avocationist
Posts: 173
Joined: Feb. 2006
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Wesley,
I am not susre where I said Darwin's ideas were misused. Maybe in relation to eugenics?
I am not excusing negative and insulting rhetoric, I simply made the point that in some of those cases, they are comparing similar behaviors in certain situations, not actually calling the people nazi's, for example.
| Quote | | Johnson compares Gould to Gorbachev. Again, no discussion of the ideas. Is this really not a comparison: "Gould, like Gorbachev, deserves immense credit for bringing glasnost to a closed society of dogmatists. And, like Gorbachev, he lives on as a sad reminder of what happens to those who lack the nerve to make a clean break with a dying theory." ? |
It isn't the same sort of comparison as I have seen made, for example, when IDists have compared academic establishment behaviors to a priesthood. That is a direct comparison, but if they compare a situation in which a regime is under challenge to a similar one involving the soviets or Gorbachev, it is not a direct comparison, i.e., they are not calling them communists. He is saying that Gould finds himself in a similar predicament.
Hello Creek (where do some people come up with these names?),
| Quote | | "A closed system with a specific internal energy will tend to relax |
Is it not so that even in an open system, the tendency toward equilibrium is still there, but simply can be counteracted?
I didn't understand your post and I'm not sure I should ask.
Why do you multiply the states, then switch and add them instead, and why do you say that A entropy increases and B entropy decreases and yet say they are not in equilibrium with each other. It wasn't clear to me whether system A and B are interacting. What does the In stand for in this:
( ln(6x10) = ln(6)+ln(10)
| Quote | | Personally, I'm curious in what manner you're interested in applying the 2nd law. Is it abiogenesis, or evolution, or genetic information, or even something as general as having a universe that isn't in thermal equilibrium? |
General information about how things work, and specifically about how other laws might be in an interactive system with it.
Chris,
| Quote | | In scientific terms that's a conjecture or a hypothesis at best. |
Yes, it's probably a hypothesis. That's alright with me.
| Quote | | The 'theory of intelligent design' needs to include what the designer did, and in more detail than 'he designed things somehow'. For example it needs to include whether evolution was frontloaded at some point, or if the designer intervened whenever anything needed doing. It needs to take a position one way or the other on common descent, and most likely the age of the earth. If the earth is young it needs to explain how x number of kinds could evolve into x number of species in a few thousand years. If life was frontloaded it needs to explain how the unused information was not degraded by mutation, and in more detail than something like 'some kind of fantastic error correction mechanism'. |
Those are ALL important questions.
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Most importantly this theory needs to make predictions, |
I have seen a few. Just reading around. Natch I can't remember them. But I have made one yesterday. I predict that we will find specifics in genetics/embryonic development that prevent species from jumping the species barrier. I.e., we will find a species barrier. Of course, that could be a problem if there is frontloading. If there is frontloading, we will have to find out how the programming allows for saltation into new species, on a periodic but not gradual basis.
Demallion,
| Quote | | The big problem with your use of entropy, is that you wish to refer to some properties of entropy in a closed system. |
So does entropy have any effect on a biological organism? What about when it dies?
Do you really think I don't know what you posted about the mechanism of evolution? Are you really unaware that much has been written to refute that? Are you unaware that while it might sound good it might not stand up to scrutiny? I mean, what was the point in assuming I didn't know that mutations are considered to be the driving force of evolution? If you didn't read my post, why throw in your two cents? I clearly stated it isn't adequate, and I think it is a wrong turn that the theory took, and its salvation lies in rethinking that.
Cedric,
If you'll note, I made a general response to 3 posters together. One of them said he wished that just once an IDer would state what the theory of ID is. Now, that's pretty absurd since it is clearly and often stated at the various sites. As to your request that I put my theory in my own words, I consider that a silly time waster. Does each of you have your own personal theory of evolution? would you feel called upon to improve upon, say, Mayr's def?
What I gave you was plenty of my own thoughts and ideas, as well as a quick run down of where I'm coming from, what I've read and considered important. You want to play a little game on your terms.
The bit about if I was at a party is actually a good way to put it, but I am not sure I'd bother at the party. I'd give a very vague rundown, and tell them that if they are truly interested and they probably are not, that I can loan them a book. I'd tell them that things are not alwasy as they appear and they may have heard one side.
I think I said quite a few interesting things in my post. the one liner wasn't even for you.
Don-
| Quote | | Me: Fascinating! Which ones? And why? |
Are you completely unaquainted with the literature? What have you read?
Serendipity,
That last paragraph, in italics, is it from you? The conclusion that an intelligent designer gives us hope for immortality doesn't really follow.
If it is from you, then it means you find the arguments of Denton, Dembski, Behe, Meyer insultingly simplistic.
In that case, I'd like you to answer the following and clear it up for me,
| Quote | If selection could, in principle, accomplish “anything,” then all the order in organisms might reflect selection alone. But, in fact, there are limits to selection. Such limits begin to demand a shift in our thinking in the biological sciences and beyond. We have already encountered a first powerful limitation on selection. Darwin’s view of the gradual accumulations of useful variations, we saw, required gradualism. Mutations must cause slight alterations in phenotypes, But we have now seen two alternative model “worlds” in which such gradualism fails. The first concerns maximally compressed programs. Because these are random, almost certainly any change randomizes the performance of the program. Finding one of the few useful minimal programs requires searching the entire space requiring unthinkably long times compared with the history of the universe even for modestly large programs … But the matter is even worse on such random landscapes. If an adapting population evolves by mutation and selection alone, it will remain frozen in an infinitesimal region of the total space, trapped forever in whatever region it started in. It will be unable to search long distances across space for higher peaks. Yet if the population dares try recombination, it will be harmed on average, not helped. There is a second limitation on selection. It is not only on random landscapes that evolution fails. Even on smooth landscapes, in the heartland of gradualism, just where Darwin’s assumptions hold, selection can again fail and fail utterly. Selection runs headlong into an “error catastrophe” where all accumulated useful traits melt away…. Thus there appears to be a limit on the complexity of a genome that can be assembled by mutation and selection!
Stuart Kaffman, At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 183-184. |
While you are at it, resolve the Haldane's dilemma.
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