Denton's case for teleology

"not mere cosmic happenstance."

p13 Refers to "biocentric unity". In discussing the functions of water he comments "They reveal that life on Earth - including mankind - is not mere cosmic happenstance.Through its magic, water sings a universal song of life, and in its special fitness for human physiology it sings a special song of man. The properties of water show that beings with our biology do indeed occupy a special central place in the order of nature, and that the blueprint for life was present in the properties of matter from the moment of creation. We may have been displaced from the spatial center of the universe but not its 'teleological center'. In the properties of water the so-called Copernican Principle is well and duly overturned. "

Idea that multiple unique properties of water work together in a way essential to life.

p19 "The wheel has kept on turning for billions of years only because liquid water and global temperatures have been conserved by regulatory mechanisms - many of which also depend on unique properties of water .."

p19 Includes a discussion of the viscosity of ice, which I hadn't seen before.

p19 "In effect, the hydrological cycle is enabled not by one unique property of water, but by several properties that 'conspire together', as it were, to turn the 'wheel' and provide water for land-based life."

p20 "Although the importance of the hydrological cycle is widely acknowledged, what is, as far as I am aware, never mentioned is the remarkable fact that the delivery of water to the land, an essential medium for all life on Earth, is in effect carried out by and dependent on the properties of water itself, unaided by any other external regulatory systems.

In this extraordinary fact we glimpse the first example of what may only be described as the transcending fitness of water for life as it exists on Earth."

He sees teleology in the way that water draws the minerals from rocks and then provides them to life.

p27 "There is a beautiful and elegant teleology in all this. The same process which draws from rocks the minerals and essential elements for life generates at the same time - in the clays and sands and silts that together form soil with organic debris - an ideal water- and mineral- retaining matrix that provides the means by which the mineral-enriched water can be used by plants. (And also ultimately by animals, because in a sense plants are nature's intermediaries, a means of imbibing and concentrating the minerals eroded from the rocks and transmitting them to the terrestrial herbivores that feed on them, and to the carnivores that feed on the herbivores.)"

p27 Chart 1.2 of the above

Design of transcending elegance

p33 "Water's properties are fit as delivery man, quarry master, and storekeeper for land-based life, all in one! This is not everyday design, analogous to that seen in human technology; this is design of a transcending elegance and parsimony."

p33 "This chapter has highlighted the fact that it is not so much the sheer number of properties of water fit for life that conveys such and irrepressible sense of design, but the way they work together to achieve ends vital to life on Earth. Yes, the number is impressive; but that fact pales against the deep teleology manifested in their profoundly purposeful synergy. That the pattern of the interactions conforms to a teleological hierarchy is as remarkable a fact as any in the entire realm of science."

p34 Chart 1.5 on teleology.

Teleology is seen in the tectonic recycling process that has kept life's nutrients available over a vast period of time.

p40 From Marcia Bjornerud "Earth's surface and subsurface - like our own skin and organs - are in a constant state of renovation, the overall architecture preserved even as the constituent parts are incrementally replaced. Nothing is permanent, and yet because of this everything is eternal."

p40 "So plate tectonics explains why the continents exist and persist, why mountains are never finally ground to sea level, why the hydrological cycle can replenish the essential mineral content of the terrestrial hydrosphere endlessly over billions of years, ensuring the continuance of life on land, and why the seas have never been depleted of their dissolved salt and mineral content. Plate tectonics has revealed that as fast as the hydrological cycle is wearing down the rocks , and as fast as the ocean sediments are entombing life's essential elements on the sea bed, tectonic processes have been continually replacing them."

p40-41 "water plays a crucial role in lubricating the entire tectonic system." Bjornerud: "Only Earth developed habits of self-maintenance that have kept it looking youthful and fresh." "Earth's beauty secret: water, and lots of it"

Teleology is seen in these two self-regulating and life-essential cycles which rest on the unique properties of water. p49 "So just as water delivers itself by its own properties to the thirsty land via the hydrological system, water by its own powers delivers itself to the mantle, and thereby activates the whole tectonic system, and sustains it over long ages."

Invokes Kant to argue that the tectonic recycling is "not a mere machine" because of "formative reciprocity".

p59-60 Kant comments very interesting. "Kant in his "Critique of Judgement" argues that a defining characteristic of living system (what he calls a 'natural purpose') is the formative reciprocity of their parts. He points out that systems, more specifically living organisms, whose parts exhibit such a reciprocal formative influence on each other belong to a completely different order of being than that of contingent artifactual assemblages.' .. 'An organized [natural] being is then not a mere machine' for it 'possesses in itself formative power of a self-propagating kind.' 'This can never be the case with artificial instruments.' Natural purposes exhibit 'nothing analogous to any causality we know.' He defines a natural whole or system as an 'organized product of nature..in which every part is reciprocally purpose (end) and means'"

p60 "The notion that the tectonic system is the result of design rises unbidden from the evidence. How could such an elegant system of integrated elements of unique fitness, which has fashioned the world for life over billions of years, and which transcends in its reciprocal self-formative abilities any artifact created to date, have arisen out of blind collisions of atoms? And how could the manifold fitness of water, which conveys every impression of having been fine-tuned to turn the wheels, be mere happenstance?"

After discussing life's processes, returns to summarize the case for teleology in the whole scenario. p122 The last paragraph is a brief summary,and the whole page is a summary of water's fitness for life. "...water, by its own powers, delivers itself to the land, erodes the rocks, provides the minerals for terrestrial ecosystems, rests in the soil, and transits as needed through the soil to the roots. Now we see that it is also by water's own powers that it raises itself and its precious cargo of minerals from the root to the leaf, enabling the production of life-giving oxygen through photosynthesis. In all such instances, a prior element of fitness is exploited to use another element in the ensemble of fitness. It is even more marvelous when...a succession of ends (each utilizing a unique element of fitness of water) are achieved by using a prior unique element or elements of fitness, making up what amounts to a teleological sequence or rational hierarchy of means to ends."

After details of the incredible coupling of handling CO2 and the acid-base balance on p154-155, an eloquent "song of praise" about water's role in physiology.

p156 This is a wonderful page, a reverie to life and the extraordinary fitness of water that suggests that it was "prefigured" "from the beginning of time".

p156 "our being was only possible because of the supreme fitness of nature through the properties of water for beings of our physiological design. And this implies that the fitness of nature for our biological design was prefigured into the order of nature from the beginning of time. This must count as a scientific discovery of the first order, which in itself has profound implications regarding our place in the ultimate ground of being."

Another reiteration of all the coordinated properties of water.

p163-165 In a section named The Prime Coincidence he discusses the fact that life must have a liquid matrix, and that water is a nearly ideal liquid which includes the range 0-50C where the biochemistry works, a tiny fraction of the temperature range of the universe. Chart 7.1 summary of water's fitness for life.

A testimony to the uniqueness of life

p188 "Water has testified, and its testimony is unequivocal. Life and humankind do occupy, after all, a unique place in the natural order."

p188 "In water's magic, the Copernican principle is well and truly overturned."