Do you think Dawkins or Noble are right in their idea of evolution? Let us know in the comments below! To watch the full debate, visit iai.tv/video/the-gene-machine?KZfaq&+comment

Excellent the way these two people accept each other's statements and discuss the outcomes from different points of view. No talking over each other, no rubbishing the opposing view. How refreshing.

It's so refreshing to listen to educated people debate objectively and respectfully. It's a fertile ground for growth and understanding. So different from the political and social-media environment.

I have no idea what they’re talking about but I love it

It's just nice to see two men having a respectable discussion. No ad-hominem, no journalistic agendas.

Kudos to Noble. Never heard of him, and at first look I was querying whether he was alive or not, and then he opened his mouth and spoke with more lucidity and clarity than most people a half or a quarter of his age. As I said... kudos.

You just know that both of these two gentlemen are prepared to change their minds when presented with facts. If only everyone behaved this way.

I was present at this debate and it was the most impressive debate I have ever had the pleasure to witness - Professors Dawkins and Noble were eloquent, respectful, clear in their positions and at times humorous. I agreed with Professor Dawkins’s position….but thought that he lost the debate, which is a rarity.

Honestly, there's no debate here. Basically, each nucleotide has its own phenotypic effect. Unfortunately, this effect is very difficult to describe because it's so heavily dependent on all the other nucleotides. As a result, the nucleotide-centric viewpoint produces a genotype-phenotype map that's far too complicated to really be practical. So in practice, you try to simplify. A good way to do this is by moving to a gene-centric viewpoint. This trick reduces the complexity of the genotype-phenotype map, but at the end of the day, it's an oversimplification, and it'll miss certain phenomena. For example, once you move emphasis from nucleotides to entire genes, the resulting model will have trouble seeing the potential phenotypic effects of a gene jumping from one part of a chromosome to another portion of the same chromosome. That's fine; every oversimplification is going to have some kind of cost, and that's completely okay, because science progresses by working out which simplifications are "largely worth it" and which simplifications are "largely not". In any event, Denis Noble's point is that even once you make the gene-centric simplification, there's still further complexities and non-linearities in the resulting genotype-phenotype map. Personally, I don't think this really undermines Dawkin's point, it just highlights the complexity that remains even once certain simplifications that are built into Dawkin's espoused viewpoint are utilized.

Two too old men discussing truths of life with zeal, taking notes and accepting each other's points of view because knowledge is the only guiding light not their egos, this video made me emotional deep down. My respect for both.

Imagine if all debates were this calm, collected and concise. Amazing

They are both right as they are talking about two different things

Can't quite put my finger on it but watching this reminds of lovely thick curtains that people used to hang on their windows in the 70s. It's a mystery to me.

Denis Noble actually looks like a professor, if I had to say what a typical professor looks like he is perfect, even his voice. I think Denis wins the 'Looking like a professor' part of this argument hands down.

It seems clear, even from Dawkins' final contribution, that they were speaking of two different functions. Therefore, Dawkins was correct in regard to evolution but he conceded that Noble was correct at the smaller, more localised level of embryology. That is what intelligent, fact focussed people do. They do not stand on principle. What I find fascinating is that we are still learning about the complex functions of DNA and genes, even though huge strides have already been made.

Really nice talk! As a scientist who has been working on causality for many years, I think Richard may have to relook at the interpretation of association as causality. Judea Pearl has shown in his "The Book of Why" that this should not be the case. Causation would imply correlation; but correlation does not imply causation. A very important reason for this is that causation is NOT merely a statistical relation, but is fundamentally a physical notion. This is also why we are moving from mere causal inferences (which are mainly statistical) to more Physics-based formalisms like entropy-based causation for information flow assessments(in the Shannon sense). On that point, I think Denis makes a very sound argument. Globally averaged causation may look like correlations(this is why Richard's evolutionary argument makes sense), but they are fundamentally not statistical associations. I have really enjoyed this talk. Thanks for sharing.

Reading The Selfish Gener was like a bomb going off in my head. I realised how life evolved, and how life started. I could never understand how life could just appear, but his chapter Selfish Replicators changed everything for me. I now teach science, and it was likely due to that one chapter.

At this point, it's not who's right or wrong, but it's a task that the biology community has to solve in the future. hard-line Darwinist's position in evolutionary studies such as psychology as well as biology has narrowed. cell biology and molecular biology have begun to accumulate a lot of research data on the expression of acquired traits and external intervention. The same goes for epigenetics, which is based on that. I think the hard-line Darwinists also need to take a revisionist view in these. Science can always change, and the possibilities should always be open.

Denis Noble, is the spitting image of young Mr. Grace, on “Are you being served”

@TheInstituteOfArtAndIdeas, could you please share the name of that music track/artist used at the beginning of this video?

Where is the rest of the debate? 🤔

It's so refreshing to hear two brilliant men who disagree so much still able to have a civil argument..

Clocks chime. Bells toll. I feel I've made a valuable contribution here.

Great and respectful communication. Pleasure to watch.

All debates should be like this

bottom line is that if such effects are there they are like a squinting version of blind mutation. they would be selected for or re-suppressed in the same way any other gene substitution would be, except the new mechanism could both take away and give as another possibility for mutation. but maybe its apt to say that the connection to Lamarck would be more like the discovery of respiratory germs that spread through aerosols effectively in its relation to miasma theories, if there exists such squinting mutations. i don't think the Baldwin effect is appropriate, maybe an honest mistake, but yeah, don't know what else to say about that one, other than saying i'm sorry to Richard for misquoting him and so on, and social selection in terms of regimes where a trait can only be selected at the individual level due to a social environment with certain features is not outside the purview of his presentation of the selfish gene.

Can two brilliant men with differing explanations for naturally occurring phenomena both be correct? This brief conversation suggests the answer is… YES!

Is the audio slightly ahead of the video?

What is the purpose of the Poisson Distribution, is an instance random or not?

I want to see the entire debate, not just this clip.

They are both right. Even if a gene's effects can be overidden, it is the ensemble of genes that is causal in this matter. Genes do not work alone. I just watched this because I saw two people I knew from the early seventies - the Balliol/Biology connection. I am not an evolutionist or physiologist myself.

These are the true role models in life.

Dawkins has so much life in him I’m so, so glad to be able to say.

and so there is nothing about the statement that genes evolve over time with advantage or they get diluted or cut off that says you cant even develop a molecular machinery that changes the genome in real time to improve its cell function or even in principle its offspring, but if that is a mechanism that has to arrise through natural selection then its results are also kind of part of the same process however its structured in the end :-)

we can say organisms evolve through the change in the genome and its not a simple one way train so to speak, but it is necessary to have a certain range of genome to be able to have the cell change or error correct at all, and there needs to be these effects for the genome to be copied so accurately or for there to be redundancy that can make say a disease dormant in most people and so on and so forth.

It was very intellectual and refreshing. So what I understand within my limited understanding is : When two lions fight in the Serengeti for the alpha position , the 'alphaness factor' which will decide the winner resides in their genes or the individual lion is still debatable ??🤔

Please link of full video?

According to Professor Noble, knock out the gene and heart rate hardly alters; ie, it does alter.

I watched the whole debate on IAI. It was awesome to see these two in action. Both were brilliant and class acts. I have been reading and listening to Dawkins most of my life. I must confess that I was unaware of Denis Noble in a quality way until this event. These gentlemen were both great. Denis really made me stop and rethink a few things. This debate is well worth taking the time to watch in its entirety. I just discovered IAI and subscribed to that platform. If their content is generally as good as this, I want in for sure. Check it out.

Do i have to be from the UK to subscribe to your website?

This should be free to view by all in totality!

Dr Dawkins should check what Dr Mike Levin is doing at Tufts University.

It seems to me, based on this clip of the conversation, that Dawkins and Noble have two different, and almost unrelated, points of focus. Dawkins: the gene is the fundamental unit of hereditary transmission and of population-level attributes. (Incidentally, this emphasis seems to neglect the relevance of epigenetic factors.) Noble: the gene is not generally what most directly determines an organism's functions and structures; rather, it's complex networks of genes and other related systems that establish an organism.

It might adapt or have redundancy but what is the robustness of that adaptation? Is the organism still able to exert itself to the same degree or is it now limited after that gene is blocked?

Dawkins says, DO THE ;EXPERIMENT, change the frequency of how the clock chimes, and Noble says, BUT I DID THE EXPERIMENT, knocked out the gene, and very little changed, and Dawkins says, NEVER THE LESS, damn your experiment, WE KNOW BETTER, and if than an appeal to a thought experiment based on his own certainty of knowledge.

I genuinely expected; 'See that evolutionary pressure selecting for island dwarfism, that's your mum that is'.

Both are correct. Genes use substrates and chemical reactions in their environment to replicate while their expression is subject to the many chemical products and energy currency that feed back upon it to control its expression. In fact the debate itself is incorrect in that the partnership between genes and their environmental substrates-products is to be messed with at the peril of Life itself.

Great discussion, but I couldn't help thinking of Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse when watching this!

hmm and I'm stumped lol. but seriously I think mr. Noble could have a point, things are always a bit more complicated at a microscopic level thats all I'm saying, so is there more to 'it' than just the 'selfish gene' or do we leave it at that.

This is the first time I saw Richard Dawkins in a proper debate/ discussion where people let each other finish their sentences. Those religious apologetics never let Richard finish a single sentence lol.

Dawkins got it right I think; not sure how Noble actually thinks evolution is working mechanistically; what is his alternative to the gene centred view????

Can somebody give me the link to full video? I'll be very grateful to him/her.

Wow, never knew Wrangler and Levi had that much rivalry.😀

Well, this is certainly more interesting than Dawkins' head to head with Piers Morgan

They are both master debaters when it comes to evolution and genes and all that science stuff.

Beautiful! They are so civilized in their manners and have no tendency towards prejudice. Science, science and only science. It may not have all the answers but it sure is the major source of knowledge, wisdom and prosperity

I think that what this discussion nicely demonstrates, is that science is far from finite. One branch of science can seriously challenge facts? Established by another branch of science. There is, as yet, no finite conclusion that can be drawn.

I'm with Noble here. I think Dawkins' interpretation is quite restrictive and thus limited, while Noble's recognizes that there is greater complexity than Dawkins' hypothesis. With more information today concerning the extremely complex nature of an organism (and its parts!), 'complex systems' thinking and interpretation is necessary for a better understanding than merely a 'localized' one that Dawkins favors. There's not only a bottom-up dynamic but top-down (even left-right, right-left!). The whole system is dynamically integrated and affect and influence the different parts and components back and forth.

Noble is correct, Dawkins often disregards the 'wholeness' of organisms because of his selfish-gene view (which of course has its value). I think it is important to realise that the question 'What is the unit of selection?' in biology is not a question that nature asks herself, 'all levels at once' might be the most appropriate answer, and it's the one George Price gave (in mathematical terms) - a scientist to whom Dawkins owes a great deal. And yes usually when you knock out a gene *for* something, that codes for an enzyme in a biosynthesis pathway for example, there is little effect on the end products of the biosynthesis pathway - until you knock out a few other genes which have been upregulated to compensate for the loss. There is a kind of basic 'intelligence' even at the genetic level which Dawkins also disregards in his view of life.

What I gather, are two points: * epigenetics can affect the organism * genes are more essential for evolution I still think epigenetic changes can be inherited for future generations, but can they continue for millions of years?

I couldn’t quite understand this exchange, but I have always agreed with Dawkins’ approach in the past. I regret I cannot understand Denis Noble’s points. A simplified explanation of what they were saying would be appreciated.

one of the points of this redundancy argument is that a living cell through its genome evolving gains the ability to proof read itself. which is a good example, but it is still part of the expression of the genome. :) the enzymes are all there and so on and so forth.

I can't wait to hear Professor Dawkins address here in Brisbane. He is a hero of mine.

Generalizing is a method of creating a plainfield to give yourself time to stay relevant, and/or avoid aknowledging, that the other person might be right and you might be wrong.

This is how to have a conversation

You can do this experiment over the course of a day, week or month, Dawkins is talking about billions of years of evolution, which makes perfect sense.

Would love to listen to this in full without being forced into a browser.

and IF being a pretty important qualifier.

so if it is so that the expression of a genome can create an apparatus that can change the genome in the next generation, then it still has its root in the expression of that genome, and thereby it would as Richard says be easy to include in his picture, *chough* as he actually stated it :-). that is to say its perfectly reasonable to suppose that evolution can lead to such mechanisms, but it would be just another avenue for mutation, even if its not as blind in a particular sense if true ^^

The selfish gene view or other adaptationist/ultra-Darwinian views have been obsolete since long ago. There are lots of heritable information and information that interacts with selective pressure other than some discrete sequences of gene.

Noble's interpretation of his experiment that deleted a gene responsible for 80% of the heart's rhythm seems uncompelling. He merely showed there's some redundancy in some important physiological systems. He should have deleted ALL of the (small number of) genes responsible for heart rhythm. That would have led to a much clearer conclusion.

Would have been great to see a 'trialogue' with Rupert Sheldrake in the mix

Dawkins always gives the impression of rage simmering just below the surface.

well, life has redundancy, a lot of how genes are set up has to do with redundancy, like having codons that can be replaced without changing the protein and so on. so its kind of silly to say because genes are not always on their own capable to changing much that means they are not causal, because they might just be causal in a way that contains a lot of redundancy, and because that is advantageous on the whole through the fact that even if one specimen loses an important gene that on its own doesn't make it not viable on its own, it will be likely that a few generations down the line the offspring will regain that, on the whole that kind of redundancy is so important for stabilizing the important parts of the genome that it is likely to evolve in this way pretty early on in the evolution of more complicated organisms. genes are still going to determine the possible proteins, but if you have redundancy for small complexes of genes or single genes then its advantageous. roughly speaking ofc.

Noble's hair is right out of a 1979 Battlestar Galactica episode. Beautiful.

Where does the "other network" come from? I guess it has a genetic origin too right? Even the components that change, such as the brain, are genetically determined at the beginning

Do they both go to the same hairdresser?

Richard Dawkins is truly amazing. He's correct on every level; every time. :)

Peace of mind is most important in life. All a persons intelligence means nothing without enjoying life, we are on planet earth such a short time even if we live till 95. People agree or disagree but time goes on

What is that metal thingy behind the moderators head, lol!

Fact is, Dawkins isn't a scantest, he's more kinda of an actor, journalist, whateverMeanwhile Noble has written over 600 paper, also he was supervisor over Dawkins back when he was student. Noble against selfish gene idea,, and the actor don't like that.

Your long-term SELFISH Satisfaction BEST is enhanced by helping others enhance their Satisfaction.

This debate will be much useful for those who have doubts-Trying to contradict it if you are not in doubt, will be a difficult task to do therefore it is better not to get involved if you don't have doubts

They are both "right", because they aren't arguing truth. They are arguing perspective. From the physiological standpoint genotype is what codes for and therefore causes phenotype. However, phenotype is what selective pressure acts on, which shapes allele frequency of the population, which narrows the window through which the genotypes of individuals may be drawn. That means from an evolutionary standpoint phenotype is what indirectly affects ("causes") genotype. Unless I just missed the point, which I may have, I only watched these 5 minutes.

I am sorry, I don't endorse Dawkins view. Causal agents can be identified by the effects, so when he claims selfish nature of genes and provides a heap of justifications, he needed only considered Darwin's survival strategy , instead of making things up. I wonder what fantasy he will dish out if I to;d that imaginary number i is defined to be the ratio of effect by cause.

Every effect must have a cause. Design argues intelligence.

Causation seems to me to be the wrong paradigm to describe the relation between genotype and phenotype. After all, the actions of the phenotype are causal of the genotype being able to reproduce, if that is how we want to look at it. The question revolves around Weissman's assertion that the germ line is not affected by changes in the phenotype, even though gene expression may be. That is still a matter that is open to further research. I simply think that introducing causality is a nod to dualistic thinking - that something must be determining the action of material life.

For goodness sake! They're not even arguing the same point!

How do genes mutate then ? If Jewish men have been circumcised for over 4000 years then when will the gene decide to mutate so future Jewish men would be born without foreskin. Especially since foreskin removal has health benefits. So how come this has not happened?

Has Dawkins ever addressed the shameful persecution of the modern-day Galileo, Nobel Prize-winner James Watson?

- Everything that has a beginning has a cause. The universe had a beginning, therefore the universe has a cause. Whatever caused it has to be outside time, matter and space. It would need to be personal, powerful and intelligent.

I pray for Richard to live 100 years He is such a diomond

Dawkins is a communicator, and never has been a deep thinker or even a proper leading scientist: his chair is in public understanding of science, someone with a strong personality whose job is to increase the interest, and respect, of the public for science and scientists. He performs well against lay people, but tends to be out of his depth against real thinkers. Prof. John Lennox, the Christian Oxford mathematician, basically demolished Dawkins.

that is to say if you rephrase what richard said to "genomes are causal" then it covers all of the objections i think. for example instead of talking about individual genes you talk about subtitutions of individual genes in the possible genomes where its viable at all, so in a set of genomes where a certain gene does not have any advantage or effect subtle or pronounced on the organism, that gene will randomly change into something useful or something else that is also random but equally not harmful.

I can't believe you didn't show the clip towards the end of the debate where Dawkins accuses him of 'not wanting any smoke' then punches him right in the face.

Why does Dawkins keep calling himself an “evolutionist,” as though it’s a philosophical view he subscribes to? And, why would being an evolutionist determine how you look at things?

My god dawkins is such a simpleton. It really hurt trying to make sense of any of his babble

also want to say sorry to Richard for misquoting him in the past :-) partially because of second hand accounts that were frankly silly.

In this clipped clip, Dawkins' argument prevails, but one wonders what followed the abrupt end of the clip.

If you have ever read both Noble and Dawkins, then you will wait impatiently for any write-up from Noble. You will never open a page of Dawkins again. History will see Dawkins as a trivial linear minded extrapolator of simple ideas. History will cherish each point raised by Noble and the ideas and approaches he brings. Fast forward 100 years and the points that Noble makes will be the central issues in research. Dawkins will have been forgotten.