Posted on 09/29/2007 6:12:27 PM PDT by Tahts-a-dats-ago
This is where the game of pass-the-parcel winds up in a dead end--as, eventually, it must. A scientific theory is a falsifiable rule that relates cause to effect. If you push Dawkins and company far enough, you find yourself more or less where Aristotle was more than 2,000 years ago in stating his view that any chain of cause-and-effect must ultimately begin with an Uncaused Cause. No matter how far science advances, an explanation of ultimate origins must always--by the very definition of the scientific method--remain a non-scientific question.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefreelibrary.com ...
Presumably, whichever strand manages to multiply the fastest.
Get a handle on that, and you've gotten a step closer to explaining the particular characteristics of real cells.
Of course, your mileage may vary -- conditions may have changed over time, so that the what we have now may not have been the optimum when the ball first got rolling.
Cheers!
Probably you won't find too much in English about Ervin Bauer. But here's something that might be of interest:
What I so admire about the Hungarian scientists: They like to "think big."
I’m glad you are enjoying the site. I have a personal footnote credit on one of the essays.
Ooooooooooooh! Which one (can you tell me?)
Even if you denied everything else in your thought experiment - all physical causation requires space and time:
In the absence of space, things cannot exist.
Self-organizing complexity stipulates guides to the physical system - as does cellular automata, etc.
Thanks. I think that little codfish sailor scenario works pretty well as an allegory.
As you stated, “Science is a multi-generational enterprise involving a very large number of highly talented people”, just like sailing the Atlantic was. Some of those sailing the Atlantic had different goals. The Basques wanted to keep their happy hunting grounds secret. The Vikings were basically fast thieves. The priest who sailed with Leif Erickson was maintaining St. Brennan’s seafaring tradition which seems to go back to the 7th century. The 16th century explorers were looking for trade routes and lands that could be claimed for their king. The pilgrims were looking for a place to live, free from religious persecution. Grace O’Malley was a pirate, and my daughter’s name is Grace O’Malley — but I hope she redeems the name. The traditions live on across generations.
It’s easy to see how they would come up with dragon-like explanations for some of the things they saw. A release of Methane into the water would scare the heck out of any sailor.
So, here I am, sailing along in this Inductive Triangle, hoping to pick up good datapoints inside the triangle. Hopefully this inductive triangle doesn’t become the corollary to the Bermuda Triangle.
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Some interesting links
Grace O’Malley, pirate queen of Connaught
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_O‘Malley
Lakes Boiling With Methane Discovered In Alaska
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1897165/posts
http://www.aoh61.com/history/brendan.htm
There is also no doubt that the Irish were frequent seafarers of the North Atlantic sea currents 900 years before the voyage of Columbus.
More conclusive evidence of Irish exploration of North America has come to the fore in West Virginia. There, stone carvings have been discovered that have been dated between 500 and 1000 A.D. Analysis by archaeologist Dr. Robert Pyle and a leading language expert Dr. Barry Fell indicate that they are written in Old Irish using the Ogham alphabet. According to Dr. Fell, the “West Virginia Ogham texts are the oldest Ogham inscriptions from anywhere in the world. They exhibit the grammar and vocabulary of Old Irish in a manner previously unknown in such early rock-cut inscriptions in any Celtic language.” Dr. Fell goes on to speculate that, “It seems possible that the scribes that cut the West Virginia inscriptions may have been Irish missionaries in the wake of Brendan’s voyage, for these inscriptions are Christian. The early Christian symbols of piety, such as the various Chi-Rho monograms (Name of Christ) and the Dextra Dei (Right Hand of God) appear at the sites together with the Ogham texts.”
http://www.iceland-vacation-information.com/leif_erickson.html
Leif Erickson was driven off course in this voyage, and found lands whose existence he had not previously known of. In one place there were fields of self-sown wheat and grapevines. Leif Erickson named the country Wineland. On the way back to Greenland he found men on a wrecked ship and rescued them, after which he made his way to his father’s home in Brattahlid. This took place in the year 1000 according to Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla. Leif Erickson brought a priest with him from Norway, and set about spreading the new faith in Greenland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_Triangle
An explanation for some of the disappearances has focused on the presence of vast fields of methane hydrates on the continental shelves. Laboratory experiments carried out in Australia have proven that bubbles can, indeed, sink a scale model ship by decreasing the density of the water[10]; any wreckage consequently rising to the surface would be rapidly dispersed by the Gulf Stream. It has been hypothesized that periodic methane eruptions (sometimes called “mud volcanoes”) may produce regions of frothy water that are no longer capable of providing adequate buoyancy for ships. If this were the case, such an area forming around a ship could cause it to sink very rapidly and without warning.
A slight confusion over words, there.
Pass, and all's well...
For some strange reason, Kevmo, it seems to me that inductive reasoning has lately been held in contempt, vis-a-vis deductive reasoning.
Now science is supposed to be the sina qua non of deductive reasoning; and because it's deductive in its methods, we are supposed to trust that it alone among the knowledge disciplines is to be considered trustworthy. All the other knowledge disciplines -- e.g., philosophy, theology -- supposedly tend to fiction, in the current "intellectual climate"....
Of course, the ninnies who propound such things neglect to mention (maybe they haven't even figured it out yet) that one cannot deduce anything, absent a standard against which the deduction is to be measured and so judged.
And so, I congratulate you on your insight: that inductive reasoning is ultimate, and deductive reasoning derivative therefrom.
Also may I congratulate you for formulating a clear and compelling description of the "observer problem."
We humans are all "observers" in the manner you suggest; i.e., being within the field that we observe, we cannot ever capture "the universe" as an objective observational fact.
Under the circumstances it seems to me, if we can but stick close to reason and experience, we don't have a problem with "induction".
So it seems to me that induction is our friend: If we can't handle reason and particularly experience, we tend to seek "doctrinal answers" -- that is, deductions from whatever "received text" might be enjoying its day in the sun....
Induction is the only correction for this problem, which inevitably is a problem of "reduction," from a source that such reductionists and associated cultural revisionists would never even name.... They simply can't, without giving up their game....
Reason, Spirit in search of Truth, does not work that way. And so, dear Kevmo, I look forward to seeing you in the grand "Inductive Triangle" some day!
Thank you ever so much for writing!
p.s. I am ever so much charmed by your elicitations of the seafaring and migrant waves of the second century A.D. that, in the case of the Vikings, seemed to have touched the shores of Poland, and westward from there, unto our own North American shores. Not to mention that the Vikings recently have been reported to have established a "civilization" on Greenland sometime between a millenium or two ago. On this observation, they established civilizational centers (e.g., towns), engaged in agriculture, raised abundant herds, and also engaged in widescale trade. They also built what are evidently Christian churches there (there are remains of this).
And then it seemed the "weather cycle" swung around; and then it got really cold in Greenland. The [present-day] icecap is the legacy of this climactic transition. The established Viking culture there then had to abandon that terrain, for it could no longer survive there....
Anyhoot, if you want my humble opinion, there's no way to understand what a human being is, if you expect to leave out the historical account of the Vikings; or of the "mysterious" Basques.... At least not if one wants a "full account."
I love it that you care about such anthropological/cultural/sociological things, dear Kevmo! Thank you so very much for writing!
p.s.: Meanwhile, do grab the "data points!" That is your experience...to be respected and cherished.... IMHO FWIW
Thank you, Betty.
FWIW, many of the points I’ve found trustworthy within the inductive triangle have come from you and Alamo Girl.
Here are some points recently that I have found which fall inside & outside of the inductive triangle:
Insults. They are offered very freely by the evo crowd and it appears to be sparingly by the creat crowd. The insults belong outside of the triangle, and factual evidence belongs inside. When we see insults in the absence of facts, that is evidence that evo is becoming a religion. And a poor one at that. When there are Freepers with enough expertise to discuss the scientific data, the dialog tends to evolve into one of those finer point discussions similar to theologists who discuss how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Such digressive discussion furthers my point that science is becoming a religion. One aspect of a religion is the desire to indoctrinate the next generation of youth. I found evidence of this the last time I was involved in the crevo discussions:
“And it is those people who vote in guys who determine social policy.” Which is why we want to stop that trend and support science over creationism.
***Oh, cool, some social policy to discuss. Let me get this straight, you want to “stop that trend” which is that those people who don’t ostensibly know a molecule have started? Is that not an open admission that you are trying to indoctrinate the next generation?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1487565/posts?page=76#76
Drake Probabilities. When we plug in the latest findings of probabilities into the Drake equation, we see that the hope for ET intelligent life is astronomically low. The SETI scientists thought it was good science to include a 10^-2 figure for the chances of life evolving without intervention, whereas Coppedge comes up with something more like 10^-700 or so. When an evolutionist offers an opinion in the absence of hard numbers (SETI is worth it, it’s privately funded, it’s good science), then they are operating outside of the inductive triangle. The only data points I’ve found inside the inductive triangle on the Drake equation have been the laughable 10^-2. In the name of good science, they owe it to the public and colleague scientists to publish the latest updated terms in the Drake equation. The absence of such updates is bad science, and it’s outside of the inductive triangle.
Historicity. When I am called “psychotic” for relying upon the historicity of the best attested event in ALL OF HISTORY, that is a data point for me on how much respect the evo crowd has for the science behind history. They strain at a gnat in historicity but swallow any camel that furthers the abiogenesis worldview. The insult belongs outside of the triangle, and the historicity evidence belongs inside.
I'd sure like to know where this come from. Can you cite a reference that asserts that science favors deductive reasoning over inductive and abductive reasoning?
Where does conjecture and hypothesis and theory formation come from if science is all deduction?
Science is not ALL deduction: It must have something to deduce from. But here's the problem, taking an extreme case for an example: Richard Lewontin. His conjecture or hypothesis deliberately screens out a whole major sector of reality. Anything deduced from that willfully reduced presupposition is bound to be false.
The point is his basic induction is faulty. Moreover, because of his irrational "commitment" to a most extreme form of doctrinaire materialism, it is not scientific.
Nothing can be screened out of reality, but conjectures can be screened from the arena of science if they fail tests or are incapable of being tested.
Some conjectures, such as ESP, have been rigorously tested by sympathetic researchers and have been thoroughly discredited.
Other conjectures, such as Dembski's explanatory filter, have not been formulated in a way that suggests a method of testing.
Some aspects of intelligent design, such as irreducible complexity, have been tested and have failed a number of tests.
So very true, Kevmo! The proselytization of atheism on scientific grounds is pure nonsense, and also anhistorical. It seems to me the only reason to keep faith with abiogenetic and autopoietic theories is because they allow one to "exclude" God, the ground of being, from our picture of reality.
BTW, I apologize for an error in my last post to you, which you probably found puzzling: I said "second century A.D" when I meant to say "second millennium A.D." Another "senior moment".... :^) Sorry!
What I was attempting to get at was the hysteria about global warming. Here again, historical experience is important, or should be. About a millennium ago, Greenland supported agriculture. Then the world entered into a period of cooling. In the Late Middle Ages, Europe was freezing. Then that trend petered out, and the world became warmer again. That this warming trend was the result of human activities seems most unlikely, since wide-scale industrialization hadn't happened yet. There is, however, a close correlation between global warming and cooling cycles and solar activity. Right now, the sun is extraordinarily active. Since we are in its neighborhood, climate effects can be expected here on Earth.
People committed to the theory that global warming is pretty much exclusively due to human activities seem (to me) to have a "hidden agenda": to delegitimate capitalism and industrial society, and therefore the nations of the world that are built on these foundations (e.g., the United States and the developed and developing world). And they are using "science" as their Trojan Horse.
Thanks so much for your kind words, Kevmo, and for writing!
Then that would suggest that science is indeed a very limited tool -- which is not the way science used to be thought of, prior to Laplace and the positivists. Once upon a time, it was generally understood that the mission of science was to understand nature as it is, i.e., in its totality. It was not a project that screened out parts of nature on principle.
If a test "fails," maybe because it was a bad test -- i.e., wrongly conceived in the first place (i.e., faulty presupposition, etc.). What is untestable today may well be testable in the future.
You seem to take a most narrow view, js1138....
Thank you for your excellent insights, dearest sister in Christ!
I apologize, but that mention brought up a classic quote from G.K. Chesterton's The Club of Queer Trades:
"It's not your opinions that I object to, my esteemed Chadd," he was saying, "it's you. You are quite right to champion the Zulus, but for all that you do not sympathize with them. No doubt you know the Zulu way of cooking tomatoes and the Zulu prayer before blowing one's nose; but for all that you don't understand them as well as I do, who don't know an assegai from an alligator. You are more learned, Chadd, but I am more Zulu. Why is it that the jolly old barbarians of this earth are always championed by people who are their antithesis? Why is it? You are sagacious, you are benevolent, you are well informed, but, Chadd, you are not savage. Live no longer under that rosy illusion. Look in the glass. Ask your sisters. Consult the librarian of the British Museum. Look at this umbrella." And he held up that sad but still respectable article. "Look at it. For ten mortal years to my certain knowledge you have carried that object under your arm, and I have no sort of doubt that you carried it at the age of eight months, and it never occurred to you to give one wild yell and hurl it like a javelin-- thus--"
And he sent the umbrella whizzing past the professor's bald head, so that it knocked over a pile of books with a crash and left a vase rocking.
You and I and Betty (and I assume Alamo-Girl) and GKC all agree on this -- we cannot abandon tradition and history without losing something of our humanity.
No matter how "scientific" the temptation is ;-)
Cheers!
In fact, that they are used at all indicates that you have won the debate because people only resort to spit-wads when they have no ammunition.
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