>This small thread started as a reaction I had to Johnson's remarks. It
>kind of changed into a question on the limits of our knowledge. I'm
>posting it with George's permission.
>--Gene
>
I think people interested in these types of limits would enjoy
reading John Horgan's <The End of Science>. Horgan's application
of these ideas to "complexology" in SciAm ["From Complexity to
Perplexity", June 1995] has been discussed here a few times.
The newest (as far as I know) chapter in this little "war" occurs
in the most recent edition of the journal <Complexity>. I don't
have it with me now, but I think it's volume 2 #2, Dec/Jan.
I haven't read it yet, but there was a funny cartoon with
John Horgan and Stuart Kauffman going at each other in
a boxing ring. The gloves were on in the cartoon, but I think
they came off later :-).
>Gene Godbold wrote:
>> I have a question that I have kind of implied in several forums and
>nobody has called me on it. I ask it here explicity: If you have
>evidence that certain organisms are descended from certain other
>organisms--related through an evolutionary pathwa--does this then mean for
>the theist that you have figured out how God created all life? Just
>because you can show the former, it seems presumptuous to declare the
>latter. Humility seems to dictate that you say that in such and such
>cases it seems very likely that evolution happened for such and such
>reasons. Outside of these cases, it should be admitted that we aren't
>sure what happened.
>
I can't find fault in your general line of reasoning, as Yogi Berra
said, "If you don't know what you're talking about, shut up" :).
I've been on somewhat of a campaign to keep emphasizing the
importance of keeping distinctions between facts and theories.
So, I would re-write your last sentence above to say "...it should
be admitted that we aren't sure how it happened." Quite often
we know what happened, we are just unsure how (by what
mechanism). For example, one will sometimes hear a Creationist
ask a Theistic Evolutionist about the wasteful process wherein
most species that have ever existed on Earth went extinct. But
this is confusing theories with facts, we know that most species
ever to exist on Earth have gone extinct.
Of course, this example is more clear cut than your example
of common ancestry. Interestingly, some creationists don't
seem to mind accepting common ancestry at all. It seems to
me that they justify this along the lines of what I'm saying
above. An admission of common ancestry (what happened)
is not the same as agreeing with evolutionists on how it
happened.
>
>George Murphy wrote:
>> As scientists we do have to say that [you limit yourself to the
>evidence you have to the case at hand--GDG]. Belief that the
>universe is rational, whether on Christian grounds or otherwise, will lead
>one to trust that a scientific explanation can be found, even if we don't
>know it yet (&, we have to admit, may never know it).
I really can't agree with this. Belief that the universe is rational
may *motivate* one to seek a scientific explanation. That it may
cause someone to *trust* that a scientific explanation will be
found seems to me contrary to the spirit of science. Remember
Yogi !
GM:==
> There is a story about Einstein being asked what he would have done
>if the 1919 eclipse observations had agreed with Newton's theory rather
>than his own. Einstein is supposed to have replied, "Then I would have
>been sorry for the dear Lord."
>
This reminded me of a little anecdote about Dirac that I found
in an excellent biography of Richard Feynman (<Genius> by
Gleick). Before the discovery of the positron, Dirac had this
mathematical theory which contained a +/- SQRT of something
or other. The positive solution yielded the electron, but no physical
explanation was known for the negative value. Dirac was well
known for placing his faith in the math and in elevating the elegance
of a solution above contrary empirical evidence. Dirac insisted
that the negative answer was not just a quirk of the algebra, but
corresponded to something real. Turns out he was vindicated,
the physical explanation of the negative solution turned out to
be the positron. Dirac made some kind of funny quip about this
but I don't remember what it was. I'm sure it didn't involve the
Lord though as Dirac was a devout atheist. In protesting Dirac's
evangelical atheism, another famous scientist (forget who) said
"Dirac has his own religion: 'There is no God and Dirac is his
prophet' ". ;-)
Well, there are lots of other interesting things here, but I think
I'll limit myself to only one further comment:
George:=====
>Caveats:
> a. I think Goedel's theorem suggests that the mathematical
> pattern of our universe cannot be logically closed. Thus
> there must be scientific questions to which science cannot
> give unambiguous answers.
Gregory Chaitin worked out some things very closely related
to Godel's theorem on the basis of his algorithmic information
theory. One theorem can be loosely translated "You can't get
a 200 lb baby from a 100 lb woman". The consequence of this
relative to this discussion is that if a physical phenomena has
a complexity greater than that of our own mental faculties
(our brains if you wish) then that phenomena will appear to
us as if it were random. In the computer lingo on which AIT
is based we would say that one program cannot compress the
output of another program more complex than itself.
conclude is that there are some physical phenomena forever
beyond our reach.
The implications of Chaitin's work reach beyond science to
pure mathematics and logic. For example, consider the following
opening statements for one of Chaitin's papers:
======================================================
The most important application of algorithmic information
theory is to show the limits of mathematical reasoning. And
in particular what I've constructed and exhibited are mathematical
facts which are true for no reason. These are mathematical facts
which are true by accident. And since they're true for no reason you
can never actually prove logically whether they're true or not. They're
sort of accidental mathematical facts which are analogous to
the outcome of a coin toss, because the independent toss of a
fair coin has got to come out heads or tails but there's no reason
why it should come out one or the other. And I've found mathematical
facts that mirror this very precisely.
-- Gregory Chaitin, "How to Run Algorithmic Information Theory
on a Computer," <Complexity>, 2(1):15-21.
=======================================================
This is a rather provacative paragraph :-). Hubert Yockey in his
book <Information Theory and Molecular Biology> follows up
on this saying something like "Chaitin has shown that randomness
exists even in pure mathematics, why not in biology as well!".
He also has this type thing in mind when he says that the
LumpenIntelligentsia (Yockey usually means dialectical
materialist when he uses this term) are really mad that they
weren't consulted when the Universe was created.
Here I have to add the usual disclaimer that the word "random"
is not being used with its normal meaning in everyday conversation.
It does, however, mean something that is I think closely related
to how the word "rational" is being used in this thread. If
something is random, it contains no regularities according to
which it could be "understood" in a scientific sense.
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
Ohio State University