On Plato, the Early Church, and Modern Science: An Eclectic Meditation

On Plato, the Early Church, and Modern Science: An Eclectic Meditation
By Jean F. Drew

God, purposing to make the universe most nearly like the every way perfect and fairest of intelligible beings, created one visible living being, containing within itself all living beings of the same natural order.

Thus does Plato (d. 347 B.C.) succinctly describe how all that exists is ultimately a single, living organism. At Timaeus20, he goes on to say:

“There exists: first, the unchanging form, uncreated and indestructible, admitting no modification and entering no combination … second, that which bears the same name as the form and resembles it … and third, space which is eternal and indestructible, which provides a position for everything that comes to be.”

And thus we find a description of the universe in which Being and Existence (Becoming) — the one God and the multiplicity of things — are bound together as a single living reality whose extension is mediated by Space (which for us moderns implies Time).

Our aim in this essay is to define these ideas and their relationships, and trace their historical development from the ancient world to the present. Taking a page from the late Eric Voegelin (1901–1985, philosopher of history specializing in the evolution of symbolization), we will follow a history-of-ideas approach to these issues. Along the way we will find that not only philosophy and cosmology, but also theology and even modern science can illuminate these seminal conceptions of Platonic thought. We must begin at the beginning, that is, with God — who is absolute Being in Plato’s speculation, of whom the cosmos itself is but the image (eikon) or reflection.

When Plato speaks of God (or when Aristotle does for that matter, as in e.g., Nicomachean Ethics), he is not referring to the Olympian gods, to Zeus, Hera, Athena, Poseidon, and the rest of the gang of “immortals.” For the Olympians are like man in that they are creatures of a creating God. Not only that, but they are a second generation of gods, the first having reigned in the antediluvian Age of Chronos; which is to say that the Olympians’ rule or law is not everlasting, but contingent. Thus they are not self-subsistent, but dependent (contingent) on a principle outside of themselves. We might say that the central difference between Plato’s God and the Olympians consists in the fact that the latter are “intracosmic” gods, and the former is “extracosmic,” that is, transcending all categories and conditions of space-time reality. In contrast, the intracosmic gods are subject to change, to contingency; and so, though they may truly be said to exist in some fashion, cannot be said to possess true Being. (More on these distinctions in a minute.)

It is clear that for Plato, God is the “Beyond” of the universe, or in other words, utterly transcendent, perfectly self-subsistent Being, the “uncaused cause” of all the multiplicity of existents in the universe. In yet other words we can say that, for Plato, the cosmos is a theophany, a manifestation or “presence” of the divine Idea — in Christian parlance, the Logos if I might draw that association — in the natural world.

As Wolfgang Smith notes, “Christian teaching is based upon the doctrine of the Logos, the Word of God, a term which in itself clearly suggests the idea of theophany. Moreover, what is implicit in the famous Prologue of St. John [“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” (John 1:1–5)] is openly affirmed by St. Paul when he declares that “the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world have been clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His power and Godhead” (Rom. 1:20) … The indisputable fact is that at its deepest level Christianity perceives the cosmos as a self-revelation of God.” [Wolfgang Smith, Cosmos and Transcendence, 1984]

Being and Existence (Becoming)
Being is a concept so difficult that it comes close to eluding our grasp altogether. It is utterly beyond space and time; imperishable; entirely self-subsistent, needing nothing from outside itself in order to be complete; essential; immutable; and eternally perduring. Contrast this with the concept of existence, regarding which Plato asks “how can that which is never in the same state be anything?” And this is the clue to the profound difference between being and existence: The existing things of this world are mutable and transient.

We must in my opinion begin by distinguishing between that which always is and never becomes from that which is always becoming but never is. The one is apprehensible by intelligence with the aid of reasoning, being eternally the same, the other is the object of opinion and irrational sensation, coming to be and ceasing to be, but never fully real. In addition, everything that becomes or changes must do so owing to some cause; for nothing can come to be without a cause. [Timaeus, 3:28]

“… they come upon the scene, we know not from whence; they grow, change, and decay; and at last they disappear, to be seen no more. The physical cosmos itself, we are told, is a case in point: it, too, has made its appearance, perhaps some twenty billion years ago, and will eventually cease to exist [i.e., finally succumbing, we are told, to thermodynamic entropy or “heat death”]. What is more, even now, at this very moment, all things are passing away. ‘Dead is the man of yesterday,’ wrote Plutarch, ‘for he dies into the man of today: and the man of today is dying into the man of tomorrow.’ Indeed, ‘to be in time’ is a sure symptom of mortality. It is indicative, not of being, but of becoming, of ceaseless flux.”

All the multiplicity of existents in the universe are in a state of becoming and passing away. But Plato’s great insight is that all things in the state of becoming — that is, all existing things — are whatever they are because they are participations in Being. That is to say, “we perceive the trace of being in all that exists,” writes Smith, “and that is why we say, with reference to any particular thing, that it is.” Existence, in other words, is contingent on Being.

But we wonder: In what way is this possible? And if existents participate in being, what is that Being in which they participate?

In Exodus 3:14 Moses has experienced a theophany: While tending his flock on Mount Horeb, suddenly he hears the voice of God issuing from a burning bush: God is speaking to him! Reverentially, Moses inquires of God what is His name (meaning: what is His nature or character).

And God said unto Moses, I AM WHO AM: and He said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

God has told Moses: that He is Being (“I AM”). And the strong implication is that there is no “other” being: “I alone AM.” For “I” is plainly singular in form.

Smith draws the crucial point, “God alone IS. But how are we to understand this? ‘It seems to me,’ writes St. Gregory of Nyssa, ‘that at the time the great Moses was instructed in the theophany he came to know that none of those things which are apprehended by sense perception and contemplated by the understanding really subsist, but that the transcendent essence and cause of the universe, on which everything depends, alone subsists.’ But why? Does not the world exist? Are there not myriads of stars and galaxies and particles of dust, each existing in its own right? And yet we are told that the transcendent essence alone subsists. ‘For even if the understanding looks upon any other existing things,’ the great theologian goes on to say, ‘reason observes in absolutely none of them the self-sufficiency by which they could exist without participating in true Being. On the other hand, that which is always the same, neither increasing nor diminishing, immutable to all change whether to better or to worse (for it is far removed from the inferior and has no superior), standing in need of nothing else, alone desirable, participated in by all but not lessened by their participation — this is truly real Being.’”

Smith continues: “In the words of St. Gregory, ‘that which is always the same, neither increasing nor diminishing, immutable to all change … is truly real being.’ As concerns ‘existing things,’ on the other hand, the teaching implies that these entities are always changing, always in a state of flux, so that their very existence is in a way a process of becoming, in which however nothing is actually produced. This has been said time and again, beginning with Heraclitus and the Buddhist philosophers. And there can be little doubt that it is true: even modern physics, as we can see, points to the same conclusion. Only there is another side to the coin which is not always recognized. Existent things — the very flux itself — presuppose what Gregory and the Platonists have termed ‘a participation in Being.’ The point is that relative or contingent existences cannot stand alone. They have not an independent existence, a being of their own. ‘In Him we live, and move, and have our being,’ says St. Paul….”

I beheld these others beneath Thee, and saw that they neither altogether are, nor altogether are not. An existence they have, because they are from Thee; and yet no existence, because they are not what Thou art. For only that really is, that remains unchangeably.

Space
Space is the third essential term of the Platonic cosmology: It is the matrix in which living things and all other existents participate in Being. Plato’s creation myth — the Myth of the Demiurge in Timaeus — elucidates the Platonic conception of Space.

For Plato, the God of the Beyond is so “beyond” that, when it came time for creating the Cosmos, he didn’t even do it himself. He sent an agent: the Demiurge, a mythical being endued by God to be in divine likeness of God’s own perfect love, truth, beauty, justice, and goodness. The embodiment of divine perfections, the Demiurge wishes to create creatures just as good and beautiful as himself, according to the standard of the divine Idea — a direct analog, it seems to me, of the Logos theory of the ancient Church. Indeed, Eric Voegelin sees in the Demiurge the symbol of Incarnation [Order and History Vol. 3: Plato and Aristotle, 1957]:

“The Demiurge is the symbol of Incarnation, understood not as the result of the process but as the process itself, as the permanent tension in reality between the taxis of form or idea and the ataxia of formlessness.”

Similarly to the Christian account, the Demiurge in a certain way creates ex nihilo — that is, out of Nothing. At first glance, Plato is seen specifying, not a pre-existing “material” but a universal field of pure possibility called Chora, “Space.” Perhaps we may find in this concept a strong analogy to Isaac Newton’s concept of Absolute Space (see below).

Chora seems to indicate the idea of an eternal, universal field of pure stochastic potentiality that needs to become “activated” in order to bring actual beings into existence. In itself, it is No-thing, i.e., “nothing.” This “activation” the Demiurge may not effect by fiat: He does not, for instance, “command” to “Let there be Light!” The main tool at his disposal is Peitho, “persuasion.”

And if Chora is not so persuaded, it will remain in a state of “nothingness.” It will remain unformed, in the condition of ataxia. Of itself it is “Nothing”; by itself, it can do nothing. It cannot generate anything out of itself, not even matter in primaeval form.

And thus Plato introduces the figure of the Demiurge into his creation myth, symbolizing form or idea — the principle of (formative) taxia that draws (formless) ataxia into existence. We moderns might be tempted to describe the Demiurge as constituting an “information set” together with an “energy source,” who “persuades” the pure stochastic potentiality of formless, absolute, empty space into actualized form, and thus existence. From the cosmic standpoint, he makes unity out of multiplicity, in harmony and geometrical proportion:

“The best bond is the one that effects the closest unity between itself and the terms it is combining; and this is best done by a continued geometrical proportion.” [Timaeus, 4]

Thus the Demiurge is a kind of “divine geometer,” producing the forms (or mathematical ideas) that Chora can be persuaded to conform to, and thus come into existence.

But the Demiurge does more than just get things started: As bearer of the divine Idea — as pure love and beauty and goodness and truth — he continues always persuading Chora to generate creatures as like himself as possible (i.e., reflecting his own divine qualities at whatever generic stage), throughout all eternity. Thus creation is a continuous process in space-time. Moreover, it is the source and driver of evolution as a universal natural process.

Through the ongoing activity of the Demiurge, men and the world are constantly being informed and renewed by the divine Idea; and thus a unified cosmic whole, a “One Cosmos,” a universal order comes into being at the intersection of time and timelessness, of immanent and transcendent reality, in the medium of Space (and Time).

Compare the Platonic creation myth with the philosophy of Dionysius the [Pseudo-]Areopagite, said to be the Greek converted by St. Paul in Acts, 17:34. For Dionyius, the “names of God” — the divine qualities — are goodness, being, life, wisdom, power, and justice. Joseph Stiglmayr writes [Cath. Encycl. at the entry for Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite], that for Dionysius, God is

“… the One Being (to hen), transcending all quality and predication, all affirmation and negation, and all intellectual conception, [Who] by the very force of His love and goodness gives to beings outside Himself their countless gradations, unites them in the closest bonds (proodos), keeps each by His care and direction in its appointed sphere, and draws them again in an ascending order to Himself (epistrophe) … all created things [proceed] from God by the exuberance of being in the Godhead (to hyperpleres), its outpouring and overflowing … and as a flashing forth from the sun of the Deity. Exactly according to their physical nature created things absorb more or less the radiated light, which, however, grows weaker the farther it descends. As the mighty root sends forth a multitude of plants which it sustains and controls, so created things owe their origin and conservation to the All-Ruling Deity…. Patterned upon the original of Divine love, righteousness, and peace, is the harmony that pervades the universe…. All things tend to God, and in Him are merged and completed, just as the circle returns into itself, as the radii are joined at the centre, or as the numbers are contained in unity.”

The Platonic resonances seem unmistakeable in these lines. It appears that both Platonic speculation and the Logos doctrine of the ancient Church as articulated by Dionysius are in agreement that Creator must be “beyond” Creation in order to resonate with it — which resonance is what makes the universe to be alive — i.e., a living universe.

C. A. Dubrey points out [Cath. Encycl. at the entry “Teleology”], that the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas makes it clear that, “Intrinsic finality [we are to think of this as a blend or merger of efficient and final causes in the Aristotelian sense] consists in the fact that every being has within itself a natural tendency whereby its activity is directed towards the perfection of its own nature…. St. Thomas does not hesitate to speak of ‘natural appetite,’ ‘natural inclination,’ and even ‘intention of nature,’ [we moderns might be tempted to add ‘instinct’ to this list] to mean that every being has within itself a directive principle of activity. Accordingly, God does not direct creatures to their ends from outside, but through their own nature…. The Divine plan of creation is carried out by the various beings themselves acting in conformity with their nature.

When, however, this finality is called immanent, this expression must not be understood in a pantheistic sense, as if the intelligence which the world manifests were to be identified with the world itself, but in the sense that the immediate principle of finality is immanent in every being…. Thus the unconscious finality in the world leads to the conclusion that there must be an intelligent cause of the world.” [Emphasis added.]

Aquinas’ insight, and also Plato’s, evokes a reconsideration of Isaac Newton’s concept of Absolute Space. Possibly this may be understood in the following terms. First, Absolute Space is “empty” space. Second, it is not a property of God, but an effect of His Presence; i.e., we advert to theophany again. The question then arises, in what “where” or “when” does this theophany take place? Perhaps Newton’s answer would be: In the beginning, and continuously thereafter. Second, it has been suggested that Newton intends us to understand Absolute Space as the sensorium Dei: “God constitutes space and time through his eternity and omnipresence” [ existendo semper et ubique, durationem et spatium consitutit: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, 3d ed., 1726]. Wolfhart Pannenberg writes,

“Now there are a number of good reasons — suggested by both philosophical and scientific thought — to consider time and space as inseparable. Einstein’s field concept comprises space, time, and energy. It takes the form of a geometrical description, and this seems to amount to a spatialization of time. The totality of space, time, and energy or force are all properties of a cosmic field.

“Long before our own age a theological interpretation of this subject matter had been proposed, and it was Isaac Newton who offered this proposal. It too referred everything to space or, more precisely, to the correlation of force as in the case of a force like gravitation acting at a distance. Newton’s well-known conception of space as sensory of God (sensorium Dei) did not intend to ascribe to God an organ of sense perception, the like of which God does not need, according to Newton, because of divine omnipresence. Rather, Newton took space as the medium of God’s creative presence at the finite place of his creatures in creating them.” [Wolfhart Pannenberg, Toward a Theology of Nature, 1993]

Thus the infinite takes priority over every finite experience, including intellectual experience — a position decisively argued by Descartes, as Pannenberg avers, “in his thesis that the idea of God is a prior condition in the human mind for the possibility of any other idea, even that of the ego itself.”

The Influence of Platonic Speculation on the Early History of the Church
D. Edmund Joaquin, an insightful and gracious Christian friend, writes, “We understand that the universe is created and sustained by the Word [the Logos], and not only that, but by the Word sounding. God sustains the universe consciously and actively. He has not gone away and left us. In fact, He reveals Himself to us, and His final revelation is in the person of Christ [the Logos]. Christ is not an abstract aspect of God, like wisdom. He is God. He is God incarnating in the world that He himself has made.”

Joaquin further observes that “[the Gospel of] John is written to the Greeks and put into words that they could understand.” It seems there’s a mystery buried in here somewhere. Consider: Socrates was the teacher of Plato, who was the teacher of Aristotle, who was the teacher of Alexander — and Alexander spread Greek culture throughout Eurasia, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. Add to this the fact that the great evangelist, St. Paul, had some difficulty converting the Jews to the Christian faith; but he converted the Greeks in droves. Not only St. John, but also St. Paul speaks in terms the Greek mind could readily grasp, as when he says God is He “in Whom we live and move and have our being.” These historical connections do not appear to be accidental, coincidental, nor incidental to the spread of the early Christian Church.

According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, the Greeks strongly responded to Christianity for its moral beauty as well as its truth. A case in point is St. Justin Martyr. He was a man of Greek culture, born in Palestinian Syria about the year 100 A.D, who converted to the faith around 130 A.D. Justin became one of Christianity’s earliest and most powerful apologists, and ended up condemned by the Roman authority for refusing to sacrifice to the pagan gods, for which offense he was summarily executed by the Imperium, along with several other of his “refusnik” co-religionists. The official record of their martyrdom is extant:

“The Prefect Rusticus says: Approach and sacrifice, all of you, to the gods. Justin says: No one in his right mind gives up piety for impiety. The Prefect Rusticus says: If you do not obey, you will be tortured without mercy. Justin replies: That is our desire, to be tortured for Our Lord Jesus, and so to be saved, for that will give us salvation and firm confidence at the more terrible universal tribunal of Our Lord and Saviour. And all the martyrs said: Do as you wish; for we are Christians, and we do not sacrifice to idols. The Prefect Rusticus read the sentence: Those who do not wish to sacrifice to the gods and to obey the emperor will be scourged and beheaded according to the laws. The holy martyrs glorifying God betook themselves to the customary place, where they were beheaded and consummated their martyrdom confessing their Saviour.”

Jules Lebreton writes (at the entry for St. Justin Martyr in Cath. Encycl.) “Justin tries to trace a real bond between philosophy and Christianity: according to him, both one and the other have a part in the Logos, partially disseminated among men and wholly manifest in Jesus Christ.”

Yet for all their apparent similarities and resemblances in many respects, there is a profound difference between Platonic insight and the Christian one: and this pertains to the relations between God and man.

Both Plato and Justin proclaim the transcendent God. Yet for Plato, God is so “beyond” as to be almost impossible of human grasp. Yet Plato felt the “divine pulls” in his own nature. These Plato thought could be accounted for and articulated by an act of pure unaided intellect, that is by nous, in a state of intense contemplation.

Contrast this position with Justin Martyr’s, who insisted that human wisdom was impossible without the testimony of the Prophets (whom God himself had informed and instructed) and the action of the Holy Spirit. For Plato, man’s relations with God consist of operations of the mind. For Justin, they are operations of the heart, of the Spirit. For Justin, God is not a mental abstraction: He is real Personality with whom one can have direct personal relations, in the Spirit.

A later writer, John Scotus Eriugina (ninth century) elaborates the Justinian position, in the process noting that there is a “downward tendency” of the soul towards the conditions of animal existence, and that this has only one remedy: Divine grace, the free gift of the Holy Spirit. “By means of this heavenly gift,” writes William Turner [at the entry for Scotus in the Catholic Encyclopedia], “man is enabled to rise superior to the needs of the sensuous body, to place the demands of reason above those of bodily appetite, and from reason to ascend through contemplation to ideas, and thence by intuition to God Himself.”

The pull of animal nature is an idea we also find in Plato, and also the countervailing pull from the divine Beyond. Man lives in the metaxy, in the “in-between reality” constituted by the two. Man’s task is to resolve this tension, and establish the proper balance that expresses the highest and best development of his human nature. But man must do this entirely by himself by means of nous or reason. There is no spiritual help “extra” to the human psyche available to facilitate this process.

“…admits that the soul can naturally comprehend what God is, just as it understands that virtue is beautiful … but he denies that the soul without the assistance of the Holy Ghost [Spirit] can see God or contemplate him directly through ecstasy, as the Platonic philosophers contended. And yet this knowledge of God is necessary for us: ‘We cannot know God as we know music, arithmetic, or astronomy’; it is necessary for us to know God not with an abstract knowledge but as we know any person with whom we have relations. The problem which it seems impossible to solve is settled by revelation; God has spoken directly to the Prophets, who in their turn have made Him known to us…. It is the first time in Christian theology that we find so concise an explanation of the difference that separates Christian revelation from human speculation.” [Emphasis added]

Natural Law, Contingency, and the Scientific Method
The Platonic model encourages us to recognize that the universe is zoon empsychon ennoun, a living creature endowed with soul and intelligence. The myth of the Demiurge describes the world process as a type of incarnation, a dynamic relation of absolute being and contingent becoming evolving in space and time in a manner expressing a perduring taxia–ataxia relation. The Cosmos itself — the totality of all existing things — like its constituents, for example man and even the stars, is an eikon of being-in-becoming, a reflection or image of the divine Idea. Time itself is but a “moving image of eternity.” The life of the cosmos is wholly dependent, contingent on the Idea from which it manifests.

It is a lawful, orderly universe, yet one in which new occurrences are always arising. These new events are coming from, as it were, a “sea of contingency” analogous to Plato’s conception of Space, that is Chora — the infinite field of unformed, pure potentiality.

The immediately foregoing ideas, of course, are not scientific ones strictly speaking. Still, there are elements here that perhaps science would do well to consider, in order to maintain the integrity of its own method. For one thing, it seems science itself, in its disclosure of the regularities of nature, seems to have an in-built tendency to overlook contingency. We may define an event as contingent if a description of it is neither self-evident nor necessary, “if it could have happened differently,” as Ted Peters puts it in his Preface to Pannenberg’s Towards a Theology of Nature.

C. A. Dubray writes [“Teleology,” Cath. Encycl.], “The fact that the world is governed by laws, far from giving any support to the mechanistic conception, is rather opposed to it. A law is not a cause, but the expression of the constant manner in which causes produce their effects.” In other words, natural laws are expressions of observable regularities that occur in the world of existent phenomena in ordinary space-time reality. Thus, the laws themselves have no force as “causes”: they are descriptions.

Yet the focus on regularity inevitably masks the particularity and contingency of unique events. As Ted Peters notes, it is here that “we run into a problem of focus in the scientific community, because virtually all the theoretical attention is given to the regularity of nature’s laws, while the contingency of natural events slips into the nearly invisible background.” Peters continues:

“What researchers concentrate on are the uniformities that can be expressed in timeless equations. A dictionary of equations describing these uniformities allegedly constitutes scientific knowledge…. A closer examination, however, reveals that the applicability of these equations to concrete cases of natural processes requires certain initial and marginal conditions, conditions that in every case are contingent. Only when contingent conditions permit can we expect a natural law to operate as expected.”

To the extent that the scientific method of inquiry is premised on an “If/Then” logical construction — which seems ever to be the case — the method itself is an exercise in contingency, yet nonetheless one in which “Determinacy gets thematized, whereas contingency gets ignored.” Arguably this is a serious bias having epistemological implications; for e.g., “if the laws of classical dynamics are in principle temporally reversible, the actual course of natural events from which those laws have been abstracted is not. The reality of nature is first and foremost a historical reality.”

Pannenberg suggests a corrective for this “bias,” acknowledging: “That modern science so easily lends itself to abuse cannot be prevented in principle. It is one of the risks involved in the abstract study of regularities that either are inherent in nature itself or can be imposed on natural processes [e.g., as in ideological, technical, or engineering solutions]. This risk cannot be met on the level of scientific description itself but must be met first on the level of philosophical reflection on the work of science. It is on this level that the abstract form of scientific description must be considered with special attention to what it is “abstracted from” and what is methodically disregarded in the abstract formulas of science.”

And so contingent conditions — i.e, initial and boundary conditions — must be restored to their proper place in our deliberations, for they “are required for any formula of natural law to be applied. They are contingent at least in that they cannot be derived from the particular formula of law under consideration.… The mathematical formula of a natural law may be valid without regard to time. The physical regularity that is described by such a formula is not independent of time and temporal sequence. But it is only that physical regularity which makes the mathematical formula a law of nature. This suggests that the laws of nature are not eternal or atemporal because the fields of their application, the regularities of natural processes, originate in the course of time. Thus it also becomes understandable that new patterns of regularity emerging in the sequence of time constitute a field of application for a new set of natural laws….”

We may recognize that the total process of natural events presents itself to observation as a mesh of contingency and regularities. It is the task of science to pursue thematically the aspect of regularity. But, asks Pannenberg, can science “ever succeed in bringing into view the entirety of nature as determined in all details by a number of laws that are in any case not infinitely complex? This would mean at the same time that a stage of research is conceivable from which nothing more could be discovered. Many natural scientists have had this nightmare because of the successes of their own research. Fortunately it probably is not a truthful dream.”

For, says Pannenberg, “laws always uncover what is necessary superimposed on what is contingent. Given the undeniable contingency of occurrences in natural events, can we recognize in their special character as occurrences … [that] regularity as their own element in such a way that the presence of regularity can be thought together with the contingency of occurrences, not only under abstraction from the contingency of occurrences?” [Emphasis added]

Which is why Pannenberg advocates an opening up of new viewpoints in scientific research, “not because physical hypotheses or insights can be derived from them but because they open up and enlarge the intellectual space on which the formation of physical hypotheses depends…. In physics also, horizons of questioning have to be opened up first of all in order that hypotheses that arise in them can be examined by experiment and classified theoretically.”

Perhaps we need a greater appreciation of the “fitness” of the scientific method to engage the truly great questions of life, which ever seem to involve the relations of law and contingency. Leibniz propounds two great questions of perennial interest to the human mind: (1) Why are things the way they are and not some other way? (2) Why does anything exist at all?

Such questions, scientists will readily tell you, are beyond the purview of the scientific method. But does that mean such questions have no force or meaning such that they should not be asked at all?

Perhaps the incapability of the scientific method to answer such questions owes to the fact that all the great physical laws are acknowledged to be time-reversible; but we know that existence in space and time is not a time-reversible process. As Pannenberg states, it is a historical process. We might even say it is an evolutionary process.

Which suggests an analogy that might enlighten these questions, sharpen their meanings, and suggest additional questions: an analogy to direct human experience. Pannenberg writes of human beings, who do seem to live in a “time-irreversible,” that is “historical” process:

“Human beings never live only in the now. Rather, they experience their present as heirs of the past and as its active change. They anticipate the future in fear, hope, and planning; and in the light of such anticipation of the future they return to their present and the heritage of their past. The fact that we know of historical continuity is at least also conditioned by this peculiarity of human experience with time. If there is a new event, then it modifies the context of our consciousness of time which is already found present. It throws light back on earlier occurrences which have become a part of our experience already. In the same way, ideas that occur to us throw light on our previous expectations and plans in justifying, fulfilling, modifying, or disappointing and thwarting them. Thus the contingent event always enters already into a context of experience or tradition…. The future, beginning in the present happenings, is thus the origin of the perspective in which the past occurrences are put by every new experience.”

Worldviews and Paradigm Shifts
It is perhaps a truism that we tend to find what we’re looking for by screening out any and all potential elements which do not fit the pattern of our expectation. Arguably, the scientific method may be said inherently to suffer exposure to potential danger from this side, as suggested in the above remarks. Indeed, Schröedinger’s theory of wavefunction seems to predict this. Consider these remarks from Stephen M. Barr [Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, 2003]:

“In quantum theory, as traditionally formulated, there are ‘systems’ and ‘observers.’ Or rather, in any particular case, there is the system and the observer. The observer makes measurements of the system. As long as the system is undisturbed by external influences (that is, as long as it is ‘isolated’), its wavefunction — which is to say its probability amplitudes — will evolve in time by the Schröedinger equation…. However, when a measurement is made of the system the observer must obtain a definite outcome. Suddenly, the probability for the outcome that is actually obtained is no longer what the mathematics said it was just before the measurement, but jumps to 100 percent. And the probabilities for all the alternative outcomes, the ones that did not occur, fall to 0 percent.”

Thus we might say that the “reality” we humans experience ever involves “a moving goal-post.” And as the mover of this goal-post, the human agent is most indispensably involved in this process.

Faced with such “indeterminacy” regarding the foundations of experience, it is not surprising that people usually have recourse to mediating worldviews, or organized frames of ideational reality that constitute the conceptual space in which active experience is engaged and accordingly analyzed and interpreted. Certainly Plato has offered such a model. And so has Nobel laureate Jacques Monod [in Chance and Necessity, 1971]:

“Chance alone is the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, is at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution. The central concept of biology … is today the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one compatible with observed and tested fact. All forms of life are the product of chance….”

Needless to say, these two models are polar opposite conceptualizations. Yet having received each on “good authority,” which do we choose?

Such are not idle considerations; for as James Hannam points out [“The Development of Scientific and Religious Ideas,” 2003], “grand theories … often suffer death by detail where it is found that up close the situation is too complicated for the theory to handle…. [Yet] in the end, after it has changed the course of the river of enquiry, the theory can end up as a mortlake cut off from the general flow….”

Hannam cites historian Thomas Kuhn, who documents an historical process he terms “paradigm shift,” describing a situation in which the findings of authoritative science move “out of science and into practically every other field of human endeavor.” Once a given, albeit partial or even defective theory becomes “dominant,” writes Hannam, “far from being thrown out, a falsified theory is enhanced to deal with new information until such time as it finally collapses under the weight of anomalous results. Then, after a chaotic period, a new theory emerges that can deal with the anomalies and normal service resumes…. A paradigm refers to but one field, say classical mechanics or health policy whereas the ideology/worldview is the general background that underpins all the paradigms.”

The worldview (or ideology, if you prefer), for better or worse, implicitly shapes the background knowledge of thinking agents to which new experiences constantly are being conformed. Hannam says that worldview “is often so deeply embedded in the psyche that it is very rarely considered explicitly except by specialists,” but that nonetheless, “the worldview is seen as [a] self-confirming fact of life and hence it is not strictly rational…. The existence of a dominant worldview does not mean that a particular individual is unable to think outside the box but rather that his ideas are unlikely to fall on fertile ground. Unless new ideas can be stated in a language that makes them comprehensible to his peers, his intention in writing will not be met.”

Which is the not-too-subtle way to put the fact that every man has a worldview, without exception, whether articulate or inarticulate; and that somehow, for the “intention of writing to be met” — that is, for accurate and meaningful (i.e., successful) communication of ideas to take place — some deeper, common ground of shared truth must first be accessed, for the purpose of providing a more capacious intellectual space in which the human pursuit of knowledge and wisdom might unfold or evolve from its present point of attainment.

But where today in our modern world is such a common ground or field to be found? Hannam proposes the examination of the history of ideas as a possibly useful method in the search for common ground. He writes,

“To examine the history of ideas the only fair way to proceed would seem to place before ourselves the evidence and authority that the historical agents had before them and assume they acted rationally on that basis. Otherwise, there is no hope of ever tracing intellectual development because ‘cause and effect’ assumes some sort of logical causality that is impossible with non-rational agents. The best that could be hoped for would be a catalog of mental positions, with no way to say how one led to another except by being pushed by blind exterior forces. This might be precisely what determinists are advocating but they would have to give up any hope of finding causes and restrict themselves to explanations.”

Perhaps we moderns would do well to reconsider the common assumption that people living before our own time were somehow inferior in knowledge, experience, and observational powers as compared with our own status as enlightened individuals. Arguably, the ancient world produced some of the most powerful thinkers in the history of mankind, formulating ideas that were, in the words of Hannam, “the fruits of unfettered metaphysical speculation that inevitably hits on the right answer occasionally.”

Democritus, for example, proposed a theory predicting the atom as the ultimate constituent of matter, more than two-thousand years before the technical means existed to isolate atoms experimentally or, as Hannam notes, any “useful applications for them” could be found. Then it was discovered that the atom itself is an ordered constellation of even finer parts. There seems to be an historical progression of ideas here, the new building up on a framework originally laid up in the past, modifying it, improving on it in light of new insights and technical capabilities.

Hannam gives another example of more recent vintage: “Copernicus needed Nicole Oresme’s solution as to why we do not feel the movement of the Earth even though in Oresme’s time it was just a curiosity as no one thought the Earth actually was moving … each new idea, once accepted, shifts the boundaries of the worldview and makes it possible for further new ideas to be accepted into the pale.”

We can extend the examples even further. Reimann constructed a geometry, apparently because his mind could grasp the logic and beauty it revealed for its own sake. But at the time, it had no apparent “external referent” in the field of nature. It was a beautiful and glorious abstraction — until Einstein came along, and picked it up “off the shelf” as it were, to become the very language of relativity theory.

Thus it might be said that the evolution or “progress” of science depends on successive enlargements of the conceptual space it requires to do its work. In other words, science inherently is a participation in the historicity of the world.

Whatever our personal worldview, perhaps it would be well to recall that science is an historical process. Perhaps this understanding could open up additional, needed conceptual space that science itself requires in order to advance.

Ok, it looks like I've finally got some time to come in and give you a response to your post #268 betty, so let me get to it.

". . . I await developments on this front with great interest. But I have to tell you: I’m not holding my breath until such time as the expected confirming “breakthrough” occurs. . . ."

I expect it will take decades personally. It was forty plus years between Stanley Miller's generation of amino acids from inorganic material and the catalyzation of RNA in mineral clays. And not all scientists working upon pre-biotic synthesis agree upon the best strategy to pursue.

". . . 'The very fact that life sprang up on earth constitutes conclusive proof of a primary reducing environment since the latter is a necessary prerequisite for chemical evolution and spontaneous origin of life.' [Manfred Schidlowsky, quoted in Robert Shapiro, Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth, 1986]

This is a great example of circular reasoning: It turns out its conclusion is already actually implicit in its premise. . . ."

That is not circular reasoning at all, since science must account for the oxygen-rich atmosphere present here on earth, which it is theorized was not present in the "Primary Reducing Environment" in sufficient quanities to sustain large ecosystems and higher-order life forms, but had to be manufactured by lower-order life before more complex types could emerge. That line of reasoning is in fact linear:

Primary Reducing Environment -> Abiogenesis -> Lower-Order Life -> Non-Reducing Environment Containing Sufficient Oxygen -> Higher-Order Life

As a scientific explanation the above model is plausible because it proposes a cause and effect sequence of events to explain both the oxygen-rich atmosphere and the development of higher-order life forms. It does not prove abiogenesis, which I think you take the statement to imply, but it does propose a plausible theory into which abiogenesis fits as a necessary step in the evolution of life on earth.

". . . let’s assume I’m wrong about this, and abiogenesis – the spontaneous emergence of life from inorganic matter by sheer random processes – is a viable theory . . . "

I do not in any way accept your definition, perhaps I should say "description," of abiogenesis. From the perspective of the physical sciences there is nothing "spontaneous" or "random" about it and I believe this is the true crux of the debate. Those who attempt to refute the possibility of abiogenesis insist that it is an argument for a spontaneous and/or random occurence, which gives them a "straw man" that is easy to knock down. "Spontaneity" implies the lack of a cause for an effect, and I'll deal with that farther on in this response. As for "randomness," in its simplest form, it is defined (from the dictionary) as "the quality of lacking any predictable order or plan." Now there are separate mathematical definitions which, depending upon which one you use, will present randomness differently, including Chaitin, who denies that randomness can ever be proven, but these definitions are always applicable to a particular systemic construct, and are not suitable to the physical sciences in general -- I'll say more about that in a moment. However the term is used, the concept of "randomness" must always be formulated as "random relative to what?," because it implies a perspective. To take a pertinent example relative to Stanley Miller's experiment which proved that amino acids could be generated from inorganic matter, consider the predictability of when and where lightning will strike. You can take a meteorologist and a physicist schooled in electromagnetism, position them both on the ground while a thunderstorm rages overhead, and ask them to tell you when and where the next lightning bolt will strike. In terms of simple ordinary language they cannot do it, so you might conclude that the timing and positioning of lightning strikes are "random" relative to an explanation you would accept in ordinary language. But those same two scientists could express in the language of Physics an equation that will take into account the variables that go into cloud formation, the density of moisture within clouds, temperature, wind patterns, differentials between the electromagnetic charges of the clouds and the ground beneath, etc. and express to you an equation that will predict where and when lightning will strike and that equation will be accurate, though it will not be understood in ordinary language. Therefore; from the perspective of ordinary language, the lightning strike appears as a "random" event, but from the perspective of the meteorologist and the physicist, it is nothing of the kind, because the location and timing of the strike is governed by the laws of physics as they pertain to meteorological phenomena and electromagnetism.

The same line of reasoning I have just outlined with respect to lightning strikes applies to abiogenesis. Now; there are several theories about just how and why abiogenesis occurred, and I am not qualified to say just which of these theories is the most plausible, because I am not trained sufficiently in the scientific disciplines necessary to explain and differentiate between these theories, though I suspect that James Ferris's "catalyzation of RNA solutions" approach may be the best going at present. But in general form, most theoretical models constructed explain abiogenesis look something like the following:

At each and every one of the above stages listed, and in truth there are many "sub-stages" involved in the transition between those depending upon just which theory you are using, the laws of chemistry, biochemistry, physics (especially concerning energy sources), and in the later stages, microbiology are all applicable. And the ways in which these theories have been constructed is to entertain these transitions as the effects of material causes that occur naturally, which means that from the perspective of the physical sciences, they are in no way "random" or "spontaneous," but the expected result of natural phenomena occurring within a given set of constraints that are plausible in themselves.

Now; for the citations you gave on the implausibility of abiogenesis:

Overman's claim about the state of scientific opinion on the impact of geological opinion on the early earth's atmosphere as defeating the prospects for abiogenesis is flat-out false. I do not like to use Ad Verecundiam arguments, but I must point out that Overman is a lawyer and for that reason I question his credentials to describe the state of scientific opinion on the early earth's atmosphere, because if I have correctly identified the source of his information, and I think I have, then I can say that on one thing I am absolutely certain, the current state of thinking in Geology does not negate the conditions for abiogenesis, which includes the evaluation of the early earth's atmosphere. I will refer you to one online article at the MIT web site that I believe can be held out to contain a much more accurate viewpoint of the current state of Geological thinking on the rise of the oxygen-rich atmosphere we now enjoy. I wanted to present particular evidence from one of the sources they cite at the beginning of the article, J.F. Kasting's work on "Earth's Early Atmosphere," since I found several online articles which cite it, but I cannot find the online source for the article itself. Kasting is a very prominent geologist -- he has co-authored textbooks on the subject -- and he may be the individual Overman refers to because he has been critical of some scientific studies which fail to take into account photodecomposition of methane and ammonia in the early earth's atmosphere, one of the bases for Stanley Miller's theoretical approach, and which Miller has since addressed. The net impact of all of this upon geological thought has not been to discount Miller's, nor Ferris's work, quite the contrary. Geologists find ample geological evidence for the development of several scenarios for the origins of life, as shown within the MIT article, including the transition from an RNA-world to higher orders of life, which Miller and Ferris's combined contributions argue. Overman's statement of the state of geologic opinion does not fit in with what geologists are saying, as the MIT article shows, so I will wait to see if anyone can present geologic scholarship to support Overman's presentation. I can only conclude that Overman did not understand what he was reading.

And to make further discussion easier, I would suggest we be careful with using the phrase "many scientists."

As for the comments/quotes on Overman/Denton and the availability of oxygen, there are early pre-biotic sources of oxygen detectable in the geologic record. See the MIT and Miller articles again, sources of pre-biotic oxygen are directly discussed there.

The objections posed by Brooks and Shaw are also flawed in terms of modern knowledge, because of the timeline involved. Now in part, this may not be their fault, because they were writing in 1973, a year in which the oldest sedimentary rocks may have been dated much later [more recent] in time than those we know today, I don't know for certain. As you quoted them:

". . . we would expect to find at least somewhere on this planet either massive sediments containing enormous amounts of the various nitrogenous organic compounds, amino acids, purines, pyrimidines, and the like, or alternatively in much-metamorphosed sediments we should find vast amounts of nitrogenous cokes (graphite-like nitrogen-containing minerals). In fact, no such materials have been found anywhere on earth."

That may have been true in 1973, but it is not true today. Go back to the MIT article I linked above and scroll down to pages 26 and 27. The evidence in the geological record is for a backwards-revision [to an earlier date in time] of the presence of Carbon isotopes at the dawn of the Archaean Age, which permits extrapolation of its origins (page 26) and the presence of carbon-depleted graphite by 3.8 billion years ago (page 27). You can read more about this evidence by viewing the information on the Isua metasediments of Greenland. Again, I don't think Brooks and Shaw can be blamed for this, because they did describe the evidence, especially graphites, which has been found for the period, and I think, but do not know, that the discovery was after their publication.

Now; Michael Denton again:

". . . Yet rocks of great antiquity have been examined over the past two decades and in none of them has any trace of abiotically produced organic compounds been found. Most notable of these rocks are the ‘dawn rocks’ of Western Greenland, the earliest dated rocks on Earth, considered to be approaching 3,900 million years old. . . ."

Nope. Here's a quote from the preceding article linked on the Isua Metasediments: (note: "Ga"=Billions of years ago, 3.86 Ga = 3.86 Billion years ago)

". . . Akilia (3.86 Ga) and Isua (3.8 Ga) metasediments in southern West Greenland, evidences the existence of liquid water, the prerequisite for life's origin, at the Earth surface at this early stage. It is believed that high-grade metamorphic overprint would not allow the preservation of morphological fossils, permitting tracing of life in these metasediments only from chemical data. Graphitic carbon, isotopically indicative of constituting the remains of primitive organisms, has been identified in both Akilia and Isua rocks (Schidlowski, 1988; Mojzsis et al., 1996, Rosing, 1999). The association of isotopically light graphite with sedimentary apatite crystals has indicated the applicability of such apatite as indirect biomarker in old metasediments. . . ."

Now one may make the argument that the rocks show evidence of the presence of life itself at this stage, rather than just the pre-biotic evidence Denton is commenting upon, but if that was his intent then it is a deliberate deception on his part, which I doubt, because I am convinced that he does not understand what the rocks reveal.

Now Hubert Yockey we must take seriously as a mathematician, because he is a genuine expert on information theory. But he has misapplied the concept of "randomness" to the origins of life, in treating it as a problem in mathematical probability, since probability theory is designed to bring order out of randomness. Abiogenesis is no more the result of random processes than the timing and location of a lightning strike, as I discussed earlier. All steps in the process of abiogenesis function according to the laws of chemistry, molecular biology, physics, and other branches of the physical sciences. Of everything you have posted betty, there is only Hubert Yockey to discuss seriously, but this post has gone on long enough. We will return to Yockey at a later date, but you already know the major issues I have with his theoretical approach as I have just stated them. Since I recognize Yockey as a legitimate scholar -- I did not say "scientist" -- I will give him a much closer look.

And finally, on your question about RNA being a "slave" to DNA, I think the answer is that you may have missed the point that, in addition to being a storehouse for genetic information, RNA acts as a "catalyzing agent" in certain types of biochemical reactions.

I still owe Alamo-Girl a response on the "Atheist" thread, but I won't have time to get there until tomorrow.

I think you posting #281 does get at most of notion of "randomness" in evolutionary theory. I would like to give some illustrations of "randomness" in computation and physics. These are not exhaustive nor deeply explained (if they were, I would just publish them somewhere, like in Erkenntnis, just because it has a nice consonant cluster.)

For this discussion, I'll just "random" to mean processes that satisfy the usual axioms of probability. (Kolmorogov is sufficient, but other interpretations are OK, Fineti for example.) The idea is that probability applies to any system that satisfies these axioms. In one sense, "random" phenomena must (or may) be described by averages.

One example is in the computation of averages or distributions in a game. One has a complete description (example: a die has probablity of 1/6 to show the numbers 1 to 6), and thus one can compute everything. It's sort of randomness through saturation. One assumes a large number of trial games and also assumes that these games will obey the same rules each time.

A second and much more interesting "random" system is given by Brownian motion. Consider a particle (dust, pollen, dust mites, etc.) being bombarded by even smaller particles (molecules) many times per second. Einstein (and others) developed the theory of the motion of such particles. There are some surprises; the velocity of the test particle cannot be defined, but it's position can. A test probe small enough to measure velocities would be subject to Brownian motion of the same size as the test particle and thus would yield no useful information. (Experiments bear this out; by 1900 or so, people knew that velocity could not be defined for Browinian particles.) Even though this system is deterministic in the sense of Laplace, there is no method (even in theory) to measure the exact conditions of the experiment. One must resort to averages. The system can be easily simulated deterministically though.

A third type of randomness would be that implied by quantum mechanics. Single particles act "randomly" and there is no method of resolving such even with simulation. (Exact simulation of quantum systems takes an exponentially large amount of time.) In this case, one must resort to probabilistic descriptions (albeit, not classical probability) to describe such systems even in principle.

The fourth "random" system would just to consider "relative independence" of events. For example, a cosmic ray may be produced on Sirius and strike a germ cell on Earth, causing a mutation. An observer won't see any connection between the local environment of the germ cell and goings on at Sirius. Similarly, a volcano (or a pack of wolves or a piano falling from the 13th floor of a hotel) may wipe out a person (dog, cat, plant) before that person can reproduce and thus kill off the person's genetic contribution. However, nothing in the physics or chemistry of DNA caused the volcano to errupt.

"Random" events (as I'm using the term) are those which may affect the outcome of an observation, but are not themselves (necessarily) implied by the physics of that observation. The lightning example is more like Brownian motion that the other forms. One cannot measure the boundary conditions well enough to exactly predict a lightning bolt, but one can do very well with averages. For example, high points (steeples, trees, golf clubs during a backswing) get struck relatively often.

Thank you oh so very much for your discussion of randomness!

All I can think to add to what you have said is this from Chaitin’s talk on Mathematics in the Third Millennium

Some final words on Stephen Wolfram's fascinating, and unfortunately unpublished, ideas. Wolfram has a very different view of complexity from mine. In my view pi is not at all complex, but to Wolfram it's infinitely complex, because it looks completely random. Wolfram's view is that simple laws, simple combinatorial structures, can produce very complicated unpredictable behavior. pi is a good example. If you didn't know where they come from, its digits would look completely random. In fact, Wolfram says, maybe the universe contains no randomness, maybe everything is actually deterministic, maybe it's only pseudo-randomness! And how could you tell the difference? The illusion of free will is because the future is too hard to predict, but it's not really unpredictable. [To Wolfram's exceedingly bright and sharp mind, the idea of indeterminacy, of randomness, of something irrational, that escapes the power of reason, of simple unifying principles, that happens for no reason—and that he will never be able to understand—is totally abhorrent. The horror of a vacuum of the ancients becomes a modern horror of randomness.

To such a mind, I must appear, because of my belief in randomness, as a muddle-headed mystic!... I'm also reminded of Feynman's fury in a conversation we had near the end of his life when I suggested that there might be wonderful new laws of physics waiting to be discovered. Of course!, I told myself later, how could he bear the thought that he wouldn't live to see it?... Science and magic both share the belief that ordinary reality is not the real reality, that something more fundamental is hidden behind everyday appearances. They share a belief in the fundamental importance of hidden secret knowledge. Physicists are searching for their TOE, theory of everything, and kabbalists search for a secret name of God that is the key that unlocks all understanding. In a way the two are allies, for neither can bear the thought that there is no secret meaning, no final theory, and that things may be arbitrary, random, meaningless, incompressible and incomprehensible. For a dramatization of this idea, see D. Aronofsky's 1998 film pi. See also G. Johnson, Fire in the Mind—Science, Faith, and the Search for Order, and P. Davies, The Mind of God—The Scientific Basis for a Rational World.]

Wolfram also has some fascinating ideas about biology, the origin of life and evolution. One of my big disappointments, the big disappointment in my scientific life, is that I couldn't use my program-size complexity to make a mathematical theory out of Darwin. [I was strongly influenced by von Neumann. For an early report of von Neumann's ideas, see J.G. Kemeny's 1955 article in Scientific American, ``Man viewed as a machine.'' For a statement by von Neumann himself, see ``The general and logical theory of automata'' in volume 4 of J.R. Newman's The World of Mathematics. For a posthumous account assembled by A.W. Burks, see von Neumann's Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata. For samples of contemporary thought on these matters, see P. Davies, The Fifth Miracle—The Search for the Origin of Life, and C. Adami, Introduction to Artificial Life.]

My complexity is conserved, it's impossible to make it increase, which is great if you're doing metamathematical incompleteness results, but hell if you want to get evolution. So I asked Wolfram his thoughts on this matter, and his reply was absolutely fascinating. He has amassed much evidence of the ubiquity of universality. In other words, he's discovered that many, many different kinds of simple combinatorial systems achieve computational universality, and have rich, complicated unpredictable behavior. pi is just one example... So what's so surprising about getting life, about getting clever organisms that exhibit rich, complicated behavior, that need it to survive? That's easy to do!!! And I suspect that Wolfram is right, I just want to get a copy of his 800-page book on the subject and be able to read it and think about it at my leisure. I have held its two volumes in my hands, briefly, once, during a fascinating visit to Wolfram's home...

The point of the foregoing is that randomness may not actually exist in this universe since everything we perceive as random – from lightning bolts to Chaitin’s Omega to Brownian motion – are effects of physical causation.

tortoise, thank you for your post. I'm going to respond to you before I reply to Doctor Stochastic's discussion of randomness above, which I want to chew on a bit. And I see no implied disrespect in your taking issue with my portrayal of Yockey as "a genuine expert on information theory" because I am beginning to question the very notion myself. In fact, I may have been dead wrong on that one, though I am trying to get some more information to make up my mind. But I do want to explain what prompted me to write that assessment.

I posted that appraisal of Yockey after learning that he has a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Cal-Berkeley and that he worked on the Manhattan Project, which I regard as pretty good credentials right off the bat. But I also noticed on a web page I visited on a Christian discussion site that he stated his belief that we may be surprised to find out "how many scientists are really talking religion and how many theologians are talking science" when speaking of a need to bridge the gap, which I took to be a decidedly "unscientific" statement, which is why I also posted my qualifying comment "I recognize Yockey as a legitimate scholar -- I did not say 'scientist' . . ." in my post #281. I also noticed somewhere else, and I can't seem to find this reference right away, that he was asked to explain why he quoted the Bible in his book Information Theory and Molecular Biology, which got me to wondering as to whether he had an agenda, a doubt that has since been enhanced by my reading of his appraisal of those arguing for abiogenesis as "Dialectical Materialists," i.e. "Marxists," which frankly leaves me dumbfounded. And I believe I took that Christian discussion site's page at its word when I posted my comment that he was an "expert on information theory." Finally; I'll add in two more quick points. One of the web sites that does a lot of work debunking "creationist myths" posted something to the effect that Yockey's work, though flawed in their opinion, had to be taken seriously and even a couple of pages I visited that were supportive of abiogenesis dealt with some of Yockey's arguments in a serious fashion.

You may in fact be right on this one tortoise. I still want to learn more about what Yockey is actually arguing -- I find so much information from people using his arguments and so little from the man himself -- before I form any final judgements about how it should be treated. But, as I also said in my post #281, I cannot accept his definition of "randomness" as applied to abiogenesis, which is a problem I have with him from the start.

I will be genuinely interested to read any comments you may wish to post about Yockey and/or his work tortoise. Please feel free to fire away. Something tells me you may be quite helpful.

Truly, I am amazed that you hold Hubert P. Yockey in such contempt. He is probably twice your age (if not more) - worked with Oppenheimer on the first atomic bomb, is a physicist who studied the effects of radiation on living systems and has studied and published for decades the application of information theory to molecular biology.

I'm sure he was alive at the same time Claude Shannon developed his ground breaking theory which began the field of information theory. The second edition of his book is available: Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life

Here are some of his other publications from the “Chowder Society” website of other scientists who work in the field of information theory and molecular biology:

Yockey, Hubert P. Information Theory and Molecular Biology, Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press (1992)

When is random random? Nature 344 (1990) p823, Hubert P. Yockey

Yockey, Hubert P. (1981). Self-organization origin of life scenarios and information theory. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 91, 13-31.

Yockey, Hubert P. (1979). Do overlapping genes violate molecular biology and the theory of evolution? Journal of Theoretical Biology, 80, 21-26.

Yockey, Hubert P. (1978). Can the Central Dogma be derived from information theory? Journal of Theoretical Biology, 74, 149-152.

Yockey, Hubert P. (1977a). A prescription which predicts functionally equivalent residues at given sites in protein sequences. 67, 337-343.

Yockey, Hubert P. (1977b). On the information content of cytochrome c. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 67, 345-376.

Yockey, Hubert P. (1977c). A calculation of the probability of spontaneous biogenesis by information theory. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 67, 377-398.

Yockey, Hubert P (1974). An application of information theory to the Central Dogma and the sequence hypothesis. Journal of Theoretical Biology,.46, 369-406.

Yockey, Hubert P. (1960) The Use of Information Theory in Aging and Radiation Damage In The Biology of Aging American Institute of Biological Sciences Symposium No. 6 (160) pp338-347.

Yockey, Hubert P., Platzman, Robert P. & Quastler, Henry, eds. (1958a). Symposium on Information Theory in Biology, New York, London: Pergamon Press.

Yockey, Hubert P. (1958b). A study of aging, thermal killing and radiation damage by information theory. In Symposium on Information Theory in Biology. eds. Hubert P. Yockey, Robert Platzman & Henry Quastler, pp297-316. New York,London: Pergamon Press.

Yockey, Hubert P. (1956). An application of information theory to the physics of tissue damage. Radiation.Research, 5, 146-155.

Information in bits and bytes; Reply to Lifson's Review of "Information Theory and Molecular" Biology BioEssays v17 p85-88 (1995)

Comments on "Let there be life; Thermodynamic Reflections on Biogenesis and Evolution by Avshalom C. Elitzur Journal of Theoretical Biology in press (1995).

I assert that Yockey - with his formidable credentials – is an authoritative source for our purposes in exploring complexity in biological systems (including information theory, biosemiosis and randomness).

From my vantage point, Yockey looks more like a dabbler in information theory than a genuine expert. There are not that many "genuine experts" in the field, and I am acquainted with most of them -- he is not one of their peers.

AFAIK, your expertise lies more specifically with strong artificial intelligence than the application of information theory of biological systems. But I could be wrong. If you are in Yockey's arena, then Tom Schneider would be one of your peers.

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