Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Darwin's Mistake and Darwin's Triumph


After Chris of Mixing
Memory and Deric
Bownds of Deric Bownds' Mindblog had already drawn attention to the prefinal
version of this article, “Darwin’s
mistake: Explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds” by
Derek
Penn, Keith
Holyoak and Daniel
Povinelli has now finally been published in the current issue of the Behavioral
and Brain Sciences.




Penn, who’s affiliated with the Cognitive
Evolution Group at the University of Louisiana, and the University of
California, Los Angeles, Holyoak, Professor of Psychology at the University of
California, and Povinelli, Professor of Biology at the University of Louisiana,
and also a member of the Cognitive Evolution Group, argue that




“Over the last quarter century, the dominant tendency in comparative
cognitive psychology has been to emphasize the similarities between human and
nonhuman minds and to downplay the differences as “one of degree and not of
kind” (Darwin 1871). In the present target article, we argue that Darwin was
mistaken: the profound biological continuity between human and nonhuman animals
masks an equally profound discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. To
wit, there is a significant discontinuity in the degree to which human and
nonhuman animals are able to approximate the higher-order, systematic,
relational capabilities of a physical symbol system (PSS) (Newell 1980). We show
that this symbolic-relational discontinuity pervades nearly every domain of
cognition and runs much deeper than even the spectacular scaffolding provided by
language or culture alone can explain. We propose a representational-level
specification as to where human and nonhuman animals’ abilities to approximate a
PSS are similar and where they differ. We conclude by suggesting that recent
symbolic-connectionist models of cognition shed new light on the mechanisms that
underlie the gap between human and nonhuman minds.”



As was to expected the article sparked quite a lot of heated responses in the
comment section both for it’s title and for its discontinuist view of human
cognitive which emphasizes the large gulf that lies between human and nonhuman
cognition. Those who are afraid that again a creationist/ID paper has made it
into a respectable science journal, can calm down. In their first footnote Penn
et al. make clear that:





"All similarities and differences in biology are ultimately a matter
of degree. Any apparent discontinuities between living species belie the
underlying continuity of the evolutionary process and largely result from the
fact that many, and often all, of the intermediate steps are no longer extant.
In the present article, our claim that there is a “discontinuity” between human
and nonhuman cognition is based on our claim that there is a significant gap
between the functional capabilities of the human mind and those of all other
extant species on the planet. Our point, to cut to the chase, is that the
functional discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds is at least as great
as the much more widely acknowledged discontinuity between human and nonhuman
forms of communication. But we do not doubt that both evolved through standard
evolutionary mechanisms. (Penn et al. 2008: 129)




Interestingly, when you google “Darwin’s
mistake” your fist hit is an amazon link for a book called “Darwin's
Mistake: Antediluvian
Discoveries Prove Dinosaurs and Humans Co-Existed” to which I won’t link because
I don’t want to raise the page rank of such junk. The second link is a funny
little poem called "Darwin's mistake",
which goes like this:








“Three monkeys sat on a coconut tree


Discussing things as they're said to be.



Said one to the others, "Now listen, you two,



There is a certain rumor that can't be true



That man descended from our noble race.



That very idea is a disgrace.



No monkey ever deserted his wife,



Starved her babies or ruined her life.



And another thing you will never see:



A monkey build a fence around a coconut tree



And let the coconuts go to waste



Forbidding all the other monkeys to taste.



If I put a fence around this tree,



Starvation would force you to steal from me.



Here's another thing a monkey won't do:



Go out at night and get on a stew,



And use a gun, or club, or knife



To take some other monkey's life.



Yes, man descended, the ornery cuss -



But, brother, he didn't descend from us.”





I must say this poem is actually pretty funny (given that it's not meant as
anti-evolutionary propaganda), although, as primatologists and the Machiavellian
intelligence hypothesis tell us, non-human primates
surely
aren’t saints either.




But Penn et al. make their scientific standpoint absolutely clear with the
title of their response, which is called:




“Darwin’s triumph: Explaining the uniqueness of the human mind
without a deus ex machina”





I am particularly excited by the comment of Graeme Halford,
professor emeritus at the University of Queensland, Australia, and his
colleagues, who write that they





“agree with Penn et al. that the ability to recognise structural
correspondences between relational representations accounts for many distinctive
properties of higher cognition. We propose to take this argument further by
defining both a conceptual and a methodological link between animal and human
cognition. The conceptual link is to treat relational processing (Halford et al.
1998a) as dynamic bindings of chunks to a coordinate system in working
memory (Oberauer et al. 2007). Such a coordinate system consists of slots
and relations between them, and includes relational schemas (Halford &
Busby 2007)” (Halford et al. 2008: 138)




This of course reminds me of Karl Bühler’s (1934) coordinate system of
subjective orientation which I
tried to use as a starting point for
a cognitive theory which sees mental representations as intersubjectively
overlapping and thus shared systemic spaces in
the form of a cognitive coordinate system/frame of reference into which and in
which conceptual representations are imported, integrated, unified, and
blended. In the future, I will have another look at both Penn et al.’s and
Graeme Halford’s claims.





Another ‘interesting’ comment is that of R. Allen Gardner, a
Professor of Cognitive and Brain Sciences at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Here’s the abstract:






“Sound comparative psychology and modern evolutionary and
developmental biology emphasize powerful effects of developmental conditions on
the expression of genetic endowment. Both demand that evolutionary theorists
recognize these effects. Sound comparative psychology also demands
experimental procedures that prevent experimenters from shaping the responses of
human and nonhuman beings to conform to theoretical expectations.” (Gardner
2008: 135).




What now, you may ask, is ‘interesting’ about this article?. Well let’s take
a look at what agrdner had to say about another important Paper on the
difference between human and nonhuman cognition, namely Tomasello et al.’s
(2005): Understanding
and Sharing Intentions: The Origins of Cultural Cognition:





“Sound comparative psychology and modern evolutionary and
developmental biology (often called evo-devo) emphasize powerful effects of
developmental conditions on the expression of genetic endowment. Both demand
that evolutionary theorists recognize these effects. Instead, Tomasello et
al. compares studies of normal human children with studies of chimpanzees reared
and maintained in cognitively deprived conditions, while ignoring studies of
chimpanzees in cognitively appropriate environments.” (Gardner 2005:
699)




To me this sounds a bit like flogging a dead horse, but what do I know. (not
much about evo-devo, that’s for sure)



At least both feature this nice photo of the test apparatus for chimpanzee
Basso, who first was believed to be able to count but, as was found out in 1917,
instead was only reacting to the unconscious cues of the experimenter:








UPDATE:




Chris of
Mixing Memory, John
Wilkins of Evolving Thoughts and George
Junior have already posted about the article, I hope there are more to
come!




References:



Bühler, Karl (1934) Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der
Sprache. Jena: Gustav Fischer.



Gardner, R. Allen (2005): Animal cognition meets evo-devo. In:
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28:5. 699-700.



Gardner, R. Allen (2008): Comparative intelligence and intelligent
comparisons. In: Behavioral and Brain Sciences (31:2):
135-136.

Halford, Graeme S..Steven Phillips, and William H Wilson (2008):
The missing link: Dynamic, modifiable representations in working memory.
In: In: Behavioral and Brain Sciences (31:2) : 137-138.



Penn, Derek C, Keith J. Holyoak. and Daniel J. Povinelli (2008): Darwin's
mistake: Explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. In:
Behavioral and Brain Sciences (31:2): 109-130.



Tomasello, Michael Malinda Carpenter, Josep Call, Tanya Behne, and Henrike
Moll (2005a): Understanding and Sharing Intentions: The Origins of Cultural
Cognition. In: Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28:5, 675–691

Posted by ایرانی at 8:09 AM
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Discontinuities between Human and Animal Cognition


Premack offers a stimulating brief essay (PDF here) pointing out that recent
cognitive studies finding abilities in animals once thought unique to humans
should not lead us to confuse similarity with equivalence, for the human brain
has nerve cell types and connections not found in any other animals. He examines
eight cognitive areas to argue that dissimilarities are large. Here is his
abstract:


Microscopic study of the human brain has revealed neural
structures, enhanced wiring, and forms of connectivity among nerve cells not
found in any animal, challenging the view that the human brain is simply an
enlarged chimpanzee brain. On the other hand, cognitive studies have found
animals to have abilities once thought unique to the human. This suggests a
disparity between brain and mind. The suggestion is misleading. Cognitive
research has not kept pace with neural research. Neural findings are based on
microscopic study of the brain and are primarily cellular. Because cognition
cannot be studied microscopically, we need to refine the study of cognition by
using a different approach. In examining claims of similarity between animals
and humans, one must ask: What are the dissimilarities? This approach prevents
confusing similarity with equivalence. We follow this approach in examining
eight cognitive cases—teaching, short-term memory, causal reasoning, planning,
deception, transitive inference, theory of mind, and language—and find, in all
cases, that similarities between animal and human abilities are small,
dissimilarities large. There is no disparity between brain and
mind.


Another major article on this topic is in draft form for Brain and Behavioral
Sciences: "Darwin’s mistake: explaining the discontinuity between human and
nonhuman minds," by Derek C. Penn, Keith J. Holyoak and Daniel J.
Povinelli.
Their abstract:


Over the last quarter-century, the dominant tendency in
comparative cognitive psychology has been to emphasize the similarities between
human and nonhuman minds and to downplay the differences as “one of degree and
not of kind” (Darwin 1871). In the present paper, we argue that Darwin was
mistaken: the profound biological continuity between human and nonhuman animals
masks an equally profound discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. To
wit, there is a significant discontinuity in the degree to which human and
nonhuman animals are able to approximate the higher-order, systematic,
relational capabilities of a physical symbol system (Newell 1980). We show that
this symbolic-relational discontinuity pervades nearly every domain of cognition
and runs much deeper than even the spectacular scaffolding provided by language
or culture alone can explain. We propose a representational-level specification
of where human and nonhuman animals’ abilities to approximate a PSS are similar
and where they differ. We conclude by suggesting that recent
symbolic-connectionist models of cognition shed new light on the mechanisms that
underlie the gap between human and nonhuman minds.

Posted by ایرانی at 7:33 AM
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Errors in Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Errors in Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Daniel C. Dennett

As of January 25, 2006, readers have identified the following errors in Darwin's Dangerous Idea. (I have considered other criticisms offered by readers, but decided that they were in error. Further criticisms are, of course, invited.):

P24. I describe Aristotle’s Prime Mover as a final cause, but this is incorrect; Aristotle’s Prime Mover is the efficient cause of all things. Pointed out by Chris Hammel, 1/23/06.

p57. "Simulated annealing" may be a misnomer, since the process I describe--and describe blacksmiths as employing--is signicantly different from standard annealing practices. source: John Verhoeven.

p97. My argument about how to identify Mitochondrial Eve (ME) is flawed. This has been pointed out by Ian Gillies, Bill Margolis, Chris Viger, and Gilbert Scott Markle. (See also, the useful discussion in Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart's new book Figments of Reality). There are two complications, which I will call multiple local MEs and grandmother stacks.

Multiple local MEs: There could in principle be long periods of "stasis" in which the sets of mothers of mothers of . . . . didn't shrink in size for hundreds or thousands of years on end. No set can be larger than its successor, but it needn't be any smaller. In such a circumstance, going backwards in time, the "remaining" lineages each funnel down to a "local ME" (with two daughters) and that local ME's mother, (maternal) grandmother, greatgrandmother and so forth, single-file lineages marching back into the past. Whenever two such local ME strands converge, they discover a "new," less local ME, discharging their two more local double-daughtered MEs. In principle such multiple local ME strands could go back to multiple independent origins of mitochondrial life (of eukaryotes)--but there is very good reason to suppose that global ME (the True Mitochondrial Eve) is a hominid of some ilk, if not a member in clear standing of H. sapiens. I was wrong to suggest (by saying the sets "must" contract") that such a twin-lineage (to take the simplest case) couldn't "go on forever"; in principle it could, but with negligible--but not Vanishing--probability.

A grandmother stack is a subset of women related by maternity within any of the sets A, B, C, of mothers of mothers . . . . Thus in set B, the mothers of people alive today, there is the following grandmother stack: Andrea (mother of my grandson), Susan (my wife), Ruth (my mother-in-law), and her mother, the late Sylvia. Set C will drop Andrea and add Sylvia's mother, and so forth. Subsequent sets will always have a four-member grandmother stack generated by today's contemporaneous generations in my family. There are probably some seven- or eight-deep grandmother stacks somewhere in the world today, but I would think that the biological limit is about nine (you can get a ten-deep stack by assuming a stack of 13-year-old mothers with a still living 104-year-old ancestor). When local MEs evaporate by coalescence in the manner described above, the grandmother stacks involved do not shrink in the sets in which they appear. But the number of distinct grandmother stacks diminishes. When we reach Mitochondrial Eve, we will go right by her, since when she first appears she will be a member of a set of at least four women (Brandon's maternal ancestors) and probably seven or eight or nine. But this will quickly be apparent, since soon enough all members of the set will be a single grandmother stack, and we can locate ME as the only one with two daughters in the previous set.

p122-23. The standard account of the QWERTY phenomenon, as presented here (and by Papert and Gould and others), has been challenged by S. J. Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis, in "The Fable of the Keys," Journal of Law and Economics, 33, April 1990, pp1-25. source: [I have misfiled the letter that drew this article to my attention. My apologies, whoever you are.] But see also Jared Diamond's article, "The Curse of QWERTY," in Discover, April 1997, pp. 34-42, and the further bibliography he lists on the last page, including the web site http://ww.ccsi.com/~mbrooks/dvorak/dvorak.html. Diamond, in a letter to me, finds grounds for disagreeing with Liebowitz and Margolis, so the issue remains unresolved.

p126. H. Allen Orr says: "Population genetic theory, for instance, does not prove that evolution by random change is faster than evolution by natural selection." ("Dennett's Strange Idea," Boston Review, 21, Summer 1996, p28.) I misspoke, but the result was ambiguity, not error. If we compare regions of DNA that are under selection pressure with regions that are not, we discover that ON AVERAGE, the regions that are under selection pressure show a lower rate of change--because of stabilizing selection. That is, when a new selection pressure is introduced, this typically leads to a relatively short, rapid burst of change followed by a long period of near stasis. If you stop the race at fixation time, then of course evolution by natural selection looks faster than random drift, but that is an artifact of the time window chosen. In his reply to my original clarification of this point in the Boston Review (October/November, 1996, p37), Orr claimed not to know what I was talking about, and rudely suggested-- "I can find no polite way of putting this"--that I didn't either, but when I gave him this elaboration of my intended meaning, he acknowledged that it was not mistaken, but that in the context he had not considered it.

p171. line 9: "figure 7.6" should be "figure 7.7" source: W. Luff

p207. fn, line 2: "their" should be "its" source: W. Luff

p271. Robert Mark's fine article, "Architecture and Evolution," in the July-August 1996 issue of American Scientist (pp383-389), shows that I underestimated the structural demands of support for a large dome over arches, so that my bracket diagram (the middle diagram in Figure 10.3) would not be sound, lacking the necessary surcharge. Squinches would also not be sufficient, he claims, for such large, heavy domes. His final conclusion is that my "treatment of crucial structural elements as a kind of surface decoration that can be altered at will--'You have to put something there to hold up the dome--some shape or other, you decide which"--ignores the years, or in some cases even centuries, of construction experience that led to their incorporation in historic buildings." In other words, according to Mark, the pendentives of San Marco are very definitely structural adaptations, not Gouldian "spandrels". This point is elaborated upon by Alasdair I. Houston, in "Are the spandrels of San Marco really panglossian pendentives?" in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, March 1997, 12.

p.274. Robert Mark (see above) also criticizes my claim that the bosses in the fan vaults of King's College Chapel could have been replaced by "neat round holes," but see the letter from Stephen Grover, and Robert Mark's reply, in American Scientist Nov/Dec 1996, p518. As Grover points out, Walter C. Leedy's 1980 book Fan Vaulting does support me on this, and Patrick Bateson, Provost of King's College, has also written to me supporting my account.

p300. Cambrian explosion occurred around 530 million years ago, not "around 600 million years ago" source: Stephen Jay Gould.

p301. line two. Walcott himself did not "literally dissect" the fossils. source: Stephen Jay Gould.

p304. up 4-6 lines: the spelling should be Naraoia, Sanctacaris, and Leanchoilia. source: Stephen Jay Gould. As Gould points out (Wonderful Life, p68-9), Walcott's terms are "a strange-sounding lot. Decidedly not Latin in their roots, they are . . . sometimes nearly unpronounceable. . . . Walcott, who loved the Canadian Rockies, . . . labeled his fossils the the names of local peaks and lakes, themselves derived from Indian words."

p320. Teilhard de Chardin did his work in China before, not after, his difficulties with the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church. "His 'exile' was to the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research in New York City." source: Christopher Peebles.

p360. Richard Feynman is wrong! As Irwin Tessman, Department of Biological Sciences, Purdue University, points out in a letter to Nature ("Feynman faux pas," 381, 30 May, 1996, p361), "The example he gives would not prove replacement; in fact, it suggests quite the opposite. In an endearing lapse, Feynman appers to have blanked out on the half-life for the decay of 32P to sulphur, which just happens to be two weeks; if the radioactivity decreases to one-half in two weeks it means (within experimental error) that there was no turnover of phosphorus in the cerebrum."

p370. Goethe did indeed say it, in Faust. Mephistopheles says, in Part I:

Denn eben wo Begriffe fehlen,

Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein.

Ernst Mayr was the first to draw this to my attention, and his citation from memory [!] was almost exactly correct. Simon van der Meer also sent me the German text, and Wolfgang Heinemann provided me with the Wayre translation:

For if your meaning's threatened with stagnation,

Then words come in, to save the situation:

They'll fight your battles well if you enlist 'em,

Or furnish you a universal system.

Thus words will serve you grandly for a creed,

Where every syllable is guaranteed."

p488. Many readers have urged that I am wrong about which cards need to be turned over in the Wason test, but it is they who are mistaken--which just goes to show how powerful this cognitive illusion is. However, Simon van der Meer finds fault with my expression of the task: I should have said "Your task is to find all exceptions to the rule" (since otherwise, one could sometimes find an exception by just turning over the first card).

p499. Three Mile Island was in 1979, not 1980. source: Joseph P. Calendriello.

p.544. Quine's Word and Object was published by MIT Press, not Harvard University Press. source: Lynwood Bryant.

p545. Schrödinger's first name is Erwin, not Ernst. (Elsewhere in the book I get it right.) source: Andrew P. Cassidy.

Posted by ایرانی at 6:56 AM
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Tuesday, July 20, 2010

THE MOON'S ORBIT

THE MOON'S ORBIT


And We have decreed set phases for the moon, until it ends up
looking like an old date branch. It is not for the sun to overtake the moon nor
for the night to outstrip the day; each one is swimming in a sphere. (Qur'an,
36:39-40)



The Moon does not follow a regular orbit like the satellites of other
planets. As it orbits the Earth, it sometimes moves behind it and sometimes in
front. As it also moves with the Earth around the Sun, it actually follows a
constant pattern resembling the letter "S" in space. This route, traced by the
Moon in space, is described in the Qur'an as resembling an old date branch and
does indeed resemble the twisted form of the date tree branch. Indeed, the word
"urjoon" employed in the Qur'an refers to a thin and twisted date branch and is
used to describe that part left after the fruit has been picked. The way that
this branch is described as "old" is also most appropriate since old date
branches are thinner and more twisted.
Since the Moon revolves around the Sun together with the
Earth, it follows a path through space which resembles the letter “S.” The
appearance of this orbit resembles the twisted shape of a dry date branch, as is
revealed in the Qur’an.

There is no doubt that it was impossible for anyone to have any knowledge
about the orbit of the Moon 1,400 years ago. The way that this pattern,
identified by modern technology and accumulated knowledge, was revealed in the
Holy Book is yet another scientific miracle of the Qur'an

Posted by ایرانی at 11:34 PM
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IDENTITY ON FINGER TIPS



3- Does the human being think that We cannot assemble his bones? 4- Surely, We are able to reconstruct even his fingertips. 75-The Resurrection, 3-4 Fingerprints did not mean much to the people at the Prophet’s time. An Englishman by the name of Genn Ginsen, in 1856, found out that the pattern of lines at the tip of a person’s finger was something unique to the individual. Until 1856, men knew nothing about this characteristic of fingertips. The discovery of the fact that the pattern of lines on fingertips was a sort of identity card is often used by the police to help find criminals. The pattern lines of the fingertips differ even in identical twins. This identity card cannot be forged; it affixes a unique signature to whatever it touches. One cannot imitate or deny it. We carry it about us till the end of our days. Epidermal burns or injuries or aging distort our bodies in one way or another, yet cannot change this fact. These patterns of lines are traced within the womb when the fetus completes its three months’ period. Research is currently being carried out to see whether these lines may be used to detect genetic defects in our body. To the best of our knowledge so far, nothing positive has been discovered on this issue. It is, however, likely that something new may emerge any day. At the time of the descent of the Quran, fingertips had nothing special about them. God, who will cause man to come back to life on the Day of Judgment, stresses the importance of fingertips.
DATA CONCEALED ON FINGERTIPSOne of the basic indications of this verse may refer to the patterns of lines on man’s fingertips. There may be other indications, according to which all the characteristics of our body are encoded on our fingertips. It could be implied that during our re-creation all the particularities and features of our body will be restored, so it may be that what lies on our fingertips, apparently of little significance, will be sufficient for this process. The reason why fingertips are given as example is the general acceptance that they are simple things of not much worth. Nevertheless, even the seemingly insignificant tip of a finger is a data bank, thanks to which the entire body may be re-fashioned. DNA is one of the most important discoveries in human history. The discovery of DNA put an end to the idea that the human cell had a simple structure with its contents. As the cell came to be analyzed more and more, the complexity of its makeup was better understood. Even one piece of DNA includes a cipher formed of a series of more than three billion codes. From the color of our hair to our little finger, everything is contained in this code. A printout of data related to DNA would form the contents of about 1000 volumes of one million pages. What is more, DNA has the capacity to duplicate all these data within 20 to 80 minutes. In the lore contained in the 1000 volumes of one single DNA, one can find all the characteristics of the body. The DNA of a simple cell on the fingertip will give one all the necessary information. Our Creator can easily have recourse to this lore to re-create man. It would be as easy for Him to do so as if He were creating him for the first time. 78- And he makes comparisons for Us and forgets his own creation. He says “Who can resurrect the bones after they are rotten?” 79- Say “He who created them the first time. He has knowledge of every creation.” 36-Ya-Seen, 78-79

Posted by ایرانی at 5:29 AM
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Monday, July 19, 2010

ATOMIC ENERGY AND FISSION

ATOMIC ENERGY AND FISSION

Allah splits the seed and kernel. He brings forth the living from the dead, and produces the dead out of the living. That is Allah, so how are you misguided? (Qur'an, 6:95)

The terms "seed" (al-habb) and "kernel" (an-nawa) in the above verse may indicate the splitting of the atom. Indeed, the dictionary meanings of an-nawa include "nucleus, centre, atomic nucleus." Furthermore, the description of bringing forth the living from the dead can be interpreted as Allah creating matter from dead energy. Producing the dead out of the living may refer to energy (dead) emerging from matter (living), since the atom is in motion. (Allah knows best.) That is because as well as "living," al-hayy can also mean "active, energetic." With its meaning of "non-living," al-mayyit, translated above as "dead," may very probably refer to energy.

Scientists define energy as the capacity for doing work. Matter, the material that comprises all things on Earth and in the universe, consists of atoms and molecules that can be seen to be in motion under an electron microscope. In the early twentieth century, Albert Einstein (d. 1955) theorised that matter could be converted into energy, suggesting that the two were inter-related at the atomic level.199 This may be the bringing forth of the dead from the living, as described above, or, in other words, obtaining energy from matter, which is in motion at the atomic level. In addition, yukhriju, translated as "bringing forth," also means "bringing out, emitting" (as in the case of electrical waves). Therefore, the terms in this verse may be indicating the form of energy obtained from the atom. (Allah knows best.)


Today, atomic nucleus can be split into smaller nuclei by means of nuclear fission.

Scientists can now split the atom by dividing its nucleus. Taking Einstein's theories as their starting point, they obtained energy from matter in the 1940s by means of nuclear fission, the process of splitting the atomic nucleus. The verb faliqu in Surat al-An`am 95, translated as "to split," may be a reference to fission's dictionary meaning: the process of splitting (the atom's nucleus). When this process takes place, enormous amounts of energy are released.

The words in Surat al-An`am 95 are very wise in terms of their meanings. The phenomena described in this verse bear a very close resemblance to the splitting of the atom's nucleus in order to obtain atomic energy. The verse may therefore be a reference to nuclear fission, which was only made possible by twentieth-century technology. (Allah knows best.)

199. “Energy and Matter,” Fundamentals of Physical Geography, www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/6a.html.

Posted by ایرانی at 8:02 AM
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Sunday, July 18, 2010

THE CLONING OF LIVING THINGS

THE CLONING OF LIVING THINGS

[Satan said:] “I will lead them astray and fill them with false hopes. I will command them and they will cut off cattle’s ears. I will command them and they will change Allah’s creation.” Anyone who takes satan as his protector in place of Allah has clearly lost everything.” (Surat an-Nisa’, 119)

The above verse contains the expression “yubattikunna,” which derives from the verb "battaka” meaning ”to cut off or break off.” The term “yughayyirunna” in the verse derives from the verb “ghayyara,” meaning “to change, alter, impair a thing’s original form.” At the end of both verbs appears the confirmatory letter ”nun.” With these expressions, verse 119 of Surat an-Nisa’ may, in one aspect, be pointing to the scientific activity of copying or cloning of organisms. (Allah knows the truth.) That is because cloning experiments are generally conducted with cells taken from an animal’s ear. To put it another way, a replica living thing is produced with the taking of cells from tissue samples “cut from animals’ ears,” just as described in the verse.

A report by the German Federal Agricultural Research Center provides the following information:

The tissue collection phase is short and simple. Once an animal has been located and restrained, a tissue sample like an ear clipping can be collected within seconds. Furthermore, somatic cells can be collected from all species. … For cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, camelids and llamas, a unified and identical procedure can be used by obtaining a tissue sample from the ear using notchers which are also used for setting earmarks… Clearly, for all species lymphocytes could be used, but somatic cells from ear clippings will be much easier to obtain and are therefore preferable. 1

Some reports concerning organisms cloned by taking samples from ear tissue include:

- According to a report by Reuters dated 1 May, 2002, a research veterinarian at the University of Sao Paolo in Brazil, Jose Visintin, produced cloned embryos for the first time in the country by using cells taken from the ear of an adult cow.2

- According to a BBC report, South Korean scientists cloned a dog called Snuppy from cells taken from a 3-year-old Afghan hound. Researchers at the Seoul National University extracted genetic material from the cells taken from the ear and placed it into an empty egg cell. An embryo was then obtained by stimulating the cell to divide.3

- Another BBC report said that a new clone had been produced using ear cells from an adult cow in research carried out by Dr. Jean-Paul Renard et al. at the Institute National de la Recherche Agronomique in France.4

- According to information of the official Human Genome Project website, in February 2002, scientists from the Advanced Cell Technologies (ACT) biotechnology company carried out experiments on cloning a cow embryo using the skin cell of the donor cow’s ear.5

- A report by Associated Press, dated 24 January, 2000, announced that Japanese scientists had cloned the clone of a bull for the first time. In the re-cloning, skin tissue samples from the first generation cloned bull’s ear were taken when it was four months old. These cells were then fused with an unfertilized egg from which the nucleus had been removed.6

The way that changes in the creation of living things are referred to in the Qur’an and the expression “cutting off cattle’s ears,” at a time when no branches of science such as genetics or embryology existed, shows that the Qur’an has come down from the Sight of our Lord, Allah, Who is unfettered by time. We are also told at the end of the verse that these people will be disappointed when they alter what Allah has created. The verse may therefore be indicating that cloning will give rise to various problems for human beings. (Allah knows the truth.) Indeed, statements from the Genetic Science Learning Center of the University of Utah provide the following information:

When we hear of cloning successes, we learn about only the few attempts that worked. What we don't see are the many, many cloning experiments that failed! And even in the successful clones, problems tend to arise later, during the animal's development to adulthood.7

Information from the Human Genome Project website take this form:

Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned from adult DNA, [died on] Feb. 14, 2003. Prior to her death, Dolly had been suffering from lung cancer and crippling arthritis. … More than 90% of cloning attempts fail to produce viable offspring. … In addition to low success rates, cloned animals tend to have more compromised immune function and higher rates of infection, tumor growth, and other disorders. Japanese studies have shown that cloned mice live in poor health and die early. … Appearing healthy at a young age unfortunately is not a good indicator of long term survival. Clones have been known to die mysteriously. For example, Australia's first cloned sheep appeared healthy and energetic on the day she died, and the results from her autopsy failed to determine a cause of death.8

In general terms, the risks arising from cloning experiments are as follows:

1) A high failure rate: The level of success is just 0.1%-3%. That means a failure rate of 970-999 for every 1000 experiments.9

2) Problems during development: Cloned animals that do survive generally have abnormally larger organs compared to the originals. This may lead to respiration and circulation difficulties, unhealthy kidneys and brain, and an impaired immune system.

3) Abnormal gene expression patterns: Although clones have the same DNA sequences as the originals, the cell nucleus in the clone does not have the same program as that in a natural embryo. To put it another way, the DNA cannot express the right set of genes essential for the development of the clone at the right time. For example, cells of all kinds, nerve, bone, blood or skin for example, all have different programs but the genetic programs in the clone embryo do not work as healthily as those in a natural embryo.

4) Telomeric differences: Chromosomes are shortened as cells divide. The reason for this is that DNA sequences at both ends of a chromosome, known as telomeres, are shortened during each DNA replication. As an animal grows older, the telomeres shorten as part of that aging. Therefore, the copied life form has shortened chromosomes from the moment it is born, just as if it were actually older.

Genetic material taken from living cells is used in cloning experiments, but fertilization takes place artificially. The reproduction mechanism created by Allah is thus impaired with these methods, and unidentified diseases, developmental deficiencies and early deaths are encountered. The way that it was reported 1400 years ago that scientists would engage in cloning and that the problems awaiting people therefrom are emphasized, clearly reveals that the Qur’an is a Divine scripture.

In the cloning process, DNA from a cell of the living thing planned to be copied is placed under the microscope and placed into an egg cell from another member of the same species. The DNA of the animal intended to be copied is used for this. An electric shock is then applied, which stimulates the egg cell to start dividing. The embryo continues to divide and is placed into the womb of a member of the species, and is then left to develop and be born.

1 http://www.fao.org/docrep/008/a0070t/a0070t05.htm

2 http://ngin.tripod.com/010502b.htm

3 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4742453.stm

4 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/331793.stm

5 http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml

6 http://www.gene.ch/info4action/2000/Jan/msg00061.html

7 http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/units/cloning/cloningrisks/

8 http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml

9 http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/units/cloning/cloningrisks/

Posted by ایرانی at 8:25 AM
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