Paul Nelson Day

A few days ago I teased another upcoming ID anniversary. It’s Paul Nelson Day, the anniversary of Nelson’s so far unfulfilled promise to provide a detailed exposition of “ontogenetic depth.” PZ has the details on Pharyngula.

Added in edit: John Lynch also notes the anniversary, and points out that Nelson is aware of it. Nelson also provides the toy model that he thinks shows that developmental biologists are incapable of accounting for cell differentiation. Nelson’s misconception is encapsulated in this sentence:

We need to know the minimal instruction (or command) set, which must be present in the starting cell, for this to happen reliably.