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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Ish wrote: | | But some genes from the land or the sea somehow migrate from one world to the other where they infect a population of the opposed species (and viruses are certainly a means by which entire populations can be affected by a genetic invasion -- rather than single individuals). |
That does away with the question of geographical or ecological isolation, which must surely run out of scope for engendering new species pretty quickly.
The 'isolated' populations that punctuate the equilibrium are then just the ones that happen to have been inoculated with the virus.
And the groups must stay small because the process of change is self-terminating: the ones who do change either die or are no longer susceptible.
Most of the time, viral-genetic shenanigans won't affect the next generation.
Hmmm...
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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This Post is a reply to Duncan's original posting in the Matters Arising THOBR Thread. I felt that I was leading that thread astray and the topic was better discussed here.
| Duncan wrote: | | This is important because THOBR does not launch any kind of attack on Evolution, not even on Darwinian Evolution, it merely points out certain shortcomings that its adherents either refuse to address or have not realised eixst. |
Okay but this thread is replete with it. Perhaps you do accept evolution. |
"Evolution" is a loaded term. At base level, "evolution" is the idea that the complexity of life has unfolded over time via unspecified natural processes. Lamark believed in evolution.
Creationism is not the only alternative to evolution. In India, many believe in a steady-state universe that has always been much as it is and always will be much as it is. What exactly constitutes "much as it is" can be quite a flexible concept however. It might be said that Pan-Spermia theory implies a kind of steady-state universe -- though, as they have it, it is only cellular life which has always been and it blossoms ocasionally on living worlds via a limited evolutionary process.
Darwinian evolution -- also known as Evolution by Natural Selection -- is a particular model of evolution. It argues that species randomly undergo constant tiny changes and that natural selection selects from these changes the ones that best promote the health of the species with respect to its current environment and, in so far as the environment changes, species likewise change.
Neo-Darwinism introduces gene theory and the principle of mutation to Darwin's essential concepts.
Now...if someone, having examined the evidence, concludes that Natural Selection will not do the job that Darwin asks of it, and mutation will not produce the qualitative transformations he called for, well...that hardly makes him a 'creationist.'
I won't say I "believe" in evolution (by which I mean essential evolution) but I will say that I do accept it as my basic working model. The question is, What powers it? What is the true motive force -- because I'm equally convinced it does not proceed by natural selection and mutation.
And as you've demonstrated a tendency to leap to conclusions, I'm not talking about an interventionist god. There is an alternative means by which to power evolution. There must be. Because the one we tentatively identified 165 years ago won't do it.
| I had originally thought that you did but much of what I have read really does make me wonder. |
You haven't gotten accustomed to the way we speak around here. I'll bet the only people you've ever read who sounded anything like me were creationists, so that's the mental box into which your brain wants to place me. Mind you...I probably have a lot more respect for creationists than you have for even people like me (whatever I am).
| They have certainly weakened it in my mind and I'm sure that others attracted to these pages by the clarity of THOBR could be turned away by the perspective on evolution that has emerged. As I say, no scientist accepts it. |
But no academic accepts what Mick has to say.
I have seen your battle over at the Time Team site. I assure you that, to them, you look as I look to you: a raving nutcase who simply hasn't the education to wade in on matters fully grasped by the experts.
| Unfortunately, there it is again. I do not accept orthodoxy as a monolithic edifice. There are only competing perspectives, your's included. |
Mick's perspective is not included.
It's my opinion you grant the other two authors you mention there too much credit. Their work seems challenging to the establishment only when read in the light of THOBR.
Once again...my disclaimer: This post represents only my views and not the views of the author of THOBR.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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In another vain attempt to transfer this discussion to a more appropriate area, I've moved my reply to this thread from Matters Arising, The History of Britian Revealed.
| DPCrisp wrote: | | Nor would I expect it to be. The Evolutionists take it to be self-evident that the diversity of life forms is to be explained....The Creationists take it to be self-evident that the diversity of life is a given, God's decision(s). |
Moreover, those who accept even essential evolution are really just another kind of creationist -- as both groups presume a universe that has a beginning. This entire notion of a beginning is a paradigm western science picked up from its heritage in Christendom -- but as I tried to point out earlier, Hindus don't accept it at all.
This leads to a really neat triangled debate (unfortunately, only a hypothetical debate). Christian traditionalists hold that life began but then remained essentially the same. Evolutionary biologists hold that life began and then rapidly changed. Hindu traditionalists say life never began and remains essentially the same.
There's an obvious fourth group that is missing: those who would hold that life never began and rapidly changed.
That group does exist. They emerged from the eastern Hindu tradtion. The theory they espouse is Pan-Spermia.
Advocates of Pan-Spermia claim that cellular life is an essential part of the makup of our universe and that life unfolds and blossoms into entire ecosysystems when its spores come into contact with a fertile world. Life was never created and it never began. It always was and ever will be.
That we look for a beginning for life stems from western presumption.
That said, I think it perfectly reasonable to assume a beginning. Without assuming a beginning, it would not be possible to look for it. But such an assumption is reasonable only if one is prepared to occasionally assume its opposite (or at least grant the theoretical viability of the opposite). So far as I can tell, the western scientific tradition admits of no such possibility. That life must begin is taken (wrongly) to be a foundational principle.
I believe the AE position must be that life in its essentials (simple cells) has always been. If what is, was, unless strong evidence exists to the contrary, then until we've good evidence that the universe was once empty of life, the only reasonable default position must be that life always was.
Again though, it is always perfectly reasonable to assume the opposite for the sake of investigation.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Othodoxy (western orthodoxy) argues from simple to complex. Since they have some difficulty conjuring life from the primeval slime, they are by no means universally opposed to panspermia. But of course the question AE has to address is whether this single-cell sperm world can be shown to have existed. My reading of the evidence ("Look at these three billion year old Australian rocks with their simple life forms") is that it is OK so long as you think a single-celled starting point is more or less the only thing possible.
How complex can an organism be to arrive on a comet? Is there any other way of gitting across space (cf. Advanced Gaia/SCUM)?
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | How complex can an organism be to arrive on a comet? Is there any other way of gitting across space (cf Advanced Gaia/SCUM)? |
As you know, I have been working on a proposal that would make plausible the wholesale arrival of complex life forms to planet Earth. That's not the same as proposing that they did so -- of course -- but it opens up the possibility.
And you are quite right that AE principles make the positing of an Earth absent of complete eco-systems of multicelluar, complex life forms difficult to justify. We just don't have a lot of evidence for it. If we were truly rigorous with our principles, we would insist that, until further notice, we must assume that so long as life has been present here, complex life has been present here.
But I am uncomfortable with the implications.
What I must insist upon is that we allow for the possibility: That life has always been on Earth much as it is on Earth for however long it has been on Earth.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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Advocates of Pan-Spermia claim that cellular life is an essential part of the makeup of our universe and that life unfolds and blossoms into entire ecosystems when its spores come into contact with a fertile world. Life was never created and it never began. It always was and ever will be.
That we look for a beginning for life stems from western presumption. |
Interesting. I both agree and disagree with both of these positions. (You weren't expecting anything else.)
Cellular life is itself a geocentric paradigm... which might be hard to fit with a cosmology full of exploding stars and stuff like that... but that's for them to work out.
And since I take the only example of a living planet that we know of to be a Gaian planet, I can't even make sense of "a fertile world" except in terms of life processes.
A beginning makes some sense, even if we reckon it to be cyclical: we are well used to processes reaching some sort of culmination and then being set back to the beginning; such as dropping back from the top of the "food chain" to the fungi and bacteria; or new solar systems formed from the dust of old ones. {Doesn't matter whether we believe in these particular scenarios: we are happy to operate with them.}
But the beginning of "life itself" I do not subscribe to: I can not see any point within the spectrum of "what chemistry does" at which to draw a line and say this is life but that is not. The Life of Earth, it seems to me, is continuous with the Life of the Universe: which is Pan- but not so much -Spermia.
| But such an assumption is reasonable only if one is prepared to occasionally assume its opposite |
Hear hear.
| life in its essentials = simple cells |
That's a whole argument in itself.
| If what is, was, unless strong evidence exists to the contrary, then until we've good evidence that the universe was once empty of life, the only reasonable default position must be that life always was. |
But we could look around us and say, as far as we can tell, the universe is mostly empty of life now: that life is extremely rare and needs a special explanation.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| DPCrisp wrote: | | But the beginning of "life itself" I do not subscribe to: I can not see any point within the spectrum of "what chemistry does" at which to draw a line and say this is life but that is not. The Life of Earth, it seems to me, is continuous with the Life of the Universe: which is Pan- but not so much -Spermia. |
I find this perspective persuasive.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Applied Epistemology has quite a lot to say about this life/non-life interface. The underlying problem, as always, is where is academia coming from? Chemistry grew out of alchemy and ultimately the Classical tradition, whereas Biology is the end-product of the species-collectors, an efflorescence of the Romantic Movement. Uneasy bedfellows.
Of course as things developed apace it was quickly evident that they were more than kinda linked so the first thing that Chemistry did was to split into Organic and Inorganic Chemistry. The latter was now comfortably sealed off from any biological impredations and it was left to science fiction to explore the possiblities of non-carbonbased lifeforms. But to make sure that Organic Chemistry retained its independence from the snarling demands of the Life Sciences, biochemistry came into existence to hold the ring. And there it has been left, with both sides on easy street.
So I expect it will ultimately be left to the Applied Epistemologists to supply the unifying paradigm.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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Unless Lovelock has given it to us already.
I don't see an 'end' to life processes and I don't see an 'end' to Gaia. And I can't see the join between organic and inorganic chemistry.
{Let's be clearer: there is a difference between "seeing no join" -- as I do -- and "not seeing a join" -- as perhaps the chemists do by not looking towards the area where their disciplines meet.}
{A parallel: interdisciplinary research is by nature fragmentary -- so it's not hard to line up the gaps in everyone's paradigms and say "look: we are all in agreement"? Transdisciplinary research is only done by us?}
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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An example of the polarity that can exist between the approach of individual researchers and that of whichever department of science is involved and the strange interaction between different branches, in this case cosmology and particle physics:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/god-particle/achenbach-text
In this instance the interests of the two 'sides' coalesce rather neatly, is that due to the enormous sums of money involved or am I being unduly cynical? A scientific institution often demands an unrealistic level of "certainty" before the researchers have really clarified the subject of study, for the sake of grant-getting presumably.
| If there's one truly extraordinary concept to emerge from the past century of inquiry, it's that the cosmos we see was once smaller than an atom. This is why particle physicists talk about cosmology and cosmologists talk about particle physics: Our existence, our entire universe, emerged from things that happened at the smallest imaginable scale |
This is the default position, right? You can't even start with a single cell since a cell is made up of I don't know how many atoms, microbes, what have you.
{The speed of light is a commonplace, some people even know how fast it is, yet light itself is a wave and a particle... are these two concepts interchangeable, if not how can light be both? And when scientists talk about 'life' they're referring to particles and other microscopic components which somehow have to be reconciled to what we perceive even when the nature of the constituents is still largely abstract}.
| How does an infinitely dense universe become a vast and spacious one? And how is it filled with matter? In theory, as the early universe expanded, energy should have condensed into equal amounts of matter and antimatter, which would then have annihilated each other on contact, reverting to pure energy. On paper, the universe should be empty. .....The LHC experiments may help physicists understand our good fortune to be in a universe that grew with just enough more matter than antimatter. |
This is what scientists think? That there just so happens, luckily for us, to be "more matter than antimatter" in the universe?
| The preferred name for the God particle among physicists is the Higgs boson, or the Higgs particle, or simply the Higgs, in honor of the University of Edinburgh physicist Peter Higgs, who proposed its existence more than 40 years ago. Most physicists believe that there must be a Higgs field that pervades all space; the Higgs particle would be the carrier of the field and would interact with other particles, sort of the way a Jedi knight in Star Wars is the carrier of the "force." The Higgs is a crucial part of the standard model of particle physics—but no one's ever found it. |
Bit of an Alice In Wonderland feel, professing to be searching for something which has never been seen yet is 'known' to exist -- God particle, not G(od)-spot -- an existence that is fleeting to the point of invisibility but is also the 'mud' that sticks stuff together. The existence of this 'X factor' has been posited for over 40 years, a considerable period in research terms.
It's a massive project. Wonder what results will emerge from the search for the fundamental particle of life. If the scientists even recognise it when they 'see' it.
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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Hatty wrote:
Bit of an Alice In Wonderland feel, professing to be searching for something which has never been seen yet is 'known' to exist -- God particle, not G(od)-spot -- an existence that is fleeting to the point of invisibility but is also the 'mud' that sticks stuff together. The existence of this 'X factor' has been posited for over 40 years, a considerable period in research terms.
It's a massive project. Wonder what results will emerge from the search for the fundamental particle of life. If the scientists even recognise it when they 'see' it |
Understanding the mind of God is something professed by both Einstein and Stephen Hawking. And it underlines the philosophical nature of modern astrophysics and particle physics. For the 40 years you speak of these two branches of science have operated on false premises.
Both disciplines are based entirely on theoretical constructs. They have built a house of cards by using mathematical equations to explain how the universe SHOULD work rather than observing the cosmos and determining how it actually DOES work.
Not one theorised substance (quarks, Higgs bosons, black holes, dark matter) nor any other theorised particle or effect have ever been observed or reproduced in lab experiments. These have all been ad hoc mathematical constructs added to their base flawed theory after the continuing stream of observational data from space probes and better telescopes (radio & optical) have contradicted their base assumptions about the nature of the universe.
Astronomy and Particle Physics have reverted to Platonic Philosophy rather than Galilean observation.
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AJMorton
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| Komorikid wrote: | | Not one theorised substance (quarks, Higgs bosons, black holes, dark matter) nor any other theorised particle or effect have ever been observed or reproduced in lab experiments. |
At last! You can 'prove' that low-birth birth rates are primarily determined by the flights of storks. If these are the only two variables that are used, Maths will back up your idea.
But it's still balls.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Astronomy and Particle Physics have reverted to Platonic Philosophy rather than Galilean observation. |
Indeed. "God" appears to be used loosely by Einstein and Hawking faute de mieux when determining what, if anything, began the universe, a somewhat loaded word in anyone's parlance, scientist or not. Since the abandonment of Steady State theory there's been a plethora of theories attempting to interpret scientists' observations giving the impression they're clutching at straws, or strings. Have you read 'A Brief History Of Time' (has anyone?)?
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Xerxes
In: The Forest of Dean
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| They have built a house of cards by using mathematical equations to explain how the universe SHOULD work rather than observing the cosmos and determining how it actually DOES work. |
So true! And this is even acknowledged by the more honest cosmologists (if you're interested, I recommend Lee Smolin's book 'The Trouble with Physics').
Apart from the reference to mathematics, Komorikid's statement could be equally applied to many other sciences where method dominates over observation. The new tools of science have too often become 'solutions in search of problems', so that, for example, DNA analysis is applied with enthusiasm to samples that are tens of thousands of years old, while forensic scientists are still working on finding reliable means to analyse samples that have been degrading for only a few decades.
In the topic at hand: 'Origin of Species', the need to look at the evidence all around us has surely got to dominate over theoretical constructs.
But before the very first questions can be addressed, haven't we got to be concerned with the definition of the term 'species'. Forgive me for stating the bleedin' obvious -- but how the hell do you discuss and debate the origin of something that has not been defined.
So, an adequate definition of the term species. Any takers? Or do you want me to jump first?
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Xerxes wrote: | | So, an adequate definition of the term species. Any takers? Or do you want me to jump first? |
Give it a shot!
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