By: Arash Daklan

The idea of irreducible complexity, in my point of view, is suffering from a very strong presupposition. For an example see Michael Behe (1996)[i] and also Minnish and Meyer (2004)[ii]. Behe uses a mouse trap as an example to show that there are some organisms which cannot have functions without each one of its parts. This approach is flawed for two reasons. At first, it is not important that a mouse trap has not its function, unless it is completed. The function is the sort of things that are important for us and not for the nature itself, then if you put aside the teleological interpretation it will not be important that the organism has any function or not, even it is not important that the organism as a whole is dead or alive. There is a way that dead organisms can develop to live ones. Minnish and Meyer in their mentioned essay say that “The data from Y. pestis presented here seems to indicate that loss of one constituent in the system leads to the gradual loss of others.” In the previous sentence they have confessed that “Contrary to popular belief, we have no detailed account for the evolution of any molecular machine.” However, they have resulted in their article that “Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely, irreducible complexity.” The second matter is that the meaning of “Gradual loss of others” in Minnish and Meyer means that we are thinking about the living cell. Let see how it is possible to develop a complete living cell by a very short life-time cells. Suppose the below code:



It is shaped by two different strings, A and B. This is the DNA code of a living cell. Every box is a sequence of Adenine, Temin, Cytosine, and Guanine. Suppose that it is the DNA code of a very unstable form of a living cell; a DNA-like code[iii], maybe. It will die very soon. Additionally, perhaps it cannot duplicate itself. After its death the string will be collapsed from the weakest part that is indicted by a dark line:



Each of these strings can be divided into two strings:



They can make new compounds as below:



And they can shape each one of the below forms:



This schema can show us that it is very natural to think that life can emerge from non-living matter by passing through the middle stages as living-like organisms; the organisms which could not duplicate themselves and die very soon. In this way if we accept that the cell organism is reducible to its DNA and its genetic codes then we can find that it can go through the same way that Darwin says in his Origin of species. By using Darwin’s Famous claim in the sixth chapter of his book:
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.
Behe wants to show that he has found this kind of organism. I refer to Dawkins (1986)[iv] for answer to his claim. According to DNA codes, I say that it is possible for an organism to improve itself step by step in DNA code levels because of biochemical causes. The events in chemical level may be deemed to be an emergent phenomenon in organism levels. I mean that even if we confront a gap in the evolution steps in organisms we cannot suddenly infer that Darwin’s idea is flawed. We do not know so many things about the biochemical realities in the beginning era of life. For example we think that the life forms have emerged after composing of atmosphere. However, it is possible that it can be started before that. If we pay attention that in those eras the measure of background radiation resulting from uranium decaying was more than nowadays; just 3 billions years ago it was 1.75 times the contemporary measure, then it is very natural to think that the probability of mutation was much more than nowadays, especially when we see that these mutations are very easier to occur in the simpler strings of the DNA-like codes. There are so many things that we do not know. Reductionism is not the solution as the same way that irreducibility is. I mean, if you think that some complexity is not reducible you are not obliged to do more, but if you say that you can reduce something to something else then you are obliged to explain “How”. If an ir-reductionst is obliged to do more either –as I will show later, he will fall in reductionism or they will produce questions which cannot be answered by science. Such as “Who is the designer and what is the designer's purpose?” This is the idea of TOR that I explained above; you should choose the one which enforces you to do more researches because your system of beliefs is never complete; because of GIT. I do not accept Millstein’s idea that one can say that we are wasting time[v]. Who can say that which action is time-wasting and which one is not, if we remember that it took about 1700 years for us to solve Zeno’s paradoxes, or it took, at least, about 2000 years for us to make an instrument for flying. Just suppose that if we had believed Lord Kevin’s foresight we could not make airplane. Science does not ask that “Is something possible or not?” It also does not hear any person who says that something is impossible. It just asks a question “How it is possible to do something?” There is no example in the history of science that you can find that it has been failed to find a way to complete its mission.

[i] - Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, New York: Free
Press, 1996.

[ii] - Scott A. Minnich and Stephen C. Meyer, 2004. Genetic analysis of coordinate flagellar and type III regulatory circuits in pathogenic bacteria, Available on website (http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?id=389)

[iii] - This DNA like code, I think, maybe is the ancestor of the both DNA and RNA. That is not surprising that we haven’t found it, because it is very likely that after the era of DNA and RNA these living-like cells may be disappeared. Maybe they have been eaten by the first DNA-armed cell as food.
[iv] - Richard Dawkins, 1986. The Blind Watchmaker. Harlow, Longman.
[v] - Robert L. Millstein, 2003. HOW NOT TO ARGUE FOR THE INDETERMINISM OF EVOLUTION: A LOOK AT TWO RECENT ATTEMPTS TO SETTLE THE ISSUE. Andreas Hüttemann, (ed.), Determinism in Physics and Biology, Paderborn: Mentis, 91-107. (Available on website: http://www-philosophy.ucdavis.edu/millstein/papers/millstein_indeterminism.pdf )