Posted on 01/16/2014 2:25:14 PM PST by Heartlander
I did not suggest that "studying biology" will teach you "astrophysics, or metallurgy, or plate tectonics." We were "merely" entertaining the idea that a change in the initial premise of science from the materialist, mechanistic, "building blocks" presupposition to a presupposition of a living universe might enable us to end what appears to be a stalemate or road block in the conduct of the life sciences, and might even shed some light on plate techtonics. Plate techtonics, after all, involves a process unfolding in time. You can't "explain" that process on the basis of materialist presuppositions, which claim that everything that happens in the universe is the result of material and efficient causes only. It seems to me that anything which exhibits the nature of a process cannot be fully understood without the reintroduction of formal and final causes.
But it seems to me the entire point of materialism is to avoid having to deal with formal and final cause, to utterly deny their relevance in scientific investigation.
You asked if I "knew" anybody who rejects the materialist premise, in favor of the premise of a living universe. As a matter of fact, I do. In fact, several.
Let's start out with Aristotle, the "father of the natural sciences." As David Bohm reminds us (in Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 1980):
...Aristotle considered the universe as a single organism in which each part grows and develops in its relationship to the whole and in which it has its proper place and function.Aristotle distinguished four kinds of causes that operate in the world: Formal, Material, Efficient, and Final. As already pointed out, modern science has expunged two of these causes from its assumptions and practice.
But I wouldn't know how to understand plate techtonics as a sustained process absent the notions of formal and final cause.
To Aristotle,
the word form means, in the first instance, an inner forming activity which is the cause of the growth of things, and of the development and differentiation of their various essential forms. For example, in the case of an oak tree, what is indicated by the term "formal cause" is the whole inner movement of sap, cell growth, articulation of branches, leaves, etc., which is characteristic of that kind of tree and different from that taking place in other kinds of trees. In more modern language, it would be better to describe this as a formative cause, to emphasize that what is involved is not a mere form imposed from without, but rather an ordered and structured inner movement that is essential to what things are.Go figure.
Any such formative cause must evidently have an end or product which is at least implicit. Thus, it is not possible to refer to the inner movement from the acorn to the oak tree, without simultaneously referring to the oak tree that is going to result from this movement. So formative cause always implies final cause.
Nevertheless, in most of the work that is being done in physics today the notions of formative and final cause are not regarded as having primary significance. Rather, law is still generally conceived as a self-determined system of efficient causes operating in an ultimate set of material constituents of the universe (e.g. elementary particles subject to forces of interaction between them). These constituents are not regarded as formed in an overall process, and thus they are not considered to be anything like organs adapted to their place and function in the whole (i.e. to the ends which they would serve in this whole). Rather, they tend to be conceived as separately existent mechanical elements of a fixed nature. The prevailing trend in modern physics is thus much against any sort of view giving primacy to formative activity in undivided wholeness of flowing movement. Indeed, those aspects of relativity theory and quantum theory which do suggest the need for such a view tend to be de-emphasized and in fact hardly noticed by most physicists, because they are regarded largely as features of the mathematical calculus and not as indications of the real nature of things. When it comes to the informal language and mode of thought in physics, which infuses the imagination and provokes the sense of what is real and substantial, most physicists still speak and think, with an utter conviction of truth, in terms of the traditional atomistic notion that the universe is constituted of elementary particles which are "basic building blocks" out of which everything is made. In other sciences, such as biology, the strength of this conviction is even greater, because among workers in these fields there is little awareness of the revolutionary character of development in modern physics. For example, modern molecular biologists generally believe that the whole of life and mind can ultimately be understood in more or less mechanical terms, through some kind of extension of the work that has been done on the structure and function of DNA molecules.... Thus we arrive at the very odd result that in the study of life and mind, which are just the fields in which formative cause is acting in undivided and unbroken flowing movement is most evident to experience and observation, there is now the strongest belief in the fragmentary atomistic approach to reality. — ibid.
Anyhoot, besides Aristotle, other scientists working on something like the "living universe" model include for example Menas Kafatos; Robert Rosen; Attila Grandpierre; Rupert Sheldrake — and David Bohm himself.
Thank you so much for writing, dear tacticalogic!
P.S.: I think it was I who originally pinged you to this thread. I did so because you are a long-time friend here at FR who is interested in science. It certainly wasn't because I was building a trap for you.... It wasn't because I want to make you look like a fool, or whatever other nefarious motive you care to impute to me.
Lighten up, my friend!
I thought the object was to "understand the world around us", and that we were entertaining the idea the "what is life?" was a better question than "what is reality?".
You say that you are not limiting the range of your query by changing the question to "what is life?". There appears to be much in reality that "what is life?" does not cover, and at the same time nothing in life that "what is reality?" does not cover. I see nothing to be gained by changing the question, and much to be lost.
Thanks dear for bringing the thread back on track.
I do not believe if we want to discuss the issue in a scientific form we can make the mistake of pre-supposing some kind of causality.
In fact it seems like it is a very short leap from the start to determining that SOME KIND of causality exists, it is an element that is more part of our (living humans) nature than any type of raw force in physics or cosmology.
And that to me is ultimately the question!
We have discussed in the past the idea that life has at least a few properties that plain old physics or math does not recognize, such as stimulus-response.
We all agree that man is dust. We would all agree that there is no way two pile of dust could ever, under the current understanding of physics, do something like send an email to each other!
That’s a pretty astounding though when you reflect on it.
So if man and life itself is the C, atoms and quarks and energy is the A, then what is the B? A+B=C
Whatever would prompt one pile of dust to send an email to another pile, that is the essence, THAT PART is the causality we are searching for.
And I cannot see anything in regular physics or math that explains it.
It’s interesting because I watched a BBC vid on Youtube about cells. Very informative.
The cells have a certain construction, and have millions (or even billions) of these little molecular machines that wander around. Building things up, tearing things down, transporting items from one place to another.
And not a single one of these machines, NOT ONE, can be said to have anything resembling “an intent” or “a purpose” or “self awareness”!
I have seen this happen on Liberal Forums. Surprised to see it here.
tacticalogic will not answer for a few reasons:
• Afraid to actually think about a different viewpoint
• Have to defend his position
• Will not concede anything in an argument
• At this point it is his Ego
I did enjoy his feigned outrage though. I see that also on Liberal Forums.
“making it personal” here?
He will not answer.
And not a single one of these machines, NOT ONE, can be said to have anything resembling “an intent” or “a purpose” or “self awareness”!
Consider a cold blooded reptile (at sometime in the past) deciding to grow feathers..
Which goes against the “Law of Increasing Entropy” meaning everything runs down...
Or when a gene structure is close to perfect it does not change(much)... except by extinction.. or staying the same..
i.e. turtles, sharks, snakes, etc..
Evolving into a totally different machine has not been seen..
It seems to be a fantasy... like other “liberal” fantasy’s like socialism.. democracy etc....
You know....... Scientific-Fiction.. i.e. perpetual motion...
The Rube Goldberg Intelligentsia.. Carnival Barker Whiz kids..
Evolution by itself does not bother me. We seem to have a firm understanding that mutations to DNA do happen, and that those mutations can be passed on to subsequent generations.
It may/may not be true that we see new forms emerging. But, as an example, we have all heard about bacteria “inventing????” new and better resistance to antibiotics.
What intrigues me the most is the “animus”. For lack of a better word, the “consciousness”.
The ghost in the machine.
How can that be? Nothing in the hard sciences (not even biology itself!) explains it.
There is no road to reality for leftists, they aren’t even on the same planet
Certainly not, djf. Still, cells "seem to know what to do" as parts in order to articulate a "whole" living organism. Material and efficient causation alone do not, and cannot, explain this.
Some thoughts on this question, sourced to Attila Grandpierre's article, "Fundamental Complexity Measures of Life," in Divine Action and Natural Selection: Science, Faith, and Evolution, J. Seckback & R. Gordon, eds, 2009:
The difference between the machine and the living organism is like the difference between numbers and mathematical rules. The complexity of the machine is phenomenological, static, and passive, while that of the living organism is organizational, dynamic, and active.Yes, we all agree that "man is dust." But he ain't "just dust." Dust has not got a clue about how to organize a living, self-conscious human being.
Let us approach the distinctions between machines and living organisms in light of the difference between physical "organization" (termed as "self-organization") and biological organization. As the root of the world "organization"("organ") tells, organization belongs to the realm of biology. Physical "organization" is present in the order of crystals, of magnets, of snowflake patterns, of convection patters, of reaction-diffusion patterns, etc. Physical "organization" represents actually not organizational, but ordering processes.
Actually, ordering and organization are two fundamentally different processes.... In physical ordering, patterns of elements can be generated, and in man-made machines they follow prescribed rules. In living organisms, biological organization generates new rules from time-step to time-step....
A living organism follows the continuously changing internal and external contexts, and reacts to them on the basis of its own principle [formal cause] driving its biological organization towards the optimization of life's conditions. Biological organization is like writing, while physical ordering is mechanical repetition of words following merely syntactical rules, if any. It is these syntactic rules that represent algorithmic complexity. In contrast, the semiotic principles correspond to a deeper, principal level of complexity. This is why machines cannot rebuild themselves from time-step to time-step. At the same time, this is the most fundamental property of organisms.
Denbigh (1975...) emphasizes that "one cannot speak of an entity as being organized without at once raising the question: What is it organized for [final cause]? ... A machine is not explainable by the laws of physics and chemistry (even though the material of which it is composed obeys these laws); machines have always to be understood in terms of their own specific operational principles laid down by those who design them."...The central thesis of physicalism proclaims the causal closure of the physical. Ashby's Law ... and Kahre's Law of Diminishing Information ... stated that physical systems cannot produce more information at their output than was present at their input. This means that for physical systems, complexity jumps are simply not possible....
I know you have a keen interest in artificial intelligence/artificial life, which theoretically can be manifested by means of mechanical simulation of "the real thing" — i.e., living, conscious human beings. But how can one "simulate" what one does not understand in the first place?.
Well, the questions are lively ones for sure. We have more fun than cats!
Thank you so very much for writing, dear djf!
What, exactly, would you "lose?"
How big does your ego have to be to think you know what someone else is thinking?
The discovery of all the things that "what is reality?" will answer that "what is life?" will not.
You tell us because YOU'RE the one who's always asking and never responding.
You will not answer the question and it is because of............Wait for it........wait for it.
Your Ego!
At least I haven't progressed from simply asking questions to demanding answers.
And you know this because?
Sorry Tact....your powers do not work here.
At this point you are making a fool of yourself and at some level you must know this.
I know I’m not the one having a tantrum because someone isn’t answering my questions on demand.
Just reflect back on when Heartlander asked you a question and if you had answered it.
He might have learned something, you might have also.....we all on here might have learned something from your responses back and forth.
But here we are in this stupid “you answer” “no I don’t have to” postings and it is taking us away from them main topic.
I suggest to you in the future when someone does ask you a question, just answer it and go with the debate. What you are doing is not conducive to a good discussion.
You could actually even try that right now. (Not holding my breath)
He might have learned something, you might have also.....we all on here might have learned something from your responses back and forth.
Why is it we're not going to reflect back on what might have happened if Heartlander had responded nicely when I inquired if I could ask why he wanted to know?
You are hopeless.
I will look for you on Huff Post.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.