Stuff I Think Is Important - Part II: The Question

[Amittai]

... Maybe I was too guarded in my approach. Maybe the damage is done, and it's too late.

It's only a matter of days since you started these threads. One about philosophy, one about the application of models in "evolution", one about some proposed equations around life forms (and others). Great! It's never too late for inference! Inference, like love, never ends.

You could relate the threads to each other, more explicitly. And keep on inviting further contributions. Minutes ago, I posted many of "my" answers to these questions, somewhere. Shall cross-refer.

 

[Amittai]

... This is a very complex problem, and if I just give you the answer, you're bound to misinterpret it, because the answer looks deceptively simple. ... I guess I'll let that go. It's gonna happen. I was getting ready to start another thread where I just start plopping down equations and you guys can have at it.

In your other thread we weren't misinterpreting it because we were pointing out it isn't as simple as it might be made to look. I think we weren't sure whether you were over-simplifying, yourself.

May I make a request - that you juxtapose several equations dealing with different matters, in the same post, rather than introduce them serially and without having commented on our responses to the previous? These procedures, will permit a more rounded discussion and view.

Please expect the unexpected, in answers from forum members!

Your present thread here is essentially about how we should improve the concept of "evolution".

 

[Amittai]

... But what motivation do I have for answering it? Almost none. Why is that? 1

If you understood Part I, as an instrumentalist, when addressing the field of evolution, my point of approach would be: Is evolution an efficacious model? It's not a model I really like, but, yeah, as far as empirical models go, it works. If my only interest is curing disease, increasing food production - those types of things - it's an effective instrument. 2

For a Realist or Platonist Christian that causes cognitive dissonance, so they reject the model. For an Instrumentalist that doesn't happen.

... Suppose I could come up with an alternative to evolution that fits within the scope of the question. If it is as equally mechanistic 3 as evolution, equally has no need for God, what have I accomplished? Nothing ... maybe. My one possible motivation would be philosophical instead of theological - to convince people the largely empirical approach to evolution is lacking and in need of a much more rigorous archetype 1.

Do I think God created everything? Yes. Do I think the "real" means were different from evolution? Yes. But it's impossible to demonstrate that when the question is scoped to eliminate God from the outset. Would ID work had the question allowed it? No. ID, while I think it is an interesting and creative idea, in the end, has some insurmountable issues, scientifically speaking. 4

Do I think evolution poses some theological problems? Yes. But that is a discussion for Christians. I don't see why it would interest non-believers.

A scattering of comments from me:

1. My own motivation for self-teaching in sciences is exceedingly strong: my admiration for the world around me.

2. What is commonly grouped as "evolution" contains issues only loosely related in reality.

3. How the world and life came about, is not mechanistic, at all. Uniformitarianism does not fit any of the facts.

4. Scientists Confront ed Petto & Godfrey pubd Norton 2007 contains contributions on this. I would like to sneak the phrase "intelligible configuration" up on the timid. Another resource I was using (not to hand at the moment) is the Cambridge Companion to Darwinism second ed. Darwin himself didn't know consistently what he was getting at.

Survival Of The Fittest is Spencer's. As S J Gould pointed out what we have at the end of the day is survival of the survivors of contingency. Equations have got to include elements for contingencies. Equations have also got to include the damping & stabilising factors playing in the interim (which even affect the aesthetics of organisms).

 

[Amittai]

... But, at a philosophical level, they are not measuring acceleration. They are measuring the charge in a crystal - or, more specifically, the voltage. As with most scientific measurements, when you drill all the way down, you are usually measuring only a few very basic quantities. In most cases, all you're really measuring is a displacement.

From there, you assume a model of some kind to equate that displacement to whatever you claim to be measuring. In the case of an accelerometer, a small mass of known value is assumed to accelerate and apply a force to a crystal, thereby causing a deflection of the crystal, which is known to produce a voltage proportional to the deflection. The deflection of the crystal can be related to a force, and the force can be related to an acceleration.

You're assuming F = ma is true. While no one is going to challenge that, the point is, if some mad scientist were going to do an experiment of some new hypothesis that claims something other than F = ma, you certainly shouldn't use accelerometers to make measurements for that experiment. When you're on the bleeding edge of science, you need to be very, very careful about those kinds of things.

Part of my career was spent working on machine control, and what I saw really bothered me. Controls engineer Carl designs a control system. Programmer Paul then turns it into code that only vaguely resembles what Carl designed. Test engineer Tim then goes into the lab and changes numbers until it appears to him the machine is stable. But what Tim does is just guessing and/or experience regarding which numbers to change. There is ... no guiding principle. And in the mind of an extreme empiricist (as I would label them) that's OK. In his mind he followed a scientific method. He has a hypothesis that changing a number from 7.3 to 9.1 will make the machine stable. He tests it. The machine tests stable. ...

The examples in the engineering works and in disease control are not closely analogous to the origins of life. Moreover the three engineers have had small tasks delegated. I agree you should be "bothered" about the risk of loss of the big picture, between them.

In regard to new hypotheses about intermittent acceleration in mutations and exterminatory catastrophes, we indeed haven't been using the uniformitarian "crystal voltage detector". But this isn't reflected in disease control.

Fascinatingly, one thing all three areas have in common, in different ways, is the crystalline!