Thread: "irreducible" complexity predicted in 1918

... Most present day animals are the result of a long process of evolution, in which at least thousands of mutations must have taken place. Each new mutant in turn must have derived its survival value from the effect which it produced upon the "reaction system" that had been brought into being by the many previously formed factors in cooperation; thus a complicated machine was gradually built up whose effective working was dependent upon the interlocking action of very numerous elementary parts or factors, and many of the characters and factors which, when new, where originally merely an asset finally become necessary because other necessary characters and factors had subsequently become changed so as to be dependent on the former. It must result, in consequence, that a dropping out of, or even a slight change in any one of these parts is very likely to disturb fatally the whole machinery; ...

Hermann J. Muller
GENETIC VARIABILITY, TWIN HYBRIDS AND CONSTANT HYBRIDS, IN A CASE OF BALANCED LETHAL FACTORS
Genetics 1918 3: 422–499

This came up on another forum. I thought I'd spread it around. I had never heard that the Darwinian-Mendelian synthesis actually predicts irreducible complexity. It makes perfect sense but since 'we' officially beat 'them' to the punch, we can now rub their faces in it should it ever come up here or elsewhere. Muller uses the term interlocking complexity in the paper but the idea is the same.

http://www.genetics.org/content/vol3/issue5/index.dtl