> One of the most telling aspects of his argument is that without recent
> hints provided in fields like chaos and complexity, there was actually
> no hope for evolution -- just faith. To me this seems like an admission
> that evolutionists had for a long time advocated their position based
> solely on faith, not evidence. As Phil and others argue, naturalistic
> evolution is currently propped up only by faith in naturalism.
Actually, Crichton is by no means the first to suggest that chaos theory
might fill in the conceptual gaps in the theoretical mechanisms of
evolution. Robert Wesson wrote a book around this theme - "Beyond
Natural Selection" (MIT, 1991). The book has many frank admissions
of the problems of evolutionary theory as well as the usual creationism-
bashing. He proposes chaos and attractor vocabulary in the hopes that
these emerging technologies will resolve the problems.
I have profound skepticism of chaos resolving these difficulties.
I specialize in digital signal processing of electroencephalograms (EEGs).
The neurophysiological community went ga-ga over chaos theory several
years ago when relatively simple dynamical systems produced trajectories
that "look just like EEG." The initial speculation was that perhaps
underlying the complex EEG were relatively simple generators. This
enthusiasm waned when Hausdorf dimensional analysis was applied to actual
EEG. This analysis gives some kind of a handle on the order of the
generator. A consequence of the Poincare-Bendickson criterion is that
chaotic trajectories can only occur for dynamical systems of 3 dimensions
or higher. The results of these investigations revealed that the
Hausdorf dimension was beyond estimation for most states of consciousness.
The two important exception were delta stage sleep and epileptic seizures.
In the later, the dimension dropped all the way down to 2 which is
observable by periodic activity in the EEG (again consistent with
the Poincare-Bendickson theorem). The conclusion was that the
mathematical models that produced EEG-like signals, despite their
apparent similarity to real EEG was nonetheless sterile and only
superficial. The high dimensionality of EEG is either the consequence
of a truly stochastic nature of EEG or because the information content
is immense (or some combination). In either case, chaotic systems are
not capable of bridging the gap simply because one cannot create
degrees of freedom where none exist.
There is also a problem to the naturalist in attempting to solve the
problem of the mechanisms of evolution through this type of appeal.
Fundamental to the naturalistic world view is that blind, mindless
processes are capable of producing apparence of design so ubiquitous is
nature. But as Ulrich Becker, Prof. of physics at MIT astutely points
out on the origin of life - "Luria and Ziegler argue on plausibilistic
levels to overcome the minute probability of an accidental start as
scientifically rigorous thermodynamics predicts. Even if new
"chaos-to-order" models enhance the probability by many orders of
magnitude to form the first reproducing entity, the question of the
origin is not answered without addressing who arranged the laws to
cooperate so well." (Cosmos, Bios, Theos - Henry Margenau & Abraham
Varghese, Open Court, 1992, pg 29). In other words, systems that
self-organize all by themselves suggest that the end product was
in fact the result of a design built right into the very laws of
nature itself.
-jpt
--John P. Turnbull (jpt@ccfadm.eeg.ccf.org)Cleveland Clinic FoundationDept. of Neurology, Section of Neurological ComputingM52-119500 Euclid Ave.Cleveland Ohio 44195Telephone (216) 444-8041; FAX (216) 444-9401