Neo-Darwinian theory posits the operation of material processes alone — genetic variation and natural selection. By definition, these can be at work in the natural world but nowhere else. If what physicist Brian Miller calls the “control center” of life “reside[s] in a mathematical structure outside of time and space,” that would make Darwinism a hopeless contender for explaining how biological complexity arose in the past, or arises in the present. Conventionally understood, evolution, unlike the theory of intelligent design, has no tools to speak of any reality outside our world.

The New Science

Expanding on these ideas, Dr. Miller comments on the new book about the thinking of mathematical biologist Richard Sternberg, Plato’s Revenge: The New Science of the Immaterial Genome:

Science journalist David Klinghoffer’s task is not an easy one: Introduce the general reader to a scientific hypothesis that is profound, potentially revolutionary, but hardly simple. Klinghoffer succeeds and, into the bargain, paints an engaging portrait of the scientist behind the idea, Richard Sternberg. As Klinghoffer explains, Sternberg has woven together the fields of biology, mathematics, and philosophy to argue that an organism’s genome is not entirely contained in DNA. Moreover, the information representing a species’ structures and processes is not confined to any physical molecule. Instead, an organism’s architecture results from immaterial principles. Sternberg’s arguments draw from the leading theorists who applied mathematics, such as category theory, to life, and his analysis demonstrates that the control center that directs an embryo to develop into an adult requires far more information than could be contained in the entire initial cell, let alone DNA. The control center must reside in a mathematical structure outside of time and space. Klinghoffer, following Sternberg, also traces scientists’ understanding of the genome through history, illustrating that many leading biologists recognized the genome’s immateriality.

BRIAN MILLER, PHD, RESEARCH COORDINATOR FOR THE CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND CULTURE, PRIMARY ORGANIZER OF THE CONFERENCE ON ENGINEERING IN THE LIFE SCIENCES, AND CONTRIBUTOR TO THE MYSTERY OF LIFE’S ORIGIN: THE CONTINUING CONTROVERSY AND INFERENCE REVIEW

The world of forms, imagined by the Greek philosopher Plato, may sound spooky. But as Dr. Miller explains, it is the combined application of “biology, mathematics, and philosophy,” chiefly mathematics, that dictates Dr. Sternberg’s conclusion. The immaterial genome is Darwinism’s silver bullet. Get the details in Plato’s Revenge, by David Klinghoffer. Find more information about the book, and more endorsements, at Discovery Institute Press.

Image source: Discovery Institute Press.