[[What it rules out in principle, however — ever since Francis Bacon — is formal cause, by which Aristotle referred to causal “ends,” or purposes. Increasingly it is becoming obvious that biology cannot be done if formal causes continue to be excluded from the scientific method.]]
And htis is a key point- The study of biology shows that indeed there is purpose- especially behind species specific metainformation- this is a major problem for the hypothesis of macroevolution, and hte evo simply dismisses purpose- or at best tries to claim unguided mistakes have purpose because the system they are workign on already has the information present to ‘guide’ the mistakes in a purposeful manner, and as the species suppsoedly evolves more and more, the complexity of information builds through trial and error- William’s article on life’s irreducible structures clearly showed that this is impossible- which again, is why evos simply dismiss the whole fact of inversely-causal Metainformation. They dede hierarchy, but claim heirarchy came about in a stepwise fashion without hte help of a metaguide system- or at best, claim the metainformation was trasnfered from nature to the species durign hte process of suppsoed macroevolution, apparently much like a game of red rover (I can’t beleive some i nthe evo field even suggest that- but there ya have it)
[[Science also accepts a rather attentuated form of formal cause — initial conditions + the physical laws. ]]
But they are stuck insisting hte impossible- that nature ‘could provide’ anticipatory information to deal with problems that are bound to arise in the future- so they devise a scenario whereby species, as they supposedly evolved, storing all manner of presently useless information, and when problems do arise, the problems are seived through al lthis stored info until just by chance ‘somethign works’, at which point, it’s retained, and passed along because of the benifit. However, Macroevolution hypothesis tells us that what isn’t useful is discarded, and one would gave to wonder just how many trillions of years it would take, and how many generations it woudl take for this weeding out process to take place by happenstance.
Ruling out formal cause, right fro mthe getgo, certainly isn’t an objective pursuit of science, espeically when we see a plethora of evidence to show that an anticipatory guidance system is inplace, keeping speices fit within species specific paramters.
I think I missed the thread on Rosen’s ‘closed loop’- would you have a link to it as I think htis is also a key to understandign hte heirachal system of metainformation- was the loop referrign to comication of informaiton? or just to the presence of species specific information?
There was a thread up re: Rosen a few months back, but I don't think this particular issue of "causal closure" by means of a final cause came up there. It's based on recollection of arguments in his wonderful book, Life Itself: A Comprehensive Inquiry into the Nature, Origin, and Fabrication of Life. Rosen's approach to theoretical biology is intensively mathematical. His method is mathematical modeling of complex systems, in particular biological ones.
He doesn't get into information/communication issues explicitly, nor is he building a hierarchical model of a biological organism of the type Williams created. Rather, he is dealing with the causal characteristics (organizational structure) of complex systems in general, and how they differ from the "simple system" structures we call mechanisms and machines.
It is, IMHO, a revolutionary book. It seems to be gaining wider attention among theoretical biologists, especially those who favor a mathematical approach. Which to me is a promising way to advance; for as Eugene Wigner put it, mathematics is "unreasonably effective" in probing/describing the universe. (Or words to that effect.)
Of course the Evos would detest final causes; they cannot have a system that is NOT completely open to the environment. All the prompts to speciation are said to come from the environment. The environment "pushes," and "natural selection" does all the rest, in a purely blind, purposeless process....
Of course, it's my view that people who say such things must also believe in fairy stories....
IMHO, your analysis of the Evo "predicament" is spot-on, dear CottShop! Thank you ever so much for writing!