>Abstract: continuing discussion of ID issues, with particular
>reference to Loren's post of Fri, 26 Jan 1996.
>
>I have been seeking clarification of ideas put forward by Bill
>Hamilton. In particular, the thought that "design is in the
>properties of entities in nature" and the thought of God
>invisibly intervening in nature as an intelligent designer and
>overseer, maintaining "control over the direction of nature by
>means of infinitesimal perturbations".
>
Let me try to elaborate some more from the point of view of
the structural biologists (self-organizationalists) such as
Brian Goodwin. Goodwin sees biological structures such as
limbs eyes etc. as "generic forms" which may be thought of
as strange attractors in nonlinear dynamics terminology. He
views this as a much more rational explanation of such things
as convergent evolution (have I used the right term?). This
would be almost heresy from the point of view of the ultra
Darwinians. Biological forms are just "there", no need for
a Blind Watchmaker stumbling around :-).
There is a new popular level book out on complexity by George
Johnson <Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for
Order>, Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. On the back cover is a short
blurb from Paul Davies:
"Is the emergence of organized complexity just a fluke
or part of a lawlike trend? A battle is raging between
Darwinian traditionalists and an iconoclastic alliance
of computer scientists, physicists, mathematicians, and
heretical biologists. ....."
Heretical biologists, I love it ;-). Davies also has a short
article in the most recent issue of _Time_ in which he discusses
self-org a little. Stephen recently commented that he felt that
Gould and Eldredge, if pressed, would admit to being Darwinists.
Perhaps, its hard to say. But I'm fairly confident that Goodwin
would rather die than make such an admission ;-).
Even more controversial than the above is the view by some,
including Goodwin, that entire organisms are strange attractors.
If the tape were played again, one would get essentially the
same thing. But perhaps not exactly. For example, there could
be "attractors" that haven't been discovered. Also, natural
selection is still viewed as playing a minor role of fine
tuning.
I believe that Bill's view is that God could be intervening in
an undetectable way by the ever so slight "tweaking" of trajectories
to be sure that particular attractors are located. I think Goodwin
would probably say that such tweaking isn't necessary. This would,
I suppose, depend upon how strong the attractors are and also how
"close" they are.
Of course, all of this is very speculative at present. If Goodwin
is correct, I personally would find this scenario strongly
suggesting design. Is the view of designing a phase space which
contains organisms as strange attractors really so different from
designing the organisms themselves?
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Brian Harper |
Associate Professor | "It is not certain that all is uncertain,
Applied Mechanics | to the glory of skepticism" -- Pascal
Ohio State University |
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