Premise not accepted. I do not consider myself a spokesperson for any one camp. I am a poet, with the eyes of a fly. I see, or seek to see, all sides of everything.
I see your side. I see Darwin's side. I see from the outside and the inside. I see from our species' perspective, and I see from the viewpoint of the Galactic Center.
I will play this game; that a mind can examine information dispassionately, rejecting erroneous conclusions presented as facts, yet building from one step of logic to the next, until a world view can be presented, which will constitute a wider view.
"Camp 1: Proponents of dogmatic Darwinism "
Premise rejected. The word "dogmatic" in this construction is a poison pill, coloring the perception of the gentle reader with a negative connotation.
Charles Darwin was an admirably competent observer, carrying no preconceived notions into the field, but simply observing closely and with astonishing skill.
Darwin's turn of mind was encyclopedically visual, relentlessly explanatory -- he asked a why question about everything he looked at, but his answer to every why question that he asked was to look again at exactly what. -- (Adam Gopnik)"...in all the sciences I studied, information comes first, and regulates the flesh and the world, not the other way around."
Wherever you happen to be going with this, I reject it. My studies, like every person able to think and converse, began with noting things, then relationships.
Like our educational system, we begin with learning letters. When the alphabet is mastered, we start to assemble words with our newly learned letters.
With words we form sentences, and are celebrated by our doting parents. From those sentences, and the ones we study, we begin forming ideas. As ideas find accommodation in our minds, we form concepts, and from the concepts, social relationships and philosophies.
But you will note that we start from very humble beginnings, both in the workings of our minds, and with all the other aspects of what we are.
Information, that is, the description of those things that have become familiar to us, is the last thing we learn about them.
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"... I can now affirm the principle empirically. Salient in virtually every technical field – from quantum theory and molecular biology to computer science and economics – is an increasing concern with the word."
Premise not accepted. You are arguing from your conclusion.
Yes, it is true that information technology can be employed to describe certain aspects of bio-chemistry. It is also true that bio-chemical organisms can be organized into a type of search function to focus on curious aspects of mathematical operations.
This does not make them interchangeable in any way, any more than statistical analysis of human behavior could be used to randomly scatter individuals into different homes at the end of the day. I assure you that the individuals would notice. Their behavior in a group can be predicted, but they remain individuals.
Essentially, you are forcing the first of erroneous concepts onto your observation. The map is not the territory.
Simply being able to describe events and probabilities, outcomes and behaviors with some kind of mathematical rigor does not mean that formulae can be devised that will bring about a behavior that is not intrinsic to the phenomenon observed. Your words can not command your subjects, regardless of the volume of your shout.
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... imply that life is biochemistry rather than information processing. But even here, the deoxyribonucleic acid that bears the word is not itself the word. Like a sheet of paper or a computer memory chip, DNA bears messages but its chemistry is irrelevant to its content. The alphabet’s nucleotide “bases” form “words” without help from their bonds with the helical sugar-phosphate backbone that frames them.Far be it from me to infer that life is one and not the other, in any manner of describing it. Life is clearly both. It is information processing through bio-chemical means.
The chemistry of DNA is not irrelevant to its content. Only certain information can be conveyed regardless of the length of the message. The description of how to form feathers, or hair, or teeth or eyes, can be written into the database. These, all of them, are simply modifications of things that came before.
How will we write our cell-phones into our DNA?
How will we write the instructions for how we may fly, like Superman, using our will-power alone? How will we write into our DNA those powers that will make us gods?
In all likelihood, we will not. The medium, you must accept, limits the message that can be conveyed.
I see your side. I see Darwin's side. I see from the outside and the inside. I see from our species' perspective, and I see from the viewpoint of the Galactic Center.
Oh. Okay. I get it: You are suggesting that your thinking is totally unhinged, and you like it that way. :^)
Good grief, that's not something I'd brag about....
The word "dogmatic" was used to make the distinction that some people are using Darwin's theory as a license to trespass beyond the domain of science. To the extent of the disconnect from the scientific method, such findings must be classified as [philosophical] "dogmas." Especially to the degree in which they are held as "sacrosanct" — i.e., NO challenge to them can be allowed in principle — such findings are not science.
As for the rest of your piece, you were mainly arguing with George Gilder, not me. Good luck! :^)
You wrote:
Far be it from me to infer that life is one and not the other, in any manner of describing it. Life is clearly both. It is information processing through bio-chemical means.Well sure, I think we can agree on that.
But where we would continue to disagree would be about this: To you, there is no real distinction to be made between the biochemistry and the message it bears. [Whatever "message" is there, it boils down to the known laws of physics and nothing else.]
While I see "biochemistry" and "message" as two different orders of reality altogether. Which just happen to be "designed" to work together in synergy....
You give your basic operating method as follows:
I will play this game; that a mind can examine information dispassionately, rejecting erroneous conclusions presented as facts, yet building from one step of logic to the next, until a world view can be presented, which will constitute a wider view.And thus I conclude that you believe the complete description of reality is to be achieved, composed, and described part-by-part, step-by-step, from the ground up in a process that has no evident "rule" to it from your perspective. It just "happens." What to make of it???? If it's the result of a blind or random process, what sense could possibly be made of it in the first place?
By the way, I don't want to write my cell phone into my DNA, nor vice versa. I don't even want a cell phone!!!