Re: Fibbonacci and other mathematical patterns in shells

From: Sarah Berel-Harrop (sec@hal-pc.org)
Date: Mon Aug 18 2003 - 16:27:17 EDT

  • Next message: John W Burgeson: "Tying up the threads."

    On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 15:31:41 -0400
      "Howard J. Van Till" <hvantill@chartermi.net> wrote:
    >From: "Alexanian, Moorad" <alexanian@uncw.edu>
    >
    >> Perhaps someone can tell me why isn°¶t, say, an
    >>electron intelligently
    >> designed? A brick is just as intelligently designed as
    >>a house!
    >
    >Yes, but only if you use the term "intelligently
    >designed" in the ordinary
    >manner of contemporary usage.
    >
    >The problem, as I have stated on numerous occasions,
    >rests with ID
    >advocates' peculiar use of the word couplet,
    >"intelligently designed." In ID
    >speak, to say that "X was intelligently designed" is to
    >say, in effect, that
    >"X was actualized (assembled, formed, fabricated...) in
    >such a way as to
    >require one or more occasions of non-natural,
    >form-conferring intervention
    >by an unidentified, unembodied, choice-making agent." If
    >one uses THAT
    >definition, then an electron would not be "intelligently
    >designed" because
    >it is produced by purely natural processes.

    To be fair, I am unsure they would actually say
    that the electron is not "intelligently designed".
    I think everything is "intelligently designed" in
    the sense of being created by God (or Vorlons), just
    the ID design is *detectable* because it is complex
    & specified or IC or whatever else they are going
    to think up next. This is where the "ID" as a
    rhetorical strategy comes to fruition. It is
    meaningful as a made-up objection to whatever
    "claims" of "science" are objectionable to them
    (Blind Watchmaker Thesis as a specific example).

    In ID-speak, frequently words have (at least)
    two meanings, and it is very important to watch
    the argument to see where the meaning changed.
    Terry Gray's review of I think _Defeating Darwinism_
    makes this point, Pennock also does in _Tower of
    Babel_ (although he is somewhat sarcastic, which
    may offend some readers).

    An irony of the ID movement is that it draws so
    strongly from the argument from analogy to *mechanistic*
    processes (eg, the revisting of the watchmaker argument,
    so-called "molecular machines", etc.). Mayr strongly
    makes the point in _This is Biology_ that a mechanistic
    conceptual framework for biology is inadequate and in-
    appropriate. Lewontin's _Triple Helix_ also makes
    this point. I suspect quite a lot of misconceptions
    about biology stem from over-applying the mechanistic
    metaphor.

    >



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