Posted on 08/26/2004 7:41:29 AM PDT by Michael_Michaelangelo
The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories
Proceedings of the Bioligical Society of Washington August 25, 2004
Link to PDF only. No text.
(Excerpt) Read more at discovery.org ...
Refering link:
Broken File id: 144
I wonder what the odds are that the only ID'er ever to get published in a peer reviewed journal gets a broken link?
I'll sneak around later and see if one of the folks here can find his journal article in the library.
Or the obverse: "If you want a causally adequate hypothesis, just postulate a sufficiently big miracle/deity".
Also known as the "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat" approach.
What peer endorsed that?
Good question.
Just to rudely but in, I've worked with a couple hundred biologists and find this to be true. I already know it's true of physicists.
(2) the form or pattern of a thing, that is, the reason (and the kind of reason) which explains what it was to be that thing....
My astrophysicist friend has given a superb exposition of the four Aristotelian causes in a recent draft manuscript. I'll quote him here, just in case any Lurker might be interested in the bases of Aristotelian logic:
“the material cause is the basic stuff out of which the thing is made. The material cause of a house, for example, would include the wood, metal, glass, and other building materials used in its construction. All of these things belong in an explanation of the house because it could not exist unless they were present in its composition.
"The formal cause {Gk. eidos} is the pattern or essence in conformity with which these materials are assembled. Thus, the formal cause of our exemplary house would be the sort of thing that is represented on a blueprint of its design. This, too, is part of the explanation of the house, since its materials would be only a pile of rubble (or a different house) if they were not put together in this way.
"The efficient cause is the agent or force immediately responsible for bringing this matter and that form together in the production of the thing. Thus, the efficient cause of the house would include the carpenters, masons, plumbers, and other workers who used these materials to build the house in accordance with the blueprint for its construction. Clearly the house would not be what it is without their contribution.
"Lastly, the final cause {Gk. telos} is the end or purpose for which a thing exists, so the final cause of our house would be to provide shelter for human beings. This is part of the explanation of the house's existence because it would never have been built unless someone needed it as a place to live.” -- Attila Grandpierre, ms of the forthcoming Book of the Living Universe, 2004
He also has a very good article in The Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Vol.XI No. 1/2, 1999, PP1-38.
http://www.jis3.org/
Have a look here.
Uh oh... Eviloootion is in trouble now.
You cannot scientifically prove that God did something. You can however prove that an unknown force is acting upon something. Religious people will attribute that force to God, atheists will be satisfied with labeling it an unknown force. You can speculate that it is aliens, or pink unicorns. Throughout history we science has repeatedly discovery a widely accepted explanation for unknowns, the atoms, gravity, bacteria, etc. But for scientists to categorically state that intelligent design can never be the answer to an unknown is trying to prove a negative.
For that he needed twenty one pages of article and five pages of footnotes?
The whole article is rather poor in concept. Meyer seems to be suffering from the "Fallacy of Retrospective Astonishment." It's analogous to looking at a bridge hand and claiming that the cards were arranged because the probability of getting that hand was 1 in 3,954,242,643,910,000,000,000 roughly.
The author's definition of "form" implies that donuts, coffee cups, headless humans, and nematodes are all of the same form. (A donut really does look like a very short worm.) He doesn't give any specifics other than some confused comments on topology.
Meyer also uses several versions of "complexity" without defining any of them. This allows him to be ambiguous, clandestinely switching between meanings. He talks about an increase in "complex specified information" without defining the term; however he does claim this undefined "something" increases over time. He gives no measure to show that his claim is true. Later he claims that no "materialist" (another undefined term) mechanism can account for his claim of an unmeasured increase in his undefined "something."
He dismisses self-organized complexity without even getting the mechanism correct. (He claims "highly improbable outcomes" in contrast to the actual work done on self-organization.)
Towards the end, he claims that things must have been "designed" without showing what he means by "design" nor by showing a mechanism for such design. A truly pathetic article.
There was no abstract to post.
Has anyone found the home page of the Bioligical Society of Washington? I've been looking, but can't find it.
I tried several times before the error went away. I got, the "corrupt file" error. Maybe this is a sign of intelligence by the machines doing the transfer.
;>)
That link is just an ad for a book.
I thought all peer-reviewed papers required an abstract. At least, that's how my instructors taught us.
This works well in the sense that one might say of a collision (cueball with eightball for example) that the efficient cause was the cuestroke but the material cause was the position and momentum of the two balls (it doesn't matter if the cueball was stroked or bowled or thrown or shot from a tennis ball server, if it has the same momentum and position in each case.) "Causality" then links states with events, but not necessarily events with events.
Which would also make it the first big thing in ID.
Apparantly it's an offshoot of the Philosophical Society of Washington
"The Anthropological Society was organized in 1879, the Biological Society in 1880, and the Chemical Society in 1884."
More info on the society can be found here:
" The Biological Society of Washington was founded on December 3, 1880. Its original purpose was the furtherance of biological scholarship by providing a forum for the presentation of scientific papers. Later modifications limited the purpose to the furtherance of taxonomic study and the diffusion of taxonomic knowledge, mainly through the publication of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. It was also one of the eight founding organizations of the Washington Academy of Sciences."
There are 200+ papers cited here:
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