"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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Published   2001.07.28