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furshur
SFN Regular
USA
1536 Posts |
 Posted - 11/09/2005 : 12:11:33 [Permalink]
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quote:
To ignore that organisms are very fundamentally different from the rest of the natural world is to miss the explainitory power of the theory of evolution.
Gravity is fundamentally different from the rest of the natural world. Gravity does not act like any other force in the universe.
You seem to want to elevate organic life to a level above nature or the physical world because it is 'fundementally' different. Well, as I said the same can be said about gravity.
quote:
I have a point, and I thought I had made my point.
I sorry, I am a little dense I guess, I still am not getting a point. Is your point just that biological processes are not like any other processes in nature?
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If I knew then what I know now then I would know more now than I know. |
| Edited by - furshur on 11/09/2005 12:12:13 |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 11/09/2005 : 12:12:13 [Permalink]
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That Dawkins' quote is talking about complexity. Nowhere does he mention "design," a highly nebulous concept.
For my part, neither snowflakes nor biological organisms appear designed to me.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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furshur
SFN Regular
USA
1536 Posts |
Posted - 11/09/2005 : 12:14:28 [Permalink]
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quote:
For my part, neither snowflakes nor biological organisms appear designed to me.
Go back to your cusion and meditate longer, grasshopper.
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If I knew then what I know now then I would know more now than I know. |
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ar
New Member
30 Posts |
Posted - 11/09/2005 : 12:48:18 [Permalink]
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It seems, frater_memetic_fake, that your two "phenomena" (apparently designed and apparently not-designed) can be seperated into two catagories, that will perhaps make it easier for others to see the fundamental difference between the two.
Catagory #1 can be described by equations (physical laws) and chaos.
Catagory #2 cannot be described by equations and chaos, and seems to transcend equations and chaos.
Catagory two, because of this transcendance, appears designed. "Designed" by what, is irrelevant at the moment.
frater_memetic_fake contends that this difference is a unique aspect of evolution alone. I am not sure what I contend, at this point.
Yes, furshur, gravity is different than any other force, but it is not fundamentally different, in that it can be described by equations.
I don't know if this is what frater_memetic_fake is saying precisely, but that is how I view "designed" versus "non-designed."
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| Edited by - ar on 11/09/2005 13:45:24 |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9687 Posts |
Posted - 11/09/2005 : 17:19:11 [Permalink]
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To say that it is designed, is to imply that there is a designer.
I do not think there is a designer, unless you accept Mother Universe/Nature. Not as a deity, but just the way Reality is.
That is why I oppose this talk about design. |
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"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
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ar
New Member
30 Posts |
Posted - 11/09/2005 : 17:37:36 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse
To say that it is designed, is to imply that there is a designer.
I do not think there is a designer, unless you accept Mother Universe/Nature. Not as a deity, but just the way Reality is.
That is why I oppose this talk about design.
Then call it something else - transcendant, complex, information -
I still am not sure what this quality is (just as I ended my involvment in the original thread of thought in this topic), but there is indeed something. There is something that elevates living, complex things - virtually indescribable mathmatically - above other more obvious physical phenomena.
As the last 8 pages of this discussion have shown, whatever it is, the definition is elusive.
I just started reading Dawkin's "The Blind Watchmaker." - he seems to be calling it "complexity," and indeed - spends an entire chapter defining "compexity" in the context of this sort of discussion. I almost feel like I'm cheating... looking up the answer in the back of the book! - I'm hoping that it will shed light on how this design/transcendence/complexity/information came to exist, naturally. |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 11/09/2005 : 17:56:59 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by ar
Then call it something else - transcendant, complex, information -
I still am not sure what this quality is (just as I ended my involvment in the original thread of thought in this topic), but there is indeed something. There is something that elevates living, complex things - virtually indescribable mathmatically - above other more obvious physical phenomena.
As the last 8 pages of this discussion have shown, whatever it is, the definition is elusive.
Why isn't "alive" a perfectly useful descriptor already? It is only when you try to cram living things into other categories like "transcendant design" or "complex information" that you run into problems.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 11/09/2005 17:57:38 |
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R.Wreck
SFN Regular
USA
1191 Posts |
Posted - 11/09/2005 : 18:30:45 [Permalink]
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This has been an interesting discussion, if rather far afield from the second law of thermodynamics, about "information".
For the sake of argument, let's say we were to stipulate that biological systems contain "complex information" (feel free to use your own definition here), and further stipulate that this information is "fundamentally different" (again, however you want to define that) from the information in, say, a snowflake or a quartz crystal, or a hurricane, or a series of 1s and 0s.
Given those stipulations, what, if anything, can we conclude about how that information arose?
We can say that any information we may perceive is the result of purely natural phenomena and physical laws, and that we are capable of the abstract thought process that allows us to recognize something we call "information".
Another possible conclusion seems to involve defining this "information" as something independent, a reality outside of nature. I'll make the analogy here to the creationist argument that "good" and "evil" exist as independent realities outside of our perception, therefore there must be some being that created them. Similarly, if there is information in DNA, is that evidence that there is a creator that put it there? I think both arguments hold the same amount of water: none. There is no evidence to support the independent reality of these concepts outside our conciousness, nor is there any evidence that even if they did exist independently, that some creative entity is responsible.
Concepts such as "information", "good", "evil", etc. exist only because we can manage to have abstract thoughts and define such concepts for ourselves. So there is no significance to the amount or type of information contained in a biological system, beyond what it can tell us about the system itself. |
The foundation of morality is to . . . give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibliities of knowledge.
T. H. Huxley
The Cattle Prod of Enlightened Compassion
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dv82matt
SFN Regular
760 Posts |
Posted - 11/09/2005 : 19:55:28 [Permalink]
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fmf
I agree that evolution produces results unique from other well understood physical proccesses. I also agree that evolution is an emergent property of the rules of physics and is best understood at it own level.
Although I largely agree with what you are saying I do have a few comments.quote:
Originally posted by frater_memetic_fake
My definition highlights a difference between natural un-evolveable systems, and natural evolveabe systems, and allows me to speculate on how these differences arise.
Here's your definition of information.quote:
If there is a much larger 'symbol space' then is generally occupied, and symbolic strings are densely concentrated in very small areas of symbol space and the strings cannot be algorithmically represented with less than a certain amount of information. Picking numbers at random, the symbols are not normally distributed with a confidence of 99.9%, the size of symbol space is at least 10^50th, and the algorithm necessary to represent the information is over 100kb. Then we can be fairly sure that we have information.
I'm not sure I see that your definition does distinguish between natural un-evolveable systems, and natural evolveabe systems. As I understand your definition most large complex arrangements of data, evolvable or not, should qualify as information. But then I'm not sure that I understand your definition.quote:
Further more, even if I were discussing complexity, I think it is clear that any organism has been produced by process of a completely different kind than produced a snowflake. As many creationist, and all evolutionist, are apt to point out, living organisms are the only systems in nature that we know of that have many interacting subsystems which work in concert to produce an effect, in this case the perpetuation of themselves.
Agreed, but I still question whether your definition of information could reliably discriminate between say a string of useful DNA and a string of useless DNA. It seems like this is what your claim essentially boils down to. |
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ar
New Member
30 Posts |
Posted - 11/09/2005 : 20:47:04 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by H. Humbert
Why isn't "alive" a perfectly useful descriptor already? It is only when you try to cram living things into other categories like "transcendant design" or "complex information" that you run into problems.
I would tend to think of "life," or "aliveness" as more a symptom of this underlying whatever-you-want-to-call-it.
That is an interesting word choice... cram. No one here is trying to cram anything into anything, any more than any other field has it's models that it tries to "cram" natural phenomena into (i.e. theoretical physicists trying to "cram" fundamental forces into a unified model).
I, personally, am simply trying to get a handle on what this quality is - and from there, will analyze for myself whether or not I believe natural processes alone can produce it.
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 11/09/2005 : 21:07:05 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by ar
I, personally, am simply trying to get a handle on what this quality is - and from there, will analyze for myself whether or not I believe natural processes alone can produce it.
Well, I still think by trying to put life into some sort of "other" category you begin to lose a handle on what it actually is. After all, we are seeking to explain "life" and whether natural forces are sufficient to produce it. So why think of an oak tree as information? Just think of it as a living thing. Then work backwards (since evolution explains how very simple organisms could have evolved into increasingly complex forms) and think of what might qualify as the simplest living thing. Then ask yourself if natural processes are sufficient to account for the emergence of this simplest living thing.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 11/09/2005 21:11:54 |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9687 Posts |
Posted - 11/09/2005 : 22:47:32 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by H. Humbert
Just think of it as a living thing. Then work backwards (since evolution explains how very simple organisms could have evolved into increasingly complex forms) and think of what might qualify as the simplest living thing. Then ask yourself if natural processes are sufficient to account for the emergence of this simplest living thing.
And at that point we are starting to talk about Abiogenesis, another, separate discipline more under chemistry than micro-biology.
The Urey-Miller experiment was a chemistry experiment, not a biology experiment, as many Christians are falsely led to believe by their authorities. |
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 11/09/2005 : 23:37:53 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse
The Urey-Miller experiment was a chemistry experiment, not a biology experiment, as many Christians are falsely led to believe by their authorities.
Hasn't it been said before, though perhaps somewhat blithely, that life is chemistry?
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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frater_memetic_fake
New Member
7 Posts |
Posted - 11/10/2005 : 11:47:33 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by dv82matt
fmf
I'm not sure I see that your definition does distinguish between natural un-evolveable systems, and natural evolveabe systems.
Well, one, the discrimination comes on the basis of whether the system can, in theory, contain information of this kind. If we cannot see how the system could have this kind of information, then it cannot evolve. This argument is actually lifted from Maynard-Smith's speculations on what types of systems could have evolved into the first life forms.
quote:
As I understand your definition most large complex arrangements of data, evolvable or not, should qualify as information.
Well, your probably right, however I don't know of any natural systems outside of DNA/RNA that would qualify. Clearly information content/storage, is only one quality that must be met by an evolving system, so by itself it is not sufficient. But. if we find this sort of information in a system in nature, I think we can safely conclude that it has been put there by evolution.
quote:
Agreed, but I still question whether your definition of information could reliably discriminate between say a string of useful DNA and a string of useless DNA. It seems like this is what your claim essentially boils down to.
Well, it can't distinguish between useful/useless DNA, because too much of the information from evolved DNA will be left imprinted on junk DNA. The definition is aimed at allowing the investigation of evolvable systems in general, and is too broad to tell us much about the differences between kinds of information in DNA.
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In other news...
Defining life helps us sort 'important' features of life out from 'unimportant' features. Where, important and unimportant are, of course, dependent on what phenomenon you are trying to investigate. I contend that one important feature of life, from an evolutionary stand point, is the storage of information.
While micro-biology might not elucidate the origins of life, evolutionary theory most certainly should. Many important evolutionist wade in on the debate about what features would be necessary to create an evolvable system. Once you have something evolving, then you are golden. |
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furshur
SFN Regular
USA
1536 Posts |
Posted - 11/10/2005 : 12:07:11 [Permalink]
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quote:
While micro-biology might not elucidate the origins of life, evolutionary theory most certainly should.
The origin of life is outside of the theory of evolution, as it should be. Evolution is a fact and evidenced based theory. The origin of life or Abiogenesis, is a completely different field of study and there is no compeling theory (as far as I know) on the origin of life.
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If I knew then what I know now then I would know more now than I know. |
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