Posted on 10/15/2009 8:15:58 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
When intelligent design (ID) proponents press neo-Darwinian evolutionists on the inability of Darwinian evolution to produce new functional genetic information, a common response from evolutionists is that they get angry and engage in name calling. That’s what happened when...
(Excerpt) Read more at evolutionnews.org ...
Does he say what is "up to the job"? Does he offer a methothodology that produces better theories to explain the fossil record, consistent with the physical evidence?
I don't have a link offhand
You could just select one of the false propaganda creation sites at random.
Words mean things, but the above means what?
"Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When at first we practice to deceive." Sir Walter Scott
I know exactly what it means. Why don’t you give it some thought and take a guess as to what it means yourself. Who knows, you might get lucky. But if you don’t, I give you my word that I will set you straight :o)
Rosen suggests that mathematics can give us insights into the structure of reality. IMHO, he — like Einstein — was a mathematical physicist of the Platonist type. His main mathematical tools were number theory, set theory, and category theory. His aim was to explore and understand complex living systems in nature by reasoning according to the logical dicta of these mathematical structures.
At least that is the basic understanding I have of his work, though I haven't read all his books yet.
Does he offer a methothodology that produces better theories to explain the fossil record, consistent with the physical evidence?
Jeepers, tacticalogic, but I don't think Rosen gave a tinker's dam about the fossil record. That type of evidence is simply irrelevant to understanding what makes biological organisms tick.
Just thought this bears repeating!
Beautifully said, dearest sister in Christ!
Final Cause does not make sense without Original Cause..
If the third human on this planet DID NOT come from the original two..
Then; a bodacious tale must be constructed.. a far reaching Yarn must be promulgated.. a humugous story must be..... (well you know)..
His main mathematical tools were number theory, set theory, and category theory. His aim was to explore and understand complex living systems in nature by reasoning according to the logical dicta of these mathematical structures.
Mathematical structure, completely removed from and unrelated to the reality of the physical structure of what it purports to explain?
I found the following in Wikipedia. Is it true?
However, according to Elsberry and Shallit, "[specified complexity] has not been defined formally in any reputable peer-reviewed mathematical journal, nor (to the best of our knowledge) adopted by any researcher in information theory."[19]
Of course not. Sooner or later, the "reality test" must be engaged.
Evidently Rosen proposes a direct correspondence exists between the structures of mathematics and the real world. As Einstein did, by the way.
We all know how fruitful that presupposition was to Einstein — even though it took many years before proper experiments could be framed and finally tested. Which, when they could finally be performed, showed that Einstein's theory was correct.
More in a few minutes in a combo reply...
When does Rosen propose to engage the "reality test"?
His main mathematical tools were number theory, set theory, and category theory. His aim was to explore and understand complex living systems in nature by reasoning according to the logical dicta of these mathematical structures.
tacticalogic: Mathematical structure, completely removed from and unrelated to the reality of the physical structure of what it purports to explain?
His ability to visualize and resolve complex mathematical problems far exceeded that of his teachers and peers. I doubt very many at all could appreciate the work he was doing.
To make a long story short, Reimann developed a geometry for which there was no practical application. And he died.
Then along came Albert Einstein (1879-1955) who having rocked the physics world with his theory of Special Relativity had a theory (General Relativity) of the warped structure of the space/time continuum...
And he was able to pull Reimannian geometry off-the-shelf to describe that structure and benefit physicists to this very day.
Like Reimann, Rosen has done the theoretical mathematics and he has passed on.
Now I'm looking for a biologist version of Einstein to come along and pull his work off-the-shelf to make the great strides that are needed in biological research.
Oh so sadly, for Rosen died young, at age 64 (of complications of diabetes, I hear)....
Einstein realized that Euclidian geometry — a geometry of "flat" spaces — did not serve the insight he had about the structure of the universe. He realized that a geometry of curved spaces was needed — and found that geometry already created for him, as if ready made, in Bernhardt Reimannn's geometrical model of curved spaces — which had been on the shelf catching dust for lack of practical "external referents" for some 60 years or so by then. Yet Einstein saw that it was what he precisely needed. So he picked it up, dusted it off, and plugged it into his relativity theory. And the rest is history....
Do not distrust the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" ( as Eugene Wigner put it) when it comes to explicating the mysteries of our universe....
Or so it seems to me.
It has been suggested that this unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is "God's copyright notice on the universe."
I wholly agree with that insight.
Or so it seems to me.
It has been suggested that this unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is "God's copyright notice on the universe."
I wholly agree with that insight.
Thank you so very much for sharing your insights!
So that leaves us with a bunch of physical evidence that seems to suggest a long term biological process, a methodology that relies on mathematical modeling submitted as the only “correct” way to interpret that evidence, and nobody knows how to actually apply the methodology to the evidence.
I do not read that as a substitute for evolution theory.
However, should geometric physics continue to progress along the lines of additional expanded temporal dimensions, wherein time is not a line but a plane or volume, then I would not be surprised if a future biologist offered Rosen's model as compatible since it entails final cause while being agnostic towards supernatural cause.
Darwin's theory relies on a time line, an arrow of time. And other explanations, such as William's inversely causal meta-information, suggest supernatural cause, i.e. God.
Or to put it another way, advances in theoretical physics may force biologists to consider non-physical causes but I suspect they would prefer any model that does not cross the hard boundary they insist exists between science and theology.
Indeed. That there is such a boundary largely explains the antipathy of science for final causes.
To many, the idea of final cause smacks of teleology and thus by implication theology. And there is a sense in which this is true — on the cosmological scale; i.e., if there is a Prime Mover or Uncaused Cause of the universe and its order, then it will have a final cause, or purpose or goal — the "reason" for which it acted in the first place. Of course, this is not necessarily a religious insight; it simply follows from Aristotle's theory of causation.
To consider final cause on the cosmological scale seems irrelevant to the study of biology. Moreoever, the scientific method does not seem at all suited to engage cosmological questions in the first place.
But Aristotle himself recognized that all four causes — formal, material, efficient, and final — are operative within nature.
As Robert Rosen wrote (in Life Itself) WRT final cause, "...for centuries past, it has been part of the essential core of science itself that science and finality are incompatible." He suggests that science shuns final cause because it evokes the idea of telos— final cause on the cosmological scale (teleology).
But as Rosen says, "finality and teleology are in fact very different things.... I am suggesting, on formal grounds, the possibility of separating finality from teleology, of retaining the former while, if we wish, discarding the latter."
The three "traditional" [scientific] causal categories (formal, material, and efficient causation) always respect [the serial] flow of "formal time", in the sense that "cause" Q always precedes effect P. Final causation gives the appearance, at any rate, of violating this flow, in the sense that the effect P seems to be acting back on the causal process that is generating it; it appears that the "future" is actively affecting the "past." I say "appears" because this (traditional) interpretation of finality confuses P with its final cause; it is not the effect P, but the final cause of P, that must operate on the process by which P is generated. The temporal anomaly remains, however; final cause clearly cannot fit within the same temporal sequence in which the other causal categories harmoniously operate. [Itals in the original]I believe the "temporal anomaly" that Rosen recognizes here is the main source of the difficultly we have understanding, say, what Alex Williams' inversely-causal metainformation is. To me, I-C M appears to operate as a final cause in the Rosenian sense just given.
Our ordinary conceptions of time are again found wanting to explain even what we encounter in nature. Or so it seems to me, FWIW.
Thank you so very much, dearest sister in Christ, for your outstanding observations!
Truly, final cause cannot be ignored in biological organization because function cannot ignored. On its own, it raises the temporal issue. And William's inversely causal metainformation drives the point home.
Here's a fascinating insight from the "first biologist," Aristotle, which touches on many points of our discussion here:
Of things constituted by nature some are ungenerated, imperishable, and eternal, while others are subject to generation and decay. The former are excellent beyond compare and divine, but less accessible to knowledge. The evidence that might throw light on them, and on the problems which we long to solve respecting them, is furnished but scantily by sensation; whereas respecting perishable plants and animals we have abundant information, living as we do in their midst, and ample data may be collected concerning all their various kinds, if only we are willing to take sufficient pains. Both departments, however, have their special charm. The scanty conceptions to which we can attain of celestial things give us, from their excellence, more pleasure than all our knowledge of the world in which we live; just as a half glimpse of persons that we love is more delightful than a leisurely view of other things, whatever their number and dimensions. On the other hand, in certitude and in completeness our knowledge of terrestrial things has the advantage. Moreover, their greater nearness and affinity to us balances somewhat the loftier interest of the heavenly things that are the objects of the higher philosophy. Having already treated of the celestial world, as far as our conjectures could reach, we proceed to treat of animals, without omitting, to the best of our ability, any member of the kingdom, however ignoble. For if some have no graces to charm the sense, yet even these, by disclosing to intellectual perception the artistic spirit that designed them, give immense pleasure to all who can trace links of causation, and are inclined to philosophy. Indeed, it would be strange if mimic representations of them were attractive, because they disclose the mimetic skill of the painter or sculptor, and the original realities themselves were not more interesting, to all at any rate who have eyes to discern the reasons that determined their formation. We therefore must not recoil with childish aversion from the examination of the humbler animals. Every realm of nature is marvellous: and as Heraclitus, when the strangers who came to visit him found him warming himself at the furnace in the kitchen and hesitated to go in, reported to have bidden them not to be afraid to enter, as even in that kitchen divinities were present, so we should venture on the study of every kind of animal without distaste; for each and all will reveal to us something natural and something beautiful. Absence of haphazard and conduciveness of everything to an end are to be found in Nature's works in the highest degree, and the resultant end of her generations and combinations is a form of the beautiful.Not only was he the first biologist, but evidently Aristotle was not adverse to intelligent design. He also evidently knows that living beings are always more than the mere sum of their parts, that the relation of parts to the total form is the preeminent question in biology.If any person thinks the examination of the rest of the animal kingdom an unworthy task, he must hold in like disesteem the study of man. For no one can look at the primordia of the human frame — blood, flesh, bones, vessels, and the like — without much repugnance. Moreover, when any one of the parts or structures, be it which it may, is under discussion, it must not be supposed that it is its material composition to which attention is being directed or which is the object of the discussion, but the relation of such part to the total form. Similarly, the true object of architecture is not bricks, mortar, or timber, but the house; and so the principal object of natural philosophy is not the material elements, but their composition, and the totality of the form, independently of which they have no existence. — De Partibus Animalium, Book I.
But this is not a question the Darwinist asks at all.
I find these passages so lovely!
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