Replies

Bovine fecal matter of the first order.

> ID is falsifiable...where ever there is no bias in an
> Origin, there is no ID.

And yet, ID is not necessary to explain bias, as you admit by dancing past Dissipative Structures, repeatedly.

Therefore, it is NOT falsifiable.

Further, I strongly suspect that you KNOW this, which is why you repeatedly engage in sophistry that would make a medieval monk blush.

"And yet, ID is not necessary to explain bias, as you admit by dancing past Dissipative Structures, repeatedly. Therefore, it is NOT falsifiable."

Incorrect again.

Yawn. You really *are* boring me. First, ID doesn't have to explain all bias. This is because bias is a prerequisite (you need to look this word up, by the way) for ID, but ID is not a prerequisite for bias.

Second, ID *is* falsifiable. If there is no bias, then there can be no ID...this applies at every level. Test for bias. No bias found with a valid test? OK, then ID can't explain the Origin in question.

Furthermore, ID *is* responsible for modern genetic engineering. This means that anyone who claims that ID is "unfalsifiable" or "untestable" or "unscientific" is dissing an entire field of science (while simultaneously looking like an uneducated poster).

And yet, ID is not necessary to explain bias, as you admit by dancing past Dissipative Structures, repeatedly.

http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/dissipative-structures.html

And then there is the matter of his scientific peers --- not the systems theorists and similar riff-raff, but the experts in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics and pattern formation. One of them (P. Hohenberg, co-author of the latest Review of Modern Physics book on the state of the art on pattern formation) was willing to be quoted by Scientific American (May 1995, "From Complexity to Perplexity") to the effect that "I don't know of a single phenomenon his theory has explained."

This is extreme, but it becomes more plausible the more one looks into the actual experimental literature. For instance, chemical oscillations and waves are supposed to be particularly good Dissipative Structures; Prigogine and his collaborators have devoted hundreds if not thousands of pages to their analysis, with a special devotion to the Belousov-Zhabotisnky reagent, which is the classic chemical oscillator. Unfortunately, as Arthur Winfree points out (When Time Breaks Down, Princeton UP, 1987, pp. 189--90), "the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reagent ... is perfectly stable in its uniform quiescence," but can be distrubed into oscillation and wave-formation. This is precisely what cannot be true, if the theory of Dissipative Structures is to apply, and Winfree accordingly judges that "the first step [in understanding these phenomena], which no theorist would have anticipated, is to set aside the mathematical literature" produced by a "ponderous industry of theoretical elaboration". --- Needless to say, Winfree is not opposed to theory or mathematics, and his superb The Geometry of Biological Time (Springer-Verlag, 1980) is full of both.

Somewhat more diplomatic is Philip W. Anderson, one of the Old Turks of the Santa Fe Institute, and himself a Nobelist. I refer in particular to the very interesting paper he co-authored with Daniel L. Stein, "Broken Symmetry, Emergent Properties, Disspiative Structures, Life: Are They Related", in F. Eugene Yates (ed.), Self-Organizing Systems: The Emergence of Order (NY: Plenum Press, 1987), p. 445--457. The editor's abstract is as follows:

The authors compare symmetry-breaking in thermodynamic equilibrium systems (leading to phase change) and in systems far from equilibrium (leading to dissipative structures). They conclude thgat the only similarity between the two is their ability to lead to the emergent property of spatial variation from a homogeneous background. There is a well-developed theory for the equilbirium case involving the order parameter concept, which leads to a strong correlation of the order parameter over macroscopic distances in the broken symmetry phase (as exists, for example, in a ferromagnetic domain). This correlation endows the structure with a self-scaled stability, rigidity, autonomy or permanence. In contrast, the authors assert that there is no developed thoery of dissipative structures (despite claims to the contrary) and that perhaps there are no stable dissipative structures at all! Symmetry-breaking effects such as vortices and convection cells in fluids --- effects that result from dynamic instability bifurcations --- are considered to be unstable and transitory, rather than stable dissipative structures.
Thus, the authors do not believe that speculation about dissipative structures and their broken symmetries can, at present, be relevant to questions of the origin and persistence of life.

Some quotes from the paper itself:

"Is there a theory of dissipative structures comparable to that of equilibrium structures, explaining the existence of new, stable properties and entities in such systems?"
Contrary to statements in a number of books and articles in this field, we believe that there is no such theory, and it even may be that there are no such structures as they are implied to exist by Prigogine, Haken, and their collaborators. What does exist in this field is rather different from Prigogine's speculations and is the subject of intense experimental and theoretical investigation at this time.... [p. 447]
Prigogine and his school have made a series of attempts to build an analogy between these [dissipative far-from-equilibrium systems which form patterns] and the Landau free energy and its dependence on the order parameter, which leads to the important properties of equilibrium broken symmetry systems. The attempt is to generalize the principle of maximum entropy production, which holds near equilibrium in steady-state dissipative systems, and to find some kind of dissipation function whose extremum determines the state. As far as we can see, in the few cases in which this idea can be given concrete meaning, it is simply incorrect. In any case, it is clearly out of context in relation to the observed chaotic behvaior of real dissipative systems. [pp.454--455]

Anderson and Stein cite two of their own papers (P. W. Anderson, "Can broken symmetry occur in driven systems?" in G. Nicolis, G. Dewel and P. Turner (eds.), Order and Fluctuations in Equilbirium and Non-Equilibirum Statistical Mechanics, pp. 289-297; and D. L. Stein, "Dissipative structures, broken symmetry, and the theory of equilibrium phase transitions," J. Chem. Phys. 72:2869-2874) for the technical details of their critique; I haven't read 'em yet. Their joint paper is reproduced in Anderson's Basic Notions of Condensed Matter Physics, sans illustrations. Prigogine may be observed waxing philosophical in Order Out of Chaos, obscure in From Being to Becoming, and textbookish in Self-Organization in Non-Equilibrium Systems.

Prigogine won the Nobel in 1977. It is now 30 years later. Where's the beef?