Modularity, A distinguishing property of life

When a human designs something, (s)he knows what the overall purpose of the design is, and uses that knowledge to make the design more efficient, less expensive, less complex, more dependable, etc. For example, multi-room buildings have adjacent rooms separated by integral shared walls, rather than separated by a pair of wall modules back to back between the adjacent rooms. Another example: a faucet designed to mix hot and cold water brings both water supplies to a mixing point, and has valves for modulating the ratio of the flow of hot and cold water in order to achieve different temperatures. The design of a modern single-lever faucet integrates both the mixing function and the ratio modulating function. A third example is integrated electronic circuits, which are laid out by the designer to fit in a socket with multiple pin connections for the various functions built into the design.If life structures and processes were designed by a designer, i.e. an entity who knew how the parts would fit together and function together, one would expect to find evidence of integrated design throughout life forms. However, the structures and processes of life are largely modular. That is, the bits and pieces of living things are largely distinct from each other. Thus it is possible to smash up a living thing and get out of it pieces which work substantially as they did in the assembled life form. That property is what makes possible the research fields of biochemistry and molecular biology. Consider the proteins which are enzymes, for example. Each enzyme catalyzes a specific reaction or closely related set of reactions at a specific catalytic site on the enzyme. The catalytic site is often only a small part of the protein. In an integrated design, it could be more efficient to make multple uses of individual proteins, rather than having a different protein platform for each type of catalytic site. One would expect to find multiple catalytic sites on some proteins, each site capable of catalyzing a different reaction.Modularity is the rule, not the exception in the design of life forms. Each piece has an existence largely independent of the other pieces. I am proposing that the absence of integrated design characteristics in life forms is scientific evidence against a designer who knew the ultimate purpose of the parts in life forms.

Mr. Jack,
In the bad old days of early radios, they were constructed of off-the-shelf parts that were not limited to being used in one specific radio. That is, many, probably most, of the parts were not designed to be used in the specific radio. When the radio was built, the stand-alone parts were connected by stand-alone wires, If the radio were broken up, the stand-alone parts would be recoverable with bits of wire dangling from them, and many would retain functionality so would be reusable. Such early radios lacked components with integrated design characteristics. The designers of modern radios use integrated design. Such radios are composed largely of integrated circuits, i.e. dedicated "chips". If the chips are smashed, you do not get stand-alone functional parts because of the integratedness of the design of the insides. It is that type of integratedness which is lacking in life forms. That lack suggests the absence of a designer who knew in advance how the parts of life would functionally relate to each other.The various functionally distinct parts of life forms connect and communicate by the biological equivalent of wires: hormones and other diffusable molecules which signal their presence by binding at specific binding sites on or in the stand-alone components of life. An occupied binding site performs a function similar to that of solder, making a working junction. Such communication links between stand-alone parts of living things are necessary because the parts do not have integrated designs.Communication between parts within a life form are analogous to human communication through the post office. Millions of individuals and institutions at postal addresses are unknown to any one of us, but we can decide to contact an individual or organization at a postal address, by looking up the name and address, and putting it on a stamped envelope. At the time the postal mail system was devised, its devisers had no idea as to how it would be used by millions of individuals and institutions, and how those parts would be related. The components of life forms have that same characteristic: they come into existence largely independent of each other, but some parts communicate with other parts by emitting and binding hormones and other diffusable molecules. A designer who knew in advance that certain parts would need to communicate with other parts would have incorporated faster, simpler, more efficient direct links into the design. Again, the absence of such links in life forms is evidence against the existence of a designer.

Phage00700,
The issue is not what natural selection would or would not do. The issue is: can we come up with evidence for or against the existence of a designer (intelligent or not) of life forms ? I am proposing that the absence of evidence of integrated design in life forms is evidence of the absence of a designer.I think you are wrong to assume that it would not be possible to tell the difference between the result of natural selection amd the result of intentional, willful design. Natural selection does not know what the purpose of the process is. A designer does know the purpose of a design, so knows something about the future. This has consequences, which I am suggesting may provide ways to distinguish between natural selection and intelligent design.

Phage0070,
Computer programmers create reusable modules precisely because they do not know, and do not want to excessively limit, the specific applications in which the modules can and will be used. Are you suggesting that an intelligent designer would have designed modules out of which unpredictable varieties of life forms could be assembled, like assemblages of modules in software apps, independent of the module designer, rather than designing individual life forms as integrated systems ? If the designer did not know what life forms would result, (s)he did not design them.

"I don't know if anyone has said this already, but one argument I expected to see is that animals don't begin to decay until they no longer possess the quality of life, or something along those lines. It is formerly living organic matter that is now dead that is most subject to decay, not life." -PercyThe above statement is incorrect. All life is decaying all the time. A substantial portion of every living thing's metabolic activity is dedicated to repair and replacement of parts which have decayed to the point of no longer functioning properly.

"If all enzymes were active all of the time, would this overload the cells and create a complex chaotic mess?" - traderdrewHaving multiple catalytic sites on the same protein platform does not mean the catalytic sites are active simultaneously. In additioon to up and down regulation of the synthesis of proteins at the DNA and RNA level, many catalytic sites of enzymes are subject to activation or inactivation by reversible covalent modification."There is also the example of a giraffe's neck. It has an integrated package of biological functions working together."The giraffe's neck is not an integrated package. If parts can be removed from a biological entity such as the giraffe's neck and remain functional, the biological entity has a modular design/organization, not an integrated one.

Thanks, RAZD, for the info on html extensions for this site. I had wondered how quotations were formatted for posting.

Physicists have put forward the idea, I believe based on observed results in experiments, that symmetric pairs of particles are constantly appearing out of nothing, then annihilating each other almost instantaneously. In the pre-universe nothingness, there would have been no time and no position, i.e. nothingness was a single degeneracy without dimensions. Whenever a particle pair arose, time, position and energy existed while the particles existed. In almost all instances, the particles arose near enough to each other to mutually annihilate. However, if a pair once arose so far apart that, even at the speed of light, it would take some time for the particles to reach each other, assuming they could travel gravity-determined paths leading to collision. Energy, time and position would all have persisted, thereby initiating the extant universe. Because nothingness would have been infinite, with the probability of a nearly infinite number of particle pairs arising and annihilating, the probability of the universe coming into existence from nothingness would have been 1, i.e. 100% predictable.

All living things possess one or more information systems, which collect. store, retrieve, analyze and respond to information. Nothing non-living does so. Do not mistake what computers do for possessing and using information. Computers merely read and set switches. No information goes into a computer or comes into existence from a computer's activity until a brain interprets the switch settings, which have to be presented in a form compatible with our senses and physical skills.Do not mistake discernible order in non-living matter, such as crystals, for information.Living things do not, and are incapable of, directly perceiving reality. Living things encode representations of reality and perceive those representations. We humans mistake what our senses present to us for reality. It is always a representation, perceived a few milliseconds after the presumed reality moment had passed.Imagine what a universe without life would be like. Nothing yet identified in the non-living universe stores retrieves or interprets information. Changes in time and positions are sensed by comparing a representation of an earlier reality with a representation of a more recent reality, and detecting a difference. Time and positiion, and changes of time and position, exist only in the workings of the information systems of living things. Time, position and changes therein would be meaningless in a life-free universe.Rather than being improbable accidents of physics and chemistry, perhaps life is an essential part of the universe, its only information system, giving the universe the the dimensions of time and position.Assuming life and its information systems are a part of the natural universe, there should be a non-life natural phenomenon from which the information systems of living things could have developed. The only candidate of which I am aware is a phenomenon at the quantum mechanical level, in which the difference in states of two particles in a pair seem to be remembered when the particles become far apart.

Thanks for getting back to the topic. I was hoping for more feedback.Modular designs are essentially unfinished designs. They permit correction of errors and replacing less efficient modules with more efficient ones. If life were the work of a super-natural, omnicient, designer, shouldn't we expect perfection in the design ? Isn't that central to the arguments of creationists that life has not evolved, but is, and remains, the way it was created ?Designs by humans get refined and improved, as experience reveals weaknesses in the orignial. Such refinements and improvements are most readily done on a modular design. If we know in advance exactly how to build a device which will function optimally, how to minimize the probability of device failure, and how to keep construction and maintenance costs under adequate control, integrated design will be employed wherever it is advantageous.The main reason for using modular design in software is that it is constantly being changed, to correct bugs, to stymy hackers, to accelerate execution, to add capabilities, etc. If programmers knew from the beginning precisely how the program would have to function, and could code flawlessly every time, would they still be motivated to build in so much flexibility, modifiability, reuseability, into modules ? Would they not, for example, use more constants and fewer user-settable variables, more steps in do loops and rarer criteria for escapes to other modules ? Which is faster: executing the next command in machine language or looking up the address at which to find the next command ? Admittedly, compactness of code and speed of execution are no longer valued the way they were when RAMs were much smaller, and CPUs much slower.

"collect, store, retrieve, analyze and respond" are terms which describe activities of both sentient and non-sentient life forms. Without performing them, life forms would have greatly reduced chances of survival. Cameras do not "see", microphones do not "hear", gas chromatographs do not "smell", etc, and computers do not "collect, store, retrieve, analyze or respond". Rather, we use computers to assist our efforts to "collect, store, retrieve, analyze and respond". Humans initiate a computer's cascade of switch settings, and humans interpret a computer's outputs, It is an illusion to think of the computer as anything more than a switch setting and reading machine. Information is encoded by humans in switch settings, and decoded by interpreting switch settings. The encoded cascade of switch settings only becomes informationsal through the human interface.

PLese translate "bugger all" for those of us on the west side of the Atlantic.

Every concept we have is projected by us. We have no way to directly observe what is in the world.I think you are misusing the word "respond". You are a bit too comfortable thinking anthroporphically about the actions of machines. The automatic door does not respond. An electrical signal triggered by the infrared beam causes a motor to run which opens the door.

Sorry, but I most emphatically do believe it, because it is an inescapable biological fact of life. We imperfectly perceive reality through our senses. We have no other way to do it.It seems to me that "respond" implies an element of choice among possible responses, and attempting to select an optimal response. If someone asks a question we usually try to respond by answering coherently and usefully. The automatic door mechanism has no choice. If it receives the electrical signal, the door opens. I do not think of machines as responding.

To a certain degree, yes. If the plant is overheating from absorbing too much sun, some plants have the option of letting their leaves hang more vertically, thereby reducing the amount of sunlight aborbed, and heat which must be dissipated by evaporation of water. This typicaly results in a midday dip in photosynthetic rate. If the level of sunlight is persistently lower than what the plant can use for photosynthesis,and leaf position with respect to sunlight has been optimized, plants make more chlorophyll in the leaves, becoming noticeably darker green, thereby increasing the efficiency with which sunlight is trapped. Also, as plants grow, they tend to grow about 3 layers of leaves, because that is usually sufficient to trap almost all of the available sunlight. If the water supply of the plant is insufficient to meet its needs for evaporative cooling, it will shut its stomates, thereby depriving itself of carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, and causing the leaves to heat up unless the plant reduces the orientation of the leaves toward sunlight. Bottom line: a plant's response to sunlight is modulated by several interacting environmental factors.