Re: Fw: Fw: economic irreducible complexity
Murphy (gmurphy@imperium.net)
Fri, 29 Nov 1996 08:31:53 -0500Terry M. Gray wrote:
> Let's not defeat a straw man here. Gradualism is out in the complexity
> field. These people talk about emergence, systems reaching a critical
> point before the new complex thing suddenly appearing, etc.
>
> Class 2 does not equal design. It simply equals a non gradualistic origin
> of complexity. Identifying something in class 2 does not mean that it is
> unexplainable in "naturalistic" terms. In other words a methodological
> naturalist coiuld be completely comfortable with class 2 phenomena.
Teilhard de Chardin's analogy of a "phase change" for
evolutionary "jumps" is interesting. You change the energy of a system
as gradually as you wish, & at some points, Bang, there's a sudden
change in macroscopic properties.
George Murphy