Got it.

MY only "charge" against Sheldrake, on the contrary, is that of pseudo-science.

On what basis? What exactly is "psuedo-science" supposed to mean, anyway? Is it just a term of derision by the institution of mainstream science against those it dislikes, or is there a clear definition that can distinguish "real science" from "pseudo-science"

As a related point, are you aware of Sheldrake's background as a highly-respected biologist and director of a research program at Cambridge, as well as one with impeccable publication credits before his "heresy"

Comparing someone to Lysenko is like comparing someone to Himmler. He was a mass murderer who used his position of power to liquidate his intellectual opposition. [MatthewCromer (February 26th, 2006 at 10:16 pm)]

OK, I agree that even hinting at any kind of association of Lysenko's name to that of your friend Sheldrake was not nice on my part. But let's distinguish, if you don't mind. Lysenko not only was a pseudo-scientist, but he also took advantage of the soviet power system in the most abominable way:

Lysenko was put in charge of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Soviet Union and made responsible for ending the propagation of "harmful" ideas among Soviet scientists. Lysenko served this purpose faithfully, causing the expulsion, imprisonment, and death of hundreds of scientists and the demise of genetics (a previously flourishing field) throughout the Soviet Union. This period is known as Lysenkoism. He bears particular responsibility for the death of the greatest Soviet biologist, Nikolai Vavilov, at the hands of the NKVD. [Wikipedia: "Trofim Lysenko"]

MY only "charge" against Sheldrake, on the contrary, is that of pseudo-science.

I'm not sure what the word "paranormal" is supposed to mean, other than phenomena that you personally believe don't exist. Trying to create a "rule" where you exclude emperical research into certain topics because they might offend journal editors is the exact opposite of the spirit of scientific inquiry. Those who espouse such are behaving dogmatically and not scientifically, no matter what sheepskins might be hanging on their walls.

That depends on what you mean by "mix the two views together," and you are a bit vague there.

It means what it sounds like. Instead of saying that a particular pattern was inevitable, you'd say that it was just more probable than not. But this would still imply something like the WEASEL program, just with a weaker genetic algorithm. And if you say that the pattern was more likely to not happen, then you start appealing more to chance.

It also depends on what you would consider to be identical outcomes from running evolution again and what you would consider to be wildly different outcomes.

I intentionally left that stuff out, because this entry was meant to be a thought-provoker, not an answer to the question. I intended for the reader to think about what would constitute identical outcomes and what would not, and other such issues. However, note what I pointed out above:

"You can also argue that everything that needs explaining is reasonably attributable to chance (good luck), or that nothing needs explaining (which amounts to either total existential skepticism, or the belief that the organization of life is a brute fact). Both positions cut natural selection out of the loop."

Arguing that all or most outcomes are identical would be a way of saying that nothing needs to be explained. Or you could try to broaden out what you consider identical to the point that each pattern in need of explaining is sufficiently broad to be explainable by chance.

That, I think, is the primary issue - figuring out what exactly needs to be explained and why. After all, you need to know what needs to be explained before you can explain it.

you have obviously invested a lot, both intellectually and emotionally, in Dr. Sheldrake's approach. It's a pity that your reaction to my comment is so heated and personal. Thank you, anyway, for giving further info about Dr. Sheldrake's ideas and activities.

I have got nothing in principle about even the most heterodox approaches, like Dr. Sheldrake's views on Telepathy (and by easy inference, all kind of "psi" phenomena). Even Dr. Sheldrake does not seem to hesitate to resort to the expression "fringe science", for the type of research he feels more inclined to.

For my part, let me say once again that, as a matter of method (and style) I prefer to stick to Dickerson's Rule #1, very much like a like to a "Professional Rule" for Scientists:

"Gentlemen [and Ladies, so g arago will consider this statement more "politically correct"] who deal in Natural Sciences shouldn't get involved with inner entities [and paranormal phenomena] of any description. If they suspect their presence, they are supposed to call on Philosophers and Theologians to deal with them". [Servetus]

The merit of a scientific theory are its consonance with the evidence, not whether or not the ideas "disturbingly loom" as threats to a popular worldview whose devotees cannot imagine anything beyond it.

[1.] In fact, under this [determined] view, selection isn't even "natural selection" per se, but rather a form of artificial selection, because, like dog breeding and WEASEL, it actually does have a goal.

[2.] We've been fooled into thinking the Darwinian mechanism is an improvement on chance, when in fact it just spreads the chance out a little over time.

Deuce,

what you call "polar opposite pictures of Darwinism" are nothing but Chance and Necessity, and it does not take much imagination to conclude that we are still (people are still) groping with the two ingredients of Jacques Monod's chief work Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology (New York, Alfred A Knopf, 1971, ISBN 0394466152).

You say, with regard to Chance and Necessity:

So, what other options are there? Well, you can try to mix the two views together. But this doesn't solve your problems, it simply gives you a combination of the problems from both views. To the degree that the outcome of any particular pattern that needs explaining is certain, you need to account for the rules that made it so. To the degree that it isn't, you're appealing to chance.

Well, I think we must locate Monod's work in its time, to appreciate fully its impact. Unlike IDers, possibly Monod does not resort to the notion of information, but approaches the problem from a thermodynamic angle. Norbert Wiener, the founder of cybernetics had already, since the "˜forties, recognized Information as just another way of looking at "order within a system" (whether artificial or natural). This is reflected by the title of his groundbreaking book Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (MIT Press, 1948).

Monod was confronted with the necessity of giving new coherence and consistency to the very foundations of the Theory of Evolution, which, since its formal birth in 1859 with Darwin's Origin of Species, has been confronted, without fully metabolizing them, with a host of novelties that Darwin could not even have the faintest notion of: and namely, the Laws of Genetics, the discovery of the highly organized structure of the cell (hardly "protoplasm" at all), the identification of the main biochemical ingredients of the cell, viz. proteins and nucleic acids, the discovery of the structure of DNA, the "code of life", real turning point of biological science. And finally, the identification of the "genes" as sequences in the DNA.

It is this modern evolutionary synthesis, this s.c. neo-Darwinism, of which Monod set to reorganize the conceptual foundations. It is from Wiener that Monod derives the equivalence between the thermodynamic order of an organism (the opposite of entropy=disorder, thence the expression neg-entropy). The original conceptual contribution of Monod is precisely to combine Chance and Necessity. In essence the idea is the following:

Chance, that is the "roulette" of random mutations of genes, provides the "raw material" upon which the constraints of General Natural Laws + Specific Environment work to select the "random inventions" of Nature that, occasionally, may prove fitter to the environment than the existing genotype, the "random inventions" that occasionally (among a host of random dysfunctional mutations) may outsmart the "genetic status quo". Monod also notices something fundamental: repetition and conservation is the rule, mutation and novelty is the exception. But because the rare "smart" mutation is interspersed among repetitions, and is only selected if functionally more adapted to the environment than the "genetic establishment", mutation & selection process can have a cumulative character.

Is Monod's Chance & Necessity model of Evolution true?

The new conceptual fremework that ID is developing, not so much the quasi-idealistic lucubrations, but, most of all, the empirical evidence (if corroborated) of Irreducible Complexity put serious doubts on Monod's brilliant conceptual construction. But, IMHO, Monod's model is the only rationally acceptable one (for ToE, of course, not within ID), if we want to remain in the domain of science proper.

Otherwise, the "new "versions of Lamackism, Lysenkoism, or even Teilhardism, are already disturbingly looming back on stage, maybe fancily renamed as "morphogenetic fields", "formative causation", "morphic resonance" or, with pure voodoo twist, even resorting to the Jungian "collective unconscious".

Note for the Webmaster

I have notice d that this thread, as it is "Uncategorized", is not monitored in the "Recent Comments" column, and in the "Latest Activities >Comments" area of the "Dashboard" page. I am sure that this can easily be sorted out.

There is also a great deal of evidence that Lamarkian-type effects occur in evolution, which is contradictory to orthodox Darwinian evolution.