Mmmm... Dawkins...
 

http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CAA03.htm

If you could teach the world one thing...

Darwinian natural selection, and its enormous explanatory power, as the only known explanation of 'design'

The scientific principle that I wish everyone understood is Darwinian natural selection, and its enormous explanatory power, as the only known explanation of 'design'.

The world is divided into things that look designed, like birds and airliners; and things that do not look designed, like rocks and mountains. Things that look designed are divided into those that really are designed, like submarines and tin openers; and those that are not really designed, like sharks and hedgehogs. The diagnostic feature of things that look designed is that they are statistically improbable in the functional direction. They do something useful - for instance, they fly. Darwinian natural selection, although it involves no true design at all, can produce an uncanny simulacrum of true design. An engineer would be hard put to decide whether a bird or a plane was the more aerodynamically elegant.

Not only can natural selection mimic design; it is the only known natural process that can mimic design. And now, here is the most difficult thing that I wish people understood. True design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything, because the designer himself is left unexplained. Designers are statistically improbable things, and trying to explain them as made by prior designers is ultimately futile, because it leads to an infinite regress.

Natural selection escapes the infinite regress, because it starts simple, and works up gradually - step by step - to statistical improbability, and the illusion of design. Engineers and other designers are ultimately made, like all living things, by natural selection.

So distant are many people from understanding this, they seriously believe that the existence of functional improbability is evidence in favour of intelligent design - the greater the improbability, the stronger the evidence. Truly, the precise opposite is the case. I wish that more people understood this.

Richard Dawkins is author of books including The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)), and Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)). See his website.

My favorite analogy is by, I believe, Douglas Adams. Being surprised that a species fits exactly into its niche is like being surprised that a puddle fits exactly into a hole.

The order is the thing. Order can't come from chaos, which is what the Big Bang theory purports. Evolution is very orderly and follows a strict set of rules. Deviation from the rules = extinction. Evolution itself points to intelligent design.

Why can't it?

Order can come from chaos. Locally. For every bit of order we pull from chaos, we create more chaos. (Also known as the TAANSTAFL principle.)

Hey you! Yes, YOU! You are personally responsible for the eventual heat-death of the Universe! :angry:

Ah, well. Might as well enjoy the ride!

I once had the question: "What is the opposite of entropy?" I asked all my friends, and no one could answer. Until I was fixing a computer problem for a friend in another department. He blithely and insightfully replied: "Accounting."

Says who?

Unless order precedes chaos then it necessarily emanates from it.

Given a set of physical laws, points of local order can form in a chaotic environment. Conway's "Life" illustrates this. Starting with a completely random board, you will usually get small orderly areas appearing and disappearing, simply because for every rule set there are certain combinations of factors that have unique behaviors. The larger a chaotic field you have, the likelier it is that a particular combination of factors will appear somewhere in it.

But if order precedes chaos, mightn't the "chaos" be orderly in its own way (though not, perhaps, in a way that we can measure)?

In the same way, if order seems to come from chaos, isn't it conceivable that the chaos wasn't really that at all?

HMs post seems to point to that. I don't know that there's any way to simulate true chaos on a board. Rules are inherent because the board and the pieces are limited to certain actions.

I'm way out of my balliwick here. But sometimes the simple questions are useful.

Energy and matter are limited to certain actions, too.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if the universe is the result of intelligent design, there's no such thing as chaos -- just a kind of order that we perceive as chaos, but is actually subject to rules we either don't understand fully or haven't discovered yet.

The exact same thing can be true if there is no designer as well.

There is no evidence of any definable first cause.

So, it's all ordered, but we're not far enough away to discern the pattern?


(I actually find that thought comforting for some reason)

Entirely possible.

That's why discovery is so important.

It's one of the reasons ideology can be such a problem.

I find comfort here too. To me, it clearly has some order to it, and I feel I (or we) simply don't discern it (yet). I don't think that distance, per se, is the issue. Certainly distance has some influence on some areas of understanding, but too close, too far, etc, are somewhat oversimplified for my taste.

Arithmetic, for example, has structure, order, but until understanding is achieved it can seem like chaos. I know my youngest son would agree with me on this, as we're working through his multiplication flash cards. But lack of understanding shouldn't be mistaken for lack of order.

There are many, perhaps infinitely many, "Eurekas" out there. Ironically, each one leads to more questions. :)

Distance can be visual/perceptual, which is the way in which we, as mainly visual beings first assume ... or it can be emotional, spiritual, etc., etc., etc.

I meant the whole magilla.

What's a gorilla have to do with it? Other than to piss off anti-evolutionists.

HM - I don't think this argument counters noodle. In fact I think it supports his proposition. Conway's game of life starts with both chaos and order. The order is in the rules of the game. If the rules were something like - select a random cell and randomly turn it on or off, you would not see order appearing - until, of course, the virgin Mary appeared in the bits. :p

True, but it's the science that believes in physical laws and religion that believes in miracles (ie breaking the laws). The rules are part of the theory - in fact, the rules are the subject of all research in the end.

I propose that between chaos and rules there is a third venue, call it guidelines for want of something better. Like HS kids changing classes, chaos but limited by the guidlines(hallway).
I think evolving has guidelines for example;
Species has medium length legs and produces offspring with short, med-short, med-long and long legs.
Short legs = too slow, caught and eaten
long legs = too delicate, breaks, caught and eaten
med-long = OK, escapes
med-short = OK, escapes but not as often as med-long
So short and long are outside the guidelines and are eaten.
med-short and med-long are inside the guidelines and survive.
Logically the med-longs would eventually out last the med-shorts but there are other things that can come into play so both would survive.
As long as they are producing 4 sizes of offspring half will be enough food for predators. The med-shorts could be just fast enough to find shelter the med-longs can't use. The med-longs may taste better. God's will.
If there wasn't the possibility of guidelines we wouldn't have so many critters (especially insects) that are ALMOST alike.
Read chapter 7....quiz next class. :blush:
Sorry, got a little involved there.

There are two things that get confused in dealing with chaos. Randomness and chaos. Basically randomness is complete lack of order. Chaos is randomness within a given framework or guideline.

Giving birth to a child with darker skin than yours, mutation, is chaos.

The situation you describe has been catalogged in the case of Darwin's Finches. You can read some about them here, here, and here.

They show remarkable variation from generation to generation and have been observed for quite a while now.

My 7th grade science teacher said a child will be no darker than the darkest parent. Of course he also passed around a bowl of mercury so we could coat our pocket change to take home. :nuke:

On pure genetics, your teacher was probably right (to a first approximation). Troubleshooter was talking about mutation, which doesn't follow those rules.

Are you sure mutation isn't spelled milkman? ;)

I like the Amber model: chaos is order so complex that we cannot understand it. What people mean when they say "chaos" is actually randomness.

*edit* I guess that kind of agrees with TS's earlier post which, because I didn't see it at first, I didn't take into account when replying.

Not to be snarky, but there have been so many definitions of "chaos" thrown around in this thread that it's merely an argument of terms at this point.

In the broad sense, chaos means disorder, and randomness is a manifestation of a chaotic system. There is no "order" behind chaos, because "chaos" is just a word we made up to define disorder! The question is "does the universe have order, or is it chaotic". Science points to a randomly assorted system with theoretical limits (there is an edge of the universe, for instance, and it began at a point). The body of evidence today suggests that the universe is chaotic with locally ordered subsystems. Entropy is NOT the same as chaos.

From a mathematical standpoint, chaos is a system with hypersensitivity to its initial conditions. There is no order, because it is mathematically impossible. But, chaotic disorder often comes in so-called "patterns", and can't be predicted, but can be generalized. I could provide a bunch of equations which "prove" (if you believe obtuse math) that chaos is definably disordered, but I did that a long time ago, and had a fine argument with Beestie about it.

My thinking is this:

There is a remote-controlled robot on Mars right now, so advanced that the world watched in rapt attention when it landed...billions in research funding was poured into it.

If you went back in time, to 1810, and described such a robot to anybody in the world, it would eclipse their sense of reason so completely, that it would be incomprehensible. Many would say that something so complex and advanced had to have been put there by God.

I believe in God. But I will choose science any day, over a catch-all no-responsibility claim like Intelligent Design.

Yeah - you're right. say evolution happened (and indeed is happening), how did that come about? how come things are programmed so stuff evolves? I like how humans are infinitely stupid - as soon as we find something out we're like "hey! we know why everything happens!" but actually we haven't got a clue!

Because things that don't adapt to changing conditions don't survive when conditions change.
If scientists thought they knew why everything happened, they'd close up shop.

i asked 'why do things evolve?' you answered 'because things do evolve'!! (paraphrased) i didn't say HOW do things evolve, i mean WHY does it happen in the first place?

Because nothing's perfect, including reproductive methodology.

Species aren't "programmed" to evolve - they are only programmed to reproduce their DNA. But only the species that manages to do so will survive. This means that only species that find such advantages over time will reproduce their DNA. Increasing genetic diversity means that different species find the advantages more quickly and adapt to widely different conditions. Different species survive in different conditions, pushing the genetic record this way and that.

Evolution is a name we've assigned to a condition wherein genes more positively adapted to survival reproduce in the next generation and the less adapted do not.

The question is whether this is an intended effect or not correct?

yep - thanks troubleshooter

No problem, it's just that a significant number of arguments could be averted by people recognizing the idea of classifying an antecedent event as opposed to an event that is caused.

humans are in an everchanging, utterly still, non-representative and certainly vague state of homeostasis. But what is so shocking and utterly contradictory about this homeostasis is that it's a homeostasis based in utter chaos and change. we all know that any words applied to this subject are a dishonest simplification, because by the time you have read these words, I, you, this conversation, the human state, the subjects of our discussion, the language in which I write, etc. will have all evolved to the extent that all these things will be utterly non-comprehensible to all of us. As Bertrand Russell said, "anyone who looks closely enough does not need darwin to know of evolution and its vast and infinite implications." ultimately, in this paradox between the total change and total stillness of human existence, we find the haunting beauty of all art, which is by its nature rooted in the past and never in the future.

Uh, yeah.

I can see why you're lonely. ;)

I hate insulting teenage philosophers, because they often do go on to do great things...


But come on man. Read that post again.

You didn't say anything!

He should do well in his chosen field then.

Or maybe he'll choose to become a corporate attorney and write disclaimers.

Jobs in industrial philosophy are pretty hard to come by.

I know. I tried.

Wow! He found the single intelligent thing Bertrand Russell ever said. Color me amazed.

Or he could have been reading too much Ionesco