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Let’s be very clear: this Stephen Meyer is *NOT* a biologist. His PhD is in physics.

I guess if I could come up with some ludicrous claim about physics, I could write books on it and make lots of money, too. After all, I have a PhD after my name—and it’s in science—so that makes me perfectly qualified to write about physics.

Whatever the hype about this book, I don’t expect most scientists are even going to notice it. We have our hands full with, you know, actual science.

Let’s be very clear: this Stephen Meyer is *NOT* a biologist. His PhD is in physics.

In my view, things will never be the same in Biology since the Physicists and Mathematicians were invited to the table. And that's a good thing because they approach the same issues from different aspects.

Many biologists consider physical laws, artificial life, robotics, and even theoretical biology as largely irrelevant for their research. In the 1970s, a prominent molecular geneticist asked me, "Why do we need theory when we have all the facts?" At the time I dismissed the question as silly, as most physicists would. However, it is not as silly as the converse question, Why do we need facts when we have all the theories? These are actually interesting philosophical questions that show why trying to relate biology to physics is seldom of interest to biologists, even though it is of great interest to physicists. 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. Ernst Mayr (1997) believes this difference is severe enough to separate physical and biological models: "Yes, biology is, like physics and chemistry, a science. But biology is not a science like physics and chemistry; it is rather an autonomous science on a par with the equally autonomous physical sciences."

There are fundamental reasons why physics and biology require different levels of models, the most obvious one is that physical theory is described by rate-dependent dynamical laws that have no memory, while evolution depends, at least to some degree, on control of dynamics by rate-independent memory structures. A less obvious reason is that Pearson's "corpuscles" are now described by quantum theory while biological subjects require classical description in so far as they function as observers. This fact remains a fundamental problem for interpreting quantum measurement, and as I mention below, this may still turn out to be essential in distinguishing real life from macroscopic classical simulacra. I agree with Mayr that physics and biology require different models, but I do not agree that they are autonomous models. Physical systems require many levels of models, some formally irreducible to one another, but we must still understand how the levels are related. Evolution also produces hierarchies of organization from cells to societies, each level requiring different models, but the higher levels of the hierarchy must have emerged from lower levels. Life must have emerged from the physical world. This emergence must be understood if our knowledge is not to degenerate (more than it has already) into a collection of disjoint specialized disciplines.

The Physics of Symbols: Bridging the Epistemic Cut

Truly, there is a big difference between historical sciences (evolution theory, archeology, anthropology, Egyptology) and other disciplines of science (physics, chemistry, etc.)

To the observer, it is as if the historical sciences construct a blueprint based on quantized historical data (fossils, artifacts, etc.) and thereafter associate new findings into that blueprint. If the finding cannot be fit, then the blueprint must change.

The historical record is not continuous, e.g. not every living thing left a fossil in the geologic record. The bottom line is that historical sciences deal with quantizations of a presumed continuum (the theory.) Other disciplines of science, deal with the theory itself - which mostly can be recreated under laboratory conditions, i.e. put to an empirical test. Or in the alternative, continuing observations can accrue to the merit of the theory, e.g. quantum field theory.

Or more simply put, to the historical sciences the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence whereas to the "hard" sciences the reverse is true, the absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

Biologists have always invited chemists to the table. But the dynamics of evolution theory has changed since the discovery of DNA and subsequently, the biologists inviting physicists and mathematicians (especially information theorists) to the table. That is the underlying theme of Pattee’s point about the physics of symbols, the epistemic cut.

Let's be very clear: this Stephen Meyer is *NOT* a biologist. His PhD is in physics.

Clear? Have you even read his bio, much less his books? His PhD from the University of Cambridge is in Philosophy of Science....not Physics. His undergraduate degree is in Geophysics. Is that clear enough?

I guess.......Yes you did.

Whatever the hype about this book, I don't expect........

I see how you arrive at your conclusions. What is not clear is, 'Why the anger'.

Let's be very clear: this Stephen Meyer is *NOT* a biologist. His PhD is in physics.

Clear? Have you even read his bio, much less his books? His PhD from the University of Cambridge is in Philosophy of Science....not Physics. His undergraduate degree is in Geophysics. Is that clear enough?

I guess.......Yes you did.

Whatever the hype about this book, I don't expect........

I see how you arrive at your conclusions. What is not clear is, 'Why the anger'.