In earlier posts in this series on the science of purpose, I pointed out that dualities have been employed as fictions of language, a façon de parler, throughout the history of western science as a means of describing complex phenomena in terms compatible with our subject-object metaphysical (SOM) framework. But while these dualities have practical value, they actually confound our deeper understanding of physical reality. The best solution is the idea of the complementarity, where context-dependence is necessary to explain the observed phenomena.
Even something as basic as m (mass) itself illustrates this problem where it can either be a (gravitational) force in one context or the (inertial) object that requires force for acceleration in another context.
And as I’ve pointed out repeatedly, our goal in this project is to challenge one of the most fundamental dualities of science, the structure-function relationship (SFR), because of its role in supporting scientism. My claim all along has been that, like all other dualisms in use in SOM, the SFR dualism is a construct, not a reality.
It is now time to return to the structure-function relationship to expose the fallacy that undergirds it. We can do this by acknowledging that the SFR duality has taken us to a conceptual limit, that of the two major compelling conundrums of biology: emergence and specified irreducible complexity. The reason they are conundrums is the same reason as for all the other conundrums: their definition is based on a misleading duality. But once we recognize that dualities are fictions of language, the fictional conundrum dissipates.
Anticipating Michael Behe
Erwin Schrödinger in 1947 recognized in very abstract terms what Michael Behe so brilliantly articulated in Darwin’s Black Box. Simply put, the message is just this: from a stepwise randomness-selection approach, “you can’t get there from here.” So that the only means of reconciling the otherwise irreconcilable was to concoct the mysterium of emergence. That is to say, the irreducible qualities of biota somehow emerge inexplicably!
Virtually everything in biota demonstrates this. But for the sake of illustration, one of innumerable straightforward examples is offered here: penguins. The only way to get to inland Antarctica is to fly. That’s why there are no foxes or polar bears there, unlike in the Arctic. In the absence of those land predators, flying becomes unnecessary and cumbersome. So in just the same way that the (now extinct) dodos of Mauritius shed their flight in favor of feeding on a land initially free of predators, penguins traded swimming for flying and went fishing for their food.
But in order to fly over to Antarctica in the first place, penguin ancestors had to have hollow bones. Yet in order to dive for fish when the rest of your body is lighter-than-water blubber and feathers, the hollow bones they arrived with had to become the densest bones in the animal kingdom! And wings had to become flippers. Much additional feather and fat insulation were needed too.
Simply put, there is no gradualistic pathway to explain penguins…or cetaceans, or bats, or marine iguanas, etc., or almost anything else such as the bacterial flagellum or the blood-clotting cascade, as Behe made clear.
But penguins and cetaceans and bats and the clotting cascade and ALL of life’s inconceivable complexity do exist! How?
There Is Only One Answer Left to Us
The answer is that the duality between emergence and specified irreducible complexity must be discarded. In discarding it, we create an ontological framework that is entirely compatible with Thomistic Aristotelianism and that provides a thorough refutation of scientism.
It’s not as difficult to do so as you might think. Consider: the conundrum of specified irreducible complexity is that its genesis cannot be predicted a priori, but its rigorous understanding is readily apparent a posteriori. The intricately detailed explanation of bacterial flagella a posteriori is itself what leads to the hypothesis of irreducible complexity. This fact argues against its random genesis. And a strangely similar “conundrum” exists with what we call emergence: a “property” is said to be emergent when it is irreducible, unpredictable, and non-deducible from the “properties” of its component parts.
“The higher quality emerges from the lower level of existence and has its roots therein, but emerges therefrom, and does not belong to that lower level, but constitutes in its possessor a new order of existence, with its special laws of behavior.”
Samuel Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920)
As I wrote earlier, a structure only creates function when a meaningful property emerges from that function. With that we’re ready for the final, crucial steps. We have seen that specified irreducible complexity pertains to functional structures and emergence describes functional properties. From this we can at last conclude: emergence, which is a quite real and demonstrable fact of nature, is the realization of specified irreducible complexity. Both are irreducible and non-predictable. Specified irreducible complexity is the theory about mechanism and emergence is the fact about irreducible properties. In this way, they form a clearly recognizable complementarity.
The Unifying Postulate
That brings us to the unifying postulate that reconciles purpose and physics: All emergent properties are realizations of specified irreducible complexity (SIC), because the a priori functional requirement determines the a posteriori structure. In this light, structure and function are an inseparable complementarity rather than a dualism.
Suppose, for example, that you wanted to construct a biosphere with the following properties: (a) chemicals that can store and transfer energy, (b) molecules that can act as solvent and heat/conductance modifiers, and (c) molecules that can be built up into three dimensions.
All you’d need for these three essentials of life would be CHNOPS — the elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur — from which some 99 percent of all of life is composed. From those six elements, all biomolecules can be constructed, needing only a handful of inorganic elements for special duty. Jaques Monod, one of the premier architects of 20th century scientism, acknowledged this and called the realization a “necessity.” In that he was right, but he went on to promulgate yet another misleading dualism when he interpreted these facts of nature as a manifestation, as he put it his famed book title, of Chance and Necessity. That was an error.
On the basis of the unity of emergence and specified irreducible complexity, we now know the truth: Life itself is the result of Purpose and Necessity.
Necessity in the very real sense that those elements of CHNOPS plainly exist to endow biomolecules with the properties necessary for life.
Purpose in the very real sense that those necessary properties plainly exist to endow biomolecules with the power to perform the functions necessary for life.
Seen this way, there is no longer an opposing duality. Instead, we arrive at a unifying complementarity of purpose and necessity, formerly described under the misleading rubric of the structure-function duality. That is, the properties defined by emergence (E) and the functions defined by specified irreducible complexity (SIC) come into existence because of the purposeful, necessary design, the telos, embedded in the fabric of the universe. This unification of SIC and E by telos is in fact the “new law” that Schrödinger predicted must exist, as did Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas.
Once we realize that functional structure is not accidental or randomly generated, it follows that the “emergent irreducible complexity” of life is in fact “necessarily specified” such that we are finally able to account forthe real scientific fact of purpose or telos.
By acknowledging as much, we can now fill the void, having identified what was missing. And by reinserting purpose in the true ontology of our existence, including purpose in a new scientific framework, life becomes thoroughly comprehensible, both scientifically and metaphysically.
