This morning at post 1085, Right Wing Professor says sarcastically: ” So you're saying that a human being is not merely a sum of his parts? Now why didn't anyone else think of that?” - and at post 1086, js1138 adds: ” I've been arguing emergent properties (a phrase I got from Ernst Mayr) for about six months, and it turns up here.”
But of course I was quite sure they knew all of this last night which made their reactions (1066, 1067, 1073-1075) to your post 1065 “bizarre” – at least to me. After all, if the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts what is a hurricane, a snowflake, a dog, a cat, a human being?
This reminds me of those TV episodes where the walls drop immediately to seal a biohazard in the laboratory when one is “sensed”. But what on earth could you have said at post 1065 to make such an auto-response occur?
If the whole were not greater than the sum of its parts, how can we explain language? Why does a word exist for tree, person, cat, snowflake. Indeed, why does DNA code exist?
And if the existent in physical reality is not characterized geometrically by its travel on a worldline which comprises its unique history, then why do we ask about autonomy at all? In that event, there would be no difference between Right Wing Professor and betty boop – no difference between this and that tree, this and that amoeba, this and that protein, etc.
The language, the autonomy, the geometry, the communication, the order itself is why we cannot and should not stop with the physical/chemical but instead reach to the mathematics, the philosophy, the theology.
Jeepers. For years, we’ve been talking about self-organizing complexity, cellular automata, autonomy, semiosis and various aspects thereof – including the math, the physics, the philosophy, the cosmology, the theology. We’ve discussed the movers and shakers in those fields. Not just Mayr but also Shannon, von Neumann, Chaitin, Kolmogorov, Rocha, Pattee, Kauffman, Einstein, Bohr, Tegmark, Steinhardt and more. And not just the scientists and mathematicians but the philosophers as well such as Voegelin, Plato, Aristotle. And not just philosophy but theology, ancient manuscripts, Scriptures and other Spiritual insight.
Perhaps it is because we have a record of speaking to spiritual matters, that the “sensors” go off and the walls come down? In which case, what can I say but Praise God! and join with you in prayer for all who do not yet sense that they belong beyond the geometry of their worldline.
BTW, for Lurkers interested in the sidebar to the sidebar on Mayr:
And as H.H. Pattee observes: ”Questioning the importance of theory sounds eccentric to physicists for whom general theories is what physics is all about. Consequently, physicists, like the skeptics I mentioned above, are concerned when they learn facts of life that their theories do not appear capable of addressing. On the other hand, biologists, when they have the facts, need not worry about physical theories that neither address nor alter their facts.
The difference between what you are saying and what we are saying is that emergent properties are an observable feature of the natural, material world as understood by mainstream physicists, chemists and biologists.
Emergence and reduction are both valid ways of studying phenomena, just as style and grammar are both valid ways of examining writing. No mystical properties need apply in the domain of science.
I'd hazard a guess, but its application to our friends RWP and js1138 would be pure speculation, and therefore not to be indulged.
Still, having said that, I am keenly aware that at least some people nowadays place their faith in science because they believe that it has the ability to explain the world without God. Our friend b_sharp expressed this idea very well in noting that (to paraphrase) as the sphere of science expands, the sphere of God shrinks. I think it's clear that this theme is evident in Richard Dawkin's public commentaries on his own work. For whatever reason, or maybe no reason at all, some folks are convinced that God is not necessary to human purposes at all, nor to the origin and structure of the Universe, nor to the very foundation of truth and reason.
If people are convinced in this manner, then how can they be reasoned with by folks of opposite worldview, who believe that, without God, the Universe could neither have come into existence, nor maintain itself as a Universe ever since? Etc. There are other dimensions to this issue, but these remarks are probably the most basic to our present concerns.
Whatever. I pray for God's grace and light on all of the parties to these debates. And I thank my friends for taking the time to write to me every now and then.