Biochemist Michael Behe created a huge controversy in the field of evolutionary biology a couple of decades ago when he came out with his book Darwin's Black Box in which he introduced the concept of irreducible complexity (IC) and argued that, although IC is ubiquitous in living things, it cannot be accounted for by any theory that insists that evolution is an unguided process.
Now Behe has again proven himself the bete noir of naturalistic evolutionists with the recent release of Darwin Devolves in which he turns the whole theory of evolution on its head.
I have not yet finished the book and don't know what implications he will draw from the research he has documented so far, but his argument thus far is revolutionary.
As traditionally taught, Darwinian evolution holds that life began as a very simple cell and that gradually, over vast stretches of time, the descendents of that cell increased in complexity, adding new genetic information through mutation and natural selection, eventually culminating in the enormous diversity of living things we see today.
Behe amasses an impressive array of contemporary scientific research to show that that's not what happens at all. The evolutionary process, Behe argues, is actually the reverse of the traditional view. The evidence that has been acquired since the turn of the millenium reveals that when species adapt to their environment and new varieties are formed it's actually by means of a loss of genetic information.
Adaptation is usually a result of genes being "broken or blunted" thus resulting in less genetic diversity than the parent species had but allowing the daughter species to thrive in a particular environment. He writes that, "...the great majority of even beneficial positively selected mutations damage an organism's genetic information - either degrading or outright destroying [genetic function]."
An example is the bacterium Escherichia coli which normally cannot eat citrate in the presence of oxygen. Researchers, however, have found that a mutant strain of E. coli could eat citrate when oxygen was present giving the mutant an enormous advantage over the normal variety.
When the researchers studied the mutant to learn what change in its molecular makeup had triggered this ability they discovered that the gene for a protein that imports citrate into the cell is switched off when oxygen is present, but that in the mutant form the control region for that gene was broken, thus keeping it "on" all the time and continuously producing the protein that imported the citrate.
In other words, in this and every other case of evolutionary change that can be studied at the molecular level, the change is a result of a loss of genetic information, not a gain.
This has stunning implications. If Behe's right it means that the classical evolutionary tale that starts with chemicals in some primordial soup coming together to form a replicating cell and then leading through a long process of mutation and natural selection to increased genetic information and complexity is exactly wrong. In fact, the reverse appears to be the case.
It appears that in the beginning there was an enormous reservoir of genetic information stored in a relatively few basic forms of living things and that over time mutation and natural selection brought about increasing diversity of species by actually diminishing the amount of that information.
If Behe is right it'll surely generate a firestorm in the scientific and philosophical communities since its main thesis is that contemporary science is completely at odds with naturalistic "molecules to man" Darwinism and much more compatible with the traditional view that life is the product of intelligent agency.
Darwin Devolves is not overly technical and will, I think, be must reading for anyone interested in the questions of origins and the philosophical and scientific implications of those questions.
