Posted on 06/15/2003 10:36:08 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
From:HLMencken( http://www.geocities.com/danielmacryan/oldbooks.html#nietzsche6)
This period of diligent but groping inquiry kept on for a couple of centuries and before the beginning of the French revolution a vast mass of facts had been accumulated. Bacon, Nicolas of Cusa and Machiavelli had put common-sense into ethics; the physicians had begun to know not a little about the human machine; through the efforts of Althusius, Mariana and others the old superstitions about the divine rights of kings and princes were dying out; Adam Smith was preparing to unearth the forces which made for national welfare, and a host of impious doubters were examining the current schemes of religion and showing their absurdity. The French revolution then made its blinding flash and after that the air was clear. Since the latter part of the 18th century, indeed, our whole outlook upon the universe has been changed. We have learned to judge things, not by their respectability and holiness, but by their essential truth. It is now possible, not only to approach facts with an unbiased mind, but also to make critical examinations of ideas: i.e., to consider the human mind itself as a living organism and to examine, not only its functions, but also its growth.
Comte, a Frenchman, was the first to perform this last feat with any success. He looked back over the history of the human race and found that it had progressed through three intellectual stages.((3)) During the first stage, men ascribed every act in the universe to the direct interposition of the deity. During the second, they tried to analyze this deity's motives, and so endeavored to learn why things happened: why the sun rose every morning, why one man was white and another black, one tall and another short; why everyone had to die. During the last stage, they began to realize that this inquiry was futile and that the answer would be out of their reach for all eternity. Then they turned from asking why and began to ask how. In a word, they began to accept the universe as it was and to content themselves with learning all they could about its workings and about the invariable laws which controlled these workings.
Personal Homepage-http://home.bellsouth.net/p/PWP-tat
Because Pi is a defined constant, not a contingent quantity.
I've seen Pax-6 described both as a regulatory gene and a master control gene. This article calls it the eye gene, but perhaps more appropriately the eyeless gene. When it is expressed, it says to "make eyes."
So what would happen if a mouse eye gene was introduced into a fruit fly genome? When the researchers induced expression of the mouse Pax-6 gene in the Drosophila fruit fly, additional (fly) eyes sprouted at the sites of the gene expression.
"The observation that mammals and insects, which have evolved separately for more than 500 million years, share the same master control gene for eye morphogenesis indicates that the genetic control mechanisms of development are much more universal than anticipated," note the researchers.
The eyeless gene appears to produce a protein that appears to be a transcription factor. The current hypothesis is that when expresses, this protein binds to a specific set of genes and basically says 'make eyes'. The discovery of this 'master control gene' will help researchers coordinate the extensive data they already have on some of the genes involved with the development of vision, and will also probably reveal the presence of many other vision-associated genes.
Why would they overwhelming mutate, randomly, in the same way? Sounds more like "pre programmed adaptation capability" to me - more like the above article describes.
Indeed pi is a constant.
The Aristotle-Hawking side of the forum goes "yawn" - and dumps it into the anthropic principle with all the other mysterious constants, 'nuff said.
Meanwhile, the Plato-Penrose side of the forum wonder at the geometry. The mathematicians discovered circles - and their properties, they say, they sure didn't invent them. They were already there. But why? And why is it universal, the same everywhere?
Master control genes are regulatory genes.
Why would they overwhelming mutate, randomly, in the same way?
That's a good question and open for exploration. It's a highly adaptive direction to mutate, and other mutations may be very deleterious, that is, evolutionary options may be limited. Some suggest horizontal gene transfer in the same way that bacteria share antibiotic resistance genes. We don't know yet, but there are quite a number of people doing research in this area.
Sounds more like "pre programmed adaptation capability" to me...
What sort of evidence is there for "pre programmed adapation capability"? This front-loading idea is a favorite of IDists, but what is a plausible scenario for it? How does it work at the molecular level?
There isn't any sort of mathematics which corresponds to evolutionism. That's basically the realm of pure fiction.
Getting back to the question at hand though. The evidence of "pre programmed adaptation capability" is in the research on Pax-6.
In support of evolution theory, the capability for eyeness may have been "built in" to the common ancestor by happenstance and passed along to all descendants. This would do injury to the random mutation pillar, but leaves the rest of evolution theory untouched.
In support of intelligent design, the capability would be endowed as an adaptation building block to all primary life forms. And from there it would be passed on as the species evolve. The difference between this and prior is a matter of causation, a mathy subject.
In support of creationism, the capability would be endowed as an adaptation building block to all primary life forms by special creation without evolution at all.
Just my two cents…
In addition to the ones Doctor Stochastic mentioned, I'd like to offer these two sites so you can investigate the matter as you wish:
Front-loading is an ID concept regarding evolution.
Moreover, my adventures in biology have been at your suggestion and by your leads. Naturally, I followed the math/physics/information theory legs.
You seem to have a keen interest in evolution. Evolution is biology. Regarding your zeal to apply math or metaphysics to biology, I've merely suggested, with some specific pointers, that you learn something about the field you wish to apply it to.
Do you have an internet location to pick up interdisciplinary work in that area?
PubMed gives public access to the MEDLINE database (NIH). BioMedNet is another database with public access. You can check NCBI, they list a couple of databases. I'm tunneled via an academic computer and I haven't tried accessing scientific literature databases outside of that but you can try the various literature databases you can google and see which ones will give you access.
There are so many journals and articles discussing math in biology (afterall, most of the important questions in biology today are addressed only with mathematical tools). If you really want to learn the application of math to biology, esp. with respect to evolution, the body of work is a large one and there is no need to restrict yourself to a few poor souls who have managed to provide you with a soundbite against evolution.
Ah, I see you've found some of your own sources! (Now, if you'd only read some of their math...) Janet Sinsheimer at UCLA does a fair amount of work in evolution. The bioinformatics group there is heavily into evolution research.
Moreover, my views are my own based on my own research and thus I can discuss them thoroughly.
I'm sorry, it's hard to tell if you've read any of it. I just go by what I see in your posts. On a thread where you promise to bring math and physics to the table, all I see is metaphysics and a heavy dose of name-association.
You can be as biased as you want to be. Absolutely. I'm biased as well. I like to make others aware that there is a whole world of mathematical evolutionary mathematical biology out there that fully supports current paradigms in evolution..
Schutzenberger speaks to this:
"If one starts from an evolutionary point of view, it must be acknowledged that in one manner or another, the earliest fish contained the capacity, and the appropriate neural wiring, to bring into existence organs which they did not possess or even need, but which would be the common property of their successors when they left the water for the firm ground, or for the air."
Why would the primaeval fish "naturally select" for functions/capabilities that it didn't need to improve its survival fitness? Did the fish "know" that its "descendents" leaving the water would need such capabilities, and thus "thoughtfully," providentially provided for this exigency via natural selection -- a selection for capabilities that it didn't need and couldn't use anyway?
It appears to me (following Schutzenberger's suggestion) that natural selection is not the "universal key" of biological evolution that turns every lock: It seems there must be other factor(s) at work as well.
In this regard, Wolfram's remark seems on-point:
"...indeed there is every indication that the level of complexity of individual parts of organisms has not changed much in at least several hundred million years. So this suggests that somehow the complexity we see must arise from some straightforward and general mechanism and not, for example, from a mechanism that relies on elaborate refinement through a long process of biological evolution...."
On this thread, I am trying to present the highlights of what I have discovered along the way, from learning and researching the debates on Free Republic. None of the excerpts agree with my conclusion fully much less directly --- and some are downright contrary, like the "summary of that view" link under "the consciousness debate."
But taken altogether it tells a story about how I arrived at the conclusions which I hold. My views are quite unique and I doubt if there is a single person on the forum who would agree with me to the gnat’s hair.
For instance, even though I support ID theory broadly from a math/physics research, doesn't mean I support everything it has to say. Jeepers, I don’t even know what ID theory has to say concerning microbiology.
My view on origins is likewise quite unique. For one thing, I see the universe is 15 billion years old and at the same time, I see that it was created by God in 6 days from his point-of-view in the inflationary model plus 6000 years from our point-of-view in the inflationary model. I see evidence of both intelligent design and evolution. I doubt if anyone here would agree with me to the gnat’s hair on that either. LOL!
For whatever offense I have caused by associating names, please accept my apology!
I get the strong impression ("Moreover, my views are my own based on my own research and thus I can discuss them thoroughly.") for a desire that certain things be kept off the table for these types of discussion.
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