the behavior of sub-atomic particles, might that not be sufficient for the time being, until we can show some clear evidence that we need some "quantum magic" to breath life into matter?

Well, it isn't a question of need, and quantum interactions aren't magic. They just produce events that would be unexpected from the perspective of a stochastic model. Nor is it really a case of QM being central to life. It's just part of the picture. But there is a lot of legitimate scientific debate over how QM could have influenced and continues to influence the course of evolution in ways that a "sticky" model just couldn't fully capture.

[Loopydude]

Originally Posted by Apos

For many people, unfortunately, I'm not sure how they would come to the conclusion that something defies evolutionary mechanisms at all. I'm having a hard enough proposing ANY basic description of something that would seem to imply a non-darwinian process. That's not the way it should be.

Why not? If I look through a telescope and see a body revolving around a star in an eliptical orbit, I have to have a good and specific idea of what else might account for this phenomenon if GR is to be a good theory? Evolution doesn't just describe, it explains, and when one comes to appreciate the ubiquity of emergent phenomena, it is indeed difficult to come up with a realistic example of something we might expect to stumble upon that shows clear evidence of design. It is precisely because there are vast amounts of time, and vast numbers of permutations invoved, that evolved systems can appear so fine-tuned as to be designed. The theory can't help it if it is actually that powerful. It also can't help it if it happens to do a brilliant job of describing almost everything its been applied to appropriately.

I'm sure as soon as somebody looks through a telescope and sees a planet tracing a square orbit around a star, they'll wonder most confoundedly if GR might not be the best explanatory framework to account for the observation. If we ever find a living creature that has no antecedents that could possibly be accounted for by Earthly natural selection, then we can wonder mightily where the hell it came from. I suppose, as you say, a massively saltatory specimine should be enough to make one wonder about orifings; but only enough to say it didn't evolve naturally on Earth. I can analyze the sequence of a lentivirus and see very quickly that a bacterial drug-resistance gene with a cytomegalovirus promoter has somehow found its way into a spot where a native gag-pol gene used to be. Now I can begin searching for an explanation. Was it some fantastically unlikely, but still natural, recombination? How could this thing have replicated, considering the fact it not lacks sequences critical for that function? Do I know that there are scientists out there who engineer viruses this way all the time? If I didn't, could I arrive at that conclusion by induction? Quite probably, yes.

I think, basically, Evolution as it stands provides all the tools needed to evaluate whether something must have been designed, but the process would involve eliminating other possibilities before resorting to design as the explanation, which isn't easy when things aren't painfully obvious. What's wrong with that? I think the reason we're scratching our heads over examples is because we're having a hard time imagine a living organism in the real world that would carry such obvious signs of manipulation, yet would have escaped notice up to now. If the signs are extremely subtle, like the ID folks claim, then it will indeed take a lot of effort to rule out the incredibly successful theoretical framework that has worked so well for all the other problems it's been applied to. The reason Evolution is so successful is precisely because random mutation and natural selection is such a poweful "force" for generating change that is described as "adaptive" (even though I think that's a poor way of putting it). I see no practical problem associated with having to grapple with that reality. Design is an extraodinary claim. It ought to require extraordinary evidence.