Posted on 09/22/2005 8:25:42 PM PDT by Crackingham
A court case that begins Monday in Pennsylvania will be the first to determine whether it is legal to teach a controversial idea called intelligent design in public schools. Intelligent design, often referred to as ID, has been touted in recent years by a small group of proponents as an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution. ID proponents say evolution is flawed. ID asserts that a supernatural being intervened at some point in the creation of life on Earth.
Scientists counter that evolution is a well-supported theory and that ID is not a verifiable theory at all and therefore has no place in a science curriculum. The case is called Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Prominent scientists Thursday called a teleconference with reporters to say that intelligent design distorts science and would bring religion into science classrooms.
"The reason this trial is so important is the Dover disclaimer brings religion straight into science classrooms," said Alan Leshner, the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and executive publisher of the journal Science. "It distorts scientific standards and teaching objectives established by not only state of Pennsylvania but also leading scientific organizations of the United States."
"This will be first legal challenge to intelligent design and we'll see if they've been able to mask the creationist underpinnings of intelligent design well enough so that the courts might allow this into public school," said Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), which co-hosted the teleconference.
AAAS is the world's largest general science society and the NCSE is a nonprofit organization committed to helping ensure that evolution remains a part of public school curriculums.
The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of concerned parents after Dover school board officials voted 6-3 last October to require that 9th graders be read a short statement about intelligent design before biology lessons on evolution. Students were also referred to an intelligent design textbook to learn more information about the controversial idea. The Dover school district earlier this month attempted to prevent the lawsuit from going forward, but a federal judge ruled last week that the trial would proceed as scheduled. The lawsuit argues that intelligent design is an inherently religious argument and a violation of the First Amendment that forbids state-sponsored schools from funding religious activities.
"Although it may not require a literal reading of Genesis, [ID] is creationism because it requires that an intelligent designer started or created and intervened in a natural process," Leshner said. "ID is trying to drag science into the supernatural and redefine what science is and isn't."
Concerning your Shakespearean metaphor - the parallels would be:
b. Information - Math/Physics
c. Actual Text - Biology/Chemistry
One would think so, Alamo-Girl! On a related matter, I seem to recall from Judge Roberts' Senate Judiciary hearings that he said conflicting findings of the different circuit courts was unacceptable in a system devoted to the rule of law, or words to that effect.
We'll see what happens...problems like this don't get "fixed" overnight.
Nor are they constrained by any need to be correct or incorrect, except as formalisms.
You seem to be, at heart, a logician, and I, at heart, a poet.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Yours is the first time I've been called a logician. And perhaps that is true, because I am very much drawn to math and especially geometry. I do however get weary from the incessant tossing around of "fallacies"... Show me the math! LOL!
Our posts will always pass in the night.
I have a really hard time understanding the mind-set of the "reductionist." I don't think one can understand anything by fixating on a "part" in isolation. To say that Shakespeare is reducible to words, grammar, etc. -- as both js1138 and (seemingly) RWP suggest -- is to admit that one doesn't understand Shakespeare. Certainly, he was a genius in the use of words; but RWP's and js' model doesn't let you see that the truly magnificent achievement of Shakespeare was, not his writing down of words to paper, but his articulation of profound insights into the human condition. Words were just his "instruments" toward that end.
Similarly, it seems to me that matter (i.e., words in our analogy) + the physico-chemical laws (grammar or syntax) are instrumental in precisely this sense. However, there seems to be little curiosity about what matter + laws are "instrumentalizing."
To put it crudely, you can study a tree all day long and not get the least inkling of the forest, or of the larger ecosystem of which the forest is a part, extending to Terra, the solar system, and beyond. Presumably these are "parts and participants" of a dynamic, integrated, universal whole. But apparently, reductionists aren't interested in this aspect of the problem.
But still they say the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Yet to my mind, reducing the parts of the larger whole to matter + physicochemical laws effectively means that the whole is a simple sum of its constituting parts.
But the parts can't tell you about the whole in which they occur, because the parts can tell you nothing about the dynamic relations that obtain among them -- for they are considered in isolation from, or abstracted from, the larger context in which they occur.
To use the Shakespeare analogy once more, it's as if Shakespeare just set down a whole bunch of words in no particular order, and at the end of the exercise we get a Hamlet, a King Lear, a Macbeth.
I suspect the great attraction of reductionism is it fits very well with intentionalist consciousness: That is, the model of the subject intending objects of cognition. But as Eric Voegelin points out (in Order and History, Vol. V: In Search of Order), there is more to the human mind than a subject intending objects. A far more profound dimension is what Voegelin (following Plato and Aristotle)calls luminosity: self-reflective consciousness, which is the subject reflecting on his own experiences by drawing on memory, juxtaposing different concepts, problem solving and abstract analysis, etc. -- none of which are "objects" in phenomenal reality. Indeed, they are instances of nonphenomenal reality, or as Voegelin sometimes puts it "nonexistent reality."
Anyhoot, luminosity is that dimension of mind (if I might use the term "dimension" in this context, which is probably misleading) where creative action, abstract thought, meditation, and contemplation occur.
Oddly enough, all such "nonphenomena" are not reducible to lesser "parts"....
In sum, you don't understand living systems by breaking them down to their parts. It's not the parts that are crucial, but how they are dynamically related one to the other and each of them, up to the "level" of the macroscopic totality of the living system. FWIW. Thus it seems in addition to the physico-chemical laws, something else is needed for life to occur: systematic, organizational information.
Must run for now. Thank you so very much for writing, DK! Great insights!
Me, too Alamo-Girl; me too!!! Hugs!!!
That a large number of water molecules together strictly follow the quantum mechanical equations of motion is not in any doubt. And yet there are qualities to water that are not easily derived from those equations of motion. Something can be deterministic, made up of cimple constituents, and yet possess regularities that do not in a trivial way depend on the properties of its constituents.
You problem is you're stuck in a false antithesis. The universe is not divided two-fold into things that can be described by the interactions of simple, elementary components, and things that are complex and 'interesting'. Complex and interesting phenomena can arise from systems that can be strictly and rigorously desribed by the motions of simple components. That's just a fact.
I don't dispute that "complex and interesting phenomena can arise from systems that can be strictly and rigorously desribed by the motions of simple components." And yet it appears that the action of the chemical laws is fairly well restricted to "near neighbor" relations. For simple systems, this is sufficient, and "interesting" as well.
Not to mention they may constitute the subcomponents of more complex systems.
But for highly complex systems such as the human body, it is difficult to conceive of the global organization required to coordinate all the various parts and systems -- that must all work dynamically and synergistically together, virtually instantaneously in real time, in order to maintain the system in a living state -- as proceeding on the basis of "near neighbor" relations exclusively. It appears that action-at-a-distance is involved, at the very minimum, to satisfy the global organization requirement. If this is so, we need to move beyond chemistry, and start looking at fields as the matrix in which such non-local actions can take place. And now we have entered the "magic kingdom" of physics and mathematics.
I don't wish to "divide the universe." To me, it is one unified system, operating under unified law. Some have suggested (starting with Plato) it is even "alive" in some sense.
My 2-cents, RWP, FWIW. Thank you so much for your reply.
The argument from incredulity is not particularly compelling.
Can you imagine how difficult it would have been for someone in the 18th century to follow the logic of quantum theory? Or someone in the 19th century to understand genetic engineering.
Science is cumulative. The train of reasoning that leads to modern biology left the station 150 years ago.
Science is cumulative. The train of reasoning that leads to modern biology left the station 150 years ago.<<
And how many paradigm changes have happened in science in the last millenium? Last 150 years? Were the scientists of those times eager to embrace change or reluctant?
I won't beat you on the head for using reasoning in your argument. Philosophically scientists are still behind curve, so they are at a disadvangage.
DK
The last two big shifts were relativity and quantum theory. They were taken seriously immediately, and fully accepted in about 25 years.
They were based on evidence. ID will be taken seriously if it acquires some evidence. Or even if it proposes some actual research.
You might note that all of the principle theorists of ID have admitted that it has no research proposals.
But for highly complex systems such as the human body, it is difficult to conceive of the global organization required to coordinate all the various parts and systems -- that must all work dynamically and synergistically together, virtually instantaneously in real time, in order to maintain the system in a living state -- as proceeding on the basis of "near neighbor" relations exclusively. It appears that action-at-a-distance is involved, at the very minimum, to satisfy the global organization requirement. If this is so, we need to move beyond chemistry, and start looking at fields as the matrix in which such non-local actions can take place. And now we have entered the "magic kingdom" of physics and mathematics.
First of all, the brain doesn't work in real time. A modern computer requires synchronous operation on a time scale of nanoseconds. Humans can get by with synchrony a hundred million times slower.
Second, it's not all nearest-neighbor interactions. Neural conductivity is electrostatic and through space. And we understand - have understood for 50 years - how brains communicate with feet on a time scale of hundreds of milliseconds.
Electrostatics and chemistry are inextricably linked in the body. What creates the electric field is the motion of chemical species. The field is short range, precisely because we're a big bag of ions that respond to the fields and therefore shield them over long distances.
First of all, the brain doesn't work in real time. A modern computer requires synchronous operation on a time scale of nanoseconds. Humans can get by with synchrony a hundred million times slower.<<
Balderdash. If what you said it true, a robot would be running the hundred with the grace of a gazelle. Of course if you redefine real time as instantaneous, nothing is real time. A functional definition of real time is:
re·al-time
adj.
Of or relating to computer systems that update information at the same rate as they receive data, enabling them to direct or control a process such as an automatic pilot.
The brain controls a body in REAL TIME. Here's a comparison you may want to read:
>>What has billions of individual pieces, trillions of connections, weighs about 1.4 kilograms, and works on electrochemical energy? If you guessed a minicomputer, you're wrong. If you guessed the human brain, you're correct! The human brain: a mass of white-pink tissue that allows you to ride a bike, read a book, laugh at a joke, and remember your friend's phone number. And that's just for starters. Your brain controls your emotions, appetite, sleep, heart rate, and breathing. Your brain is who you are and everything you will be.<<
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/computer.html
You took another bad position perfessor.
LOL
DK
In your computer reference you forgot the various bottlenecks slowing down the process, was that intentional? Oh, also you forgot that the computer is dealing in 1 and 0 only. Oh, and you forgot the complexity of the program of the brain compared to the computer.
GIGO
Time to step back and think about what is being said here. The brain has very little to do with the coordination of bodily functions needed to stay alive. Breathing and heartbeat don't need a lot of intelligent coordination to maintain life.
BB: I think you need to clarify what you mean.
Good point. The brainstem is needed for breathing, but the heart works on its own feedback loop, with only loose control from the brain.
BTW, have you notice a strange ape-like gibbering sound around here?
I have my Darwin Central Blinders on. They protect me from having to think. You can get yours from the High Priest for a nominal fee.
I do believe, however, that someone who should know better is trying to revive vitalism. I don't know what else to call it.
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