According to Wikipedia materialism is a form of physicalism.

Physicalism is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things.

Are you a materialist Why? Why not? Does materialism or physicalism correlate to reality? How would you know?

Or are you an advocate for naturalism? If so then why naturalism and not materialism? Or is it both?

Michael Egnor wrote Materialism of the Gaps at Evolution News & Views. Quoting Egnor:

I must say that I’ve never understood the rhetorical force of the ‘God of the Gaps’ argument. The God of the Gaps sneer is invoked to imply the inexorability of materialism as a complete explanation in natural science. Any critique of materialist dogma in science from a design or immaterial perspective is derided as a 'God of the Gaps' argument. But the real issue is the gaps, which are plentiful and very wide.

Egnor puts his finger on the real issue. Perhaps he does not understand those attracted to the phrase because he does not perceive the mindless, robot-like mentality leading one to fall back on cliches. More from Egnor:

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Mother of Six has Octuplets

I presume everyone here has heard about the birth of a litter of eight to a 33-year old woman in California who already has six children ranging in age from 7 to 2-year old twins. The babies – 6 boys and 2 girls – were delivered 9 weeks prematurely and weigh anywhere from 1 pound 8 ounces to 3 pounds 4 ounces, all but one are breathing on their own. All are receiving fluids, proteins and vitamins intravenously, and all are expected to survive.

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Chuck Colson wrote a commentary titled The Proper Role of Science. Although I agree with his general thrust I have some minor reservations about it. For example, increased grants for research go beyond embryonic stem cell research although that is included. Since abortion was recently debated in another thread I wish to focus the attention of this blog entry on other points. I know stems cells and abortion can be debated separately but the same underlying values mark the differences of the two sides. Quoting Colson:

As Nancy Pearcey and I write in our book, How Now Shall We Live?, scientism has its roots in Darwinism. Tufts University professor Daniel Dennett writes that Darwinism, rightly understood, is a “universal acid” that dissolves away all traditional moral, metaphysical, and religious beliefs. For if humans have evolved by a material, purposeless process, then there is no basis for believing in a God who created us and revealed moral truths, or imposing those moral views in any area of life.

Dennett is using a common tactic—using science as a weapon to shoot down religious faith. The standard assumption is that science is objective knowledge, while religion is an expression of subjective need. Religion, therefore, must subordinate its claims about the world to whatever science decrees.

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This thread began as an off-topic offshoot of Bradford's post, Guided Pathways. Please discuss here instead. Read the rest of this entry »

Tom Gilson has a blog entry titled Knowledge and Bias: A First Response to Tom Clark One striking aspect of the exchange between Tom Gilson and Tom Clark is its substantive dialog and the civil nature of it. My focus is a small part of it, specifically a portion of a comment made by Tom Clark. The first quoted comment segment:

That prediction doesn’t stem from a naturalistic bias, but from the nature of science and more generally the project of gaining intersubjective knowledge: understanding things and their connections tends to unify our view of the world, and the world that science reveals is what we ordinarily call nature. I also say that “Should something categorically immaterial someday play a role in scientific explanations, so be it, but for the time being there’s no indication that dualism will carry the day.”

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Science tipped to score in Obama cash stimulus raises some issues about the role of scientists in policy making. This subtitle follows:

Researchers jockey for a piece of the US economic package.

Researchers have become one of many special interest groups seeking money from the public trough. Science occupies a unique position though compared to competing interest groups. Science is viewed by much of the public as a source of objective data. Policy makers use that data and technical guidance to formulate governmental policies. Governmental policies (in theory) are based on promoting the general welfare. Determining what constitutes the general welfare is linked to consensus values held by society (in theory). Those values cannot be a function of scientific data alone. They are ultimately linked to moral and ethical norms as well as practical matters like how much money is available. In reality policy decisions can be influenced by who supplies campaign funds or other forms of assistence helpful in retaining one's political office. Quoting from the first paragraph:

The US research community stands to gain billions of dollars in funding, as Democratic leaders in Washington DC seek to lay the foundation for a greener, more competitive economy in a $750-billion stimulus package.

Policy decisions entail designating priorities and deciding how much funding is to be alloted to cancer research as compared with say environmental concerns. It is not the task of science to determine relative values. It is the job of science to furnish policy makers with information and when needed interpret the data. Caution is required so as not to blur boundary lines.

Over at Evolution Engineered, I issued a challenge to critics of front-loaded evolution (FLE) who have not read The Design Matrix:

If you read DM, I'll read a book of your choice.

As of right now, one critic has taken me up on my challenge.

Here at TT, it appears that most critics have not read The Design Matrix. Therefore, I issue the same same challenge here*. The only stipulation I have is that the book of your choice is of comparable price to The Design Matrix.

[Edit: I should also mention another critic at EE was reading The Design Matrix before I made the challenge.]

*Endless Forms Most Beautiful has already been taken.

Evolution Under Intrinsic Control is a blog entry at Mike Gene's The Design Matrix. Mike begins by noting that "antibiotic resistant bacteria has long been used as a classic example of Darwinian evolution in action." He then focuses on a study by Floyd Romesberg and colleagues which puts a new twist on the resistence theme. Quoting Mike:

The twist is this: in this case, mutations don’t “just happen” – bacteria make sure they happen. That is, the evolution of antibiotic resistance is not simply the passive process of selection screening through the available variability. On the contrary, bacteria respond to the insult by making sure there is a plentiful source of variability to screen.

In this study, it was determined that bacterial input was essential to the evolution of antibiotic resistance. In other words, the cellular process of “making sure there is a plentiful source of variability to screen” is exactly what is needed to evolve antibiotic resistance.

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January 20, 2009

In writing Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness, authors Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner seemed to have two goals. First to provide an honest, straightforward understanding of the fundamental aspects of the quantum world as opposed to the classical world. Second, to graciously and even-handedly explain why these aspects both seem to 'encounter consciousness' and why, despite this, there is a strong tendency for physicists to prefer the matter remain downplayed – if it needs to be mentioned at all.

They've succeeded. What's more, their book is uniquely useful not only to better understand what could be called the foundational weirdness of quantum physics (and in a way pleasantly free of overt mysticism or exaggeration) but also to get a glimpse of what happens when scientific research doesn't return results friendly to the reigning metaphysics.

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The article about the evolutionary history of body size on Earth has raised some interest. Words like "latent evolutionary potential was realized", "realize preexisting evolutionary potential" and" a major innovation in organismal complexity—first the eukaryotic cell and later eukaryotic multicellularity" seem to have raised a few eye brows. Are "latent", "pre-existing", "innovation" and "potential" the appropriate words?

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The Varieties of Crackpot Experience is a gutless article carried by a mainstream publication and authored by someone who calls himself Sean (no last name). I ordinarily have no problem with pseudonyms or the use of first names only (if Sean is really his first name). Apparently it is. I'm told this is none other than Sean Carroll, a theoretician good at imagining non-existent Galilean metaphors. There are occasions for personal attacks and this Sean writes for a mainstream publication spouting mostly mainstream views. Is his career endangered by this? Hardly. Unless he believes the type of article linked to reflects badly on him. So what's wrong? Quoting:

Frank Tipler is a crackpot.

He can't resist this. The first sentence no less. Sean vs. Frank Tipler in the Discovery octagon. Sean's a brave man. Sean also writes:

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Cass Sunstein has been selected to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Here is one view of Sunstein and here is another. He has supporters and detractors representing a broad part of the political spectrum. Surprisingly he has some support from conservative sources. I think there is much truth in this quote from the WSJ article:

In other work, Mr. Sunstein has developed the concept of an "availability cascade" — the way in which ideas gain prominence simply by being prominent, until we take their truth for granted.

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Approximately thirty years ago, the design methodology for structural engineers was deterministic. Discrete values were used to define loads/demand (D) and resistances/capacity (R). In the Working Stress Design method (WSD), a design was considered satisfactory if the ratio of R to D (representing the nominal resistance and nominal demand, respectively) was greater than or equal to a prescribed factor of safety, whose minimum value was based on engineering experience and was different depending on the structural element being designed. There are drawbacks to the WSD method*, one of which is it doesn’t adequately account for the variability inherent in R and D.

Today, most structural engineers incorporate probabilistic design into a new design philosophy called Limit State Design (LSD). From my graduate class notes:

“[LSD] is a design philosophy that requires the designer to recognize the various limit states for his/her structure and design to reduce the probability of each of these limit states being exceeded to an acceptably low level.”

It is now widely recognised that there are uncertainties in determining both R and D. Uncertainties in D (loads/demand) are due to the fact that they may vary depending on location and time (eg. there are no snow loads in summer, change of use). Different types of loads acting in combination serve to increase the amount uncertainty. There are three main factors that affect uncertainties in R (resistance/capacity): geometry, material properties and theory. The geometry of the member may be different than assumed during design (this is especially commonplace for cast-in-place concrete members). Similarly, material properties, such as strength, may be different than assumed. The strength of the member is determined using simplified equations that may not exactly represent the behaviour, which can be quite complex.

The range of values for R and D are assumed to be represented by lognormal distribution curves (See Figure 1). This assumption has been found to be reasonable because of the control of material properties and positive skewness of known load distribution curves. When R and D are plotted on the same graph, the location of the non-zero probability of failure is the region where the two curves overlap (D > R). This method of determining the likelihood of failure is known as statistical interference.

A convenient way to assess the probability of failure (D > R) is to consider a single lognormal distribution curve called the safety margin or S, where S = R – D (see Figure 2). The portion of the curve on the negative side of the graph (D > R) represents the probability of failure. This location is bound by bs_S where b is the safety or reliability index and s_S is the standard deviation for S. Figure 2 implies the higher b is, the lower the probability of failure will be.

However, most engineers (including myself) prefer to use deterministic values rather than probability distributions in their design calculations. Thus, the LSD method uses nominal values of D and R that are multiplied by load and resistance factors, respectively, that incorporate a low probability of failure. For a design to pass, the factored resistance must be greater than or equal to the factored demand, or f R ≥ aD, where f is the resistance factor (generally less than 1) and a is the load factor (generally greater than 1). The equations for f and a are derived using the lognormal distribution curve S (Figure 2) along with statistical mathematics and algebra. Thus, when engineers use the LSD, they can use discrete (nominal) values for R and D while accounting for uncertainties using load factors that were developed using probabilistic design theory.

Now that we've seen how structural engineers make use of probability theory in their designs, let's shift gears a bit. Is it plausible that the engineering method used to design life's biodiversity was based on probabilistic design? A piece of supporting evidence is that several evolutionary mechanisms tend to be stochastic processes, which means their behaviour could be potentially represented by distribution curves (normal, lognormal, or other). Thus, these curves have the potential to be incorporated into an engineering design methodology to design the first life form to evolve according to a preconceived plan (i.e. design objective).

I’m not alone in suggesting probabilistic design could have been part of the engineering design method used by a front-loading engineer.

“Life’s designer may have also made an intelligent use of chance. …the bait could have been the entire cell, or set of heterogeneous cells. What the blind watchmaker could subsequently find was then constrained by the carefully chosen initial conditions. …life’s initial conditions [may] have been rigged by the design of the cell’s architecture and the choice of which components to employ.” (emphasis mine)

The Design Matrix, Chapter 7, p. 153

The terms “bait” or “baiting evolution” are mentioned (in one form or another) several times in Chapter 7. IMO, this suggests that a front-loading engineer could use stochastic properties of evolutionary mechanisms to design the structure of the first life forms to achieve certain design objectives (my apologies to Mike if this was not his intended message).

Let me be clear. I am not suggesting that probabilistic design was actually used by a front-loading engineer. I am only saying this is an intriguing, yet plausible, option that deserves a closer look.

*This is not to say that structures designed to WSD were unsafe and are ready to collapse at any moment. Quite the opposite: WSD would generally lead to “overly” safe, robust, and (more often than not) costly structures as compared to structures designed using LSD method.