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The Euclid algorithm includes processes, symbols, decisions and recursives and is purposeful. Decision making, awareness and purpose are properties of intelligence - therefore such properties existing at the inception of a thing (whether entirely internal as in initial rules for self-organizing complexity or whether externally interfaced as in communications) indicates an intelligence causation.

OR both. It seems that scientific materialists cling to the idea that the only thing going on in the world is matter in its motions. Yet this seems to be a flying jump to conclusions, IMHO. As far as I know, there has never been a single formal study of this issue as such in all of science. That is, it is just a generalized, vague assumption, something just "taken for granted"....

Notwithstanding, there seem to be things in the world which are not materially-based (e.g., the "informational" -- physical laws themselves and also worldviews, which often furnish an undisclosed premise on which research and analysis are based); and then there are others that are "physical" (e.g., vacuum fields, which are presumably not "material" in any usual sense).

One major problem I see regarding "classical" neo-Darwinist theory is that it does not take the quantum world into effect at all, nor is it otherwise the least bit interested in questioning whether there are deeper organizational levels beyond what can be "seen" -- e.g., recursive algorithms, vacuum fields, geometry, cellular automata, and suchlike -- outside of "random mutation" and "natural selection." Which, when you boil it all down, refer to processes thought to be spontaneously produced by environmental pressures -- i.e., from "inside" the visible world.

What this most reminds me of is the creation myth of the ancient Sumerians, who figured that the whole world was riding on the back of a huge sea turtle, swimming or floating in an infinite sea. Like the old Sumerians, it seems to me there are quite a few people around today who want to study the world, but they have no interest in the turtle, nor in the infinite sea.

To translate this analogy, the world is the visible, material world that materialism wants to reduce to matter and its motions. The turtle represents the physical laws and any deeper cosmic principles from which they may derive. And the infinite sea is the quantum world.

Of course, the only part of the Sumerian insight (and the directly analogous scientific materialist one) that is directly observable is the physical world. But that doesn't make the turtle or the sea "go away."

I know the analogy is a tad fanciful; but the parallels are there in my view. In the end, "classical" science wants to look at "the tip of the iceberg" and at not at the vast depths that lie beneath the surface....

FWIW, for as long as it takes this attitude, Darwinian evolutionary theory necessarily would constitute little more than a "just-so story" to my mind.

Alamo-Girl, thank you so much for your excellent posts today!

Corrction: the Sumerian creation story does not involve turtles, and, to some, has distinct parallels with Genesis.

http://www.geocities.com/garyweb65/creation1.html

...creation myth of the ancient Sumerians...

Which is the same myth copied by much later by the Hebrews. No turtles at all.

Thank you so much for your excellent essay-post and for your encouragements!

OR both. It seems that scientific materialists cling to the idea that the only thing going on in the world is matter in its motions. Yet this seems to be a flying jump to conclusions, IMHO.

Indeed, "or both!" And sadly, I agree that scientific materialists cling to the matter-in-motions prejudice which tortures all of their conclusions.

Notwithstanding, there seem to be things in the world which are not materially-based (e.g., the "informational" -- physical laws themselves and also worldviews, which often furnish an undisclosed premise on which research and analysis are based); and then there are others that are "physical" (e.g., vacuum fields, which are presumably not "material" in any usual sense).

So very true. There is no way a conclusion can be complete if the investigators are tunnel-visioned.

I know the analogy is a tad fanciful; but the parallels are there in my view. In the end, "classical" science wants to look at "the tip of the iceberg" and at not at the vast depths that lie beneath the surface....

The impression I got from Whitehead's assessment of it is that scientific materialism is so reduced that it cannot help but produced results whereupon the investigators pronounce their reduced view is the correct because it is successful. Jeepers. It is much easier to predict the result from the toss of a single coin than it is to predict the result from tossing a pocketful of change.