Blinded by Science

Discovery Institute ^ | 6/2/03 | Wesley J. Smith

[betty boop]

The universe, physical and otherwise, one dimension or multiple dimensions, was created and constantly changes. We can experience only a very small portion of it in any given lifetime and we use our free will to determine which portions by the decisions and choices we make in everyday life. Each decision moves us towards possibilities and probabilities and away from others.

Very interesting insights, Consort. I think this puts you in the Erasmus Darwin camp of evolutionary theory, and decidedly not in his son's. The former recognizes and is open to intellect and free will; the latter is relentlessly deterministic, "blind." It has been observed that Charles Darwin's theory is the secular twin of the Christian dogma of predestination, as it is commonly understood.

[js1138]

It doesn't wash: For in Darwin's theory, "Luck" explicitly stands in the place of "Mind" -- its explanation banishes mind, so nature or selfish genes cannot be said to "have" mind, or purpose -- for purpose presupposes mind.... And yet we have nature ineluctibly moving toward "fitness."

I'm still waiting for Darwinists to explain this paradox to me.

Evolution does not move "towards" anything, at least not anything knowable, because there is no static state that can be known as "fitness". Whatever works and whatever succeeds succeeds. Most of the living mass of the planet, by weight, is made up of bacteria. Evolution does not compel any "upward" trend towards "complexity".

Dispite what any given authority might say, evolution is compatible with any concrete definition of free will. The utility of the mind is in its attempt to know and adjust to the future -- a task that remains and will always remain incomplete and unfulfilled. It is this attempt to predict and manage the future that gives us the "feeling" of free will. It is the impossibility of predicting the future that makes the feeling of freedom consistent with reality.

Evolution, in fact, turns the usual cause and effect paradigm upside down. In the world of living things, cause operates from the future backwards, rather than from past to present. That's really, in a nutshell, what evolution means.

[freedomlover]

SCIENCE!

LOL brings me back to my college days in the dorm when for no reason at all someone would yell "SCIENCE" when things got too quiet.

I guess you had to be there.

[Pyro7480]

I can see that. I read on a pop-up on Pop-up Video when they showed that video that people would shout "Science!" at the guy who did that for the song, and he got annoyed at it.

[f.Christian]

j8 ...

Evolution does not move "towards" anything, at least not anything knowable, because there is no static state that can be known as "fitness". Whatever works and whatever succeeds succeeds. Most of the living mass of the planet, by weight, is made up of bacteria. Evolution does not compel any "upward" trend towards "complexity".

Dispite what any given authority might say, evolution is compatible with any concrete definition of free will. The utility of the mind is in its attempt to know and adjust to the future -- a task that remains and will always remain incomplete and unfulfilled. It is this attempt to predict and manage the future that gives us the "feeling" of free will. It is the impossibility of predicting the future that makes the feeling of freedom consistent with reality.

Evolution, in fact, turns the usual cause and effect paradigm upside down. In the world of living things, cause operates from the future backwards, rather than from past to present. That's really, in a nutshell, what evolution means.


22 posted on 06/03/2003 10:57 AM PDT by js1138

fC ...

science (( no change )) vs the study of science (( change )) !

dh ...

That's a silly quibble. The universe does whatever it damn well pleases, and hasn't the slightest demonstrated notion of what a law is to constrain it. Insofar as what is demonstrable, natural laws are human inventions to help us think more effectively about nature. The claim that they are objectively existing things in and of themselves, is unproven and probably unprovable--as is likewise the claim that there is such a thing as "science" which exists independently of "the study of science".

1,398 posted on 05/14/2003 10:36 PM PDT by donh (u)


fC ...

science is evolving ?

[Consort]

Evolution does not move "towards" anything, at least not anything knowable,...

Then it probably moves towards the unknowable. And, it seems that a paradox is merely something that we are not smart enough to understand yet.

The utility of the mind is in its attempt to know and adjust to the future...

It seems to me that most of what the mind is concerned about is what is happening right now. We don't dwell in the future.

Evolution, in fact, turns the usual cause and effect paradigm upside down.

Why would they be mutually exclusive? Cause and effect can be everyday occurrences as we evolve.

[js1138]

science is evolving ?

Do you have a problem with that. I understand your assertion that the universe doesn't change, but the complexity of the universe far outstrips our ability to understand it. Hence the evolution of our understanding. Should we stop trying because we'll never reach the end?

[js1138]

It seems to me that most of what the mind is concerned about is what is happening right now. We don't dwell in the future.

what we do is based on what we expect. It isn't rocket science to realize that different people have different horizons, and concern themselves with short and long term goals, based on their level of intelligence and their education. but even one second from now is the future.

[f.Christian]

How does what you write- think contribute to a conservative forum ?

Welcome!
Free Republic is an online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web. We're working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America. And we always have fun doing it. Hoo-yah!

The biggest fraud and corruption are liberals -- evolution and you're trying to root it in --- irrigate it !

[js1138]

How does what you write- think contribute to a conservative forum ?

I was invited to this thread by betty boop. My views are well known to her. It is also my opinion that telling the truth about what we believe is a conservative virtue. I could, like Clinton, just say what I think you want to hear.

[cornelis]

cause operates from the future backwards

Sounds like a teleology to me, but more like the old time religion: god is on the winning side. That's what Homer and Herodotus touted long ago: the Greeks win because the gods favor them with success.

But what, after all, is success? Success is of a particular kind, right? The description of success moves our attention from the fact of evolution to the value of evolution. But in your supposed teleology, the value is actually coeval with the fact! Now there's a matrix. It was with this that Socrates long ago took issue, because he couldn't accept the ol' positivism que sera, sera. Nor does politics, never has, never will.

[cornelis]

But I thought we supposed to let the wheat grow up with the tares?

[f.Christian]

Should we stop trying because we'll never reach the end?

Maybe you are going in the wrong (( anarchy // evolution )) direction!

[Consort]

what we do is based on what we expect.

Yes, but when the unexpected comes up, we have to deal with it now. And later, what we planned for and what we didn't plan for will become the now that we have to deal with. It's all happening...now.

[cornelis]

At least Aristotle admitted more than one cause, effecient, final, formal, and material. And Aquinas admitted two more kinds, original and contingent causes. We forget Evolution is concerned with one kind of change in particular: biological motion, if social evolution becomes a function of the biological in toto, we know we are dealing with a simplism via oblivion of difference. Making everything the function of one thing is a determinism that works very well for Bedouins in the desert and ego-centric Europeans.

[f.Christian]

Funny ...

for a hundred years no anarchists were allowed through immigration entry or citizenship in America ---

now they - ANARCHISTS are through evolution -- running everything via an illegal monopoly and forbidding the constitutional intent and purpose of all of our free speech rights and liberty !

The Bible 2500 years ago predicted this tyranny -- persecution ...

false science - evolution -- tyranny would wax -- increase ...

true science - knowledge -- liberty would be forbidden - punished !

We have to root out - FIGHT these weeds -- tares !

Why would the founding fathers who came to America to escape religious persecution form a govt of protection for religious tyranny -- evo Atheist arsonists !

EVO - OVERLORDISM !

Funny how some people see the communist threat through environmentalism and don't see it where it is the most damaging -- media - schools - govt !

[Phaedrus]

Thanks for the ping. Smith just slices right through all the doubletalk and obfuscation, doesn't he? Makes me smile. And it proves that lawyers are good for something, if there was any doubt about that on anyone's part (count me in).

[betty boop]

The utility of the mind is in its attempt to know and adjust to the future -- a task that remains and will always remain incomplete and unfulfilled. It is this attempt to predict and manage the future that gives us the "feeling" of free will. It is the impossibility of predicting the future that makes the feeling of freedom consistent with reality.

If the utility of mind "is in its attempt to know and adjust to the future," then the genius of mind must consist in the ability to freely conceive a desired future, and then to work toward securing it. The future isn't just something "out there" beyond our will that we humans need to "adjust to." It also can be something imagined, even created by us on the strength of decisions we make.

Charles Darwin has us living entirely in/for the former type of process, for that's the best that his brand of determinism can do. But in fact, we humans live in the latter type as well, which is the sphere of intellect and free will that no infinite random series (in theory or practical fact) of material cause and effect can either anticipate or explain.

It seems clear to me that man is both "creature" and "creator," within his sphere of competence. Darwinist evolutionary theory has nothing to say about man in this second capacity. Of the artist, the poet, the saint, the theoretical scientist intuitively groping for new visions, new insights -- of these Darwin has absolutely nothing to say.

Presumably because the creative consciousness of man complicates the elegance of the system, all such considerations are omitted. Human consciousness is assumed to consist in being "reactive to stimuli," just like any "lower" creature, such as jellyfish, paramecium, dog, cat, tweety-bird, etc., etc. But to say that animals (including man) "react to stimuli" doesn't mean that a clear concept of "future" need necessarily be present.

Thus a contradiction seems to slip in: If utility depends on notions of the future -- for something to be "useful," to have utility, it must accomplish a specified purpose, and the purpose's fulfillment lies beyond the present moment -- how do we know whether the lower orders of animal mind even conceive the idea of "future" at all? There must be something more to the human mind than simple "animal mind" -- for humans seem to be keenly aware of, even at times anxious about, this thing called "future."

Does the inchworm, progressing along his planar existence, reacting to stimuli all along the way, have any "idea" that he is moving in time -- from the "now" of Point A to the "future" of Point B?

But humans seem to do more than react to stimuli; and they can "react" to "stimuli" that are not occasioned by things in the exterior world (in the sense of sense impressions caused by physical objects). They can also reflect them in consciousness, and choose alternatives on the basis of those self-reflections.

Charles Darwin turns a blind eye on this problem. Darwin's world is a vast machine populated by other machines that just happen to have a "biological basis." And we humans, just as all other "evolving" concatenations of materialist "stuff," are all just "passing through," meaninglessly, and creating no meaning ourselves as we move in time.

In the matter of consciousness, what happened in the evolution of mind from muck to Einstein? How did man get "here" from "there?" I'm groping for language to express where I think Darwin's theory is deficient. To me it is so clear that he is leaving something truly vital and necessary out of his concept -- a mistake his father did not make. And its lack, to my mind, puts his entire theory in doubt. FWIW

Thanks so much for writing, js1138.

[js1138]

Does the inchworm, progressing along his planar existence, reacting to stimuli all along the way, have any "idea" that he is moving in time -- from the "now" of Point A to the "future" of Point B?

I don't have time to give this post the detailed response it deserves, but I will respond to the inchworm problem. The worm doesn't need to have ideas. It has a rudimentary nervous system that supports behaviors that result in the species surviving. Whatever "point b" is, it is statistically likely to have some survival value. Selection is the cause of the nervous system's form.

I understand that this looks like a paradox, which is why the concept of selection is so difficult to analyze and "prove".

Back later with more.

[js1138]

No, it's all happening in the future. "Dealing" with it means taking action that has some probability of having a desirable consequense. We do not know consequenses with certainty, but we try. We judge the complexity and intelligence of both people and animals by how well they anticipate outcomes.