What Creationists note however is that we are talking about types of tortoises. Some tortoises have a high neck arch and others a smaller one. Adaptation they note only effects the magnitude of existing traits. But all this variation occurs on an immutable species. A tortoise is a tortoise. Whether it has a high or low neck arch does not change its essence. God made tortoise and tortoise is a thing He made.
This is very similar to Plato's musing on essence. What makes something what it is? But it is actually not as simple as Essentialists like Creationists think. Consider alchemy. Gold was thought to be the most pure element, indivisible and underlying the universe. By 1905 it was Rutherford's experiments on gold that showed to the contrary that the majority of mass of gold was actually in tiny nuclei. Perhaps gold was made from tiny particles of gold? And what makes these smaller particles gold? Perhaps even smaller particles of gold? And so their is infinite regress without ever examining "what is gold." So the theory developed that gold was an atom of a particular number of protons, and these determined, in obeyance to thermodynamics and quantum theory, the geometry and behaviour of electron which gives us the chemical properties. Its a beautiful theory which puts gold alongside all the other elements and explains the essence of gold. Gold is no longer a unique "thing" made as indivisible gold by God, it is a type of atom with 79 protons. To explain something then we must do it in terms other than itself, it means throwing away the itself you are explaining! (This is realise is another example of my SRH.)
But then we have the problem of the essence of "protons" and "electrons." Haven't we just shifted the problem of what is gold to what are protons and electrons? In biology we say that animals differ only in their DNA. Swap out the DNA of one animal in an egg for another and it grows into the animal defined by the new DNA. Like gold, tortoise is no longer indivisible and god given, but sits side by side all other species. With atoms we can experimentally create all the possible atoms by adding protons to nuclei. With species, its far more complex, and its not so clear what DNA sequences gives us animals and which don't. We can never-the-less using this theory create both elements and species. The only question remaining was the apparently more trivial one of how particular elements and species got created. Questions like why is Oxygen so abundant, or why do dinosaurs no longer exist?
And so 20th Century science would be happy with this account of essence. No God in this system, everything explained by more general atomic theory.
At college I had a problem with this, much in fact like Kierkegaard reacting to the Big System philosophies like Hegel. Something was lost when we move to the big theory. To create a universal theory, the unique parts must be discarded. Yet it is the unique parts that we start with. A tortoise crawling slowly across the ground, regardless whether it can be explained by a unique DNA sequence, is still a tortoise and Tortoise and DNA are not the same thing. If they were the same thing then like gold being explained by smaller particles of gold we would be explaining nothing. Tortoise must be different from DNA for DNA to be of any value in explaining tortoise. All we do is discard "tortoise" in favour of more general DNA theory, and that felt wrong at college. Perhaps I am an artist at heart. A painting of Tortoise DNA is really a very different thing from a painting of a Tortoise. Both painting appeal to a different essence. God made Tortoise, God made DNA!
But what we can say is that one thing correlates with another. You push the accelerator and the car goes faster, does not mean that the clutch IS the car going faster. You change this gene and the result is a higher shell arch on the tortoise, but this gene is not a higher shell arch. Both shell arch and gene have their own essences that are bound together in a complex dynamic system. Ultimately the Creationist is asking if genes are responsible for the size of shell arches then what is responsible for that? There is an infinite regress, just as their was with gold. Whatever essence is promoted as the cause of some other essence, say atoms to explain gold, the question still remains but what causes that essence. So if we know that atoms are what makes gold what it is, then what is it that makes an atom what it is?
Ultimately we realise that the pursuit of essence like a bullet being shot into water has initially impressive impact but the endless dissipation of energy in fanning out ripples leads eventually to the bullet being stopped. The pursuit of essence is endless because the idea of essence is flawed.
When we first teach a child that something is a tortoise we stimulate a fascination. I remember the day I first saw a tortoise. I was in Africa aged about 2. A tortoise was pointed out to me at a distance and all I could see was a rock. I still didn't see a tortoise. Then as we approached it moved and I was blown away by a moving rock. What a fascinating thing. A rock that moves is a tortoise. How can an animal be a rock. How can a rock be an animal. The fight between essences exciting and fascinating my fledgling mind looking out on an endlessly new and exciting world. I had just run away from an imported giant scarlet macaw that was as large as myself. With no knowledge of DNA or even species the world is just new and fascinating and the mind finds things and essences everywhere.
With that initial fascination we continue searching, the bullet has been shot. And as already explained we dissect tortoises to see how a rock can move, and endlessly expand the essences of this excited mind. Behind it always looking for the true essence, the gold and philosophers stone underlying the universe. But its a dangerous quest because to move on we must discard where we have been, and we lose some of the bullets velocity. I very quickly discovered that stones don't move. Stones are boring lumps of rock (well boring compared with animals), and tortoises are like lizards with eyes and mouths and scales. I lost that initial magic. And so it continues.
Creationists still have that initial magic of creation 100%. They are not prepared to discard anything. Evolutionists are prepared to entirely throw all that magic away and explain life in terms of the same boring matter that they explain stones. Yet both hold on to essence. The Creationist holding onto the pristine initial kids book, zoo like essence. Evolutionist seeking deeper the gold essence at heart of the universe.
What if essence is the mistake? What if looked one way a tortoise is just a tortoise, really very different from a lizard and strangely similar to a rock. What if looked the other all are just matter and chemistry? Neither way is more fundamental than the other?
I've been meaning as a slowly roll out the polemic to briefly mention the criticism of "adaptationism" as coined by E.O.Wilson. The dogma is that DNA holds the differences between one animal the other. You want to see how a Tortoise is different from Lizard just look at its DNA, its all in there. And you want to know why a tortoise looks like it does and a Lizard looks like it does then just look at the environmental pressure, selection and adaptations of that DNA. A tortoise has a domed shell because it feeds on plants and so only needs to move slowly which means it must be able to defend itself. A lizard is slender and streamlined because it feeds on active prey and defends itself by running. E.O.Wilson questioned whether this is the right way to see it. It is more that we have some clay that was moulded in a direction. We don't say that clay is critical to the functions of a plate and a cup. We can make them from wood, plastic and metal also. The essence of a cup does not lie in its matter. It just needs anything that is suitably rigid and waterproof. So too with tortoise. How much of a tortoise is to do with what it is moulded from and how much is moulding and adaptation. We look at insects with their exoskeletons, 3 body segments, 6 legs, wings, spiracles and see no difference across the entire group. Yet this starting setup has been moulded into the greatest array on Earth (of multicellular organisms). Its not correct to say that 3 body segments is necessary for an ant to be an ant, its just it has inherited this because ants came from the family we call insects. When we buy a plate and a cup from a potters it will be clay not because a plate needs to be clay but simply because that it where it came from. So when Evolutionists and Darwinists speak of essence they are often bundling things that are nothing to do with adaptation into their idea of essence. It is like gold being able to be made from things other than atoms. And indeed this is a step to realisating that essence is the problem.
Suppose we buy some gold in a computer game. It looks like gold, it behaves like gold, but it is not made from atoms. It is a narrative and stimulation of sense created by a computer. It may even have value like gold, as with various virtual currencies in games. It is actually as good as gold, yet it isn't made from atoms. It is the same with convergent evolution two different evolutionary families adapt to create something similar. We have the Orcas and the sharks. Yet one is made from mammal essence and the other is fish essence. If you eat them you will notice the fundamental difference in what they are made from.
Time is running out and this polemic is huge. I hope enough has been said to start to drive the wedge into essence. We think in terms of what things are and what they are made from. We believe in essence. Creationists think this essence is made by God, immutable and unchanging as fixed now as when it left Gods hand. And they are right looking one way. But alchemists and scientists want to throw that away and look at more fundamental underlying essences that unify things. And they are right looking another way. But there is a third way that does not need to apply fixed essence to things. They can be fixed like the tortoise in the zoo which has a cage specially for its type, or they can be unified like Orcas and the Sharks that could be in separate mammal and fish houses or could be put in the same fish tank as top ocean predators. Or we race through the insect house at the zoo and not being that interested just see nasty six legged critters without much essential difference. Yet to me who loves them I would see 20 or so families and countless genii. Or they can be really unified as we walk through the DNA labs of the zoo and see tortoise, orca shark, beetle DNA in test tubes. Or even more fundamental as we go through the chemistry labs and see the chemical process and diagrams showing the elements from which the molecules from which all the animals are made. Or we could put on 3D goggles and walk through a virtual zoo where dinosaurs exist and imaginary creates we never even saw have been made, forgetting for a minute it is make believe and attributing essence to each of these creations.
There is no fundamental essence. There is no fundamental moment of creation because there is no fundamental thing there. Its a infinitely complex world with endless faces, as fascinating as when we first had a tortoise pointed out to us, but as deep as we wish to go. How could a God have created this bit by bit? Did he moulded existing clay like in the Bible or did he make the clay itself. And if he made the clay did he mould atoms or did he make them also, and electrons, and quarks, and strings... its an infinite regress again. God does not play with essences, if He did anything he made essence itself.
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