Posted on 12/07/2005 3:31:28 AM PST by snarks_when_bored
601
I''d be thrilled to see your links, if you have time to locate and post them.
I could've sworn I had two PDF articles discussing the nature of the laws of physics...I can't find them now. But I do recall reading an article by Victor Stenger a couple of years ago, and I find that he has now turned that article into a book to be published next year. Here's a link to his website for the book; you can download each of his chapters as a PDF file:
The Comprehensible Cosmos: Where Do the Laws of Physics Come From?
(The name of the linked HTML file has a ring to it.)
As for the "appearance of design," doesn't Dawkins realize that things might "appear" to be designed because they actually are designed? That humans are just awfully good at spotting "design" in nature? I don't mean that a designer is running around actively producing natural forms; my conjecture is that something like an "algorithm in the beginning," as my dear friend Alamo-Girl puts it, "loaded in" that which conduces to design in the beginning. It does not fully specify absolutely every detail of organic and inorganic forms, for there is a random aspect built into the structure of things. But what it does do is constrain evolution and make it subject to laws.
I think the answer to both of your questions is "of course he realizes that". As for the 'algorithm at the beginning', one can't rule it out, but one also can't rule out that there was no algorithm but rather what we see is the unfolding of a cascade of causation from a rather simple beginning.
With respect to your remarks about Greek philosophy, you're in the company of Plato if you're distinguishing between ever-existent, always unchanging Being and never-existent, always changing Becoming (he lays that out with particular emphasis in the early pages of Timaeus, which I believe you've read if memory serves).
In the void of the beginning there is no space, no time, no energy/matter, no physical laws, no physical constants, no mathematics, no logic, no universals, no forms, no autonomy, no qualia, no physical causation. There is no physical causation in the void - the first cause must be uncaused and the only candidate for uncaused cause is God.
The sort of void you describe is indistinguishable from a perfect unity, and so would be indistinguishable from what you're calling 'God'. You're running up against the old problem of coincidentia oppositorum here, and Hegel's "the night in which all cows are black". Care is warranted!
That reminds me of a short story I read many years ago, in which a con was pulled on an earthling by an alien (called a "Sloonian," IIRC) who inserted a day (called "Zeepsday," I think) between Wednesday and Thursday. The con was caught because the protagonist was "allergic to Sloonian time."
It's strange, really, what odd things will stick in your memory for decades...
Wherever the Data Lead
Sounds like a modest proposal the Kansas Board of Education couldn't refuse...
Oh My... I didn't know you cared.
I buy most of my stuff from Penzey's. Their blends can be a little iffy, but the basic stuff is cheaper and better than any market stuff.
Well jeepers Professor, wherever did you get the idea that we human beings live "in" a "formal system?" I thought we all lived in a "real" system.
Who is the "idealist" here?
Sorry to be such a P.I.T.A.
Not at all dear brother. Your "squeeks" make sense. But I'll need to follow you around for a while before I fully comprehend them.
To be continued....
In a strict mathematical sense, there is no distinction here. Even in less strict terms, an 'algorithm' is nothing more than the name for a high-order representation of information, and therefore all information is an algorithm (and everything is information, mathematically). In this sense, there is nothing special about 'algorithms', at the "beginning" or elsewhere; if something exists at all it must be an algorithm.
The idea that data, information, patterns, computers, and algorithms are fundamentally different concepts is an intuitive but perniciously incorrect bit of common sense. It is one of the reasons information theory is so difficult to grok -- its fundamental theorems violate what most people "know".
Does this real system exhibit properties not describable in mathematics? I cannot think of any.
Sorta. But needs substantial tweaking to achieve clarity.
So do you want to help out with this clarifying "tweaking operation?"
There are always two sides to any good dialogue. Monologues tend to get boring. :^)
Thanks for writing, b_sharp!
In fact, I tend to the view that all information is embodied information, that there was never, is not now nor will there ever be any information that is not physically carried or mediated. This is what I call the Roseanne Roseanna Danna theory of reality: "There's always something...if it's not one thing, it's another."
Well, that's exactly right, aNYCguy. But you still haven't told me what, on your view, is specifically "wrong" with this understanding/formulation.
I'm a very patient person who is looking forward to your reply.
We haven't met before, nor spoken before; and I have no idea what you most care about or where you're coming from, what you have seen in your experience, etc.
But if you a looking for a good faith, civil, rational dialog/debate over issues of deep importance to you, then please give me a yell.
Just specify the issue you most want placed in contention. And once we know what that is, then we'll be at liberty to debate it, pro and con.
Thanks for writing, stranger!
Thanks to the magic of Google, I was able to pinpoint the decade. The story was called "Zeepsday," it was by Gordon R. Dickson, and it appeared in the November issue of F&SF in 1956. I would have been an eighth grader at the time, and I did have a subscription to F&SF back then (I still do, in fact).
Yes. I have noticed that. Yet science per se is not "categorically" opposed to God. Only some of its more "doctrinally materialist" thinkers engage in such activity. Such as the dude who penned the essay at the top of this thread.
I just think this is a case of science biting the hand that feeds it. Which seems to be all the rage these days.
But I also know that where the "realm of God" shrinks, so do human prospects. As in: "The Incredible Shrinking Humanity." Which comprehends the problem of "The Incredibly Shrinking Person."
You wrote a fine essay, b_sharp; yet it's late and so I'll have to defer a fuller response to tomorrow. I'm grateful for your post.
Good night!
No. The "proper sequence" had the mesonychus in it until a few years ago. And your link's conclusion was not a "proper sequence", but Conclusion Taken together, all of this evidence points to only one conclusion - that whales evolved from terrestrial mammals. We have seen that there are nine independent areas of study that provide evidence that whales share a common ancestor with hoofed mammals. The power of evidence from independent areas of study that support the same conclusion makes refutation by special creation scenarios, personal incredulity, the argument from ignorance, or "intelligent design" scenarious entirely unreasonable. The only plausible scientific conclusion is that whales did evolve from terrestrial mammals. So no matter how much anti-evolutionists rant about how impossible it is for land-dwelling, furry mammals to evolve into fully aquatic whales, the evidence itself shouts them down. This is the power of using mutually reinforcing, independent lines of evidence. I hope that it will become a major weapon to strike down groundless anti-evolutionist objections and to support evolutionary thinking in the general public. This is how real science works, and we must emphasize the process of scientific inference as we point out the conclusions that scientists draw from the evidence - that the concordant predictions from independent fields of scientific study confirm the same pattern of whale ancestry. Notice it is only in the first sentence. The rest is a rant. My point is that the evidence is mostly "appearance" and all inferential.
I totally agree, Fester,
I gather that b_sharp has illusions about human intellectual progress "progessively" displacing God -- on whose truth human intellectual progress has ever depended -- to the purpose of finally eradicating God in the end. [As if a person, or all of humanity collectively working together towards that purpose, could ever do that.]
It has been observed (P. J. Raju, 1972) that we live in a "mysterious" universe; yet Raju insists the mystery is a rational one, not a "superstitious" one.
And Plato and Aristotle essentially had the same observation, in common.
I think if people could just get used to that idea, the enterprise of science would really prosper.
Just between you and me, where does b_sharp think logic (among other things) came from to begin with?
Thank you so much for writing, Fester. Good night!
Looks like I made a mistake. There was a thread on FR awhile back regarding an experiment that said it was smooth. I now assume the report is NG, because it doesn't pop up on a web search. All I can find is from 2004 right now. This and this which is the sort of work the first easy to understand article is based on are all I see. The nature note gives a summary. The space is quantized and the only way to get it to give a 4D world is to require constant c and causality on the Plank scale.
So, good night b_sharp! See you tomorrow. Thanks for writing!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.