21 Responses to “The Experiment Begins”

1. stunney Says:
   July 2nd, 2007 at 3:38 am

   Hey, that's no experiment. That's my life!:cool:

   To The Powers That Be:

   Below is a link to a very interesting and provocative essay with great relevance to many of the issues debated at TT, not least evolution. Worth a topic thread of its own, I suggest. Or will this one do? Anyhow, a taste…

   Does Mathematical Beauty Pose Problems for Naturalism?

   …..To the extent that this is true, the less of a miracle the success of mathematics would appear to be. Wigner, as a physicist, certainly lived with mathematics as an indispensable tool. But other sciences do not share their reliance on mathematics, at least to the extent that physics does. Biology, it is said, has not been successfully dissected by the mathematical scalpel.

   It seems to me, parenthetically, that this position is not obviously correct. A great deal of mathematical effort has been focused as of late on biological questions. A colleague of mine, for example, is currently looking at a Coxeter Groups as a model for DNA similarity. Also, knot theory, a newer branch of mathematics that deals with topological invariants, has had some success in the classification of DNA strands according to how they crinkle up under certain conditions. Even if we grant the argument, however, the success of mathematics in physics is something that cannot simply be dismissed by pointing to slower progress in other areas.

   Finally, Hamming posits that the evolution of man provided the model, meaning the model for why humans are able to mathematize the physical universe. This is an interesting claim, but is not fleshed out beyond Hamming's remark that, "Darwinian evolution would naturally select for survival those competing forms of life which had the best models of reality in their minds"”"˜best' meaning best for surviving and propagating." It is interesting to note that Hamming concludes with,
   If you recall that modern science is only about 400 years old, and that there have been from 3 to 5 generations per century, then there have been at most 20 generations since Newton and Galileo. If you pick 4,000 years for the age of science, generally, then you get an upper bound of 200 generations. Considering the effects of evolution we are looking for via selection of small chance variations, it does not seem to me that evolution can explain more than a small part of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.

   I do not find this refutation compelling. Just as an inclined block needs a critical slope to overcome its friction and begin sliding, and once the sliding starts it proceeds rather rapidly, so too one might argue that, once science started it progressed quickly, but the evolutionary development that occurred before this explosion cannot be discounted.

   But evolutionary accounts have problems as well. Let's briefly look at three such explanations. The first can be called the sexual selection hypothesis as argued by Geoffrey Miller. He claims that excessive capacities or acquisition of resources of any kind is basically a sexual display. If you've got the energy or time or intrinsic capacity to do things that don't have direct adaptive value"”carrying around a set of antlers that are so big they are more of a detriment than a defense, or a peacock walking around with a big colored tail, or possessing artistic or mathematical brains that don't contribute to reproductive success"”then that energy or time or intrinsic capacity by itself attracts mates.

   Of course, physical attributes may well have some role in mate attraction, and artistic brains may as well insofar as they enable people to make attractive artifacts for display. The argument for mathematical brains, however, does not seem to hold up as well. Miller has some ways of dealing with this problem. For example, he states, "The healthy brain theory suggests that our brains are different from those of other apes not because extravagantly large brains helped us to survive or to raise offspring, but because such brains are simply better advertisements of how good our genes are. The more complicated the brain, the easier it is to mess up." But how would a larger brain be evident, and how would one somehow deduce that this is evidence of good genes? Such speculation seems to be forcing a theory when there may be no good evidence to support it.

   Next is what we might call the module approach as argued by Stephen Mithin. Mithin writes from the perspective of an anthropologist, and has an enormous amount of archaeological data on which to draw. His thinking is that integrative and higher level (meta) cognitive processes grew out of the unification of specific evolutionary modules such as a module for tool use, or a module for interpersonal relations. He further argues that only in humans do we find a structure on top of modules"”call it general purpose rationality.

   This last approach has been extensively debated. For example, Alvin Plantinga's "Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism" claims that rationality is very unlikely a quality produced by survivability. Plantinga's approach, as he himself acknowledges, is similar to that found in C.S. Lewis's Miracles. Lewis's argument, incidentally, was recently enhanced by Victor Reppert in his book C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea. The thrust of Lewis's and Reppert's thinking is that you cannot get rationality out of a causally closed system that works solely on the basis of physical interactions operating in accordance with the laws of nature.

   This brings us to the byproduct hypothesis, as exemplified by Pascal Boyer, who argues against Lewis's and Reppert's view. His main thesis is that many higher cognitive functions (mathematics, art, religion, ethics, etc.) are not evolutionary adaptations at all. Instead, they are byproducts of things that are adaptive, and just piggyback on the adaptiveness of these other capacities. Some form of mathematical or quantitative ability is adaptive, Boyer argues, and as a byproduct of this we get the capacity to do higher order mathematics, the naked capacity of which at the time of its development wouldn't have been adaptive (or evolution wouldn't have known it was adaptive), though it may have turned out to have been adaptive.

   But I can't find any compelling evidence that would support Boyer in his contention, try as he might to produce one. His claim reminds me of scaffolding theories that are used to refute "Intelligent Design" arguments. If one is going to argue against something using an evolutionary framework, it behooves that person to supply a detailed model or story that will support such a refutation. Otherwise, the "God of the gaps" charge normally levied against design theorists can be turned around into, if you will, a "natural selection of the gaps" counter charge against the person arguing for blind chance natural selection…..
   

   Have at it.

Comment by stunney — July 2, 2007 @ 3:38 am

2. nickmatzke Says:
   July 2nd, 2007 at 4:29 am

   I don't suppose this means The Design Matrix is coming out sometime soon…

Comment by nickmatzke — July 2, 2007 @ 4:29 am

3. Aagcobb Says:
   July 2nd, 2007 at 10:54 am

   Hi stunney,

   His claim reminds me of scaffolding theories that are used to refute "Intelligent Design" arguments. If one is going to argue against something using an evolutionary framework, it behooves that person to supply a detailed model or story that will support such a refutation.

   Why? IDists don't supply any detail at all. We know a lot of details about how evolution works, so the fact that scientists have not yet filled in every single detail in every particular instance doesn't make IDism suddenly a legitimate alternative argument, since there isn't a single described example of design of any portion of a biological organism by an inhuman intelligence, ever.

   Otherwise, the "God of the gaps" charge normally levied against design theorists can be turned around into, if you will, a "natural selection of the gaps" counter charge against the person arguing for blind chance natural selection"¦..

   That may work philosophically, if you are arguing for theology as an alternative way of knowing to science. But science doesn't progress by arguing that goddidit is a legitimate alternative explanation to observable natural forces. We can be sure that there will be some things we will never be able to explain, but that will never make goddidit a scientific explanation.

   As for math, even a dog can do it (try to show your dog two treats, then give him only one), so I don't really understand why you would think this presents some kind of insurmountable problem for evolutionary theory; being able to do basic math offers obvious benefits. Once we reached the level of communicative skills that allowed knowledge to be preserved, then higher mathematical knowledge could build from what was already known, as in any other field.

Comment by Aagcobb — July 2, 2007 @ 10:54 am

4. Salvador T. Cordova Says:
   July 2nd, 2007 at 12:05 pm

   Open Thread. YAY!

   I wrote up a followup to Mike Gene's A Mystery of the Ages at Uncommon Descent: The best evolutionary biologists think about intelligent design.

   Johnnyb found the most interesting account which he alerted me to in the commnet section. He pointed to this article which proves Maynard-Smith co-authored and peer-reviewed an article by the Creationist George Price in the prestigous scientific journal, Nature.

   EARLY IN THE summer of 1970, at the age of forty-seven, Price underwent a sudden religious conversion. "On June 7th I gave in and admitted that God existed," he explained to friends"¦.

   One week later, he attended his first service at All Souls at Langham, a particularly evangelical branch of the Church of England, located around the corner from his apartment.

   Over the course of the next year, Price's scientific work was accompanied by a new passion "” biblical exegesis. Adopting a highly literal approach to the Bible,
   "¦
   Price made his final revisions to "The Logic of Animal Conflict" the following February. In a cover letter, he explained to Maynard Smith that he had made a few changes to accommodate his newfound belief in creationism. "I think I found wordings that you won't object to, and that won't shock Nature's readers by making them suspect what I believe," he wrote.
   "¦.
   In the fall of 1972, "The Logic of Animal Conflict," co-written by John Maynard Smith and George Price
   ..

   Good gravy. The plot thickens.

Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — July 2, 2007 @ 12:05 pm

5. Raevmo Says:
   July 2nd, 2007 at 12:41 pm

   Sal:

   He pointed to this article which proves Maynard-Smith co-authored and peer-reviewed an article by the Creationist George Price in the prestigous scientific journal, Nature.

   Ironically, Price converted after discovering an elegant mathematical formulation of natural selection, now known as the Price Equation. He considered his formula of such astonishing beauty that he literally called it a "miracle". He published his paper "selection and covariance" in Nature in 1970. As far as I know the only paper in Nature without a single reference to other work.

   Not that his conversion did him much good apparently. In 1974 he comitted suicide by snipping his carotid artery with nail scissors.

Comment by Raevmo — July 2, 2007 @ 12:41 pm

6. Salvador T. Cordova Says:
   July 2nd, 2007 at 1:12 pm

   Thanks for your thoughts Raevmo.

   For the interested readers, here is
   The Price Equation.

Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — July 2, 2007 @ 1:12 pm

7. Jehu Says:
   July 2nd, 2007 at 1:38 pm

   Ironically, Price converted after discovering an elegant mathematical formulation of natural selection, now known as the Price Equation. He considered his formula of such astonishing beauty that he literally called it a "miracle". He published his paper "selection and covariance" in Nature in 1970. As far as I know the only paper in Nature without a single reference to other work.

   Just to clarify, he was an athiest until 1970. His most significant work appears to have been published in the 1970-1973 time frame.

Comment by Jehu — July 2, 2007 @ 1:38 pm

8. Salvador T. Cordova Says:
   July 2nd, 2007 at 1:48 pm

   I think Price's death was a tragedy. I think he was overzealous for certain aspects of his faith that are not the practice of most Christian believers. I do hope that he is with the Lord today. But it is still an amazing story of his work with Maynard-Smith. I'm certain now that Price must have surely said a few things that remained in Maynard-Smith's mind.

Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — July 2, 2007 @ 1:48 pm

9. Raevmo Says:
   July 2nd, 2007 at 1:53 pm

   Jehu:

   Just to clarify, he was an athiest until 1970. His most significant work appears to have been published in the 1970-1973 time frame.

   If only more atheist scientists would convert, eh? Imagine the discoveries.

Comment by Raevmo — July 2, 2007 @ 1:53 pm

10. eric Says:
    July 2nd, 2007 at 7:35 pm

    Raevmo Says: Not that his conversion did him much good apparently. In 1974 he comitted suicide by snipping his carotid artery with nail scissors.

    I don't think we are in a position to see how much good it did him, but it is at least apparent that it deepened his heart and concern for the homeless, which may be related to the death as well.

    Some Wikipedia excerpts to fill out that aspect…

    [After his conversion] He then dedicated his life to helping the homeless, and invited many homeless people to live in his house. …

    He was eventually thrown out of his rented house due to a construction project in the area, which made him unhappy because he could no longer provide housing for the homeless. He moved to various squats in the North London area, where he committed suicide with a pair of nail scissors by slashing his throat at Christmas 1974. Friends said he committed suicide because of despondency over his inability to continue helping the homeless.

    A memorial service was held for Price in Euston (not in a church). The only persons present from academia were Hamilton and Maynard Smith, the other few mourners being those he had come to know him through his social work.

Comment by eric — July 2, 2007 @ 7:35 pm

11. stunney Says:
    July 2nd, 2007 at 7:44 pm

    Aagcobb wrote:

    Why? IDists don't supply any detail at all. We know a lot of details about how evolution works, so the fact that scientists have not yet filled in every single detail in every particular instance doesn't make IDism suddenly a legitimate alternative argument, since there isn't a single described example of design of any portion of a biological organism by an inhuman intelligence, ever.

    Your use of the word 'inhuman' is incorrect, as it connotes (very negative) ethical judgement. 'Non-human' is the correct term for what you want. Also, if you are seriously intending to make a negative ethical judgement, you would have to assume the existence of the entity so judged.

    I find fault also with the phrase 'described example of design'. As it stands, it's much too vague. For one thing, you don't specify (and this is common among the anti-ID camp) what you would count as an example of design in biology by a non-human intelligence. As far as I can tell, the answer from the anti-ID camp, shorn of its camouflaging and philosophically tendentious verbiage, is essentially: nothing would count, thus rendering the orthodox opinion immune to falsification.

    As for an example, I would say DNA is one such. From a scientific point of view, it is warranted to say, based on observationally derived and mathematically informed evidence, that DNA involves or constitutes a code; and also warranted to say that all other codes we know of were intelligently designed, and hence on inductive grounds, (and logical grounds concerning whether codes can even in principle arise unintentionally) that it's more probable than not that DNA was intelligently designed.

    Another example is human beings. As the essay highlights, the mathematical abilities found in the human species are poorly explained on the hypothesis that humans were the result of unintentional processes, and better explained on the hypothesis that humans were intentionally designed to have such abilities. See my comments below.

    Otherwise, the "God of the gaps" charge normally levied against design theorists can be turned around into, if you will, a "natural selection of the gaps" counter charge against the person arguing for blind chance natural selection"¦..

    That may work philosophically, if you are arguing for theology as an alternative way of knowing to science. But science doesn't progress by arguing that goddidit is a legitimate alternative explanation to observable natural forces.

    Well, 'The Will of God' and 'Laws of Nature' are empirically equivalent hypotheses. Scientists frequently invoke the latter, thus revealing an empirically unwarranted bias in favor of philosophical naturalism. I think it's important that science be conducted without being presumptively biased in favor of a controversial philosophical worldview, since such bias will tend to color the choice of questions, answers, and interpretations of data in logically illegitimate ways.

    We can be sure that there will be some things we will never be able to explain, but that will never make goddidit a scientific explanation.

    And it will never make matterdidit one either.

    However, we don't need to say anything about God. All we need for ID to be scientific is for there to be scientific criteria of intelligent design. Also, science already posits loads of theoretical (i.e. unobserved) entities. And there seems to be no clear reason in principle why minds cannot be posited in the same way as other theoretical entities. In fact, we take the existence of minds other than our own for granted. What it is exactly that licenses that belief is really what ID is all about. The same goes for Strong AI.

    As for math, even a dog can do it (try to show your dog two treats, then give him only one), so I don't really understand why you would think this presents some kind of insurmountable problem for evolutionary theory; being able to do basic math offers obvious benefits. Once we reached the level of communicative skills that allowed knowledge to be preserved, then higher mathematical knowledge could build from what was already known, as in any other field.

    I'm reminded of Doctor Johnson's attempt to refute Bishop Berkeley. Your reply betrays a similar misunderstanding and gross underestimation of the problem:

    In reference to Berkeley's philosophy, Dr. Samuel Johnson kicked a heavy stone and exclaimed, "I refute it thus!" A philosophical empiricist might reply that the only thing that Dr. Johnson knew about the stone was what he saw with his eyes, felt with his foot, and heard with his ears. That is, the existence of the stone consisted exclusively of Dr. Johnson's perceptions. It might be possible that Dr. Johnson had actually kicked an unusually grey tree stump, or perhaps that a sudden attack of arthritis had flared up just when he was about to kick a random patch of grass with a painting of a rock. Whatever the stone really was, apart from the sensations that he felt and the ideas or mental pictures that he perceived, was completely unknown to him. The kicked stone existed, ultimately, as an idea in his mind, nothing more and nothing less.

    Almost 150 years after The Origin of Species science still hasn't solved the Hard Problem of consciousness even in principle, to the point where some prominent naturalists have opted for the get-out clause; nor the even harder problem of intentionality, the latter especially as it relates to mathematics.
    For one thing, it's extremely hard to see how evolutionary science could explain how there could be such a thing as propositions at all, let alone propositions about non-physical things like negative, complex, and imaginary numbers as well many other highly complex mathematical entities. Let me direct your attention once more to this passage from the linked essay we're discussing, with some emphases added:

    …Perhaps, though, evolutionary theory will eventually come up with a plausible explanation of our rationality. If so, any such theory that also attempts to promote a naturalistic world view would still run up against the arguments of Mark Steiner, author of The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem. Strictly speaking, Steiner's argument attempts to refute "Anthropocentrism" rather than Naturalism. But if Steiner is correct the naturalist should not take comfort. As far as I can tell, and Steiner shares this opinion, any form of Naturalism is defacto non-anthropocentric in that it would disallow a privileged status for humans in the scope of the universe. If, as Steiner argues, the success of mathematics can be shown to put humans in such a position, then naturalism has problems.

    And just how does the success of mathematics put humans in a privileged position? For Steiner, it is not so much the success of any one particular mathematical theory in an area of science. After all, there have been many, many failures of mathematics in addition to its successes, and in this respect Steiner agrees with Hamming's third point and is thus critical of Wigner's approach in citing specific success examples from physics while ignoring error stories. The use of pi by the statistician in Wigner's opening line ignores all the failures, for example, in attempting to predict population trends. What Steiner is talking about is the success of mathematics as a grand strategy. It is a strategy that takes, for example, the raw formalisms of complex Hilbert space theory and boldly uses them as tools to make predictions about the quantum world, predictions that subsequently seem to be born out via experiment. And how is this phenomenon anthropocentric? Let me give an analogy. Most cultures use a base ten number system. No one is 100 per cent sure why this is the case, but the general consensus is that it has to do with our having 10 fingers. (Some primitive cultures use base 20, and to many this confirms the appendage hypothesis.) Now, what if successful theories of how the universe operates were based on multiples of 10? That would be anthropocentric in an extreme, as the only reason the number 10 is special to us is due to how we appear to ourselves.

    Now suppose that, not only did the number 10 have special significance, but time and time again human aesthetic criteria played a significant role in understanding the universe. Such occurrences, when looked at from a meta-level, would surely make one wonder why such privilege seems to fall on the human species. Yet this situation is precisely analogous to what mathematicians and scientists actually do when they rely on human notions of beauty and symmetry in the development of their theories.

    Here are three insurmountable difficulties for an evolutionary naturalist, as I see it.

    1) Einsteinian relativity, and quantum mechanics (and multi-dimensional space as per string theory), are incredibly counter-intuitive. And hence, they are intuitively extraordinarily far removed from being probably the result of a long history of unintentional and largely random physical processes. They're also nothing like what would be useful to a dog. Or to a cat. Especially Schrodinger's kitty.

    2) The scope of our mathematically informed theories is astounding when one considers the scale of the universe in both space and time. The chances of us evolving the ability to probe the Big Bang or distant quasars are astronomically low given an accidental, unintentional starting point, since we are but one species on one planet in an mindbogglingly gigantic universe and we know of no other species anywhere in the universe with even a remotely comparable ability. If naturalism were true, and this ability is not all that improbable in the universe, then we should have encountered some evidence of other species having that sort of ability by now, given, again the age of the universe and the age of life on this planet—-Fermi's Paradox. We should have received a visit or a card by now. And we haven't encountered any such evidence (unless life here is construed as such evidence, or if you believe in UFOs.)

    3) There is no reason why aesthetic considerations should be a good heuristic procedure in theoretical physics given naturalism. Beauty is inextricably linked to consciousness. But why should an impersonal universe care about what it's going to look like to conscious mathematicians and physicists who will be living in it at some point billions of years in the universe's future?

Comment by stunney — July 2, 2007 @ 7:44 pm

12. Aagcobb Says:
    July 2nd, 2007 at 11:07 pm

    Hi stunney,

    I keep erasing what I've written, so I'm going to keep this response short. First, I didn't mean any negative connotation by the term "inhuman."

    As for an example, I would say DNA is one such. From a scientific point of view, it is warranted to say, based on observationally derived and mathematically informed evidence, that DNA involves or constitutes a code; and also warranted to say that all other codes we know of were intelligently designed, and hence on inductive grounds, (and logical grounds concerning whether codes can even in principle arise unintentionally) that it's more probable than not that DNA was intelligently designed.

    Not true, bees have complex codes which were not intelligently designed. The nonrandom evolutionary process has been shown to have the capacity to genrate such codes in fact.

    Well, 'The Will of God' and 'Laws of Nature' are empirically equivalent hypotheses. Scientists frequently invoke the latter, thus revealing an empirically unwarranted bias in favor of philosophical naturalism. I think it's important that science be conducted without being presumptively biased in favor of a controversial philosophical worldview, since such bias will tend to color the choice of questions, answers, and interpretations of data in logically illegitimate ways.

    They are not equivalent, because a miracle can be invoked to justify any result, making the hypothesis untestable and useless. Science needs limits, so that it can develop testable models which become ever more accurate with time. "Scientific" theories which invoke miracles would simply proliferate like religious sects, each claiming to be "true".

    1) Einsteinian relativity, and quantum mechanics (and multi-dimensional space as per string theory), are incredibly counter-intuitive. And hence, they are intuitively extraordinarily far removed from being probably the result of a long history of unintentional and largely random physical processes. They're also nothing like what would be useful to a dog. Or to a cat. Especially Schrodinger's kitty.

    First, evolution isn't a random process. Second, the counterintuitiveness of relativity and quantum mechanics is probably why it took us 10,000 years after the rise of civilization to develop those theories.

    If naturalism were true, and this ability is not all that improbable in the universe, then we should have encountered some evidence of other species having that sort of ability by now, given, again the age of the universe and the age of life on this planet -Fermi's Paradox. We should have received a visit or a card by now. And we haven't encountered any such evidence (unless life here is construed as such evidence, or if you believe in UFOs.)

    If the evolution of intelligent life capable of, and actually successful in, developing technological civilization was rare enough that at any given time there was on average only about one such civilization per galaxy, there could be billions of such civilizations in the universe that we would lack the capacity or luck to have observed.

    3) There is no reason why aesthetic considerations should be a good heuristic procedure in theoretical physics given naturalism. Beauty is inextricably linked to consciousness. But why should an impersonal universe care about what it's going to look like to conscious mathematicians and physicists who will be living in it at some point billions of years in the universe's future?

    We evolved to fit this universe, the universe wasn't designed to fit us. If there are recurring patterns at many different levels of the universe, including ones observable by us when we were evolving, it would be natural for us to evolve to find them aethetically pleasing.

Comment by Aagcobb — July 2, 2007 @ 11:07 pm

13. stunney Says:
    July 3rd, 2007 at 12:11 am

    Aagcobb wrote:

    Not true, bees have complex codes which were not intelligently designed. The nonrandom evolutionary process has been shown to have the capacity to genrate such codes in fact.

    So much for Common Descent!

    No, my point was, whatever is true of bees, there are no observed cases of codes arising unintentionally from non-code stuff.

    Well, 'The Will of God' and 'Laws of Nature' are empirically equivalent hypotheses.

    Aag:
    They are not equivalent, because a miracle can be invoked to justify any result, making the hypothesis untestable and useless.

    Er, so can Laws of Nature! Have you heard of, say, quantum vacua and virtual particles? Or has human understanding of the world ever been changed by an unexpected observation?

    Science needs limits, so that it can develop testable models which become ever more accurate with time. "Scientific" theories which invoke miracles would simply proliferate like religious sects, each claiming to be "true".

    As a matter of plain historical fact, there have been lots of different scientific theories. There still are. Now we've got string theories and multiverses coming out our ears, for pete's sake.

    1) Einsteinian relativity, and quantum mechanics (and multi-dimensional space as per string theory), are incredibly counter-intuitive. And hence, they are intuitively extraordinarily far removed from being probably the result of a long history of unintentional and largely random physical processes. They're also nothing like what would be useful to a dog. Or to a cat. Especially Schrodinger's kitty.

    Aag: First, evolution isn't a random process.

    Bits of it are.

    Second, the counterintuitiveness of relativity and quantum mechanics is probably why it took us 10,000 years after the rise of civilization to develop those theories.

    It has taken all other species millions of years to get, er, nowhere near even Newtonian physics. Why are we so special? Just a freak accident of evolutionary history? I refuse to purchase that notion, without proper evidence. Evolution hasn't explained sets, or propositions, or lots of other things that are part and parcel of math and science. So once it does that, then it can try to figure why one species out of lots also discovered quantum physics.

    If naturalism were true, and this ability is not all that improbable in the universe, then we should have encountered some evidence of other species having that sort of ability by now, given, again the age of the universe and the age of life on this planet -Fermi's Paradox. We should have received a visit or a card by now. And we haven't encountered any such evidence (unless life here is construed as such evidence, or if you believe in UFOs.)

    Aag: If the evolution of intelligent life capable of, and actually successful in, developing technological civilization was rare enough that at any given time there was on average only about one such civilization per galaxy, there could be billions of such civilizations in the universe that we would lack the capacity or luck to have observed.

    Yeah, there could be. But you don't have the data. The actual data says, we're the only species afawk in the universe with a theory of not only the Big Bang, but any theories whatsoever. And if you're going to appeal to millions of hypothetical, unobserved, and unobservable-by-us entities such as alien civilizations for which there isn't a shred of evidence in order to shore up a naturalistic theory of human mathematical accomplishment, then I leave as an exercize for other readers to figure out why that would expose the hollowness, if not outright intellectual bankruptcy, of your charges against ID.

    3) There is no reason why aesthetic considerations should be a good heuristic procedure in theoretical physics given naturalism. Beauty is inextricably linked to consciousness. But why should an impersonal universe care about what it's going to look like to conscious mathematicians and physicists who will be living in it at some point billions of years in the universe's future?

    aag: We evolved to fit this universe, the universe wasn't designed to fit us. If there are recurring patterns at many different levels of the universe, including ones observable by us when we were evolving, it would be natural for us to evolve to find them aethetically pleasing.

    Well, no other species evolved to engage in great art, appreciate wonderful music, delight in elegant equations, enjoy having a house with a gorgeous view of the ocean, etc. So why didn't more of them evolve to fit the universe's myriad aesthetic properties? And no, I don't mean mechanisms of sexual attraction.

    And it's not just mathematical and other forms of beauty that we appear to have lucked out on. It's the capacity for experiencing moral value, the capacity for religious experience, the capacity to study history, the capacity to not believe our species merely lucked out to become so different across different dimensions of experience. For instance, we can imagine a mathematically talented species which knew nothing of morality or aesthetics. Or a very ethical species which was hopeless at math. Or a wonderfully artistic species which was also amoral. But we got all three. Hmmm.

    Once more, I refuse to purchase the naturalist theory. It's far too implausible to be reasonable. A transcendent creator who is the source not only of the ordered physical world but of moral and aesthetic order and value as well seems to me to be more rationally credible than the heap of implausible, 'just-so', unfalsifiable hypotheses that naturalism piles up and would have us accept.

Comment by stunney — July 3, 2007 @ 12:11 am

14. Aagcobb Says:
    July 3rd, 2007 at 8:16 am

    Hi stunney,

    Well, 'The Will of God' and 'Laws of Nature' are empirically equivalent hypotheses.

    Aag:
    They are not equivalent, because a miracle can be invoked to justify any result, making the hypothesis untestable and useless.

    Er, so can Laws of Nature! Have you heard of, say, quantum vacua and virtual particles? Or has human understanding of the world ever been changed by an unexpected observation?

    Of course it has. The difference is that there are definable limits which can be placed on natural phenomenon; even quantum events fall within realms of probability. There are no such limits on God.

    As a matter of plain historical fact, there have been lots of different scientific theories. There still are. Now we've got string theories and multiverses coming out our ears, for pete's sake.

    There have been lots of scientific theories, which have been replaced by other theories which provide better explanations of the evidence. Religions aren't sustained by evidence, but by faith, so they simply proliferate, each claiming to have the "truth". Science is simply a disciplined form of study which seeks to develop useful models of reality. Some believers now want their faiths to get the "scientific" label because they believe the success science has had using methodological naturalism promotes philosophical naturalism, your own concern. But that isn't science's purpose and never has been.

    It has taken all other species millions of years to get, er, nowhere near even Newtonian physics. Why are we so special? Just a freak accident of evolutionary history? I refuse to purchase that notion, without proper evidence. Evolution hasn't explained sets, or propositions, or lots of other things that are part and parcel of math and science. So once it does that, then it can try to figure why one species out of lots also discovered quantum physics.

    Humans are uniquely intelligent, but there are many species which are unique in one way or other compared to other species. And the fact that scientists haven't figured out everything yet doesn't make ID scientific by default. IDism doesn't provide plausible explanations of anything at all. IDists have to do more than point to gaps in our current knowledge to make a case for intelligent design.

    The actual data says, we're the only species afawk in the universe with a theory of not only the Big Bang, but any theories whatsoever. And if you're going to appeal to millions of hypothetical, unobserved, and unobservable-by-us entities such as alien civilizations for which there isn't a shred of evidence in order to shore up a naturalistic theory of human mathematical accomplishment, then I leave as an exercize for other readers to figure out why that would expose the hollowness, if not outright intellectual bankruptcy, of your charges against ID.

    You are contradicting yourself, stunney. Before you said
    

    And there seems to be no clear reason in principle why minds cannot be posited in the same way as other theoretical entities. In fact, we take the existence of minds other than our own for granted. What it is exactly that licenses that belief is really what ID is all about. The same goes for Strong AI.

    When its for ID, other minds is what ID is all about. When I argue it, its "intellectual bankruptcy". You'll have to be more consistent than that.

    Once more, I refuse to purchase the naturalist theory. It's far too implausible to be reasonable. A transcendent creator who is the source not only of the ordered physical world but of moral and aesthetic order and value as well seems to me to be more rationally credible than the heap of implausible, 'just-so', unfalsifiable hypotheses that naturalism piles up and would have us accept.

    Thats fine; if in fact the universe isn't naturalistic, then science lacks the capacity to accurately describe it. Several centuries of incredible scientific breakthroughs, however, argue that science is an enormously powerful tool for gaining new understanding about the universe. It may well be that intelligent life is the exception; in that case, the best science can do is say "we don't know".

Comment by Aagcobb — July 3, 2007 @ 8:16 am

15. stunney Says:
    July 3rd, 2007 at 10:41 am

    Aagcobb wrote:

    me: Well, 'The Will of God' and 'Laws of Nature' are empirically equivalent hypotheses.

    Aag:
    They are not equivalent, because a miracle can be invoked to justify any result, making the hypothesis untestable and useless.

    me:
    Er, so can Laws of Nature! Have you heard of, say, quantum vacua and virtual particles? Or has human understanding of the world ever been changed by an unexpected observation?

    aag:
    Of course it has. The difference is that there are definable limits which can be placed on natural phenomenon; even quantum events fall within realms of probability. There are no such limits on God.

    No, that's simply a blatant misconception as I've explained before, including to you.

    me: As a matter of plain historical fact, there have been lots of different scientific theories. There still are. Now we've got string theories and multiverses coming out our ears, for pete's sake.

    Aag: There have been lots of scientific theories, which have been replaced by other theories which provide better explanations of the evidence. Religions aren't sustained by evidence, but by faith, so they simply proliferate, each claiming to have the "truth".

    Belief in a transcendent, rational and moral creator is one of the most stable beliefs ever recorded. So is the belief in matter existing independently of perception. It's hard to see what could falsify belief in the latter, since it's hard to know what difference it would make if the null hypothesis was true. But that doesn't stop materialists believing in completely mind-independent matter or 'Laws of Nature'.

    Science is simply a disciplined form of study which seeks to develop useful models of reality. Some believers now want their faiths to get the "scientific" label because they believe the success science has had using methodological naturalism promotes philosophical naturalism, your own concern. But that isn't science's purpose and never has been.

    Well, tell it to Dick Dawkins.

    me: It has taken all other species millions of years to get, er, nowhere near even Newtonian physics. Why are we so special? Just a freak accident of evolutionary history? I refuse to purchase that notion, without proper evidence. Evolution hasn't explained sets, or propositions, or lots of other things that are part and parcel of math and science. So once it does that, then it can try to figure why one species out of lots also discovered quantum physics.

    aag: Humans are uniquely intelligent, but there are many species which are unique in one way or other compared to other species.

    Humans are uniquely lots of things compared to all other species on the planet. We speak English, Chinese, etc. We've been to the Moon. We grow wheat for export.

    And the fact that scientists haven't figured out everything yet doesn't make ID scientific by default.

    It doesn't make unintelligent evolution scientific by default either.

    IDism doesn't provide plausible explanations of anything at all. IDists have to do more than point to gaps in our current knowledge to make a case for intelligent design.

    Breaking into a rousing rendition of The Matterdidit Somehow Chorus isn't what it takes to make a scientific case for Impersonal Nature filling in gaps in our knowledge either.

    The actual data says, we're the only species afawk in the universe with a theory of not only the Big Bang, but any theories whatsoever. And if you're going to appeal to millions of hypothetical, unobserved, and unobservable-by-us entities such as alien civilizations for which there isn't a shred of evidence in order to shore up a naturalistic theory of human mathematical accomplishment, then I leave as an exercize for other readers to figure out why that would expose the hollowness, if not outright intellectual bankruptcy, of your charges against ID.

    You are contradicting yourself, stunney.

    That's a nice big baloney sandwich you've got there.

    I said: "And if you're going to appeal…". Notice the conditional. I, like all theists, already and openly appeal to one unobservable entity. If naturalists denounce us for doing that, and end up doing it themselves by appealing to numberless unobservable entities, intellectual bankruptcy is an apt term to describe it.

    Before you said

    me: And there seems to be no clear reason in principle why minds cannot be posited in the same way as other theoretical entities. In fact, we take the existence of minds other than our own for granted. What it is exactly that licenses that belief is really what ID is all about. The same goes for Strong AI.

    Aag: When its for ID, other minds is what ID is all about. When I argue it, its "intellectual bankruptcy". You'll have to be more consistent than that.

    Oh, I'm consistent. It's the naturalists who're not.

    There's no contradiction between believing in science and believing in other minds, be they human, alien, or transcendent. But see my remark above for an example of inconsistency.

    me: Once more, I refuse to purchase the naturalist theory. It's far too implausible to be reasonable. A transcendent creator who is the source not only of the ordered physical world but of moral and aesthetic order and value as well seems to me to be more rationally credible than the heap of implausible, 'just-so', unfalsifiable hypotheses that naturalism piles up and would have us accept.

    Aag: Thats fine; if in fact the universe isn't naturalistic, then science lacks the capacity to accurately describe it.

    Well, it depends on whether one is talking about actual science or ideal science. Who knows what the latter is capable of? It might actually specify criteria for, and find instantiated evidence of, cosmic and biological design.

    Also, if theism is true, God is the most natural reality there is, since God exists solely by virtue of God's eternal nature as the unique being which exists of metaphysical necessity. All other beings are contingent.

    Several centuries of incredible scientific breakthroughs, however, argue that science is an enormously powerful tool for gaining new understanding about the universe.

    Does anyone at TT ever deny this?

    It may well be that intelligent life is the exception; in that case, the best science can do is say "we don't know".

    Let's not pre-judge the findings of science. The 'fine-tuning' data regarding the cosmos garnered in the past few decades could hardly have been dreamed of when The Origin of Species was published, and would have delighted Paley (not sure about Darwin). It's well under 100 years since Big Bang cosmology began to be developed. AI, or string theory, or ID may achieve something of a breakthrough in human understanding. But not if the supporters of these ideas are continually subject to scorn and hostility and hounded from the Academy.

Comment by stunney — July 3, 2007 @ 10:41 am

16. Aagcobb Says:
    July 3rd, 2007 at 3:40 pm

    Hi stunney,

    It doesn't make unintelligent evolution scientific by default either.

    Evolution by mutations random in regard to fitness and natural selection isn't scientific by default, its been observed, and it makes useful predictions.

    Breaking into a rousing rendition of The Matterdidit Somehow Chorus isn't what it takes to make a scientific case for Impersonal Nature filling in gaps in our knowledge either.

    Of course not, what it takes is research, which scientists are constantly engaged in, but IDists do very little of.

    , like all theists, already and openly appeal to one unobservable entity. If naturalists denounce us for doing that, and end up doing it themselves by appealing to numberless unobservable entities, intellectual bankruptcy is an apt term to describe it.

    I am a theist as well, I simply don't think God can be studied scientifically. We are aware of multiple species which have made and used tools: several species of homos and chimpanzees, but we don't have scientific evidence of an unobservable entity which intervenes in the natural universe.

    Well, it depends on whether one is talking about actual science or ideal science. Who knows what the latter is capable of? It might actually specify criteria for, and find instantiated evidence of, cosmic and biological design.

    IDists keep saying that, but they never actually do it, or even seem to have research proposals to try to do it.

    ID may achieve something of a breakthrough in human understanding. But not if the supporters of these ideas are continually subject to scorn and hostility and hounded from the Academy.

    The DI has its own research institute now, at which IDists should be able to engage in research free from persecution, so we will see what amazing breakthroughs it produces. I'm not holding my breath.

Comment by Aagcobb — July 3, 2007 @ 3:40 pm

17. stunney Says:
    July 3rd, 2007 at 5:00 pm

    Aagcobb, this one will be quick. You wrote:

    me: It doesn't make unintelligent evolution scientific by default either.

    aag:
    Evolution by mutations random in regard to fitness and natural selection isn't scientific by default, its been observed, and it makes useful predictions.

    I don't doubt evolution. But words like 'random' should be used with care. First, mutations are physical events, covered by the laws of physics, and those laws look designed to me, not least quantum mechanical laws***. Second, Russian roulette, state lotteries, random-number generators in gaming consoles, etc, and sweeping leaves in a yard with a brush, are all instances of, or exhibit evidence of, intelligent design. So, the word 'random' does not entail blind through and through, or un-designed, or unintentional, or unintelligent per se.

    ***

    As a final example, the fact that nature obeys the principles of quantum theory is highly important for the possibility of life. It turns out that matter would not be stable in a non"“quantum world. People generally suppose that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle makes the world, at least at the atomic level, a fuzzier and more indefinite place. However, paradoxical as it may sound, that principle is ultimately responsible for the fact that subatomic particles form stable atoms with well"“defined chemical properties. Were it not for the principles of quantum theory, matter would be amorphous and protean to such a degree that it is hard to imagine a living organism being possible"¦..

    "¦..In the final analysis one cannot escape from two very basic facts: the laws of nature did not have to be as they are; and the laws of nature had to be very special in form if life were to be possible. In my view these facts lend themselves most naturally to a religious interpretation. Certainly, they tend to undercut the claim so often confidently made by materialists that the discoveries of
    science point to a universe without meaning or purpose, in which man is an accidental by"“product.

    That's from a particle physicist at the Bartol Research Institute, U. of Delaware. More here.

Comment by stunney — July 3, 2007 @ 5:00 pm

18. Doug Says:
    July 3rd, 2007 at 6:15 pm

    Since it's an open thread; does anyone have any thoughts on dual-coding?

    Coding of multiple proteins by overlapping reading frames is not a feature one would associate with eukaryotic genes. Indeed, codependency between codons of overlapping protein-coding regions imposes a unique set of evolutionary constraints, making it a costly arrangement. Yet in cases of tightly coexpressed interacting proteins, dual coding may be advantageous. Here we show that although dual coding is nearly impossible by chance, a number of human transcripts contain overlapping coding regions. Using newly developed statistical techniques, we identified 40 candidate genes with evolutionarily conserved overlapping coding regions. Because our approach is conservative, we expect mammals to possess more dual-coding genes. Our results emphasize that the skepticism surrounding eukaryotic dual coding is unwarranted: rather than being artifacts, overlapping reading frames are often hallmarks of fascinating biology.

    (Wen-Yu Chung, Samir Wadhawan, Radek Szklarczyk, Sergei Kosakovsky Pond, Anton Nekrutenko, "A First Look at ARFome: Dual-Coding Genes in Mammalian Genomes," PLOS Computational Biology, Vol. 3(5) (May, 2007), emphasis added.)

    It sounds very exciting; but how does the reading frame shift and still have the appropriate start and stop codon? It seems as if a shift in the reading frame would lead to a non-expressed gene, not a gene that now will code for another protein.

Comment by Doug — July 3, 2007 @ 6:15 pm

19. Joy Says:
    July 3rd, 2007 at 7:53 pm

    Doug:

    It sounds very exciting; but how does the reading frame shift and still have the appropriate start and stop codon? It seems as if a shift in the reading frame would lead to a non-expressed gene, not a gene that now will code for another protein.

    I suspect you'll find answers to "how" in yet another level of coding, this one in the histones, as part of chromatin dynamics.

    There was interesting research released just today on how useful it's proving - New Method for Reading DNA, about gene expression 'suites' necessary for cell differentiation being part of this dynamic.

Comment by Joy — July 3, 2007 @ 7:53 pm

20. keiths Says:
    July 5th, 2007 at 11:15 am

    Doug asked:

    how does the reading frame shift and still have the appropriate start and stop codon? It seems as if a shift in the reading frame would lead to a non-expressed gene, not a gene that now will code for another protein.

    Joy answered:

    I suspect you'll find answers to "how" in yet another level of coding, this one in the histones, as part of chromatin dynamics.

    Joy,

    Doug asked about frameshifts within the standard code, not about alternate codes.

    Doug,

    In the shifted reading frame, you will no longer have a start and stop codon at the original locations, but there can still be a start codon and a stop codon.

    Here is a toy example using mRNA codons to demonstrate the principle:

    Original frame:

    AUG Start
    AAU Asparagine
    GAC Aspartic acid
    CUC Leucine
    AGU Serine
    AAC Asparagine
    CAG Glutamine
    GUA Valine
    AAC Asparagine
    UAG Stop

    Now shift the frame forward by one nucleotide:

    UGA —-
    AUG Start
    ACC Threonine
    UCA Serine
    GUA Valine
    ACC Threonine
    AGG Arginine
    UAA Stop
    ACU —-
    AGx —-

    So in this case you can actually get two proteins from the same gene by shifting the reading frame forward by one nucleotide.

    In other cases, as you suspected, you won't see a start codon in the shifted frame, so the gene won't be expressed in that frame. It all depends on the exact nucleotide sequence of the gene in question.

    To see this, look at what happens when we shift the reading frame forward by two nucleotides, using our toy example:

    GAA —-
    UGA —-
    CCU —-
    CAG —-
    UAA Stop
    CCA —-
    GGU —-
    AAA —-
    CUA —-

    In this case we hit a stop codon before we see a start, so the gene is unexpressed.

Comment by keiths — July 5, 2007 @ 11:15 am

21. Doug Says:
    July 5th, 2007 at 12:11 pm

    Thanks Keiths!
    Greatly appreciated.

Comment by Doug — July 5, 2007 @ 12:11 pm

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