 was present much before Darwin. In 1802, William Paley, an Anglican priest, had written a famous book, "The Watchmaker", where he was arguing that the things of life were too complex to be made spontaneously by natural processes, and that therefore only God could be responsible for the designs of life. And today, more than two centuries after that book, the same arguments are presented by the creationists, who with the notion of intelligent design also fight against the concepts of evolution.
Scientist nowadays, with very few exceptions, do not hold to creationism and to the notion of intelligent design. Even scientist who are convinced believers, like the late Christian de Duve, accept the idea of an evolution without predetermined goals. No purpose in nature. But how it is then for life itself? Actually, considering the origin of life on Earth, we may go deeper in this argument.
Scientists in the field would agree that the pathway that goes from inanimate to animate matter must follow the natural laws- the laws of physics and chemistry. From this common denominator depart however two quite different points of view, both in the framework of science- forgetting the divine intervention. The one, which we will call deterministic-better would be to say “absolute determinism”, states that the origin of life on Earth was an inescapable outcome of the original initial conditions on Earth. In general, determinism means that we are dealing with a sequence of events, each one determined causally by the preceding one, and causing by necessity the next one. According to this view, then, the laws of nature are channelled into a narrow road that has to conduct to a well-defined goal: life itself.
What is the alternative point of view? It is one that goes under the keyword of contingency. This is something that in the old nomenclature would be called “chance”- and in fact one of the basic literature milestone is J.Monod’s book “Chance and necessity” (1971).
Contingency is in fact a more sophisticated concept than the vague term chance. It indicates the simultaneous occurrence of various per sé independent factors which determine one event in a given time/space situation. Take the example of a tile that falls from the roof of an old house and strikes to death a pigeon which was peacefully flying beneath. Certainly a “chance event”- but this depends on the speed by which the birth was flying, on the angle by which the tile stroke the pigeon, on the density of the tile, on the age of the roof, from the wind blowing in that particular moment... All these factors are independent from one another, and their juxtaposition has determined that deadly accident. And, importantly: change only one of these parameters (the bird’ flying velocity, the age of the roof, …) and the event would not have happened. Contingency, as Gould states, is characterized by the tyranny of one parameter.
Two different points of view-but notice also that contingency and determinism come always the hand in the hand. Contingency cannot go without the laws of nature: in the example of the pigeon given before, the gravity, the density, the laws of motion, of course are there to determine all movements and the final event. This is so also in the things of biological evolution: if by contingency wings are invented, eventually they have to sustain the flying according to the laws of gravity and have to respect the thermodynamics of blood flow in the animal, etc. The image which is often give-see next figure- is that of a water fall rolling downhill from the top of a mountain: this event is mostly determined by the gravity law, but the actual pathway of the water downhill is determined by the accidents of the ground- bulges and grooves and holes and walls.
However, even if they are together when they operate in real nature, there is a profound difference between the determinism and contingency: that the former states that a given process has to go in a precise way, and contingency instead states that it may go in a quite different way-or that it may not happen. With contingency you can never predict the future, with (absolute) determinism you do.
And generally, the idea that life on Earth can be seen as a deterministic pathway of highly probability is to be found frequently in the literature.
I personally believe that this view is flown by a basic conceptual mistake. In fact, to say that the natural laws may have governed the prebiotic scenario, assumes that the origin of life is deterministically controlled. Now, to invoke a guided determinism toward the formation of life would only make sense if the origin of life would demonstrably be a preferential, highly probable natural pathway. But this is precisely what we do not know-or better, we know that it is not so. The chemical processes leading to life are not under thermodynamic control, and life does not correspond to a minimum of energy, to a stable equilibrium. The statement: “the origin of life must have been highly probable otherwise we would not be here” is based on the faith that life is unavoidable.
One cannot invoke natural laws and then force them into one preferential channel. I maintain that this view is equivalent to a creationistic view, although this is not said expressly by those Authors. Elsewhere, the term “crypto-creationism” has been created to describe this scientific movement (Luisi 2006).
“Run the tape again, and the first step from prokariots to eukatiots may have taken 12 billion years instead of 2” implying that a change in one of the variables, (temperature, pH, salinity, pressure, concentrations…) might had prevented the Cambrian revolution then.
Having said that, namely having accepted the relevance of contingency in the creations of nature, let us go back to the questions raised in the introduction of this short article. We asked: why 40 thousand different species of butterfly? Is it compelling to have precisely this number? Could they have been 20 thousand-or ninety thousand? We have to answer positively to this question.
And now let us pass to our lizard. Was it thee a particular purpose for nature to make lizards? Could we imagine a world without lizards? Well, if they would not be here, nobody would have noticed the lack of them.
And it is so is for all things of nature: if, during the vagaries of molecular evolution, conditions -even only one parameter- would have been different in a critical step, different designs would have been created. Thus, many of our things might have not been here. And, conversely, think of the many flowers, fish, birds... who are not with us, but might have been created by a slightly different pathway of the evolution.
But: if we accept the idea that lizard might have not been here, on this Earth... then how is it with mankind? In force of the logics of contingency, we should then accept the idea that evolution might have not created man. Just like the case of the lizard.Since the Spanish Deputy Minister for Budget threatened to intervene in Catalan budgetary affairs and in response to the recentralisation debate, the Catalan President, Artur Mas, sent a public warning to the Spanish Government and politicians in Madrid. Mas emphasised that “a point of no return” might be reached if the Spanish State puts obstacles on the Catalan Government’s financing. He also threatened that, if Spain takes action, Catalonia will react.
Barcelona (ACN).- The relationship between Catalonia and Spain is at risk of \u201Creaching a point of no return\u201D, warned the President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas. In a radio interview on Thursday, Mas answered the recent general statements made by Spanish Prime Minister José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero and the much more concrete ones made by the Spanish Deputy Minister for Treasury, Carlos Ocaña. Ocaña warned the Catalan Government that the Spanish Government could block its capacity to issue debt in order to cut the public deficit.
Spain\u2019s aim is to set the public deficit for 2010 below 10%, which includes all the public administrations. The Catalan Government\u2019s deficit for 2010 is set at 3.6% of Catalonia\u2019s GDP and it is responsible of some 40% of the expenditure. The Spanish Government considers it way too high and warned the Catalan Government to limit its capacity to get new loans. Artur Mas claimed that the Spanish Government is cutting its own deficit by increasing the deficit of other public administrations. He insisted that the Spanish Government owes 1.000 million euros to Catalonia, which would set the Catalan deficit at around 3%.
Mas threatened Madrid that, if the Spanish State blocks Catalonia\u2019s capacity to get new debts, his Government has \u201Ca plan B\u201D, as it has \u201Cmechanisms to defend itself\u201D. \u201CThis is a Government that has a voice within Spain, but also outside Spain. We can tell many things\u201D, Mas emphasised. Mas continued, \u201Cwe are reasonable people but once we reach a certain point, we also know how to defend ourselves. What we will not do is simply watch while we get hit and continuously offer the other cheek\u201D, he added. \u201CEverything has a limit\u201D.
Mas accused the Spanish Government of owing 1.000 million euros to Catalonia from the competitiveness fund for the Autonomous Communities. However, this fund is empty for 2010. In order to reduce its own deficit, the Spanish Government took the money from this fund, which is 10.000 million euros. 1.000 euros were for Catalonia for 2010, which were counted in Catalonia\u2019s budget. Therefore, Mas acc