It is truly a joy to watch the “evolution debates” through the prism of The Design Matrix. For example, Peter Forbes reviews two new books on evolution, including The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution, by Sean B Carroll. Let’s conider this review in the light of the DM.

Forbes writes

But for Carroll celebration is not enough. He is troubled by the remorseless attacks on evolution in the US by rightwing evangelicals and says: “The body of new evidence I will describe in this book clinches the case for biological evolution as the basis for life’s diversity, beyond any reasonable doubt.” Carroll, at the University of Wisconsin, is one of the pioneers of evolutionary developmental biology (”Evo Devo”), the science of how genes tell organisms to form the shapes they do, both in growing from the egg and in evolving over time.

Yet the irony here is the fact that Evo-Devo fits quite comfortably within a teleological perspective of evolution as explored in The Design Matrix. In fact, I have already used this blog to touch on some of points of convergence. For example, see A Tool Kit; Evolution Genes; Front-loading with Homeodomains; Ways to Think About the Frontloading of Animals. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to reading Carroll’s new book.

While discussing one of Carroll’s arguments, Forbes notes:

duplicated genes that can then evolve new functions are one of the key engines of evolution; nature, as Carroll points out, is a tinkerer, a bricoleur

Gene duplications are discussed in Chapter 7. While a non-teleological perspective views gene duplication as a brute given, and evolution occurs with and without it, the front-loading perspective predicts that something akin to gene duplication would indeed be a “key engine of evolution.” As for the tinkerer, this is explored in Chapter 9. Yes indeed, the blind watchmaker works best as a tinkerer, a feature we can use when trying to assess a design inference.

Forbes eventually pulls Intelligent Design into the review:

Which brings me to so-called “intelligent design”, the idea that some biological structures are too complex to have evolved under natural selection.

First, Forbes is just invoking the Traditional Template (as discussed in Chapter 2). Second, no where does the DM argue that some biological structures are too complex to have evolved under natural selection. As a consequence of these two points, Forbes offers an argument that poses no challenge in the Matrix:

Fossil genes are the nemesis of intelligent design. What sort of grand designer would litter his creations with decayed copies of genes that we know are still functional in other creatures? There is a simpler explanation. Fossil genes have decayed because they are no longer under selection pressure. We humans use our eyes more than our noses. As Carroll says: “the rule of DNA code is use it or lose it.”

Pseudogenes are discussed in Chapter 9 and 10 and are scored as things that are not designed. Since Forbes comes to the table from the perspective of the Traditional Template, it is no surprise that he is constrained to black-and-white thinking, as if either every biotic feature must be the product of intelligent design or no feature can be the product of intelligent design. The Design Matrix explores the middle ground that is not seen by Forbes.

What’s most useful here is Carroll’s observation - “the rule of DNA code is use it or lose it.” This rule is used to explain why we are unlikely to find some hidden messages encoded in the genome (see Chapter 6) and also comes into play big-time when it comes to exploring front-loading and evolution (Chapter 7).

Finally, we have this:

The most vivid and bounteous evidence we have for natural selection concerns two kinds of genes: those that never change (immortals) and are going strong at more than 2 billion years old; and those that are no longer used (fossil genes) but live on, moth-eaten, accumulating more and more deleterious mutations. The immortal genes are the 500 or so that are vital for the life processes of every cell. These are virtually identical in every living creature, from primitive archaeobacteria that can live in the boiling geysers of Yellowstone Park to Einstein’s brain cells. They have been preserved intact by selection because most mutations to these would be fatal: if a cell stops working it cannot reproduce.

There is no good reason to think Archaea are “primitive,” but the point about 500 or so immortal genes is just more grist for the Matrix. From one perspective, these could be a portion of the architecture and composition of the original cells, thus shaping evolution for billions of years (again, Chapter 7). What’s more, did this universal set of immortal genes really come into existence through great spans of tinkering? Chapter 8 comes into play here.