History, Evolution, and the Darwin Debate
Physicists Capture First Images of Atomic Spin
ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2010) — Though scientists argue that the emerging technology of spintronics may trump conventional electronics for building the next generation of faster, smaller, more efficient computers and high-tech devices, no one has actually seen the spin — a quantum mechanical property of electrons — in individual atoms until now.
Sean Carroll Talks School Science and Time Travel
by Claudia Dreifus – The New York Times
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5472
The world of science has two Sean Carrolls. One is an evolutionary biologist. The other is a cosmologist and theoretical physicist, an expert on time and the early moments of the universe. As it happened, the physicist stopped by the offices of The New York Times on a recent March morning. Dr. Carroll, a 43-year-old research professor at the California Institute of Technology, had come to New York for an appearance on “The Colbert Report.” He was in town promoting his meditation on the physics of time, a trade book with the clever title “From Eternity to Here.”
HuffPo screws up evolution again
Coyne’s critique of Laszlo’s post at Huffington is reasonable enought (so is the Laszlo post!) but the bottom line is that we can’t close the case on such questions.
We should be wary here since Creationists/ID-ists have abused arguments that might conceivably be valid in a way we don’t yet understand. That may be Laszlo’s point, therefore, don’t use exhausted language, the term ‘god’ being the worst of the lot (which isn’t quite an atheist statement).
To repharase Laszlo for myself I would say that the fine-tuning evidence suggests that we must extend our understanding of naturalistic evolution to include an aspect of evolution, directional or teleological, that is unknown to us. The idea of teleology is another abused term, so we can put it at the feet of Kantian discussions of the noumenal.
It need not be indulgence in creationist theism or supernatural posturing to consider that the emergence of the universe includes the emergence of life according to laws of nature still unknown to us, but which fine-tuning physics seems to stumbled on.
If that’s design it is not the same as ‘intelligent design’, a term sabotaged from the start to suggest ‘god’. String looks pretty intelligent to me also, but I wouldn’t start claiming it was ‘intelligent design’ evidence.
In general the laws of physics look like ‘intelligent design’ (to speak the sloppy language that proves nothing), but, well, so what?
Einstein’s Theory Fights Off Challengers
ScienceDaily (Apr. 16, 2010) — Two new and independent studies have put Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity to the test like never before. These results, made using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, show Einstein’s theory is still the best game in town.
Nuclear Missing Link Created at Last: Superheavy Element 117
ScienceDaily (Apr. 7, 2010) — An international team of scientists from Russia and the United States, including two Department of Energy national laboratories and two universities, has created the newest superheavy element, element 117. The lifetime of element 117, which has now been created in the lab for the first time, confirms that superheavy elements lie in an island of stability on the periodic table.
Published on Monday, April 5, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Event Horizon: War on Physics?
by Sean Gonsalves
Phew. We’re still here. Thanks be to the God-particle! That was a close one. Or not.
Maybe you missed it but those crazy European physicists cranked up the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) and, lo and behold, we haven’t been sucked into oblivion! If you listened carefully, you may have heard the clink of Champagne flutes, celebrating the achievement.
For One Tiny Instant, Physicists May Have Broken a Law of Nature
ScienceDaily (Mar. 30, 2010) — For a brief instant, it appears, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island recently discovered a law of nature had been broken.
Scientists seek dark matter in “Big Bang” project
GENEVA, Mar. 29, 2010 (Reuters) — Scientists at the CERN research center will begin trying on Tuesday to make particles collide at ultra-high power and close to the speed of light to create mini-versions of the “Big Bang” that gave birth to the universe.
Quantum physics again proves a theistic God
Priest and accommodationist John Polkinghorne, previously a physicist at Cambridge University, and author of some of the most muddled apologetics I’ve ever read, gets interviewed by In Character.
And he reveals that quantum physics has been just great for theology, because a stupid old Newtonian universe would testify only to a deistic, wind-up-the-universe-and-let-it-go kind of God. Quantum physics, however, provides a theistic God, one who changes the world by tweaking electrons.
I agree that the abuse of QM has gone on for a long time, from many sources. But the usual interpretation of QM often fails to see how strange the subject is.
‘Cold Fusion’ Moves Closer to Mainstream Acceptance
ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2010) — A potential new energy source so controversial that people once regarded it as junk science is moving closer to acceptance by the mainstream scientific community. That’s the conclusion of the organizer of one of the largest scientific sessions on the topic — “cold fusion” -
Mysterious ‘Dark Flow’ May Be Tug of Other Universe
by Irene Klotz – Discovery News
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5292
THE GIST:
* Our universe is sliding steadily in a specific direction, in what researchers are calling “the dark flow.”
* Some suspect the flow is caused by the pull of gravity from another universe.
What Is Time? One Physicist Hunts for the Ultimate Theory
by Erin Biba – Wired Science
from dawkins site
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/what-is-time/
In Brookhaven Collider, Scientists Briefly Break a Law of Nature
by Dennis Overbye – NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/science/16quark.html?ref=science
from dawkins site
Physicists said Monday that they had whacked a tiny region of space with enough energy to briefly distort the laws of physics, providing the first laboratory demonstration of the kind of process that scientists suspect has shaped cosmic history.
Quantum Mechanics at Work in Photosynthesis: Algae Familiar With These Processes for Nearly Two Billion Years
ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2010) — A team of University of Toronto chemists have made a major contribution to the emerging field of quantum biology, observing quantum mechanics at work in photosynthesis in marine algae.
Single Photons Observed at Seemingly Faster-Than-Light Speeds
ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2010) — Researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), a collaboration of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland at College Park, can speed up photons (particles of light) to seemingly faster-than-light speeds through a stack of materials by adding a single, strategically placed layer.
With less than a year under its belt, Quantum Darwinism is already an idea that is getting more and more attention with each passing day. First proposed by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) physicist Wojciech Zurek, it essentially correlates quantum and classical physics. This means that, if proven, it could be one of the most important revelations in the world, ever. It attempts to explain why the subatomic level, of quantum particles, is subjected to the laws of quantum physics, whereas larger scale systems, from the atomic level up, are governed by classical physics.
Dark matter holds the key to the universe
by Paul Davies – guardian.co.uk
from dawkins site
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/23/dark-matter-key-understanding-universe#start-of-comments
The Genesis 2.0 Project
Compared with the market-driven, killer-app insta-culture of the Digital Age, the new Large Hadron Collider exists in a near-magical realm, a $9 billion cathedral of science that is apparently, in any practical sense, useless. Exploring its whizbang machinery, deep underground, the author probes the collider’s brush with disaster last year—and the secrets it may soon unlock.
With respect to the Biocentrism question, and also of the Goswami/Chopra idea of consciousness as fundamental, I wrote a post last spring when the book Biocentrism first came to our attention here: Matter, life, consciousness
This post was too harsh, when in fact I was actually expressing interest in the Biocentrism thesis.
But as the recent posts show the critics of idealism will descend on you, as I realized at the time last spring.
Idealism as such isn’t the problem, rather the question arises as to how we could apply a vague term like ‘consciousness’ to holistic entities like the ‘universe’.
I had laid out a defense using a different approach based on the work of J. G. Bennett in The Dramatic Universe, where he bases his systematics, not on a duality of matter and consciousness, but on a triad of what he calls Being, Function, Will.
It is a very clever way to divide the pie and ends up making a distinction between things/stuff/entities that are material, are alive, are conscious. These are not the same thing, as with the last two predicates.
Schopenhauer produced the breakthrough here, for Bennett, with his understanding of will. But Bennett brings in the question of Being where it is absent in his idealism. Whatever.
The point is that with Bennett’s formulation (which claims to follow Indian Samkhya) all entities stand in relation to ‘being, function, will’, and their material, vital, and cosmic aspects are triadically variable. The degrees of the manifestation of the ‘wil’ allow us to pass seamlessly from the realm of ‘willing agent’ to ‘mechanical law’, with degrees of consciousness an aspect of being. Matter actually disappears (as a fundamental), and becomes a relationship of function, being and will, like everything else.
Will this really work? Hard to say, since it is quite a complex set of questions. But the simple antithesis of the material and the conscious can create problems of interpretation.
I think that the simplified version in Schopenhauer has great merit (if only because more comprehensible).
The point in any case is to see the descending transition from triads of the will to mechanical laws. Seeing the issue then in terms of will rather than consciousness can be helpful.
The point in general is that ‘consciousness’ and ‘matter’ don’t even enter as fundamental categories, but emerge from the triad of Being, Function, Will.
Bennett’s system is too complicated, I fear, and requires long study, but the gist is there in Schopenhauer, as you puzzle over his use of the term ‘will’.
Schopenhauer’s insight, out of the blue, offers a possible way to reconstruct Samkhya, as Bennett sensed, before he made a hash of the whole business, of this obscure Indian system, now apparently lost to all parties, Indian or not.
Comment on More on Biocentrism and Idealism
From the Quantum Activist
http://quantumactivist.com/
mitri said,
December 18, 2009 at 1:16 pm ·
greetings to you thinkers, bravo.
as co creator of a recent film about amit goswami and his particular brand of monistic idealism I can assure you that when one uses the word god it is for provocative purposes as well as to refer to a concept that we have no other functional word for. In the case of Amit Goswami and his monistic idealism positing that it is consciousness not matter that is the ground of all being he is making a scientific statement based in both mathematical and lab science. The essential problem of the quantum measurement (i.e. if consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter but consciousness also collapses the wave into a particle how can consciousness as a brain phenomenon itself a part of matter do this?) this question is profound and in need of resolution. TO posit consciousness as the ground of being and no t matter opens the possibility of solving many of our most tenacious problems in science, the real problem that arrises is the dogmatism from both the materialist science community (including darwinism, that most favored 150 year old child “as if we havn’t learned more since then”) as well as its implied association with the non inquisitive religious dogmatists. Dawkins makes a fool of himself by playing Don Quixote against a straw God that few defend, to take on the questions of the observer consciousness, form and non form are age old questions that the sooner we can answer within science the better all of humanity will be. I am of course biased since I spend several years creating a film on Dr Goswami, but we did so because we felt his message should be added to the mix of scientific scrutiny not to be held high for no reason and not to be discounted by emotionality in the guise of science. I hope we have succeeded.
peace.
Comment on False Charge of Mysticism…
Stephen P. Smith said,
December 17, 2009 at 11:47 pm ·
Mysticism is the logical conclusion of the intuitionist program started by the mathematician Brouwer. So the so-called charge of mysticism is not a charge but a badge of honor. Moreover, Brouwer`s intuitionism can be found connected with the space-time fabric.
Read the rest of this entry »
Comments on Biocentrism Demystified
reece sullivan said,
December 17, 2009 at 12:11 am ·
Stephen,
Would you elaborate on various flavors of idealism; I’m familiar with Berkley, of course, but don’t know how he differs from others, or rather, how others differ from him. Also, what’s your take on panpsychism? I’ve found it attractive, but have just started doing some reading on it.
————————————- Read the rest of this entry »
Large Hadron Collider Makes History with 1.18 TeV Protons
by Ian O’Neill – Discovery News
from dawkins site
http://news.discovery.com/space/large-hadron-collider-makes-history-with-118-tev-protons.html
Darwin made it clear once again that—as Maimonides, Avicenna, Aquinas and Eckhart had already pointed out—we cannot regard God simply as a divine personality, who single-handedly created the world. This could direct our attention away from the idols of certainty and back to the “God beyond God.” The best theology is a spiritual exercise, akin to poetry. Religion is not an exact science but a kind of art form that, like music or painting, introduces us to a mode of knowledge that is different from the purely rational and which cannot easily be put into words. At its best, it holds us in an attitude of wonder, which is, perhaps, not unlike the awe that Mr. Dawkins experiences—and has helped me to appreciate —when he contemplates the marvels of natural selection.
But what of the pain and waste that Darwin unveiled? All the major traditions insist that the faithful meditate on the ubiquitous suffering that is an inescapable part of life; because, if we do not acknowledge this uncomfortable fact, the compassion that lies at the heart of faith is impossible. The almost unbearable spectacle of the myriad species passing painfully into oblivion is not unlike some classic Buddhist meditations on the First Noble Truth (“Existence is suffering”), the indispensable prerequisite for the transcendent enlightenment that some call Nirvana—and others call God.
This rubbish from Armstrong is suspicious: Armstrong seems to have made a strategic choice to defend monotheism even though she doesn’t really believe in anything. Her remarks on mythos and logos are especially suspect, in suggesting that this ‘mythos’ routine is her own stance on the question of divinity.
Why not, pray tell, adopt a mythos and logos approach to Darwinism? Nope, we don’t do things that way, and in this case the mythos/logos hype becomes transparent.
Darwin did NOT make it clear that divinity is not a divine personality. His theory is false, can’t explain evolution, can’t explain life, and says nothing at all about the origin of the universe.
The question of suffering is a tough one, but only for Christians. Schopenhauer addressed the question with a perspective that would be non-Darwinian. Armstrong brings in Buddhism and the first noble truth. These buddhists were theists.
I cannot see, although I am not a theist, why atheists get so upset over creationism (apart from finding it false!): in good Kantian fashion the antithesis they embrace is as suspect.
The irony here is that the Big Bang looks to some now like a ‘relative transformation’, not an absolute beginning. Frankly, although I would not waste time defending the thesis, the universe looks like a string theory tinkertoy and almost a kind of macro-technology. It is probably false, but certainly thinkably defensible as a floating question for the future that an agent of ‘will’ inconceivable to us is involved in these cosmic productions.
For heaven’s sake, in a mere ten years, Google has produced computation environments at the level of the petabyte able to answer queries from a whole planet simultaneously.
I wouldn’t jump to conclusions about ‘cosmic entities’, if any exist, that could mimic divinities.
That said, I don’t believe a word of it, but merely as a dialectical exercise try to critique deadpan Spinozism as useless alternative.
Beware of such statements, of course, it is certainly not a belief on my part, but the point is that dogmatic anti-creationism forgets that physics creates its own kind of inverted creationism. Why should that be some absolute, in a world of Kantian exposes of the all these mind games.
As Kant made clear, this is the stage at which transcendental idealism becomes your own option. The question of space and time begin to impinge on the neuroscience of mind, and mind on a reality that transcends space and time.
Could the Large Hadron Collider be sabotaging itself from the future? That’s the suggestion of a couple of reasonably distinguished theoretical physicists, which has received a fresh airing in the New York Times today.
Actually, it’s the Higgs boson that is doing the sabotage. Apparently, among the many singular properties of the Higgs that the LHC is meant to discover could be the ability to turn back time to stop its cover being blown.
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