Finding this wonderful fig eater, Cotinis nitida got me thinking about this quote and a few more cosmic issues. I don't know. Must be incipient heat stroke.
During the intelligent design controversy, ID proponents liked to say that all we can say about the designer is that design exists and that we cannot infer anything about the designer. So I half jokingly said that maybe we can infer that the God- excuse me, designer- was really fond of beetles. The response I got was quite clever, as ID responses often are. Namely: would a carpenter be fond of nails because he needs lots of them to build a house?
If I had been a bit quicker I might have commented on what this says about the ID view point. It really is all about purpose, human purpose, just as the old style creationism is. All the creatures around us are merely nails in some sort of grand scheme. The beetle is just a nail in a house. Whose house is it? God's house or our house. And why make such intricate nails? Why make anything at all?
The belief that the universe has a purpose is so ingrained in our minds that it often hinders our ability to think about the Universe. For instance we commonly believe in the balance of nature and that every species has its place- the niche. My students will tell me that plants carry out photosynthesis to produce oxygen. Never mind that oxygen is a waste product of photosynthesis. Many of them just don't get it.
And its not just students who's sight is blinded by purpose. Otherwise sophisticated people sometimes will say that being gay is a way of population control- sort of a group selectionist idea a la V.C. Wynne-Edwards. During the 70's and 80's scientists seriously proposed that the Earth is a great self regulating system. This is the "Gaia hypothesis" of James Lovelock and that of course blends into some slippery versions of the anthropic principle which are stated as saying that the Universe is the way that it is because we are here. And that blends Frank Tipler's notions about the fate of the universe. He claims that eventually life will fill and control the universe and through its quantum mechanical interactions with the universe reach some sort of Omega Point that he identifies with God.
Now this is an appealing notion for me because it seems to be a sort of self assembly of the sort we encounter all through out biology extended to a cosmic scale. Life bootstrapping itself up into greater and greater complexity without intervention of some sort of external intelligence. To quote Tipler:
"I also argue that the ultimate future state of the universe, the Omega Point, should be identified with God. ...If we regard God as something Ultimate, then He is telling us that He is the Ultimate Future. "
So God in the future is influencing the past, presumably through some sort of quantum mechanical entanglement. Very self referential sounding indeed. And at the same time a lot like manifest destiny-only it is life that has as its manifest destiny to become God with the power to resurrect the dead.
Of course if you are Christian, God does have that sort of ultimate power. But it seems that Tipler, like the Intelligent Design advocates, and perhaps even the group selectionists and Gaia advocates, are trying to hammer the universe into a shape that is a reflection of what we are are.
Now the impulse to do that is understandable. After all, in terms of our own evolution, the ability to bend and chip matter for our own uses and by extension modify our environment to suit our very human purposes has served us in good stead. I would not want us to retreat into some sort of technological passivity. Nor do I disavow all notions of purpose. But I believe we constantly have to 'guard or minds' against the very powerful and subtle illusion that our notions of purpose have any scientific meaning in terms of the universe. A beetle otherwise becomes merely a funny looking nail and plants produce oxygen so we can breathe.
11 comments:
Purpose in nature depends entirely on which cosmological model is actually in effects.
We don't know that yet for certain, but we do have evidence that says that you're wrong.
Well, maybe so. I would love to be wrong on this one. But the evidence I see, from my humble place as a biolologist suggests that human purpose is different than whatever else maybe going on in the universe.
What is your evidence?
hmmmm... Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock are biologists. Prominent biologists, at that. Not that bugs are any less important to the ecobalance, but ecobalances are the predominant feature of the goldilocks enigma.
Anyway, my evidence would be the CMB anomalies that place us at a centralized location in the universe, and the anthropic physics, which, believe me... is not even given due consideration.
The first part of this is about the CMB anomalies, which isn’t something that too many cosmologists like to talk about until they're done trying to "explain it away".
There are, however, very recent scientific papers from heretics like me, that talk about it, but you can read about it in layman’s terms in this older article:
http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=2640
They also talk about it from the fringe:
http://www.cosmology.info/newsletter/2007.04.htm
Or you can also get it first hand from Lawrence Krauss at edge.org
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/krauss06/krauss06.2_index.html
But when you look at CMB map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That’s crazy. We’re looking out at the whole universe. There’s no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun — the plane of the earth around the sun — the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe.
-Lawrence Krauss
That's Crazy!
That's the best refutation that they've ever come up with, yet they've given themselves an unlimited amount of time to explain it away without bothering to give equal time for the most apparent implication of the evidence, which, by rights, should spawn a flurry of research into the biocentric implication.
The problem here is what Brandon Carter termed, "anticentrist dogma" that doesn't fit the observations, which leads to absurdities by scientists.
This would be some more of my evidence that isn't recognized by scientists for the above mentioned reasons:
http://evolutionarydesign.blogspot.com/2006/11/very-strong-anthropic-principle.html
Personally, I believe that I have very good reason to believe that the anthropic physics is telling us that the universe is "Darwinian". This is a prediction that is necessarily inherent to any true anthropic cosmological principle... assuming that the basic tennants of evolutionary theory are correct... which I do.
So Paul, I'd like to put something to you for your advice. I obviously have a point that I can't make due to dogma vs. creationism that gets read-into the physics.
What the hell am I supposed to do?
How could a neodarwinian ever get to the conclusion that their own theory was defining the most accurate cosmological model... if it means that they have to recognize "purpose in nature"... ?
What if this is important to our survival, but I can never get past the preconceived prejudice?... I say that because that implication does exist too.
I really honestly do hate what I've learned, but I think that I hate ideologically led sheep even more than that.
I guess what I am saying in my post is that I don't like skyhooks, if you have read Dennett's book Darwin's Dangerous Idea. From my all I see are Dennett's cranes, no evidence in the biological sphere of any sort of purpose.
From the evolutionary perspective self regulatory properties of the Earth of the Gaia hypothesis, seem illusional, the result of evolutionary opportunism. It's not dogma with me but since I don't see evidence of purpose-and here I mean some sort of intentionality in the biological would, why should I expect it at more inclusive, ummm more cosmological levels of levels of organization? Not dogma, but (I hope) healthy skepticism.
In the early part of the the last century there was a book by a fellow by the name of Henderson (I think that's right) called the fitness of the environmrnt which talked at length about how the properties of water just happen to be just right for life.
He made (as I recall) an argument that water just happens to be transparent at just those wavelengths used for vision by most organisms. Now some might leap to the conclusion that this is a really interesting coincidence and tie it in to the anthropic principle.
But of course there is no coincidence at all-visual systems are the products of the evolutionary process and so those systems that evolve will tend to exploit those wavelengths available to them-or at least certain subsets of those wavelengths. So the coincidence is not so remarkable after all.
So why should I be suprised at the seemingly centralized location of us (Do you mean humans or carbon based life?) in the universe?
Sorry, I ramble.
Hi Paul, I'm sorry that I took so long to respond, but I had a rough monday... ;)
I guess what I am saying in my post is that I don't like skyhooks
Can't blame you for that, as I have the same sort of dislike when physicists use "uncertainty" and other similarly meaningless notions, (like multiverses), to dodge causlity and first principles.
From the evolutionary perspective self regulatory properties of the Earth of the Gaia hypothesis, seem illusional, the result of evolutionary opportunism. It's not dogma with me but since I don't see evidence of purpose-and here I mean some sort of intentionality in the biological would, why should I expect it at more inclusive, ummm more cosmological levels of levels of organization? Not dogma, but (I hope) healthy skepticism.
In the early part of the the last century there was a book by a fellow by the name of Henderson (I think that's right) called the fitness of the environmrnt which talked at length about how the properties of water just happen to be just right for life.
He made (as I recall) an argument that water just happens to be transparent at just those wavelengths used for vision by most organisms. Now some might leap to the conclusion that this is a really interesting coincidence and tie it in to the anthropic principle.
But of course there is no coincidence at all-visual systems are the products of the evolutionary process and so those systems that evolve will tend to exploit those wavelengths available to them-or at least certain subsets of those wavelengths. So the coincidence is not so remarkable after all.
No, it's not dogma, but ecobalances, ecospheres, and habitable zones are coinciding anthropic concidences that fall into the cosmological realm of the goldilocks enigma. Regardless of common claims about how life evolved to fit the conditions, rather than the other way round... "evolutionary opportunism" requires a certain degree of practical environmental enablement that falls under the wing of the anthropic physics, not evolutionary theory.
So why should I be suprised at the seemingly centralized location of us (Do you mean humans or carbon based life?) in the universe?
The WMAP anomalies indicate that the Earth appears to constrain the motion of the rest of the universe to a preferred direction around us. If nothing else, this indicates an extremely strong anthropic constraint on the forces, but the Earth's motion around the sun, the ecliptic, also traces-out the goldilocks zone of the observed universe, where life elsewhere in the universe is expected to be found.
I think that I have reason to think that intelligent life is be a more special-ized tool than other forms of carbon based life, but the physics points more generally at carbon based life without my variant interpretaion.
self regulatory properties of the Earth of the Gaia hypothesis, seem illusional
So do the WMAP anomalies, but we don't ignore the guy that's standing over the dead body with a smoking gun just because we don't believe that the appearance that he might be guilty is anything more than a illusion.
Island,
You wrote:
"The WMAP anomalies indicate that the Earth appears to constrain the motion of the rest of the universe to a preferred direction around us."
Ah, so you think the tail really does wag the dog? ;-)
No, I think that the tail, (which includes planets in every galaxy in the habitable zone), is inherent to the dog prior to the moment that the matter field gets layed down by the big bang.
But it only grows-out when the dog has evolved to the point that it needs the tail for continued survival.
The point though, Paul, is that you don't just ignore the most apparent impication of evidence because you don't believe your own eyes. I have no problem with equal time for the alternative possibility, but it isn't even acknowledged that this requires that we make a concession of doubt that apparently isn't called for to the less likely suspect.
Pretending that the most apparent implication of the evidence doesn't even exist... IS... dogma.
Well, not so apparent at all to me. I am not a cosmologist, so show me the evidence for your claim that:
"But it only grows-out when the dog has evolved to the point that it needs the tail for continued survival."
This is an extraordinary claim...so you must have some extraordinary evidence for it. I don't think it is dogmatic to insist on that. Lots of ideas sound really cool philisophically but don't pan out empirically.
What?!... Wow, no, you took that completely out of context with the point that was already made, and I learned the hard way upon naively stumbling into my first bunch of rabid neodarwinian antifanatics who are much more interested in fighting their culture war, than they are in doing honest science, is that you do not let them avoid making an admission when one is called for, so just to be on the safe side, Paul:
"i" pointed out the known but ignored fact that:
The WMAP anomalies indicate that the Earth appears to constrain the motion of the rest of the universe to a preferred direction around us.
Paul replied:
Ah, so you think the tail really does wag the dog?
It does not matter what you, nor I think, got it, now?
You don't just ignore the most apparent impication of evidence because you don't believe your own eyes. I have no problem with equal time for the alternative possibility, but it isn't even acknowledged that this requires that we make a concession of doubt that apparently isn't called for to the less likely suspect.
Pretending that the most apparent implication of the evidence doesn't even exist... IS... dogma.
Much as I'd love to talk about what I think, it does not matter, and we have not even touched on the most conservative mainstream interpretation of the anthropic physics.
It does not matter what I think, because the relevant facts are already out there in front of your eyes, Paul.
What's it going to be, "dogma" or science?
Well maybe so I would love to be wrong on this one .
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