Intelligent Design and Peer Review

Discovery Institute ^ | November 1, 2003 | William A. Dembski

[Aracelis]

Once you go monotreme, you never go back.

Oh dear, what's next Patrick? Echidnas???

[PatrickHenry]

I should have known that you'd take something which is pure, clean, sublime ... and try to make it into something that you could relate to ... something carnal, base, something sordid. Everywhere Plato and I go it's the same old story ...

[I donno how much longer I can maintain this mode.]

[Aracelis]

[betty boop]

There are certainly an infinite number of different leaves possible, because no single leaf exactly matches an abstract form.. I am no mathematician, but my spidey sense tells me there are an infinite number of patterns possible.

Well, if you say so, js1138. WRT this "infinite number of patterns possible" paradigm you suggest, answer me this: Why is it that the budding process of a new leaf on a stem -- any stem, of any botanical system in nature -- seems to stay roughly within the bound of 137.5 degrees rotation along the main stem, as calculated from the position of the last bud/leaf establishment?

The Fibonacci series, and the Mandelbrot set come to mind here. The former seems to be uncannily well-established in nature, and also in human nature (e.g., human artistic and architectural imagination). The latter may well be the best imaginable description of the quantum world that we have. Both point to non-physical things that may have a role in shaping actual physical outcomes in nature. Suggesting, at the end of the day, that nature reveals pattern. From which one might rationally infer that nature actually expresses purpose.

I'll leave the problem there for now, in anticipation of dissent from people who feel matters of spirit are inconsequential to human life and society.

Good night all!

[Doctor Stochastic]

Any time something is built additively, one get the Fibonacci numbers (see FIbonacci's original description). They arise out of the recursion x(i+2)=x(i+1)+x(i), regardless of the starting values (if these are positive.) If the last two things in sequence are added to produce a new thing (being deliberately vague about the nature of things), the Fibonacci numbers result.

For example, a couple of people published some (nonsense, actually) observations on Mozart compositions. They showed that the ratios of lengths of the "development+recapulation" compared to the "exposition" and the length of the whole compared to the "development+recapulation) were usually close to a ratio of Fibonacci numbers (the Golden Section.) They later noticed that this relation was required mathematically (A+B)/B is closer to he Golden Section than B/A (B being longer) regardless of the values of A and B.

I have no references for the Mandlebrot (or Julia) sets related to QM other than both use complex numbers inherently.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your excellent post!

I certainly agree that the Mandelbrot set cannot be explained by happenstance. I would put various geometries in that category as well. Space/time itself and other dimensions would also fall in that category as well as the six fundamental physical constants mentioned by Martin Rees.

Virtually all of these are requisite to this universe and thus to biological life as well.

The only counter-argument I can see is plenitude - the claim that everything that can exists does and therefore all possible universes, geometries, constants must exist in some parallel universe. Even so, that wouldn't seem like happenstance to me either, since anything would be in everything.

[Doctor Stochastic]

You may find the chapter "The Primes Play A Game Of Chance" in Marc Kac's monograph Statistical Independence interesting in this regard.

[VadeRetro]

If My Mom Were A Platypus

"I'd rather marry a duck-billed platypus
Than end up like old Oedipus Rex!"

-- Tom Lehrer

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the referral! You got my attention, so I did a little probing on the net and found this interesting quote:

"Consider the integers divisible by both p and q [p and q both prime]. To be divisible by p and q is equivalent to being divisible by pq and consequently the density of the new set is 1/pq. Now, 1/pq = 1/p * 1/q, and we can interpret this by saying that the "events" of being divisible by p and q are independent. This holds, of course, for any number of primes, and we can say using a picturesque but not very precise language, that the primes play a game of chance! This simple, nearly trivial, observation is the beginning of a new development which links in a significant way number theory on the one hand and probability theory on the other."

M. Kac, Statistical Independence in Probability, Analysis and Number Theory. (Wiley, 1959)

I look forward to reading the book!

[PatrickHenry]

Pleasingly juxtaposed P L A C E M A R K E R

[Tribune7]

I've been thinking some about this thread.

I call myself an old-earther but deep inside I'll confess that am a YECer in the sense that I believe when all is revealed the YECers are going to be found to be more in the right the OEers. And I recognize that this is blind faith.

But I'll still wear the OE mantle for the sole reason I'd be extremely opposed to YEC being taught in a science class. I strongly believe it is proper to teach the young that the red shift indicates the universe to be at least 9 billion years old and that radiometric dating shows the age of the earth to be +-4 billion years old.

If a teacher should be challeged by a student claiming that the red shift may be explained by some unknown phenomena, the proper answer would be for the teacher to say "you study hard, go and investigate and if you should find it you get a Nobel Prize but that phenomena has not been found, the red shift is measurable and this is what it indicates."

When it comes biological evolution, it seems the roles are reversed. Natural selection is observable but only to a point. We can't see or duplicate the mechanism that would cause a category of animal to be fertile but still unable to fertilize the seed of a fertile line from tracable common ancestor. Nor can we show in this fashion how an single-cell creature evolves into a mulit-celled one. Or how exclusively asexual creatures become exclusivly sexual creatures.

All these things must occur for Darwinian evolution to be true.

The proper answer to these questions in a science class is "we don't know" not that "this is how it was done and we will soon find the proof."

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your excellent post!

The proper answer to these questions in a science class is "we don't know" not that "this is how it was done and we will soon find the proof."

I like the "we don't know" answer. The kids ought to know where the weak spots are to encourage them to continue on into scientific research and to avoid their leaving with the false impression that all the information presented to them is of equal confidence.

I call myself an old-earther but deep inside I'll confess that am a YECer in the sense that I believe when all is revealed the YECers are going to be found to be more in the right the OEers.

I may be the only one on the forum who sees that both of these statements are true:

the universe is approximately 15 billion years old from our space time coordinates and

the universe is 6 days old from God's inception space/time coordinates plus 6000 years (Adamic man) from our space/time coordinates.

This is based on the Scriptures plus inflationary theory and relativity: Gerald Schroeder's Age of the Universe

[Tribune7]

may be the only one on the forum who sees that both of these statements are true: the universe is approximately 15 billion years old from our space time coordinates and the universe is 6 days old from God's inception space/time coordinates plus 6000 years (Adamic man) from our space/time coordinates.

I can accept that. Thank you for the link and the nice words.

[Alamo-Girl]

You're quite welcome! I'd love to hear your comments on his article if you'd care to share them.

[Tribune7]

I will.

[general_re]

I can't think of anyone who would say that "I don't know" or "scientists don't know" is an inappropriate answer, when "I don't know" is an honest answer. And, for example, with the question of "how did single-celled creatures become multi-celled creatures", well, we know perfectly well how that happened - evolution via natural selection. What I think the core objection is, is that we didn't see that first multi-celled creature, and therefore we don't know what it was. Which is perfectly true - if a student asks what the first multi-cellular creature looked like, "I don't know" is very much the best, most honest answer.

But turning the standard of knowledge into "we didn't see it happen, therefore we can't really say if it happened or not" is not an honest answer. Not only would it be impossible to do science with such a standard, it would essentially be impossible for you to live your daily life.

We know perfectly well how single-celled organisms would form multi-cellular organisms, we know perfectly well how speciation occurs, we know perfectly well how sexual reproduction would come about - the answer to all of those things is "evolution". Turning "we haven't caught it in the act" into "we don't know" is not an honest formulation, because there are plenty of ways to know something without actually observing it - if you got up this morning, and all the streets and yards and houses in your neighborhood were wet, you pretty well know that it rained last night, even if you weren't awake to see it or hear it. But what you would have the science teacher do is answer the question of "did it rain last night?" with "I don't know", even though he does know perfectly well how such a thing would have likely happened.

[js1138]

I have to agree with the general here. We do not know how first life originated, and even if we find a way to create life in the laboratory, we will still not know how it happened historically.

We do not know every detail of the history of life on earth, but it's morning and the ground is wet. We believed it rained in the night. Evolution is a forensic science. It deals with found evidence and with known processes. As with a murder mystery there is always the possibility that the perfect alibi will turn up -- some fossil that is in the wrong stratum according to theory, or some DNA finding that is incompatible with the tree of life.

The mystery of missing links is not a mystery. There are living transitional species right now. They are called sub-species, varieties, ring species, and so forth. They fit perfectly with the expectations of evolution, and you can walk outside and touch them right now.

[Tribune7]

We know perfectly well how single-celled organisms would form multi-cellular organisms, we know perfectly well how speciation occurs, we know perfectly well how sexual reproduction would come about - the answer to all of those things is "evolution".

If we know how these things came about can we duplicate them in a controlled setting by evolving an asexual creature into a sexual one, or turn a single-celled orgnaism into a multi-celled one by using naturally occuring processes?

[general_re]

Do you expect physicists to make stars in the lab before you believe them when they tell you that they understand how stars are formed?

[js1138]

Stars are made in Hollywood. There are, of course, countless things that we understand and can't (yet) produce or control in the laboratory, like sustained nuclear fusion.