Posted on 07/04/2004 5:19:27 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Professor Ernst Mayr, the scientist renowned as the father of modern biology, will celebrate his 100th birthday tomorrow by leading a scathing attack on creationism.
The evolutionary biologist, who is already acclaimed as one of the most prolific researchers of all time, has no intention of retiring and is shortly to publish new research that dismantles the fashionable creationist doctrine of “intelligent design”.
Although he has reluctantly cut his workload since a serious bout of pneumonia 18 months ago, Prof. Mayr has remained an active scientist at Harvard University throughout his 90s. He has written five books since his 90th birthday and is researching five academic papers. One of these, scheduled to appear later this year, will examine how “intelligent design” — the latest way in which creationists have sought to present a divine origin of the world — was thoroughly refuted by Charles Darwin a century and a half ago.
His work is motivated in part by a sense of exasperation at the re-emergence of creationism in the USA, which he compares unfavourably with the widespread acceptance of evolution that he encountered while growing up in early 20th-century Germany.
The states of Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Oklahoma currently omit the word “evolution” from their curriculums. The Alabama state board of education has voted to include disclaimers in textbooks describing evolution as a theory. In Georgia, the word “evolution” was banned from the science curriculum after the state’s schools superintendent described it as a “controversial buzzword”.
Fierce protest, including criticism from Jimmy Carter, the former President, reversed this.
Prof. Mayr, who will celebrate his 100th birthday at his holiday home in New Hampshire with his two daughters, five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, was born on 5 July 1905 in Kempten, Germany. He took a PhD in zoology at the University of Berlin, before travelling to New Guinea in 1928 to study its diverse bird life. On his return in 1930 he emigrated to the USA. His most famous work, Systematics and the Origin of Species, was published in 1942 and is regarded still as a canonical work of biology.
It effectively founded the modern discipline by combining Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection with Gregor Mendel’s genetics, showing how the two were compatible. Prof. Mayr redefined what scientists mean by a species, using interbreeding as a guide. If two varieties of duck or vole do not interbreed, they cannot be the same species.
Prof. Mayr has won all three of the awards sometimes termed the “triple crown” of biology — the Balzan Prize, the Crafoord Prize and the International Prize for Biology. Although he formally retired in 1975, he has been active as an Emeritus Professor ever since and has recently written extensively on the philosophy of biology.
Conversely, if the information is not an emergent property of the consituent components then it must have originated externally. The external source may be physical such as the sun or space aliens - or God.
I of course would point to God as the external source!
Conversely, if the information is not an emergent property of the consituent components then it must have originated externally. The external source may be physical such as the sun or space aliens - or God.
I agree with your restatement. It presents the issue quite well. I'm still concerned that there is the potential for confusion about the meaning of "information" in this context, but at this stage we're both on the same page.
Note 1: Now that I think about it, because you present the alternative in your restatement, we could remove the word "arguably" from the first sentence.
PH, I don’t think information is a “message slipped in by some supernatural agency” at various points along the line of natural development, as if God were constantly interfering and intervening with his creation, so to speak. If you think that’s my position, I guess I haven’t been very clear. (Which would hardly be surprising, since I’m struggling to understand and articulate these ideas myself.) Rather, I suspect that, somehow, the information was loaded in, "once and for all," at the beginning. That is, the Second Law of Thermodynamics requires a beginning and a very highly ordered beginning at that (i.e., one with low entropy).
Now I might be mistaken in this, but I assume you believe that the evolution of the universe is essentially a random process, based exclusively on the laws of chemistry and the physical laws. If my assumption is incorrect, you should let me know. I don’t know whether you think the universe had a beginning, or just “always was (is).”
Roger Penrose has calculated that the probability of the universe occurring by chance is one in 10300. Yet I gather you feel that a random process, pushing up from “below” as it were, accounts for everything we see all around us.
But this does not seem to square at all with certain evidence we have from the fossil record:
“The fossil record indicates that the temperature of the Earth’s surface and the composition of the air appear to have been continuously regulated by … the entire biota. Although the complex network of feedback loops [i.e., successful communication of information necessary to such “global” regulation] is not well understood, much evidence suggests that the entire biota is responsible. For example, the stabilization of atmospheric oxygen at about 21 percent was achieved by the whole biota millions of years ago and has been maintained ever since.
“If the oxygen concentration were only a few percent higher, the volatile gas would cause living organisms to spontaneously combust. If it had fallen a few percent lower, aerobic organisms would have died from asphyxiation. This whole [i.e., the total biota] also appears to have prevented nitrogen and oxygen from degenerating into substances that would have poisoned the entire system -- nitrates and nitrogen oxides. As Margulies and Sagan explained, ‘If there were no constant, worldwide production of new oxygen by photosynthetic organisms, if there were no release of gaseous nitrogen by nitrate- and ammonia-breathing bacteria, an inert or poisonous atmosphere would rapidly develop’….” [Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe, 1999; emphasis added]
In other words, it appears as if certain extant global conditions had to be satisfied in order for life to begin in the first place. All the different parts of the whole biota had to “play ball” in a synchronous manner in order for life to emerge and sustain itself.
“Physics also indicates that the total luminosity of the Sun, or the total quantity of energy released as sunlight, has increased during the last four billion years by as much as 50 percent. According to the fossil record, however, the temperature of the Earth has remained fairly stable, about 22 degrees centigrade, in spite of the fact that temperatures resulting from the less luminous early Sun should have been at the freezing level. Since the level of carbon dioxide is mediated by cells, one of the emergent properties of the whole of the biota that maintained the Earth’s temperature was probably regulation of atmospheric levels of this gas.” [ibid.]
So it seems to me a whole lot of “fine-tuning” was going on very early in the natural history of our planet that facilitated the emergence and evolution of the entire biota and its species. Their development was, of course, according to the natural laws that we know; but the point is, were it not for the fact of the “fine-tuning” of the parameters of atmospheric conditions and solar radiation, the biota could not have emerged in the first place, or survived very long if it did emerge. Certainly the necessary conditions for life weren’t produced “pushing up from below in a random process” (so to speak; sorry for the clumsy language). Rather the specifications for the emergence of life preceded such emergence and were what facilitated it, made it possible in the first place.
That is, the fact that the biota could emerge at all is because it could synchronize with a kind of “cosmic blueprint” that set the basic tolerances necessary for the successful emergence of life on our planet, which I speculate were specified in the beginning, in the mind-bogglingly extraordinary, highly-ordered singularity. For life to begin, these tolerances had to be satisfied, and then collaboratively maintained by the entire biota in order for life to survive.
In short, there had to be “successful communication” between life forms and a sort of “life template” or paradigm or what I like to call “cosmic DNA” in order for the natural laws that we know about to kick in and result in the evolution of the whole biota and its individual constituting “parts” (e.g., organisms, species, etc.)
One way to describe this process would be to say the “parts” had to somehow be able to “decode and read” the information contained in encoded form (given by the singularity of the beginning and perhaps carried and transmitted by a universal vacuum field), so that successful communication could then take place such that life could (can) emerge. Admittedly, this description is pretty unscientific. Yet Nadeau, Kafatos, and many others point out that there’s a whole lot of work left for science to do precisely in this area.
And fortunately, many people today are doing this work -- in the fields of information science, microbiology, physics, complex systems theory. We'll just have to wait and see what develops.
No, not random. Very determined, actually. That's a consquence of natural law. It's too complex to predict most of it, unlike for example the orbits of planets, but I don't think there's much randomness at all.
I don’t know whether you think the universe had a beginning, or just “always was (is).”
I don't really know. The big bang is certainly a beginning. I just can't get my brain around any "before" that event.
Roger Penrose has calculated that the probability of the universe occurring by chance is one in 10300. Yet I gather you feel that a random process, pushing up from “below” as it were, accounts for everything we see all around us.
I don't know how he concluded that. But we have a universe, that's for sure. It's all the evidence we have for the existence of universes. I would calculate it's probability at 100%, based on the evidence.
But this does not seem to square at all with certain evidence we have from the fossil record:
You lost me.
In other words, it appears as if certain extant global conditions had to be satisfied in order for life to begin in the first place. All the different parts of the whole biota had to “play ball” in a synchronous manner in order for life to emerge and sustain itself.
Yes. Without the right conditions, it couldn't happen. Not naturally, anyway.
So it seems to me a whole lot of “fine-tuning” was going on very early in the natural history of our planet that facilitated the emergence and evolution of the entire biota and its species. Their development was, of course, according to the natural laws that we know; but the point is, were it not for the fact of the “fine-tuning” of the parameters of atmospheric conditions and solar radiation, the biota could not have emerged in the first place, or survived very long if it did emerge. Certainly the necessary conditions for life weren’t produced “pushing up from below in a random process” (so to speak; sorry for the clumsy language). Rather the specifications for the emergence of life preceded such emergence and were what facilitated it, made it possible in the first place.
Fine, but I see no evidence of design, if that's where you're going. I agree that the conditions were right, else we wouldn't be here. Quite possibly, in most of this big universe, the conditions aren't right, so nothing like us is there.
In short, there had to be “successful communication” between life forms and a sort of “life template” or paradigm or what I like to call “cosmic DNA” in order for the natural laws that we know about to kick in and result in the evolution of the whole biota and its individual constituting “parts” (e.g., organisms, species, etc.)
I don't join you in that leap. It's an assertion which, in my always humble opinion, isn't justified by the evidence.
Does that mean that the "right" conditions were the product of chance? If there's no design, then it seems that's the only possible alternative.
Or am I missing something here? Care to offer a defense of order arising from chance? How is it possible for "fine-tuning" to be the result of a random process? Certainly, if the universal process were the outcome of a process of trial and error over long time periods, still doesn't that imply that some standard of success is objective to the process? And that the emergence and sustenance of life is the sine qua non of that success?
I'm more open-minded than you think, PH. I sincerely welcome your insights into such matters.
Only at the beginning? Is that a difference of kind or degree?
And why do you keep pinging me if you don't address the points I bring up? Show me something measurable or all you are doing is pontificating into the void...
Learn to spell if you want anyone to take you seriously. Hell, even an idiot can use the built in spell checker here at Free Republic. Oh, wait, looking qt your posts, maybe not. Still you should try it sometime.
OK, I will post a few thoughts.
I was originally going to post to the Information Theory thread, but it fits here as well.
Information theory is in a sense in a conundrum like cosmology. Cosmology has the problem of merging the big (The cosmological theories) with the small (the quantum size of things)
Until the theories are merged, then it cannot ever be said we have a complete, consistent view of the universe. Perhaps they never will.
On the infomation side, we have two competing doctrines.
On one hand, we have the pure infrmation theory mathematicians. Shannon, Weiner, Von Neuman(sic) and others. This side is concerned about data transmission, it's content and reliability. Looking at one of the diagrams, you will see a big mess in the middle, with all sorts of references to logarithms, etc, error correcting, etc.
The ones who are actually doing the sending and receiving are almost relegated to being footnotes, casual, tiny boxes on either end. It is a tenet of mathematical info theory that the message actually contains some kind of real, relevant data, some type of universal absolute.
On the other hand, you have the cognitive theorists. Piaget, Gardner, De Bono (his work is very enlightening), and others. To these people, the important part is the persons, things, or events involved. They are deeply debated about the meaning of knowledge, how much can we trust our perceptions, and questions about whether or not our internal representations of the world can be said in some sense to match the actual world. The cognitive folks are not so interested if you get a message by letter, phone, or carrier pigeon.
Now the cognitive folks cannot stand up to the rigors of the information folks. The information folks cannot see the subtleties and apparent possible contradictions of the cognitive side.
But the cognitive folks have provided a model that can at least start to reach a middle ground.
According to them, each human brain is made up of a huge number of switches. Say, for example, you have a switch in your brain for "It's raining outside". The switch is either on or off.
Now the act of communication is defined. It is when one brain has it's switches set in a particular manner. There is then an intentional act of some type to set the switches of somebodiy elses brain in the same manner. So if I tell you "It's raining outside" and you trust me, then your switch gets set.
This is imho the part of the theory that is needed to complete it. And we have stumbled on something that gives definition to a part that is normally fluid and hard to pin down.
Meaning.
Not it can be said that there is in fact no actual content to a message propagated, no matter how complex, no matter what the information theorists say. If you put me into a room with, say, a Chinese man, and he starts reading, I have not a clue what it means, or if it's actually gibberish.
The information throy folks would say that doesn't mena the message is void, they would blame it on me for my lack of understanding.
But there is a part missing that they need to consider. If I hear something and say "I understand that", even if it is a simple binary piece of info like "It's raining outside", the message caan be said to be only a very small part of the actual message.
Because for me to understand, I need to know what rain is. I need to have a spacial sense of what is "inside" and what is "outside". Lacking these elements, then the message is gibberish.
This particular part is described well by the ideas of symbology and language, and in particular, the computing ideas of Backus-Naus Form, where successive simple definitions can lead up to extrordinarily complex models and structures.
So, in order to have "MEANING", we need both camps! We need the info theorists telling us about the content and symbology of the message. We need the cognitive theorists with their ideas of perception, knowledge, and experience.
So much for the preliminaries.
Imagine:
In some universe, for some reason that doesn't matter now, a series of radio pulses occur. They are the first 100 prime numbers in binary. The pulses repeat over and over.
Is there a message?
Here is the caveat. It's a dead universe. No life, no radios, nothing but rocks and stars and gas.
With that caveat in mind, I ask again, Is there a message?
With the subtleties and definitions, I would probably say that in this case, there IS a message, but there is NO MEANING.
Let us extend the analogy a bit more. Imagine in the same sense that this is occurring in the jungles of the Amazon, where instead of radio pulses, a Yanamamo tribesman hears the pulses as far off, distant drumbeats.
He finds it curious. But as someone who knows only "One", "Two", "Three", and "Many", he cannot make any sense or purpose of the drums.
We observe the tribesman and chortle about his ignorance.
We sit here and pat ourselves on the back, with our Nobel prizes, and our treatises, and our grants, and our glorious dinners. Our colliders, and impressive college campuses, and libraries.
I'm almost done, and not nearly as cynical as this.
Given that we maintain how we know something that the por tribesman doesn't, we are forced to face the conclusion that HE KNOWS MANY THINGS WE DON'T.
And we would be vain indeed to decry and maintain that all of his ideas about the universe and his particular brand of theology are only superstitions of a prehistoric man.
I would love to expand on this and know I left our some points, perhaps later.
We are the transmitters.
We are the receivers.
We, with our sciences and theologies, ARE THE MESSAGE.
One final thought. Betty says she has always mainteined the difference between science and theology. I have also held this to be true. Science is a valuable, but incomplete part of the whole.
Everybody gets, in my mind, way to wrapped up about intelligent design. Intelligent design implies knowledge, intent. A kind of husbandry.
But there are very good reasons to realize that time, as we normally think about it, does not exist. That the entire universe, spatially and temporally, is here, right here in my hand, right now.
And if that is so, as some super-universal being might see it, then WE ARE THE PURPOSE. WE ARE THE DESIGNERS. FOR GOOD OR EVIL, WE POSSESS THE INTENT.
Overman is a “high-powered,” Washington-based international lawyer whose passionate hobby is cutting-edge science. The following is a “lawyer’s argument” against Stephen Hawking’s rhetorical question, “What place, then, for a creator?”
While not a working scientist, Overman’s critique strikes me as epistemologically immaculate, and opens up a greater appreciation of the logical basis of the kinds of “to-ing and fro-ing” that we have recently been doing here on our present question as to whether life is the result of random processes or of an implicit universal design. Overman writes,
“The answer Hawking is making to this rhetorical question fails to distinguish between causa essendi (a cause of existence) and causa fieri (a cause of becoming). Something which exists may need a cause for its continuing existence without necessarily needing a cause for its becoming. Even assuming, argumenti causa, that [Hawking’s] no boundary proposal reflects reality, a creator who is a necessary and non contingent being is required as a causa essendi for the continued existence of the universe pursuant to the following reasoning:
1. To avoid the fallacy of petitio principii, assume that the universe exists without a beginning. (If we assume a beginning, we beg the question of a creative cause). This is consistent with Hawking’s proposal and is perhaps the main motivation behind it.
2. A distinction must be made between causa essendi and causa fieri. A mare may be a causa fieri of her foal, but a mare does not act as causa essendi of her foal; she is not the cause of the continuing existence of her foal. A mare which passes away while her foal continues to inhabit the earth cannot be the cause of her foal’s continuing existence. A match may be causa fieri of a flame, but oxygen acts as causa essendi because it is a necessary condition of the continuing existence of the flame.
3. Something which needs a cause of its continuing existence at every moment is contingent upon that cause; it is not necessary in and through itself.
4. As we have discussed, this universe is only one among many possible universes which might have existed. We can conceive of other universes which could exist with different characteristics than our universe. Because other universes are possible, this universe is not the only universe that could ever exist. It is not a necessary universe. Because it is merely a possible universe, its existence is not necessary in and through itself. It is not the only universe which can ever exist.
5. Something must exist when it cannot be anything except what it is; it cannot not exist. It is necessary. However, something which could be other than what it is might not exist. A universe which could be other than what it is might not be at all. Such a universe has the possibility or the potential for non-existence.
6. A universe which has the potential for non-existence is a contingent rather than a necessary universe. Anything that is contingent requires a causa essendi, an effective cause of its continuing existence. This merely possible universe is contingent and requires a causa essendi to prevent the possibility of its non-existence. This merely possible universe requires a preservative cause of its continuing existence to protect it from the possibility of annihilation (its reduction to nothingness). This preservative activity is an action of ex-nihilation (coming out of existence out of nothing) as it is juxtaposed to an action of annihilation.
7. Even if Hawking’s boundary-less proposal is correct (which is very unlikely) and the universe does not need a causa fieri for its coming into existence, it does need a causa essendi for its preservation and to protect it from the possibility or potential of a reduction to nothingness or annihilation.
8. To prevent annihilation, the causa essendi cannot be a natural cause because natural causes are themselves contingent things. Contingent things cannot act as causa essendi because they do not have the cause of their own continuing existence in themselves. Something that is necessary and uncaused is required to act as causa essendi of a contingent thing.
9. If we define the concept of God as a necessary rather than a contingent being, God cannot be part of the universe, because the universe and all of the individual things in it are contingent in their existence. A necessary existence means that such an existence is uncaused, independent, and unconditioned. In this concept God has a necessary existence. 10. Thus, even if we assume that Hawking’s questionable proposal is true, the answer to his presumed rhetorical question concerning the need for a creator [implying the rejection of both a beginning and a creative design] is that the creator is necessary as a preservative cause of the existence of the universe.
The important premise in this argument is that the universe is contingent and not necessary. Because other universes are possible, our universe is not necessary in and through itself. If it is not necessary, it is contingent. As Professor Keith Ward argues: To say that the existence of this universe is necessary is to say that no other universe could possibly exist. But how could one know that, without knowing absolutely everything? Even the most confident cosmologists might suspect that there is something they do not know. So it does not look as though the necessity of this universe can be established…. The physical cosmos does not seem to be necessary. We can seemingly think of many alternatives to it. There might, for instance, be an inverse cube law instead of an inverse square law, and then things would be very different, but they might still exist. We can see how mathematics can be necessary, but it is a highly dubious assertion that there is only one consistent set of equations which could govern possible physical realities. We cannot bridge the gap between mathematical necessity and physical contingency. How could a temporal and apparently contingent universe come into being by quasi-mathematical necessity?
In his book, How to Think About God, Mortimer Adler stated this argument and his position that this premise cannot be affirmed with certitude but only beyond a reasonable doubt. He concluded that a preponderance of reasons favor the belief that God exists. Adler himself was persuaded that God exists either beyond a reasonable doubt or by a preponderance of reasons. The reasoning for a causa essendi for the preservation of the universe is consistent with a God whose involvement with the universe is continuous. As causa essendi God would not be simply a cause which began or wound up a universe compossible with life and then left to run on its own, but a cause which intimately and constantly preserved the universe in all of its detail. With respect to the existence of God, one may argue that each person must make an act of free choice in determining his own conclusions. The reasoning on either side of this choice does not produce an absolutely compelling argument. Either conclusion requires a leap of faith. It is up to each individual to decide in which direction he or she will leap. No perfectly ironclad argument destroys the freedom to make that decision.”
But for me, here is the piece de resistance, which Overman cites from Owen Gingerich: “From a Christian perspective, the answer to Hawking’s Query is that God is more than the omnipotence who, in some other space-time dimension, decides when to push the mighty ON switch. A few years ago I had the opportunity to discuss these ideas with Freeman Dyson, one of the most thoughtful physicists of our day. ‘You worry too much about Hawking,’ he assured me. ‘Actually it’s rather silly to think of God’s role in creation as just sitting up there on a platform and pushing the switch.’ Indeed, creation is a much broader concept than just the moment of the Big Bang. God is the Creator in the much larger sense of designer and intender of the universe, the powerful Creator with a plan and an intention for the existence of the entire universe. The very structures of the universe itself, the rules of its operation, its continued maintenance, these are the more important aspects of creation. Even Hawking has some notion of this, for near the end of his book he asks, ‘What is it that breaths fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the question of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?’ Indeed, this is one of the most profound, and perhaps unanswerable, theological question.”
PH, we Christians are no fools, and have been asking the really, really hard questions for over two millennia by now. But that doesn’t necessarily make us “creationists.” (Which, BTW, following Bohr, I consider an illegitimate trespass of theological doctrine into the domain of science. FWIW.)
p.s.: There was no “before” the Big Bang – which created both space and time, out of nothing. “Before” is a time concept that can have no relevance where there is no time.
"What is it that breaths fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the question of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?"
Beautiful. Certainly an admission that science has it's limits.
So? Is this a surprise to you somehow?
In a universe governed by natural law, everything is determined. No chance, no design (well, I don't know about "The Beginning," nor does anyone else). But from that moment on, neither design nor chance is involved. (Quantum mechanics seems to be an exception, about which I'm not prepared to speak, but I suspect that eventually even those interactions will be seen to be determined.) In my view, everything is determined by natural law -- until you get to us, with some limited degree of free will. And free will isn't chance either. Nor, I suspect, is it "design" as you've been using that term.
Or am I missing something here? Care to offer a defense of order arising from chance?
Not from chance, but we see a lot of order arising naturally. Salt crystals, snowflakes, trees, and even Betty Boops.
How is it possible for "fine-tuning" to be the result of a random process?
If you mean the initial state at the time of the big bang, I don't know how those conditions were set, nor does anyone else. Perhaps they are the way they had to be, because of some as yet unknown natural law. I don't know and you don't know and no one knows (as of now). If you mean fine-tuning of events thereafter, nothing which happened after the big bang was random. As I said, it's all determined by natural law. Like the planets in their orbits.
Certainly, if the universal process were the outcome of a process of trial and error over long time periods, still doesn't that imply that some standard of success is objective to the process
I suspect you're confusing the history of the universe with the evolution of life on earth. There's a lot of apparent trial and error in biological evolution. The objective standard there is survival and procreation. You already know that. For the non-living universe, the events which have happened since the big bang were all predetermined, as I said. No trial and error at all. Just a big freight train roaring downhill, so to speak.
And that the emergence and sustenance of life is the sine qua non of that success?
No. You're personifying the whole universe. Go ahead if it makes you happy, but I just don't see it.
Not at all. That has been my position all along.
What really surprises me is his use of the symbology "breathes fire". Why not "pukes popcorn"?
That particular symbolism is almost universally present in all theologies and mythologies. And that fact tell us something. I'm not sure what exactly, but something!
Somewhere between his paragraph 4 and paragraph 5, Overman slipped on an intellectual banana peel. He goes downhill from there. I could take an hour and dig into it in detail; but I'm not willing to spend more time on him.
woopty freakin' do. i let some words run together. attack the logic, not the wording or the person. or does direct conflict of your reasoning threaten you?
Well PH, I suppose Aristotelian logic is not to everybody's taste. Especially these days. But the fact that your thought process broke down somewhere between points 4 and 5 is a bit surprising to me, I must say. I had thought you were rather a fan of Aristotle.
definitely bookmarked for further reflection. Great read, djf. Thank you!
But I am addressing youre points, in that I perceive certain aspects of this problem which you may not have considered are directly relevant, which is why I'm pinging you. I'd be glad to desist from this practice if it makes you happy.
Spoil sport. :^)
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