Posted on 06/23/2007 12:21:46 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Pro-Darwin Biology Professor Laments Academia's "Intolerance" and Supports Teaching Intelligent Design
Charles Darwin famously said, "A fair result can be obtained only by fully balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question." According to a recent article by J. Scott Turner, a pro-Darwin biology professor at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York, modern Neo-Darwinists are failing to heed Darwin's advice. (We blogged about a similar article by Turner in The Chronicle of Higher Education in January, 2007.) Turner is up front with his skepticism of intelligent design (ID), which will hopefully allow his criticisms to strike a chord with other Darwinists.
Turner starts by observing that the real threat to education today is not ID itself, but the attitude of scientists towards ID: "Unlike most of my colleagues, however, I don't see ID as a threat to biology, public education or the ideals of the republic. To the contrary, what worries me more is the way that many of my colleagues have responded to the challenge." He describes the "modern academy" as "a tedious intellectual monoculture where conformity and not contention is the norm." Turner explains that the "[r]eflexive hostility to ID is largely cut from that cloth: some ID critics are not so much worried about a hurtful climate as they are about a climate in which people are free to disagree with them." He then recounts and laments the hostility faced by Richard Sternberg at the Smithsonian:
It would be comforting if one could dismiss such incidents as the actions of a misguided few. But the intolerance that gave rise to the Sternberg debacle is all too common: you can see it in its unfiltered glory by taking a look at Web sites like pandasthumb.org or recursed.blogspot.com [Jeffry Shallit's blog] and following a few of the threads on ID. The attitudes on display there, which at the extreme verge on antireligious hysteria, can hardly be squared with the relatively innocuous (even if wrong-headed) ideas that sit at ID's core.
(J. Scott Turner, Signs of Design, The Christian Century, June 12, 2007.)
Turner on the Kitzmiller v. Dover Case
Turner sees the Kitzmiller v. Dover case as the dangerous real-world expression of the intolerance common in the academy: "My blood chills ... when these essentially harmless hypocrisies are joined with the all-American tradition of litigiousness, for it is in the hand of courts and lawyers that real damage to cherished academic ideas is likely to be done." He laments the fact that "courts are where many of my colleagues seem determined to go with the ID issue” and predicts, “I believe we will ultimately come to regret this."
Turner justifies his reasonable foresight by explaining that Kitzmiller only provided a pyrrhic victory for the pro-Darwin lobby:
Although there was general jubilation at the ruling, I think the joy will be short-lived, for we have affirmed the principle that a federal judge, not scientists or teachers, can dictate what is and what is not science, and what may or may not be taught in the classroom. Forgive me if I do not feel more free.
(J. Scott Turner, Signs of Design, The Christian Century, June 12, 2007.)
Turner on Education
Turner explains, quite accurately, that ID remains popular not because of some vast conspiracy or religious fanaticism, but because it deals with an evidentiary fact that resonates with many people, and Darwinian scientists do not respond to ID's arguments effectively:
[I]ntelligent design … is one of multiple emerging critiques of materialism in science and evolution. Unfortunately, many scientists fail to see this, preferring the gross caricature that ID is simply "stealth creationism." But this strategy fails to meet the challenge. Rather than simply lament that so many people take ID seriously, scientists would do better to ask why so many take it seriously. The answer would be hard for us to bear: ID is not popular because the stupid or ignorant like it, but because neo-Darwinism's principled banishment of purpose seems less defensible each passing day.
(J. Scott Turner, Signs of Design, The Christian Century, June 12, 2007.)
Turner asks, “What, then, is the harm in allowing teachers to deal with the subject as each sees fit?” ID can't be taught, he explains, because most scientists believe that "normal standards of tolerance and academic freedom should not apply in the case of ID." He says that the mere suggestion that ID could be taught brings out "all manner of evasions and prevarications that are quite out of character for otherwise balanced, intelligent and reasonable people."
As we noted earlier, hopefully Turner’s criticisms will strike a chord with Darwinists who might otherwise close their ears to the argument for academic freedom for ID-proponents. Given the intolerance towards ID-sympathy that Turner describes, let us also hope that the chord is heard but the strummer is not harmed.
Gratitude and sacrifice are particularly interesting when looking at the conscience of men.
If it is true, or at least possible, that DNA 'lives,' then it is arguable that BOTH 'body' and 'spirit/will' are encoded within it.
Hi dougd! Fascinating discussion.... Just a couple of observations, FWTW.
I don't see that it is the DNA that "lives." An organism's DNA is just the same, whether the organism is alive or dead. We know this is so, because forensic science uses DNA to, say, identify homicide victims, etc. IOW, the organism's life is not in its DNA. The conjecture is that DNA is not itself what codes for life, but rather may be the master "decryption key" that accesses whatever it is that does code for life, transcribing it in ways relevant to the particular organism. It appears that all living organisms are participations in a "master genome." That's why humans share so much DNA with the higher apes (something like 99%), and even daffodils (25-30%). The conjecture is DNA decodes/transcribes information from a master source, the genome, selecting whatever is needed from it to express the particular life form, or species. (We can conjecture that the genome -- a "master information set" or perhaps even "algorithm from inception" -- is the "common ancestor" in this regard.)
Believe it or not, this is a speculation that is actually getting some attention from physicists these days.
Funny thing, it seems to be the physicists who are interested in the problem of life and its origin, more so than the biologists. Biology in the U.S. these days seems to be in a kind of straightjacket that it can't get out of, thanks to doctrinaire Darwinism. That doctrine maintains that only sensible, material objects exist; intangibles such as will or spirit or soul are held to be illusions. It's interesting to me that the genome itself has the character of an "intangible" or insensible "object"; but Darwinians make an exception for it, declaring it a real thing, even if no one has ever directly, physically observed it, "walking around on four legs," as it were. (But I digress; end of editorial.)
Your ruminations about will and spirit are dismissed out of hand by many biologists today. But to me, it should be clear to any careful observer that there is a "will to live," which some call the fecundity principle. Alamo-Girl has given many examples of the will to live in recent posts that I won't recapitulate here. In biological organisms, its most striking manifestation is the ability of organisms to access the Gibbs free energy for investment in work which is designed to maintain the organism as far from themodynamic equilibrium as possible. Otherwise, equilibrium eventually sets in, and the organism dies.
Evidently only living organisms are able to store and access free energy; inorganic systems seemingly are not: They just head straight for TD equilibrium by the shortest path (though in the case of a rock, for instance, that could take a very long time). Such "investments" of energy by biological organisms (e.g., to maintain the physical well-being and global integrity of the organism, repair damages, maintain metabolism, etc., etc.) are informed, not random or unguided processes and not even necessarily environmentally driven, at least not in the short run.
But if such processes are "informed," how is that supposed to work? Here's where it really gets interesting. Niels Bohr pointed out in his celebrated paper “Light and Life” (Bohr, 1933) that the quantum nature of light has profound implications for biology. I gather that's where this line of conjecture originated; but modern physics has taken the insight to the next level, speculating that there is a biological principle in nature more fundamental than physical laws, more fundamental even than the quantum level of reality.
Which brings us to the photon. Zukav argues that “Something is 'organic' if it has the ability to process information and to act accordingly. We have little choice but to acknowledge that photons, which are energy, do appear to process information [in the two-slit experiment, the photon either acts "as if" it knows what path to take, or actually does know, from nonlocal sources; e.g., a universal field (a zero-point vacuum field that spontaneously emits photons) via Feynmann's path-integral formalism] and to act accordingly, and that therefore, strange as it may sound, they seem to be organic.” [Zukav, G., The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics. Bantam New Age Books, New York, 45-66 (1980).]
In short, the photon is alleged to possess a form of proto-consciousness. A. Grandpierre writes,
Indeed, Bohr (1933) noted that from a physical point of view, light may be defined as the transmission of energy between material bodies at a distance. Life in its physical fundament is energy transmission between the excited states of complex systems. We propose that biological organization acts through couplings such as those between endergonic and exergonic biochemical processes, and the best candidate for the facilitation of such couplings are photons, since they are created in spontaneous processes that are out of the reach of complete physical determination regarding their initial position and timing (spontaneous emission) and final position (spontaneous absorption). In the absence of highly specialized couplings, only exergonic emissions and absorptions are allowed. In the case of biological couplings, it suffices if the processes are exergonic at the global level of the organism. This means that the presence of biological couplings generates additional possibilities beyond those that would obtain on the basis of the physico-chemical laws alone, making possible an astronomically large number of endergonic biochemical reactions through coupling them to exergonic processes....One last word before closing. There is a conjecture that is rapidly gaining attention that the entire universe is a living organism. To speak of entities as "animate" or "inanimate" may represent a false dichotomy. For on this model, all living entities in nature possess a form of consciousness (or proto-consciousness), whether simple awareness, sentience, self-awareness, self-reflective consciousness. If an inorganic system processes information in some fashion, then it isn't "inanimate" -- by Zukav's definition at least.Eugene Wigner ... came up with the idea that biology is a more general science that includes in itself physics as a special subclass: “Since it is rather clear, in retrospect, that physics in the past always dealt with situations which turned out later to have been limited cases… It may well be suggested, therefore, that present-day physics represents also a limiting case — valid for inanimate objects.” Wigner ... considered inanimate matter “as a limiting case in which the phenomena of life and consciousness play as little a role as the nongravitational forces play in planetary motion.”
In order to be able to speak about the level of reality beyond the quantum level, we have to outline what we regard as corresponding to the quantum level and what as corresponding to the still deeper, biological level. The distinguishing biological phenomena arise in actualizing the maximal version of the action principle. First, biological organization acts using virtual particles as tools, determining the range of acceptable endpoints; then, the action principle acts as a physical principle, realizing with the minimum amount of action the path to the selected endpoint. We can term the organizational process actualizing the maximal version of the action principle within living organisms as the primary level of biological organization. We think that one obtains the simplest picture if we assume that the vacuum has a primary biological nature. [A. Grandpierre, "Integral Aspects of the Action Principle: Biology and Physics Meet Below Quantum Level," 2007; paper presented at an international conference of physicists and biologists at Salzburg last Friday.]
Pretty weird, huh? :^)
Oh, just one more thing -- the reason we have clocks is because time is subjectively perceived; and if we didn't have clocks, we humans would have no way "to get on the same page." :^)
Thank you so very much for your thought-provocative essay/posts, dougd!
p.s.: I'm probably gonna get my head handed to me on a silver platter over this post!
I don't think that's entirely true. Deprived of all external time reference, people seem to consistently assume a sleep/activity cycle of about 25 hours.
But that seems to some extent to be subjective to the individual.
However, if science were to declare like Lanza that time is illusion, there would be nothing for science to do.
Aristotle used counting to illustrate time. That of course presumes a timeline or arrow of time. Modern science points to the Second Law of Thermodynamics and says that is evidence of time passing, a timeline or arrow of time.
But Geometric Physics says "not so fast." Time is geometric, relative, a plane or brane and not a line - part of a continuum we call "space/time."
I think people can get on the same page without an external reference, but need to agree on an external objective standard to get everyone down to a particular word on the page.
We are vectored in time, just like we are vectored in space.
It also seems to render a "sense of timelessness" as nullity.
Interesting discourse you emitted.. If so then machines have a kind of proto-animation/awareness/ or proto-LIFE.. and Animists are "on-to-something"..
They may BE..
Machines whether organic or non-organic can animate if "working properly".. Even a solar system/galaxy are machines.. A Sun(and other degradations of Suns) are machines whether they are Rube Goldberg machines or not is a subjective call..
The human body is a machine.. The whole universe as I know it is a machine of machine like parts.. some scientists call it(the universe) a Rube Goldberg device others a Rolex Watch (like) piece of ingenuity devised by a Sage(i.e. GOD)..
Much to think of/about with this concept.. Can this Universe be a mechanistic functionality busily accomplishing nothing of substance(Rube Goldberg) for no reason -OR- a cleverly designed mechanization of many machines used to distract and test HUMANS (and probably some angels) for an/some unknown future non mechanical saga.. (Judeo-Christian lore)..
Much to consider while my spirit rides my Donkey this dragon hunting trip..
Are machine like structures proto-life -or- is life non mechanical in essense and functionality?..
When I eat a carrot is that a machine eating a machine?..
Or does Chewing gum make me a Rube Goldberg device?...
(to self)- Donkey rides should not be boring..
Timelessness is not zero time, but no time. Timelessness and spacelessness are "beyond" the space/time continuum.
Or even if we do.
Does that mean that it is merely "at rest" in time, realative to the continuum?
But the object traveling at the speed of light might indeed feel "at rest" from his perspective.
How do you reference velocity in the absence of a time delta?
Hope is the weakest virtue. Rather than mix and match philosophic authorities and end up with no authority at all we should do our own speculating. Since one philosopher might come along each century, maybe not that often, we ought not expect a truckload of thinkers to come up with anything at all beyond some gnomics. The discipline of hermeneutics should apply to both reader and writer, but no good examples should be expected on this BBS.
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