"Law, Chance and Opportunity in Nature: Insight into Natural and Human Creativity"
Pauline Rudd
Metanexus 2001.07.28 3844 words.
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Foreword by Stacey E. Ake

"Law, Chance and Opportunity in Nature: Insight into Natural and Human
Creativity" by Pauline Rudd is today's topic. Rudd's June 6th, 2001, lecture
at a Science and the Spiritual Quest Program of the Center for Theology and
the Natural Sciences titled "The Natural Sciences and the Human Quest for
Meaning: The Cosmos, Evolution, and the Limits of Knowledge" held at General
Theological Seminaryin New York City.

And, according to Dr. Rudd, "Nature is characterised by order, patterns,
organisation, creativity and opportunism. Humans observe natural order,
impose order, embark on design with a sense of purpose, and are creative and
opportunistic. God is defined as creator - but in what sense? Is God also a
designer, purposeful and opportunistic? To what extent can God, Nature and
human beings work co-creatively together?"

Now those are some real humdinger questions! Then again, humdingers are the
best kinds of questions. We learn best and most, I suspect, when we are
pushing the limits of the envelope of conventional thought. So please enjoy
her essay on the subject, and engage her and yourself in the attempt to
provide some worthy answers to those questions.

Dr. Pauline Rudd is a University Research Lecturer and Senior Research
Fellow in the Glycobiology Institute in the University of Oxford. With her
colleagues, she has pioneered the development of novel technology for the
rapid, sensitive analysis of sugars attached to glycoproteins. Dr. Rudd has
worked in many different biological systems carrying out basic research into
glycoproteins involved in heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, hepatitis,
prion diseases, and inflammation. Currently, her particular interest is in
the role of glycosylation in antigen recognition in both the cellular and
humoral immune systems. She has published over 70 scientific papers and
spoken at numerous meetings in the United States, Israel, Japan, Hong Kong,
China and Taiwan as well as throughout Eastern and Western Europe.

Dr. Rudd has recently been privileged to take a short Sabbatical at The
Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, CA and is a visiting Professor at
Shanghai Medical University. She has been committed to integrating the
spiritual and scientific journeys for many years, becoming a lay member of
the Community of St. Mary the Virgin, Wantage, Oxfordshire while reading
Chemistry at London University. In 1997-8 she was a participant in the
'Science and the Spiritual Quest' programme organised by the Centre for
Theology and the Natural Sciences. In 1999/2000 her speaking engagements
included the opening lecture at the Chautauqua Institution season, Buffalo,
NY, as well as lectures at several colleges and universities in both the
United States and England.

Speaking of Science and the Spiritual Quest, the Harvard Conference on
Science and the Spiritual Quest: The Quest for Knowledge, Truth, and Values
in Science and Religion held on October 21 - 23, 2001 at Harvard Memorial
Church, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts and will include a live
national telecast Monday, October 22, 2001 from 3:00 PM  - 9:00 PM, EDT.

The conference is presented by Science and the Spiritual Quest, a program of
the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in partnership with
Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion, a program of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. Co-Presenters are the Episcopal
Cathedral Telecasting Network and the Center for the Study of World
Religions, Harvard University Divinity School.

This Harvard Conference will bring together leading scientists from around
the world to explore the interface between contemporary science and the
great religious and spiritual traditions.
For conference information and registration, visit the SSQ website at:
www.ssq.net
For details on how to view the satellite or webcast broadcast, visit
www.ectn.org or call 1-800-559-3286.
For media information or SSQ scientist interviews, call Silas Deane at Logic
Media Group, Silas@logicmediagroup.com, 615-301-8313 or FAX 615-301-8001.

Science and the Spiritual Quest, 2400 Ridge Road, Berkeley, CA 94709-1212
TEL: 510-848-2355
FAX: 510-848-2592
EMAIL: ssq@ssq.net
WEB: www.ssq.net
 

Enjoy!
 

-- Stacey E. Ake

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Subject:    "Law, Chance and Opportunity in Nature: Insight into Natural and
Human Creativity"
From:        Pauline Rudd
Email:    <pmr@glycob.ox.ac.uk>
 

"Law, Chance and Opportunity in Nature: Insight into Natural and Human Creativity"

Nature is characterised by order, patterns, organisation, creativity and opportunism.

The order we observe in the nature, such as the Fibonacci patterns in
sunflower heads, may be fundamental and restricted, given the parameters
that delineate our Universe and world. Many different arrangements of the
same basic structures are manifest in biology. For example glucose
residues can be linked in different ways, in open structures to form pollen tubes
or in stacks as they are in potatoes. However, the combinations are still
restricted and only some of the possible combinations of the material in
the Universe are actually observed. Organisation is required for living things
to function and only few of the possible combinations of structures can
give rise to a living organism which can replicate. For example the hepatitis B
virus has 4 genes, which give rise to some 20 proteins, although
theoretically more could be expressed. Evolution provides many
possibilities, and Nature builds on what is successful. However, evolution
doesn't prescribe for the future. If mutations do not work i.e. cannot be
made sense of, or do not give rise to a functioning organism they will not
survive. The natural world has developed over many millennia in such a way
that different species can adapt to their environment and survive alongside
each other. This implies organisation at many levels because to survive and
flourish organisms depend on co-operation, co-ordination and communication
both within themselves and with their environment.

Nature is a great experimentalist- nature keeps changing things within at
the genome level and without at the environmental level. There is a great
panoply of permutations and combinations and possibilities. A few mutations
will survive because they are functionally useful and at best provide the
organism with opportunity to develop in new ways. Other mutations, such as
in the prion protein which give rise to spongiform encephalopathies, will
survive because the organism can function at least for a while, but since
the mutated or disordered proteins are not functioning in harmony with their
surroundings, they eventually lead to disease and death. It does not seem
that there are any ethical restrictions on Nature.

Genes represent opportunity or potential not inevitability. There is room
for many alternatives to be tried - so random mutations, (caused eg by
radiation from solar bodies) at the level of the gene may result in the
expression of different proteins which may give a particular advantage to
a group of individuals within a species in a particular environment eg
sickle cells protect against malaria.

Once some parameters are established then the possibilities are restricted -
for example the salinity of the sea, the composition of the atmosphere, and
the components of the soil restrict the possible forms of life which can
survive. As soon as these are defined the possibilities are restricted just
as when an artist makes the first brushstroke or the sculptor the first
marks with the chisel.

There doesn't appear to be any long term linear aim in the natural world,
perhaps because Nature itself needs to be flexible and responsive to
changing environmental conditions within and beyond the world. Biological
evolution seems to be more like a kaleidoscope where the same material is
continuously re-assembled into different forms of life. Every now and then a
cataclysmic event allows things to reshuffle, to begin over again - after
the dinosaurs, after the ice ages, sometimes even after wars. Unless man
turns out to be the exception, although in the short term Nature moves
towards increased complexity, in the long term things don't seem to be
moving purposefully towards a clear objective, they just become different.

Humans observe order, impose order, embark on design with a sense of
purpose and are creative and opportunistic.

Twentieth century science, which we might characterise as an enterprise
involving 'description which leads to prediction and control', works, at
least to a first approximation, because the material of which the natural
world is composed behaves in a predictable manner. Newton could only
derive his laws of motion because this is the case. At the molecular level,
models can be used for prediction because nature provides us with structurally
related families of molecules / protein domains/ lectins- predict how they
will function once one is understood. Nature repeats things- for example
in a family of adhesion molecules the same binding site is located at
different distances from the cell membrane by putting in extra domains - thus
pattern emerges by repetition. The same protein domains are used over and over
again and the same structure may serve different functions depending on its
environment.

Modern biology provides a basis for understanding the living world because
it allows us to make predictions which are, in general, more reliable than
our intuitive reactions and certainly more testable. In addition, it
provides experimentally derived data bases which everyone can use as a
starting place for new research.

Thus the natural order we recognise in biology - which has been selected
from an infinite number of possibilities- survives because it is has
become useful for functionality. For example, there is complementarity between
particular bacteria and different blood group sugars so that our blood
group plays a role in determining the flora in our gut.

A reductionist view of Nature has served us well in our physical and
chemical analysis of the world, but we know, that although it is still
necessary to study small parts of things because we do not have the
technology to do otherwise, it is no longer enough.  In Biology we need
new ideas so we can deal with complexity. Even at the molecular level we are
dealing with complex sequences of events in systems where many other
processes which might affect each other are happening simultaneously. An
example is the complement which deals with bacteria which invade our
bodies.
We do not yet know where to begin to unravel such complexity. In the even
larger view, when we come to dealing with something as complex as food
webs, we can only make the most simple predictions because we have yet to
develop the mathematics required to deal with the complexity.

Order may not always be the fundamental property it seems. It may be
something we project onto our surroundings -an optical illusion- like the
constellations that help us to establish our location in the universe. We
impose pattern or form on vague shapes- the rocks in the desert, those
faces in the stones at Avebury. We do this because it is a short cut to
evaluating or transmitting information. Sometimes we see different orders in the same
data as in Escher's drawings.

Human beings are very good at pattern recognition and at designing models
which allow us to explain and predict. They do not even have to be
fundamentally true if they allow us to predict- when the model fails to
live up to experimental data the model is changed for a better one.

Design is a concept associated with human beings. Purpose is a concept
which enables sentient beings to make sense of their lives. Design and purpose
imply that an informed selection from many possible alternatives has been
made by intelligent beings with specific motives, with an endpoint in
sight and with the capacity to build on experience, to predict and to relate
choice to outcome. Thus with sufficient information, humans can build
inanimate structures by design because we can imagine or predict outcomes,
so while things might not always work out as we plan, generally we do not
have to try out each possibility.

Why do we do need to design things with a purpose? The awareness which
humans have of self leads to fear - fear of pain, non-being, non-survival.
Fear stems from a feeling of being out of control. We are at the mercy of
cosmic events that we cannot regulate. Therefore our best hope for
survival lies in our ability to predict and control as many local events as we can.
We seek to be more and more in control of our futures rather than leaving
them to chance. If our purpose is to increase both the quality and length
of our lives, we may do this more successfully if we use our knowledge to
plan and design things which enhance the body or provide harmony for the
spirit.

Living things are not designed in the sense that word generally applies to
human endeavour. Using the word design in connection with Nature implies
that there is intention or purpose before an organism evolves and the
conscious control of options.

Indeed there is control in Nature- the physical nature of the components
of the Universe (eg gravity) allows some structures to emerge but not others.
Not everything is possible. There are sets of building blocks eg at the
atomic level and at the amino acid level.  However, there does not appear
to be any further constraint. Living things are a result of an immensely
creative process far, far beyond anything we have attempted. In Nature,
anything that arises spontaneously is tested. The screening process is
survival. Nothing is precluded in advance. Nature is opportunistic and
free to respond to changing conditions. One way in which we have imitated
nature to some extent is in the search for new drugs based on combinatorial
chemistry where every conceivable permutation is tested without bias.

Man is creative, not only in his response to the physical world, but also in
the world of ideas. This by no means suggests that man's predisposition to
design and live purposefully is inferior to Nature's profuse creativity.
It is complementary, for we have fertile, creative imaginations which are the
pre-cursers of design and purpose. We depend on the natural world, of
which we are a part, to bring our creative ideas to reality.

In the scientific enterprise, we not only test, describe and report, we
invent new ways to do this. We also use the existing material on earth to
create new materials, new cells, and new organisms to test our ideas. We
also dream and imagine because we can only test what we can imagine.

Creative artists use natural materials to express their deepest
experiences, musicians use sound and finely tuned instruments, and poets use words and
pens. There is an almost limitless number of ways to arrange words use
paint or combine musical notes, but not everything makes sense and if creativity
is to result in productivity we have to place restrictions on ourselves to
create a story or a tune. We do this intelligently - it is not random in
the sense that genetic mutations are random - they occur and nature sorts out
the viable from the non-viable.

Academics use words and ordered, rational thinking to express concepts and
ideas, including that of God, and in a way, like the natural world, such
creative ideas evolve. Dark ages when whole sets of ideas are apparently
lost may be the mind equivalent to the whole scale extinction of life forms-
a way of shuffling and re-dealing the cards.

We re-interpret God in each generation - each generation re-creates God in
its own image- we struggle to view God and relate to Him in ways which are
consistent with our understanding of the world, even though we know this to
be limited. God is not constrained by us - we cannot expect to understand
him once and for all- indeed we cannot even do that with the natural world
which is more open to our senses.

Today we seem to need a God to whom we can relate with parts of our being
which are not accessible to other people or even to ourselves. Maybe we need
to justify our decisions to ourselves, maybe we need some inner confidence
to survive in this universe which might seem quite terrifying if we felt
ourselves to be alone. Maybe we need something to replace the security we
felt before birth or as small children. So to some extent at least we
project our own needs and ideals onto the concept of God which we obtain
through our personal experience and interaction with Being beyond ourselves,
if we have such experience.

Could we with certainty distinguish a God of our own constructions arrived
at by the shifting and turning of ideas about God from the conviction that
there truly is a reality that represents some kind of ultimacy and mystery
that may somehow satisfy a human longing for completeness and fulfilment? At
a personal level often these two aspects of the immanent yet transcendent
God are integrated in a way which enables us to translate religious
experience into something meaningful for everyday life.

These inaccessible areas of ourselves include the unformed, yet to be
articulated and, even further away, yet to be acted upon ideas. It seems
like an infinite progression - our notions of God are generated at one level
from the history and culture of our environment, at another in the centre of
out own inaccessible being where creativity also begins. As individuals we
assimilate these ideas, we create new ones of our own using our personal
wealth of inner experience. When we can express these ideas we consciously
use them to develop our ideas of God which then modify our deepest thoughts.
Thus the cumulative richness of our culture combined with the depths of our
present experience provides new threads of wisdom in every generation.

God is defined as the creator, but in what sense? Is God also a designer
with purpose?

Why did God create an evolving Universe? If God's purpose is to make
everything perfect why didn't he create the world perfect from the
beginning? Surely because this would be incompatible with an evolving
universe that has a beginning. Biological evolution is integrated with the
physical evolution of the world.
What we interpret as 'design' in the Universe may be an intrinsic property
of Nature, it does not necessarily imply the direct intervention of a
sentient being such as we understand sentience. We may ascribe purpose to
our experience but it does not follow that God necessarily also does this.

When we design or create we try to avoid being non-productive - we don't
write down random letters and then pick out the ones that happen to be
words. We recognise order- for example out of the billions of combinations
of notes we select some as being harmonious and tuneful. Why does Nature/God
work on the random principle if there is a pre-conceived design? Certainly
it seems he is not interested in efficiency!

Co-creativity and partnership between God, Nature and Man

Perhaps some answers lie in the idea of partnership or dance and a role for
Nature, including Man, to work co-creatively with God. Partnership like the
dance is not just one sided. It involves each partner putting the other
first, respecting the other and extending to them trust and freedom to make
informed choices. Partnership involves trust, freedom and relinquishing
total control. We cannot control God and if we wish to be responsible
individuals then we do not want God to control us either. As we mature, we
recognise that we are in a partnership with a God who may be unchanging, but
whom we experience in different ways as we change- as the monk reciting the
rosary remarked to a critic - the prayers don't change, but I do.

Control may satisfy our need for security, but it doesn't really fit with
our observance and experience of nature, or indeed with experience of our
selves at the level of intentional action. It appears, instead, that there
is openness, a range of possibilities within nature. If we see God as
someone who designed everything once and for all at the beginning of
creation then we miss the majesty of the possibility of creation itself
being creative as it responds in harmony with changes to itself. Indeed
cannot God's involvement with us be such that together we can attain real
novelty, contingency and opportunity that preserves the integrity of life in
the process?

In some measure 'freedom' applies to the whole scale of things- at some
levels it may mean the probabilities that atoms will collide and form bonds;
at other levels probabilities can be skewed by conscious choices. The more
complex the organism the more important is the need for responsible informed
choice, not only for the survival of the individual but for the survival of
the group which sustains the individual. Though they may restrict our
options, genes do not ultimately control us.

Why should the Universe have any 'intentional purpose'? Why should what is
arrived at by design be better than what happens though combinations of
probabilities and possibilities? Design which implies a defined purpose with
no room for opportunistic development does not seem to reflect what we see
in the world. The world is full of opportunism at every level. Even humans
do not design their own lives except in a limited way - we respond to
opportunities. Isn't what we observe more like God as an artist, having some
kind of vision but then working with the material of creation to allow it to
have a life of its own, standing back, withdrawing even, to allow it to
reveal itself. Many creative people recognise that they reach a point where
the music, the painting, the sculpting, the characters in a novel take on a
like of their own. The same is true in science- there are these great
moments where you stand back listening to the symphony, watching the scene
unfolding before you, knowing that all the preparation and data collection
has been essential but that alone it does not constitute the event you are
exploring.

When we make gardens, new materials or new genes we work with Nature and
potentially with God, using both our creative imaginations and our ability
to design.

While design has to do mainly with control, creativity involves a response
to the environment and to circumstance.  We design gardens, we breed
racehorses and maybe now we are on the brink of being able to alter or even
design genomes.  However, just because we plant the seeds or genetically
engineer the DNA does not mean that we completely control any of these
things because just like Dolly the sheep, or quintuplets all living things
develop in response to their environment so neither clones nor quintuplets
are exact replicas.

A world where we could design control everything would surely not be
desirable, even if this was some kind of dream of mankind. Design can be
thought and looked for by us for the wrong reason--a need for control, or
for certainty--but it may foreclose on mystery and the real contingency
which combines with our intentions. We can design a garden to perfection- we
can eliminate pests, we can trim everything to within an inch of its life,
but in so doing we may miss the rare beauty that only chance and
opportunism
can bring.

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