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To: Alamo-Girl
1) ...the fact of a beginning regardless of cosmology, 2) the unreasonable effectiveness of math, and 3) the presence of successful communication [information] in biological systems.

None of these imply that much though.

1) There are cosmologies (steady state, Hindu, etc.) that have no beginning. (Newton liked a beginningless cosmologn but he settled on a spatially infinite one with finite time so as not to undergo gravitational collapse.

2) Mathematics is invented to describe the real world; things that do not work are discarded; it would be surprising that mathematics were not effective.

3) There is no more communication among biological systems than among snowflakes deciding which flake will move first in an avalanche (or between water molecules deciding to form a snowflake in the first place.)

572 posted on 01/09/2005 8:30:11 PM PST by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: Doctor Stochastic
". . . 2) Mathematics is invented to describe the real world; things that do not work are discarded; it would be surprising that mathematics were not effective. . . ."

Are you a closet "Nominalist" Doctor Stochastic? Do you believe Mathematics reflects an objective reality or do things just work the way they do in Mathematics because of the meaning we give to definitions?

This is one of my favorite debates in all philosophy.
603 posted on 01/10/2005 12:39:49 AM PST by StJacques
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