Engineered Adaptability and Blockchain Technology
We have been observing the continuous environmental tracking (CET) model that is becoming a serious challenge to Darwinism. Instead of "pressures" on organisms causing them to change, CET is using an engineering approach. That is, how would the Master Engineer have designed living things to adapt to changes in the environment?
The process of blockchain technology was developed for Bitcoin digital currency, but has grown into something that can be used in other areas of technology (and I reckon it will probably still be around even if Bitcoin falls out of fashion). Computers are linked and regularly update transactions. In a similar manner, DNA can be compared to computer programming that can account for both stasis and variation. Using blockchain technology, we can see how organisms and populations can rapidly adapt.
Credit: Freeimages / Katia Grimmer-Laversanne |
Evolutionary selectionism believes that outside forces called selective pressures produce DNA modifications that lead to trait variations in organisms. Thus, DNA is an accumulation of selected random variations. However, selectionism finds it difficult to simultaneously explain both variation and stasis. The dilemma is that DNA cannot be modified via random mutation without also quickly losing its ability to produce traits. In other words, this kind of variation tends to not simply alter traits but eliminate them.To read the entire article, click on "Engineered Adaptability: Blockchain-Like Process May Produce Adaptive Traits". Seems to me that the CET model is being developed on many levels, and should be very interesting to keep watching.
In contrast, computer software specialist Mitchel Soltys uses engineering principles in a model that compares DNA to a computer program that combines both instructions and data in a single stream. Though the code is bounded by fixed, top-level instructions, input data called variables enable variation. Soltys describes how this model accounts for both variation and stasis: