Posted on 03/14/2008 5:08:51 AM PDT by iowamark
The $1.6 million Templeton Prize, the richest award made to an individual by a philanthropic organization, was given Wednesday to Michael Heller, 72, a Roman Catholic priest, cosmologist and philosopher who has spent his life asking, and perhaps more impressively answering, questions like “Does the universe need to have a cause?”...
Much of Professor Heller’s career has been dedicated to reconciling the known scientific world with the unknowable dimensions of God.
In doing so, he has argued against a “God of the gaps” strategy for relating science and religion, a view that uses God to explain what science cannot.
Professor Heller said he believed, for example, that the religious objection to teaching evolution “is one of the greatest misunderstandings” because it “introduces a contradiction or opposition between God and chance.”
In a telephone interview, Professor Heller explained his affinity for the two fields: “I always wanted to do the most important things, and what can be more important than science and religion? Science gives us knowledge, and religion gives us meaning. Both are prerequisites of the decent existence.”
Professor Heller said he planned to use his prize to create a center for the study of science and theology at the Pontifical Academy of Theology, in Krakow, Poland, where he is a faculty member....
On returning years later to Poland, where Communist authorities sought to oppress intellectuals and priests, Professor Heller found shelter for his work in the Catholic Church. He was ordained at 23, but spent just one year ministering to a parish before he felt compelled to return to academia....
The prize will be officially awarded in London by Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, in a private ceremony on May 7 at Buckingham Palace.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
"As far as we are able to measure" is the operative clause here TXnMA. Alamo-Girl acknowledges this; you gloss right over it, seeming to suggest that the universe itself is somehow the product of Brownian motion. But this is the very point A-G gets to with her observation that we cannot know for certain what is "random" in a system if we don't know what the system "is."
The ability to "measure" is the ability to directly observe. This is the heart of "the observer problem": As spatio-temporally located parts of the system that we observe, we are never in a position to observe "all of it." We can only see from where we happen to stand. Thus we cannot know what the total system "is" on the basis of observation in principle. We therefore have no reason to conclude that "what is" can be reduced to what can be measured.
But if we assume that reduction, we foreclose the possibility that the randomness we perceive may be a physical process manifesting a higher-order cause that is not perceptible, detectable by sense perception.
Do we really want to reduce the universe (and human knowledge) to what sense perception can report? In effect, this is to say that Man, not God, is "the Measure" of all things. Or perhaps it's more correct to say that not Man, but his five sensory "windows" on the world, are the "measure" of reality.
It seems to me that the "randomness" that God uses as a tool in nature (so to speak) is indispensable to growth, change, development, evolution. Without it, the creation -- the universe -- would be wholly static. But this is not to say that randomness means "pure, blind chance," as Jacques Monod maintains (along with Dawkins, Pinker, Lewontin, Singer, et al.).
Ultimately, it seems to me that God's laws are guides to the system that operate on the random aspects of the system, in such a way as to constrain pure chance. Thus I think we need to see that the words "random" and "chance" are not synonyms, even though typically we speak of them as if they were.
Alamo-Girl is so right: We need to understand what "randomness" really means when we toss the word around in popular debates. In short, it seems to me before we start speaking about randomness and "chance," we ought to acknowledge that the observer problem is inextricably involved in whatever we say about the matter, and there is no single "privileged" human observer in the universe in a position to know the truth, because the sole observer of "all that there is" can only be God Himself.
In contrast, we humans see only partially, and "as if through a glass, darkly."
My two cents, FWIW.
As far as you care to measure.
Seemingly obvious, and yet it's the key to all these epistomological puzzles.
We think we are "aloof" as "observers," and yet we are always trying to mint coins out of imagined gold, or wondering why we can't stare into our own eyes.
Truly, it is important for everyone to understand the "observer problem" - but most especially, it is crucial for Christians to understand it. And convey it to others. As you said:
In contrast, we humans see only partially, and "as if through a glass, darkly."
Illusion. Nothing but parallax.
As we never will know any system in full, the best approach for most practical reasons is to assume randomness - and let the philosophers quibble about the difference between randomness and unpredictability....
And it would be a wonderful random number generator, but, alas, the numbers are to complicated to calculate. So, we look at even simpler methods to generate things which feel random...
However, the term "random" is rooted in mathematics. The issue is not a "quibble" of philosophy, it is a matter of "proof" and accuracy in speaking.
If one pointed to a rectangle with four right angels and parallel, equal sides and declared it a "trapezoid" we'd say "Not so fast, it is a square, a trapezoid has only two sides parallel and it does not have four right angles."
Likewise, if one points to a thing and says to me it is "random" I'll reply "If you have established a uniform distribution, then perhaps so, but only to the extent of your measurement - because you cannot say something is random in the system unless you know what the system 'is.'"
a propos "accuracy in speaking": We were talking (at least, I was) about the physical world, not the mathematical. And there we're talking about experiments - not proofs. And until now, no experiment has falsified the hypothesis that the quantum world acts randomly...
Old chestnut: Einstein was uncomfortable with randomness in quantum mechanics and expressed his discomfort with the phrase, "The Lord God does not play dice." To which Neils Bohr retorted, "Who are you to tell God what to do?"
Thanks a lot.
Again, one cannot say something is random in the system if he does not know what the system "is."
What's this bizarre obsession with the uniform distribution? There is no uniform distribution on N or R... So, no scientist will assume that it applies for the hole universe.
And I fail to see how your post is related to my post #53.
Again, one cannot say something is random in the system if he does not know what the system "is."
And we cannot say that something is a straight line if we don't see the hole line.
Do you see the problems with your statement? In the physical world, there is nothing we know to be a straight line - and there is nothing we know to be random. Doesn't stop us from doing geometry or probability theory - and geometrical or statistical physics...
Not even discussing anything in the organic system but discussing your budding universe system.
I'm pinging a few others who might be interested in some of the following.
Depending on the circumstance, all possibilities may or may not be equally probable.
When a person buys a lotto ticket in a field of a hundred million purchases of lotto tickets, the odds of his winning the prize is announced as a ratio of 1 in a hundred million. That is combinatorics. It is blind like a roll of the dice. Each possibility is equally probable to win the full prize.
But of the hundred million people buying lotto tickets, some are using numbers which represent important things or events in their lives, and very often those numbers are birth months and days. Because there are only 12 months in a year, 28-31 days in a month – and the range of numbers from which to choose ordinarily exceeds those limits --- the odds of such a purchaser winning the total prize amount is significantly diluted. Which is to say, there exists a greater probability of certain number selections and multiple winners having to split the prize. That is Bayesian probability. It is not blind. Each possibility is not equally probable to win the full prize.
If the sports book were based on combinatorics, it would be bankrupted quickly because the possibility of each team winning is not equally probable. Conversely, in sweepstakes each ticket is equally probable to win the prize.
In the crevo debates on this forum, both sides advance either combinatorics or Bayesian probability depending on how they wish to advocate in the debate.
betty boop and I, on the other hand, promote full disclosure.
As an example, Jewish Physicist Gerald Schroeder uses combinatorics to point out that a single typical protein is a chain of 300 amino acids, and that there are 20 common amino acids in life, which means that the number of equally probable combinations that would lead to the actualization of the protein would be 10390.
Conversely, theists often argue that this universe is improbably finely tuned for life - that the laws of physics are precisely tuned so that life will appear in this universe, e.g. the speed of light and the fine structure constant. [The following is paraphrased and/or excerpted from our book, Don't Let Science Get You Down, Timothy.]
Ditto for the strong nuclear force. If it had been just 13 percent stronger, all of the free protons would have combined into helium-2 at the early stage of the big bang, decaying right away into deuterons, which would then fuse to become helium-4. There would be no hydrogen, no water, and no hydrocarbons. A decrease of approximately 31 percent would make the deuteron unstable and remove a step in the chain of nucleosynthesis. Consequently there would be nothing but hydrogen in the universe.
And water, too. The hydrogen bond is the attraction of the electron-rich oxygen atoms of water molecules for the electron-starved hydrogen atoms of other water molecules. This in turn determines the precise H-O-H bond angle of 104.5 degrees. This hydrogen bond is what holds together the two strands of DNA — it also causes the crystalline structure of ice (an open lattice), which is less dense than the liquid form. Thus, ice does not collect at the bottom of lakes and oceans — building up to a frozen earth. Instead, the ice on the surface acts as an insulation, which prevents evaporation and keeps the water beneath warm. No water, no life as we know it.
There’s an even more unlikely process in carbon resonance. Within stars, two helium-4 nuclei merge to make beryllium-8, which only exists for about 10–17 of a second. So a third alpha particle (helium nucleus) must collide and fuse with the beryllium nucleus in a tiny interval of opportunity in order to make carbon. Lucky for us that there is a resonance in the three-helium reaction at the precise thermal energy of a star’s core. If it weren’t so, then most carbon would be quickly processed into oxygen. Again, no life.
But so the debate goes on - combinatorics v Bayesian probability.
But betty boop and I promote full disclosure.
Thus whenever a correspondent advocates that a certain thing in nature is “random” we hold his feet to the fire. He is using combinatorics to make that claim – all possibilities within the scope of the investigation are equally probable - a uniform distribution.
Nor will we stand idly by while he attempts to project the observation in a sample to the whole. (An element of the "observer problem.")
As an example, in the extension of pi - a sampling of numbers from the extension may be random to the observer doing the sample - but because we can and do know what the system "is" - we know it is not random at all, but highly determined by calculating the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle and extending it to the furthest position (n) from which the sample was extracted (3.14159265358979323846...n)
Likewise, a random (uniform distribution) observation in a sample may be belied by correlation observed in a larger sample or in the whole. Causation and no boundary in the extension is why random number generators such as Chaitin's Omega are only "pseudo-random." The same can be said for observations in nature, e.g. physical causation or origins and boundaries of space/time.
Without making the observation, it is impossible to claim uniform distribution. And the extent of physical reality (cosmos, universes, dimensions) is both unknown and unknowable.
Moreover if the correspondent advances “randomness” or “equal probability” in one instance – e.g. quantum mechanics – and then decries it in another, e.g. in Schroeder’s analysis of the probability of proteins – we will call him on the inconsistency and ask him to justify how in one instance each possibility is equally probable while it is not in the other.
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