Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Quod Erat Demostrandum

The whole exchange I have been having in "comments" was born from a statement of mine, that I perceive very little science in our society, and that this is because of the disjunction of faith and reason.

The main objection I can be moved is: how can you say such a thing, considering that it is only our society that has achieved with science a knowledge that can be shared by everybody, just through reasoning on the evidence of experience, not bound by the impediment of faith?

Are we sure? But let's grant for a moment that such is the case, what we call "science" covers very little of our ordinarily life.

Nobody doubts that physics chemistry and biology are sciences, and some of their findings drip to the general public without any of the discussions that led to them or still surround them in the scientific world. Besides them, also psychology enjoys a little of their prestige, and some of its notions have equally dripped to the general public, however controversial they may still be in the scientific world. Still less can be said of the other human sciences, concerning the life of men in society and everything it has been passed over to us in fact of art, literature, and models of human excellence. All things considered outside the realm of science.

Thus, the greatest part of our ordinary life is left to the realm of sentiment and emotion, utterly out of any possibility of rational discourse, but just a question of taste.

However, to allow me a QED: there is very little science in our society, I would need to demonstrate that there can be more science than this. Which, unless we adopted a concept of science non in line with the one current in our mainstream culture, cannot be done.

That it can be done, because the current notion of science responds to an unreal concept of experience, and hence or reasoning, is the claim I make. And I already made, trying to explain in a previous post the true sense of "faith", based on the etymology of the word that brought it back to the context of human interchange that makes our common ordinary experience.

To this we need to pay attention.

*****

I was brought to do it in my youth by the disturbance caused to me by the alleged collision between the teaching of the Church and the findings of science. There seemed to be no way out: neither could be true at the same time. And though, I didn't want to give up either: I didn't want to hold to my faith making a sacrifice of reason, and I didn't want to give up faith to keep on reasoning.

The way out of the dilemma came from faith: I mean, by trust in those who had educated me, as being reasonable people, who must have had good reasons for what they taught me. This prompted me to study, i.e. to face the challenge coming from science. It was a dangerous path, because it could have led me to naught, with religion necessarily yielding to science.

I know, some would say that this wouldn't have been naught, but the real conquest. However, such was not the case. I discovered that where science seemed to go against Church teaching, it was because it was faulty, not really scientific. I want to be clear: it is not the teaching of the Church that decides what is really scientific, but reasoned reflection on the evidence represented by the witness of theories accredited as scientific.

This at the same time required a deepening in the understanding of Church teaching, to see why and how it agrees with what is really scientific in science. The trouble in our society is that usually we receive an infantile version of that teaching, together with the infantile versions of all the notions making up our knowledge of the world. Then, while we grow, we come to learn the scientific version of these notions, at least as physics chemistry and biology is concerned; but our notions of Church teaching remain infantile. So we come to compare a mature adult knowledge with an infantile one, and of course we find it ridiculous. I can't say of having found a critic of theological teachings coming from the world of the accredited sciences showing more than a raw knowledge of it, fettered to those infantile notions.

More in general, it is rare for someone who is an expert of his discipline, with a sophisticated knowledge of its procedures and findings, to have an equally sophisticated knowledge outside of it. For other specialized fields we can't but trust those who are qualified for their expertise in them, while, when it comes to the ordinary affairs of life we tend to rely just on ourselves, confiding in some kind of common sense.

For what I am concerned, are precisely the ordinary affairs of life that intrigue me: being what makes the realm of experience to which also experts of whatever discipline qualified as scientific resort.

We appeal thus to it for immediate common sense experience, but overlook the fact that whatever we perceive bear traces of all the ideas we have been exposed to since our early days, and with which we had to confront ourselves in our growth: such exposure and confrontation being then an integral part of experience, that bear traces therefore also of our trusts and mistrusts.

Do I need to add more? Well, an invitation, perhaps the hardest to accept in our culture: to watch at babies, and think that we have been like them. We see them learning to speak, and by this way to recognize people and things, and to identify themselves in relation to them, and so on and so forth. We know that we have been like them, but we can't absolutely remember it. A gap is there between what we observe babies do and our self-conscious adult experience, that nothing can bridge; nothing, except the stories we have been told as children to account for our coming to the world, that we can't but take on faith (of course, I am not speaking specifically of Christian faith, but I use the word in the generic anthropological meaning of the Latin fides).

Here it is the intriguing thing on which to measure the adherence of our discourses to experience: we don't remember out birth; hence, on the other side, we can't imagine our death.

Instead, the mainstream Euro-American culture, settled in our world of adult speakers, by negating faith hides the existence of that gap.

I was led from here to the realization that the opposition we currently maintain between science and religion is faulty, because actually science and religion aren't but conceptual words with which we are used to classify human ideas and actions, whose definition finds no correspondence in what people do that we claim to classify with them.

*****

I tried to explain it already in a previous post by the analysis of the meaning of belief (whose connection with trust in fide I discussed before). What we call "religion" is for the people who hold it simply their understanding of reality, that which they are persuaded to know: in a word, we can call it equally their "belief" or their "science".

To say "science", in fact, means nothing else than a belief redoubled in reflection. If belief in fact means
the persuasion of the truth of something, science means to be persuaded that one's own persuasion constitutes truly knowledge. So we can equally say, in English, "I believe in evolution", or "I believe in creationism", even though one is ascribed to science, the other to religion (also staying to the sentence by a judge in Pittsburg based on faith in the scientific community).

You are not telling us anything new, I could be objected, but overlook that with science this redoubling of persuasions is sustained by reasons. Agreed, I answer, it remains however the question of which reasons are able to make a belief into science.

Reasoning means many interconnected things. One of them is counting. The other is accounting for things in a way that is public, repeatable and communicable. This, I am told, is what the "scientific method" does. But does it?

Of course it does it, I am told, because the "scientific method" takes us on the only common ground we have, that of "awake" sensory perception: it fills in this way the gap you spoke about, that, you say, makes faith unavoidable.

On this regard would have been right the thinkers, self-styled as logical positivists, who in the early decades of the 1900 asked that all statements be put to the test of sensory verification. They were wrong only in not realizing that actual verification is impossible, because it would require an overview of all possible cases of the same thing, which is impossible. The version of the "scientific method" that has gained the way is then that of Karl Popper, who required subjecting theories to a crucial test, but remarked that this cannot verify the right ones, but only show the falseness of those that don't pass it, so letting stand, at least for the time being, the one that passed it. Accordingly he defines scientific only those theories for which it can be envisaged a test of falsification: otherwise we would have to do with "metaphysics" or "religion".

The trouble with this theory of science is that it doesn't hold up to what it requires from any theory to be scientific. It is not just that it is actually falsified by all evidence of how people ordinarily act, and even of what scientist do; but, if it were to be denied the relevance of this evidence, I don't see to what test of falsification it could be put.

A test, in fact, has to be prepared and described in a way to make it communicable: this means that it implies a shared language, and a language already involves a vision of things. Even within the strict realm of accredited science, then, setting a test delimits the scope of things that can be found in it. Things get worse if we observe that the language thus involved isn't but an aspect of the ordinary language. By speaking we account publicly for our experience, setting our sensory perceptions into a contest of meaning. But languages are a multifold, each informing the capability of perceiving things and accounting for them of those who speak any given one.

This means that an explanation of what science is falls into the sphere of ordinary experience, not made of men who test theories with facts, but of man in conversation who compare their respective views of things. Methods can work in the routine of an activity, be that of science, but don't exempt from the intelligence that sparkles when, from such a comparison, comes the right idea of how to account for things.

It follows that the gap I spoke about cannot be bridged by the alleged "scientific method". Sensory perception doesn't put us in the immediacy of an adult experience that can overlook education: the education we watch babies undergo, with the required recognition of having undergone it ourselves.

Now I can make a claim of QED. There is very little science in our society, I say, because there are many disciplines that don't filter to the mainstream culture dominated by the authority of "science" based on an alleged "scientific method". Trough the study of language, storytelling, art, social institutions of all kind, etcetera, they are devoted to a reasoned account of the way an educated animal such as man tests received ideas in ordinary experience, applying to this a reasoning as sophisticated as that employed by the accredited sciences in their special field of research, but which is often lacking when their practitioners turn to it.

*****

I could close here, but I still deem convenient some further considerations.

The trouble with many "scientific" authors who have been able to reach the general public is that there is truth in what they found within their partial field of research, where it has an explanatory value for them of general import, because they take it as the whole.

Now, the whole of human knowledge concerned me, in dealing with the question of "faith" and "reason". Which is: what makes people able to reach an agreement in their understanding of things?

On this have more to say the old Plato and Aristotle then modern theoreticians of science. In their discourses on method these hide their advancing a claim of reason, which would put them in question with regard to others with similar claims, to state purely and simply that reason is on their side. Not so with Plato and Aristotle: when they first raised the question of what makes opinions or beliefs into science, their aim was precisely that of giving an answer to my question, by finding criteria to judge among different claims. They deserve therefore a privileged mention in the story of the differentiation of rationality which, with gains and losses, reaches all the way to Einstein and other contemporary authors outside of the physical sciences.

Discarded, for the reasons I showed, the alleged "scientific method" as a way of accounting for what is scientific, the validation moment cannot be kept separated in assessing science from its genetic moment, as it is claimed. Therefore history of science is not irrelevant to the understanding and evaluation of discourses with claim to be scientific, i.e. rationally and experientially well grounded. And history of science has to embrace, for the reasons I said, not just what has been accredited as such in the last four centuries, but what people thought of their world in any place and time.

This means that by telling a story we account for whatever we know of the world, be it the story of how at a certain pointy in history we discovered a previously unknown "scientific method". Now stories can only be validated by comparison with other stories, to see which better agrees with our experience of the world as educated animals, by taking into account both terms: our rootedness, as animals, in non human nature, and our participation, by education, to society.

Always men, like us, accounted by telling stories for the world they know. Always, therefore, they have been rational. With this difference: that the reasons, represented in the old exemplary stories we call "myths" by way of images, have been afterwards recognized in their more abstract forms, thanks to mathematics and logic. The meaning of these, therefore, cannot be referred simply to the selected experience of today science, but has to be tracked down in the more unified, ordinary experience accounted for by myth.

I give just a short example, without developing it, of the problems I am talking about.

I ask myself, and others: how does the theory of evolution squares with Einstein's theory of relativity? If I were to be asked in turn about the why of such question, I would answer that the theory of evolution involves a linear sequence of time, in which things get transformed one into the other; while Einstein's theory of relativity integrates time into space. Now, this involves not sequence but recurrence. So it evokes the pre-modern understanding of the world once upon a time couched in storytelling.

HP

12 comments:

Andrea said...

A beautifully crafted post which deserves a detailed answer (I'll work on it as soon as I have time). Those last seven lines, though, urge me to address an issue right away.

Your assessment of the incompatibility between Evolution and Relativity shows a lack of knowledge in at least one of the two theories.
Space time is a continuum of four interlinked dimensions, what does it mean? that time is dependent on space and vice versa, not the perception of time we have, but the way time flows. We have evidence that at certain speeds space contracts and time extends. this evidence is greater the greater the speed approaches that of light.
Evolution takes place on Earth, it takes therefore place in a frame of reference where the relative movement of actors is irrelevant (since adding or subtracting the speed of the fastest creature on earth to that of earth itself does not impact the application of relativity).

Where exactly do you see circularity in the behavior of time as predicted by relativity?

Now, if you are against evolution and/or relativity please motivate your position rationally.
Fossils and radioactive records allow us to state that our current model of the universe, the one that implies that both Relativity and Evolution describe reality is, at least currently, the best possible.

A theory may state that fossils were put there by someone intentionally,such a theory needs to be verified with other evidence we have against it.

Andrea said...

I'll start by focusing on your sentence: "the greatest part of our ordinary life is left to the realm of sentiment and emotion, utterly out of any possibility of rational discourse, but just a question of taste. "

The incapability of rationality to explain taste, is not due to a native complexity of phenomena which are out of the scope of rationality, but to a complexity which is the result of a cardinality of many simple and explicable interactions.
An embryo is potentially capable of expressing a brain but it is not until the correct number of neuron cells is developed that we can say that a creature is able to analyze and react. Such analysis takes place via the exchange of billions of electric messages between our neurons.
This does not mean that as soon as such complexity develops the results it produces jump out of the domain of rationality into the world of music, literature, arts etc.

music art and literature are simply the complex combination of simple interactions (involving senses, memory, language) which are given a name that refers the level of abstraction at which we address them.

It doesn't take a degree in chemistry to taste a good glass of wine, or a nice piece of music, but the reasons why it tastes in such a way and not in another one can be analyzed with a degree in chemistry or one in acoustics. (well it is a bit more complex than that because appreciation requires more education, which means our brain can get used to appreciating music or wine after specific training)

The purpose of my explanation is not to reduce the importance of feelings, I too do not think about physics or chemistry when i love, listen to music etc. But the reasons why I appreciate such things at the correct level of abstraction has electrical and chemical origins at the lower level, regardless of how sad or uncomfortable the concept may feel.

Humbly Presumptuous said...

It's funny business this thing of the three space dimensions plus time as a fourth dimension. Popularizing books on physics try to explain it to us poor mortals who don't master all the math necessary to read the original formulation and follow its subsequent developments. But by and large they don't make much sense, because their attempt at explening with ordinary language remains essencially newtonian, i.e. tied to the paradigm of imagination to which we have become accustomed by four centuries of newtonian physics, based, as we know, on the the separation of extension (absolute space) and duration (absolute time). It became for me less obscure when I realized that all our ordinary experience is spatial-temporal, because we perceive things in patterns, where each is recognized for what it is by its unfolding (time) in interaction with the others (space). Einstein's theory of relativity appeared then to me as a real "revolution", in the old astral sense, because it returned to a point previously abandoned, regaining what had been lost to allow the galileian-newtonian advancement of physics.
P.S. I am convinced that a mathematical physicist, who has really understood the meaning of what math allows him to do, is also able to explain it in ordinary language.

Andrea said...

I hope you are not trying to demonstrate that I am having faith in people I don't understand ;-)??

I agree with you, my explanation for our difficulty in understanding is in fact based on our experience which takes place in an environment in which newtonian laws and relativity give exactly the same result.

But experiments confirm the theory wether one understands all its little mathematical nuances or not. and I don't mean funky lab experiments conducted by some brainiac in the secrecy of a cave.

If you synchronize two atomic clocks and send one on a trip on a plane around earth, they do get out of sync once they are brought together again.

that's a clear example of how even a complex theory can be reconciled with our average experiences. unless we lose faith in one of the two clocks ;-)

to further understand time dependence on space:
we have experimental evidence of the fact that the speed of light violates newtonian laws, by showing that it cannot be added up to other speeds. If you turn on a flashlight in the back of a very fast train pointing at the front of the train the speed of light as observed by someone standing on the tracks (stationary) is not 300km/sec + speed of the train but it is still 300km/Sec. The same is not true if you make a little ball roll (at much slower speed) in the same direction while on the train.

This implies that for the two observers to agree on the simultaneity of the starting and arriving of the ray of light time has to "run at different speeds" for them.

Now one may not trust physicist but these experiments are reproducible.

The difference between our direct experience and our indirect experience of phenomena raises questions about the importance of what we think is true because it has helped us survive in our environment and what is in fact true even if we are not used to it. (please apply to the word true the same caveats we have been discussing so far)

Another interesting example would be that of our tendency to spot intentions where there aren't.
to see intentions all around us is a good self defense mechanisms from an evolutionary point of view. If you mistake a shadow in the dark for a killer you have a false positive that produces no risks. If you do the other way around your dead. That's how evolution has coded (at earlier stages) this tendency in the way we behave.

Humbly Presumptuous said...

No. You remember: I am "humbly presumtuous". I am saying that they don't understand themselves.

I read already the things you are saying. No qualms with them. The only question to which I find no answer is: what do they mean for the larger understanding of the world. Sure, at a certain level of abstraction newtonian laws work for our world. But Einstein unmasked it for what it is: a certain level of abstraction. And, let me add in a galileian fashion, what is valid for the sublunar is valid also for the sopralunar world, and viceversa.

Tricky thing the time-space, isn't it?

Andrea said...

mmm,
I think we have to be very careful in defining what a "Larger understanding of the world" is.
If the universe turns out to be an onion with an infinite number of layers to peel (both on the macro and on the micro sides), who's right?
he who doesn't stop searching and considers the current layer under analysis the only limit to his knowledge, or he who thinks he has already found an answer and stops searching??

what exactly is a larger understanding of the world? It cannot be asking ourselves why we love and why we taste and why we like music, that's already been addressed.
I feel that the only room left for discovery is that left by questions such as "why does the universe exist?"

I do not see any contribution from any discipline to this sort of question, such a basic definition of existence can only be taken for granted at the moment.
Religions say we are here for a purpose, our life has a meaning. Science says we tend to dream about how we would like things to be, we can dream about an existence purposely tailored to our needs,we have always done so, filling in the gaps of the unknown with our fears. But we ask ourselves these questions simply because we are a complex form of life evolved from a very simple one (no doubt on this), life is here because (most likely but still in the range of probabilities) given enough time and the right precondition life can emerge from inamnimated matter (we are indeed made of carbon and water).
Is the real question: "where does matter come from?".
That's the domain of the Big Bang theory, turning the most basic question into: " did the big bang have a cause?" and,the two speak a common language: "was God the cause of the Big Bang" or even worst: "is God the Big Bang"?, Because if God is a cause of something we can get even more basic: "If the big bang has a cause what caused the cause of the Big Bang?" That's the initial onion under disguise, we have no right to stop asking ourselves questions and feel satisfied by partial answers. Unless we feel the urge of consolation, but we cannot demand that all of us do. And we cannot assume that he who does is right or knows the truth more than he who doesn't.

My question to you is:
What exactly is a larger understanding of the world beyond that basic question, If we can explain everything else?

Humbly Presumptuous said...

Sorry about that "larger". I pondered whether to put it or not. What did it mean here? Simply the the understanding of the world corresponding to our ordinary experience, as I said in the post.

How much do our present cosmological theories explain? For once let me be modest and say that I should know more about them, but I didn't have all the time to devote to them that they deserve. So I give you just two short notations.

I read once that our present astrophysical knowledge allows us to reconstruct the state of the universe up to 0,0000 (I don't remember how many zeros) 14 nano seconds from the big bang. I mentioned it to my scientist friend of whom I talked you about, and he commented: that is still an infinite time.

I read somewhere an interesting observation about the general theory of relativity. As you know, this lends itself to be rendered with different equations, about which scientists are uncertain. The observation was this: to decide between them it would be necessary an experiment, of the kind that are done with subatomic particles; but to do such an experiment we would need engage the same amount of energy present at the big bang.

In that infinity of time and infinity of energy looms the semantic of "existence" and "God" speach. Which, I prey you notice, is a very peculiar one.
Traditionally, before Kant, after "physics" there was "metaphysics", as a rational investigation devoted precisely to the question: what does "existence" mean, what do we afferm when we say that something "is"? Answering such questions involves the subject in the object he talks about: this is the semantic peculiarity I mentioned, often remarked in the disciplines devoted to reflection on ordinary experience.

Can complex forms emerge from simple ones? I'd say yes, but only if the simpler ones already had in them inchoatively the principle of all following developments. Otherwise the probability would be equal to zero.

One last consideration about "consolation". You say that not all of us feel the urge for it. Allow me to desagree. Of course here I am not saying where this consolation should come from, but everybody needs to find again that unconditional love that he receved as a new born baby, and that staid with him allowing him to grow as a sane person.

Andrea said...

- That's still an infinite time -

Well any interval is an infinite time because it can, at least theorically, be subdividde ad infinitum. What is relevant in the context of our discussion is that the power of that infinity is an infinitesimal fraction of the type of infinity represented by the time that passed between 14 nanoseconds from the Big Bang and today (13 billion years), countless ("almost and infinite amount of") 14nansoeconds intervals fit in that interval, and they all are infinite as well.

What is curious about the universe is that after 14 nanoseconds from the beginning the laws of physics can be proven to have had effect (of if you will "to be put in place"), and such laws have worked unchanged for the last 13bilions of years.

- In that infinity of time and infinity of energy looms the semantic of "existence" and "God" speach -

Exactly, what has God been doing afterwards? In which way is the universe now different from how it would be if he only "created" 4 laws of physics and stepped aside?
Before we ask ourselves questions we have the right to ask ourselves wether those questions still make sense, this is where Philosophy has failed to contribute to society in modern times, many of the questions addressed by philosophy have lost any meaning. The only unanswered questions pertain to those 14 nanoseconds.

Now if 5000 years ago I could have asked my self (what is the purpose of a lightining? Does someone create a lighting for some reason? What are the causes of a lighting?), all three questions would have made sense. Nowaday looking for a purpose in a lightning is meaningless, just as it is meaningless to look for a purpose in human life (according to the evolution). It wouldn't be meaningless to look for a purpose in the life of the first bacterium, at least until (if ever) we'll be able to prove that life originates from inanimated matter for physical causes. But the very moment you take that purpose for granted there's no purpose for mankind that can be analyzed separately from the purpose for bacteria….

Andrea said...

- Can complex forms emerge from simple ones? I'd say yes, but only if the simpler ones already had in them inchoatively the principle of all following developments. Otherwise the probability would be equal to zero -

"The principle of all following developments", well what exactly is that principle if not the set of simple mechanisms by which life reacts to its environment?
Any specie can possibly evolve from the simplest bacteria, can I prove this statement? Yes, look at the tree of life and see for yourself www.tolweb.org, natural selection shapes evolution of life not an inherent or preconceived intention to become this or that.
A very simple mechanism such as that of DNA replication can generate millions of life forms with the only limits imposed by chemistry (ability of substances to connect together) and physiscs (the structure has to be compatible with the environment), these life forms are not there until the selection takes place, (of course chemistry is an abstraction oh physics with its molecular vs atomic view of the world).
We even experience the speed at which this phenomenon takes place, look at the various types of flu from year to year.


We have to be very careful when we speak about probabilities, because when we refer to probabilities in life we must take the anthropic principle into account, since we are judging life form inside it. It is very easy to think of life as something that has a purpose, something that requires external action otherwise it would have zero probability. We act this way because it is very unusual for us to think about the many possible trillions of environments in which life may have not emerged in the universe, and since it hasn't no one is there asking himself why. But we have to take those into account when we refer to probabilities.
I'll make myself clear with an example:

let's say I am a soldier, who has just been captured by the enemy during a war, and who is condemned to death by fusillade. I have ten soldiers in from of me each carrying he's gun and ready to shoot. There's a slight probability one or two of them will miss me, but we can estimate that I'll be dead at least at the second or third shooting. Now take (it's an hypothesis) billions of prisoners condemned to the same sentence, each of them facing not 10 but a 100 or even 1000 soldiers ready to shoot. If you apply the same probabilities of the first case, and give only one turn to shoot guess who'll think his life has just been saved with a purpose, with an intention? The only one who is alive… now take a trillion of prisoners, you'll find a million life forms each thinking to be there with a purpose.

That is if you compare the likelihood of the contemporaneity of the preconditions that generate life, to the likelihood of being left alive by 1000 soldiers shooting at you, it is reasonable to think that you have been saved for a purpose and that life emerges for a purpose. It wouldn't be as reasonable if only you knew, or spent tie thinking about the existence of the other billion of prisoners…, but that's what scientists do, evaluate all possible scenarios and assess the probabilities.

Humbly Presumptuous said...

Dear Andrea, this time you find me a bit at fault, because I postulated a principle of development without further ado. I should have known that you would have jumped at the vaganess of the expression immediately to exclude it. The fact is that I didn't devore much time to think how things could have been after that "creation without God" commonly called Big Bang. For the very simple reason that, as I said in the last post, that the beginning is outside out experience, since, as you recognized, we are always "judging life from inside". From where else could we judge it? Here is the essencial difference bwtween you and me: that you think that science gives us a vintage point to judge from outside, and I think that this is not true. There are always the 14 nanoseconds to mark the difference from the beginning.
So concentrated on what we experience, because, whatever we say about the beginning, has to account for it, as it is.
I know for example what a principle of development is when I observe a living organism being born, grow and decay. You might call it DNA. Granted (however more complex the whole question might be). But the funny thing is that the DNA is a compound of different elements, shaped into such a form to anable it to inform further elements to take shape. Is it reducable to its elements? No, because it is its form that makes it active. But we could ascribe this form to a casual aggregation of its simple elements, still casual aggregations of simpler elements, down to the simplest elements of them all, as certain theories are prone to do that you seem to approve. To which I can only answer that such a discourse is not scientific, by your very definition of science. To say it in popperian terms, it is an hypothesis non susceptible of falsification. Why, because we have no experience whatsoever of simple things. Even the so called subatomic particles, whose existence we postulate behind the tracings on the screens of the great acceleration reactors, prove no more than the unevoidable complexity of what we used to think "indivisible".
I would invite you to take a little more seriously mathematics, which isn't simply an useful artificial constructin of the human mind, as you seemed to say in a previous answer to a mathematical observation of mine, but a language that quite accurately describes our actual experience: always of things made of "continuous" and "descrete", formed wholes and component parts.

I have more to say about time, probability and the development of the universe, but this to another time.

Humbly Presumptuous said...

Dear Andrea, this time you find me a bit at fault, because I postulated a principle of development without further ado. I should have known that you would have jumped at the vaganess of the expression immediately to exclude it. The fact is that I didn't devore much time to think how things could have been after that "creation without God" commonly called Big Bang. For the very simple reason that, as I said in the last post, that the beginning is outside out experience, since, as you recognized, we are always "judging life from inside". From where else could we judge it? Here is the essencial difference bwtween you and me: that you think that science gives us a vintage point to judge from outside, and I think that this is not true. There are always the 14 nanoseconds to mark the difference from the beginning.
So concentrated on what we experience, because, whatever we say about the beginning, has to account for it, as it is.
I know for example what a principle of development is when I observe a living organism being born, grow and decay. You might call it DNA. Granted (however more complex the whole question might be). But the funny thing is that the DNA is a compound of different elements, shaped into such a form to anable it to inform further elements to take shape. Is it reducable to its elements? No, because it is its form that makes it active. But we could ascribe this form to a casual aggregation of its simple elements, still casual aggregations of simpler elements, down to the simplest elements of them all, as certain theories are prone to do that you seem to approve. To which I can only answer that such a discourse is not scientific, by your very definition of science. To say it in popperian terms, it is an hypothesis non susceptible of falsification. Why, because we have no experience whatsoever of simple things. Even the so called subatomic particles, whose existence we postulate behind the tracings on the screens of the great acceleration reactors, prove no more than the unevoidable complexity of what we used to think "indivisible".
I would invite you to take a little more seriously mathematics, which isn't simply an useful artificial constructin of the human mind, as you seemed to say in a previous answer to a mathematical observation of mine, but a language that quite accurately describes our actual experience: always of things made of "continuous" and "descrete", formed wholes and component parts.

I have more to say about time, probability and the development of the universe, but this to another time.

Andrea said...

"But the funny thing is that the DNA is a compound of different elements, shaped into such a form to anable it to inform further elements to take shape. Is it reducable to its elements? No, because it is its form that makes it active."

It is funny because it is also false.
DNA 's complexity is not irreducible as it isn't that of an eye. In fact the whole question of irreducible complexity sounds like a full-blown intellectual surrender strategy… Countless studies have proven that such complexity can be generated in an evolutionary way (see genetic algorithms in computer programming). Which is just the same way in which a natural arch of stone is produced: The removal of unused components with no essential function, like the natural process where rock underneath a natural arch is removed, can produce irreducibly complex structures without requiring the intervention of a designer.

In a more general view I'd say that the fact that God already knew things work exactly the way we would have gradually found out they work (this is another way to call complexity hidden inside simplicity) , still doesn't explain a need for evolution…
The Universe, from the Big Bang to now has gone from simplicity to complexity, this makes the likelihood of a simple primal cause much greater that that of a complex one (which would require we start asking ourselves again and again what cause such complexity to being with). And a simple cause cannot incorporate intentions, love and all those other beautiful attributes.

"…Why, because we have no experience whatsoever of simple things" ,
Do we instead have a greater experience of what is supposed to be the complex cause of such simple things? The Designer of DNA if you wish?
They are just competing models and one is simply more logial than the other one.
It is not enough to see it or to believe it to call it a "greater experience", the requirement in science is not: " it must be observable" , but it must be compliant with observation. Chemistry would be a religion if it weren't for such assumptions, instead it is not, it does not require any belief to assess that aspirine will do good to your cold. If you don't believe in aspirine it will still heal you, even if you don't agree with the completely "unexperienceable "chemistry model that lies underneath it.
Taking mathematics seriously is like taking grammar seriously, it is just a language, not the cause or aim of a anything.