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04.21.09
Posted in Philosophy, Science at 3:38 pm by nemo
comment on Nietzschean logic
James said,
April 21, 2009 at 2:45 pm
These discussions are mostly useless given that neither side can provide a coherent and adequate definition of the “natural world.”
Science defines the ‘natural world’ in such a way as to leave human psychological realities outside of nature, defining ‘methodological naturalism’ so as to apply to a kind of headless human hulk. And then religionists agree, calling what should be the natural aspect of man’s psychology supernatural.
It is a question that Samkhya, that ancient legacy of India, resolves in its own way with a more intelligent terminology.
Meanwhile, Nietzsche is a puzzle: why did he replace the solution to the problem in Schopenhauer with another round of the solved problem unsolved all over again?
Three cheers for ‘methodological Samkhya naturalism’
Permalink
Posted in Evolution, Science, The Eonic Effect at 2:51 pm by nemo
Comment on Case Of The Missing Centuries
This comment ironically discovers the eonic effect, and the way in which science is connected to the eonic sequence: it is born as an Axial Age phenomenon in the first Scientific Revolution, almost dies out in the middle ages, and then is reborn in the next eonic transition in the modern eonic transitions. So science by itself was unable to ensure its own progress, or even survival. The next irony is that this shows us a glimpse of the ‘eonic evolutionary process’, note the term ‘eonic’. This is not Darwinism.
So I share Jeremy’s interest and support of science, but science is not the super-objective knowledge source it claims to be, and in fact has misjudged the issue of evolution.
Jeremy said,
April 20, 2009 at 10:46 pm ·
I don’t necessarily think that it’s nonsense to think that science is the greatest achievement of human history. The fact is that religion slowed down, and even reversed human evolution during the time called “dark ages” If we would have continued on the enlightened path set fourth by the greeks, we would probably be more advanced today than we were back then. You’ll find that scientific discoveries that were made during the renaissance, were actually discovered much longer ago during the Hellenistic era. As for religious these religious critics who find flaws with Darwinism seem to be close minded. Darwinism can be found in just about every concept known to man. Just look at culture for example. There is always competition amongst different cultures as to which one will win. Religion is no different, you still have different religions competing against one another. All those are examples of social Darwinism.
Permalink
04.18.09
Posted in Science at 12:38 pm by nemo
PRESSING QUESTIONS FOR OUR CENTURY – A Talk With AC Grayling
by Edge
Reposted from Dawkins site
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/grayling09/grayling09_index.html
AC GRAYLING is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford. His most recent book is Ideas That Matter.
I’m asking myself a lot of questions at the moment and I’ll pick out a few that are really pressing. One is the problem about scientific literacy in contemporary society. There are huge things going in the sciences, both in fundamental sciences, like particle physics, and in the biological sciences, especially in genetics and in medical research involving genetic techniques. In both respects, there have got to be big changes in the way we think about the world and how we think about ourselves. And in the case of biomedicine, there are going to be differences to longevity, health and maybe even the nature of future human beings.
Permalink
04.16.09
Posted in Science at 2:43 pm by nemo
Across the Universe
Intelligent life surely exists on some of the planets beyond our solar system. But we’ve scarcely begun to look for it. With NASA dithering and corporate titans more interested in space tourism, a serious exploration of the stars is limited more by a lack of vision than of technology. But a few scientists think they can use the sun’s light to cheaply propel an unmanned craft deep into the interstellar ether. Their vision may be quixotic, and their first attempt failed. But what will it mean for our solipsistic species if they succeed next time?
Permalink
Posted in Science at 12:54 pm by nemo
Novel Technique To Sequence Human Genome Created
ScienceDaily (Apr. 16, 2009) — Since the human genome was sequenced six years ago, the cost of producing a high-quality genome sequence has dropped precipitously. More recently, the National Institutes of Health called for cutting the cost to $1,000 or less, which may enable sequencing as part of routine medical care.
Permalink
04.06.09
Posted in Science at 12:43 pm by nemo
Chemists Create Bipedal, Autonomous DNA Walker
ScienceDaily (Apr. 6, 2009) — Chemists at New York University and Harvard University have created a bipedal, autonomous DNA “walker” that can mimic a cell’s transportation system. The device, which marks a step toward more complex synthetic molecular motor systems, is described in the most recent issue of the journal Science.
Permalink
04.05.09
Posted in Science at 4:51 pm by nemo
Being Isaac Newton: Computer Derives Natural Laws From Raw Data
ScienceDaily (2009-04-03) — If Isaac Newton had access to a supercomputer, he’d have had it watch apples fall — and let it figure out the physical matters. But the computer would have needed to run an algorithm, just developed by researchers, which can derive natural laws from observed data. … > read full article
Permalink
04.03.09
Posted in Science at 2:05 pm by nemo
Being Isaac Newton: Computer Derives Natural Laws From Raw Data
ScienceDaily (Apr. 3, 2009) — If Isaac Newton had access to a supercomputer, he’d have had it watch apples fall – and let it figure out the physical matters. But the computer would have needed to run an algorithm, just developed by Cornell researchers, which can derive natural laws from observed data.
Permalink
03.31.09
Posted in Science at 1:20 pm by nemo
New Step Towards Quantum Computers
ScienceDaily (Mar. 30, 2009) — The intrinsic rotation of electrons – the “spin” – is a promising property for future electronics devices. If use as an information carrier were possible, the processing power of electronic components would suddenly increase to a multiple of the present capacity.
Permalink
03.29.09
Posted in Kant, Philosophy, Science, The Eonic Effect at 3:19 pm by nemo
Laws Of History And Popper On Historicism
One of the mysteries of current science culture is the way Karl Popper is taken as the methodological ‘take me to your leader’ guru.
His views, while of the greatest interest, do not square with the average sense in which science is taken. In fact, Popper appears rather uncomfortably in the series of critics of scientific methodologies, with Feyerbend and Lakatos at the start and Fuller a generation later.
Popper is famous for his critique of ‘historicism’, a term with a complex history, and this is really a critique of Marx. Now, everyone applauds this critique, but then fails to realize that Popper is essentially saying that a ‘science of history’ is highly problematical, and the next kid on the block in trouble is ‘evolution’.
In fact, Popper is ‘notorious’ for his initial swipe at Darwinism as unfalsifiable, a position he is said to have retracted, as his bio is airbrushed here.
In any case, Popper’s critique is one starting point for the eonic model, and the resolution in terms of a perspective on the antinomies of Kant is the right answer to the ‘historical inevitability’ argument against scientific determinism misapplied to social subjects, and we must suspect to biological subjects.
Permalink
03.27.09
Posted in Evolution, Science at 8:31 pm by nemo
Nothing is harder to challenge than the delusion that DArwin/Dawkins have explained how evolution climbs Mt. Improbable (and that the computer program Methinks it is a weasal can represent that). Climbing Mt. Improbable: Evolutionary Directionality
One of the strangest aspects of the Darwin paradigm, and its members, is the way the same wishfulfilment takes place that we see charged against religion.
The whole game is based on an essentially metaphysical belief system disguised behind scientific reductionism.
Persistence beyond exposure for so long is doing irreparable damage to the science culture.
(The irony is that the Dawkins computer program is essentially a teleologically rigged system)
Permalink
03.26.09
Posted in Science at 1:25 pm by nemo
New Possibilities For Hydrogen-producing Algae
ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2009) — Photosynthesis produces the food that we eat and the oxygen that we breathe ? could it also help satisfy our future energy needs by producing clean-burning hydrogen? Researchers studying a hydrogen-producing, single-celled green alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, have unmasked a previously unknown fermentation pathway that may open up possibilities for increasing hydrogen production.
Permalink
03.23.09
Posted in Science at 1:00 pm by nemo
Building a better way of Understanding Science
by John Timmer, Ars Technica
Reposted from: From Dawkins site
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/03/building-a-better-way-of-understanding-science.ars
At the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, Berkeley’s Judy Scotchmoor introduced a new web resource called Understanding Science that’s intended to change the way that the nature and process of science are presented to students.
Permalink
Posted in Science at 12:46 pm by nemo
Artificial Genetics: New Type Of DNA Has 12 Chemical Letters Instead Of Usual 4
ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2009) — In a dramatic rewrite of the recipe for life, scientists from Florida today described the design of a new type of DNA with 12 chemical letters instead of the usual four. Presented in Salt Lake City, Utah, at the 237th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), this artificial genetic system already is helping to usher in the era of personalized medicine for millions of patients with HIV, hepatitis and other diseases.
Permalink
Posted in Science at 12:19 pm by nemo
Mice With Disabled Gene That Helps Turn Carbs Into Fat Stay Lean Despite Feasting On High-carb Diet
ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2009) — Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have identified a gene that plays a critical regulatory role in the process of converting dietary carbohydrates to fat. In a new study, they disabled this gene in mice, which consequently had lower levels of body fat than their normal counterparts, despite being fed the equivalent of an all-you-can-eat pasta buffet.
Permalink
Posted in Science at 12:17 pm by nemo
Nanotech Batteries For A New Energy Future
ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2009) — Researchers at the Maryland NanoCenter at the University of Maryland have developed new systems for storing electrical energy derived from alternative sources that are, in some cases, 10 times more efficient than what is commercially available.
Permalink
03.22.09
Posted in Science at 2:31 pm by nemo
Our Two Cultures
This essay on the ‘Two Cultures’ is interesting, but… I was long a fan of Snow, and his thesis of the Two Cultures, and grateful, since he is responsible for a great deal of science study on my part.
But in retrospect his perspective now seems, if not dated, then wrongly framed.
First, I agree, it is important for humantists to study more science.
Snow was right there.
But he missed the other half of the issue: it is important, essential, drastically important, the more so over time, for scientists to get their heads out of their assholes, and stop confusing science and scientism. In fact, the issue has passed the point of no return it seems, and now the humanists are being systematically stripped of significance and made to worship at the altar of scientism. And Darwinism.
Most humanists are too intimidated, or, ironically, too ill-educated, to see the issues, let alone protest. That’s because it is not a question of what literature you read in college, but of seeing the real ‘dialectic’ between ‘science’ and ‘humanities’ which is something far broader than that dualism. It goes back to the way modernity emerged as a scientific and a liberal civilization. Noone seems to see that liberalism and science were not the same world view, a point rendered explicit for all time in the philosophy of Kant, where causality and freedom are mediated in a new and revolutionary philosophy. That philosophy never had an impact on those who found themselves stranded in the realm of positivism. It is a saga fully visible in the emergence of Marxism, a sort of miner’s canary of the positivistic age. Marxism, its controversial aspect apart, is interesting because it straddled the era of the post-Hegelian moment of emerging scientism/posivism. The tension between the ‘two cultures’ in that ideology is telling.
Most humanists don’t know it, but they are in reality pre and post-darwinists.
The reason is that in the land of Darwinism, their humanism doesn’t exist, has been declared dead, obsolete, tacitly, by asphyxiation.
So, to me in retrospect, Snow was the first of the asphyxiated humanists. Still another brand is visible, consider:
Today, others believe science now addresses the human condition in ways Snow did not anticipate. For the past two decades, the editor and agent John Brockman has promoted the notion of a “third culture” to describe scientists — notably evolutionary biologists, psychologists and neuroscientists — who are “rendering visible the deeper meanings in our lives” and superseding literary artists in their ability to “shape the thoughts of their generation.” Snow himself suggested in the 1960s that social scientists could form a “third culture.”
In principle the ‘third culture’ is a great idead, but the reality here is that this club for feather-preening geeks cannot seem to get unstuck from the age of positivism.
The solution to this is not hard: a genuine dialectic (not Hegel’s) that looks at the interplay of what very early in the wake of the Kantian world was foreseen as the ‘two cultures’ done right: geisteswissenschaft and naturwissenschaft….
And a synchronous study of science and humanities, that is, of the whole of culture.
It is desperately needed by scientists. We can see the type: overspecialized since teenage years, and focussed on a narrow scientism all the way through. This type then is pressed into service passing judgment on the whole of culture, with abysmal results.
This requires transcending the duality of the two cultures, a difficult venture.
In the nonce, one should turn Snow’s injunction on the scientists: their education is malformed and leads to the Darwin groupie syndrome, among others, and the inability in, say, explaining ‘religion’ via Darwinism to grasp the dimensions of the problem to be solved. A kind of simplistic fundamentalism has overtaken the scientific mind, even as science in the age of Big Science, has acquired immense social influence, media control, thence the power to do real harm, oblivious in self-satisfied certainty inside the Science Religion.
Humanists, in the meantime, take a few courses in various highly selective brands of literature, reading a strange concoction of not much, and exit college with virtually nothing.
Permalink
03.11.09
Posted in Kant, Philosophy, Science, The Eonic Effect at 6:59 pm by nemo
Comments on A Hidden Entrance To Transcendental Idealism
OUr culture forces us to strike out completely on the issues of transcendental idealism. I am not a member of the cult, only a student of the way that Kant and Newton work together in the drama of the Enlightenment.
The question is not hard:
if you accept universal causality then question of values, ethics, freedom, and the aesthetic are illusions, with no further place in human life in an age of science.
Kant saw this absurd consequence in the legacy of Newton and mapped out a way to deal with it.
I think I should requote the passage from yesterday, but acknowledge that it might not make sense at first. And in an atmosphere of Darwinian scientism on the one hand and religious literalism about the Bible on the other, a sense of hopelessness arises as a Kantian critique, and new approach to theory, encounters both Darwinism and Christianity. Darwin’s theory, and the Biblical Old Testament are suddenly challenged. Small wonder we suffer denial!
But the issues, and the eonic model, are relatively simple, and the conclusion we should consider is the Kantian perception that while ‘teleology’ is problematical in the extreme, it remains a factor in the realm biology, and thence history. That teleology might be a hidden noumenal aspect of what in the phenomenal realm appears as cyclical directionality is both sensible, once seen, and quite elegant. And the facts suggest it.
The Kantian perspective is confirmed by the perception of the eonic effect, in an unexpected way. It is not an inherently difficult insight, but the steps to it require a modest amount of study.
I would think twice about all those attempts to get beyond Kant. Mostly he remains misunderstood.
In any case, forget the issue of the words in the phrase ‘transcendental idealism’. We are not dealing in the transcendental or idealism, but looking at what the relation is between freedom and causality in basic science, and in the questions of history and evolution.
A noumenal mystery Our eonic model almost automatically produces a structure isomorphic to Kant’s distinction of noumenon and phenomenon, and it does so deftly using different concepts and without any of the complications that haunt the original. Isomorphic, but in a different context, large-scale history. Since this was serendipitous, and unasked for, we are left to wonder what this means. The problem is that history is all of a piece, phenomenon, including our eonic sequence. And yet this sequence stages the hard evidence of the ‘uncaused freedom emergence factor’ inside a temporal oscillation. All we can do is notice this isomorphism, and proceed on our own way with our self-sufficient model, which exploits a dualism of levels for purely practical system model reasons. So what is the relationship of our eonic sequence to this enigma of Kant? Since our transitions are phenomenon yet noumenally tuned, we must consider that in some fashion our eonic sequence oscillates near the limits of manifestation (a statement bordering on a kind of metaphysics we haven’t allowed), and at the limits of our representations we see the inexplicable appearance of the freedom generator. The long lost mediating factor between the phenomenon and the noumenon suddenly appears, where least expected, in history itself. We must suspect that the ‘teleological’ aspect is beyond the limits of our representations, noumenal, as all that we see is phenomenon, directionality, a stupendous oscillation in the degrees of freedom of the system execution.
Permalink
03.07.09
Posted in History, Science at 2:34 pm by nemo
The problem with Darwin’s theory can be found by asking if we can create of a science of history…From The Legacy Of Darwinism
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
03.04.09
Posted in Evolution, Science at 2:32 pm by nemo
Origin of the Species officially translated into Arabic in 1964
The last paragraph of this article contains a common confusion: since scientists are good at hard science, they should be credited for the soft science of evolution. Fallacy!
It is desperately easy to misuse reductionism.
At the very end of the Natural History Museum’s Darwin exhibition there is a glass case containing copies of Darwin’s The Origin of the Species in various languages, and a short history of its publication.
Despite having been first published in 1859 in London, by John Murray, the exhibition claims that the work wasn’t translated fully into Arabic until over a century later in 1964. This seemed, frankly, a little hard to credit given the number of flourishing universities in the Arabic-speaking world.
[...]
I’m not sure I agree. I was taught about evolution at school – with considerably more gravity than I was taught about religion – had the opportunity to buy the book (which admittedly I’ve only recently done) and was left in no doubt that the same scientific establishment that saved my sister from dying of appendicitis and replaced my nana’s hip and knee joints fully subscribed to Darwin’s ideas. How could that not profoundly colour one’s world view?
Permalink
03.02.09
Posted in In the News, Science at 1:26 pm by nemo
From Stem Cells To New Organs: Scientists Cross Threshold In Regenerative Medicine
ScienceDaily (Mar. 2, 2009) — By now, most people have read stories about how to “grow your own organs” using stem cells is just a breakthrough away. Despite the hype, this breakthrough has been elusive.
Permalink
02.24.09
Posted in Science at 3:02 pm by nemo
Materials Science Mystery Of ‘Hidden Order’ Solved: How A New Phase Arises And Why
ScienceDaily (Feb. 23, 2009) — “One of the most important problems in materials science solved,” reports Professor Peter Oppeneer of Uppsala University. Together with three colleagues, he has managed to explain the hitherto unsolved riddle in materials science known as ‘the hidden order’ – how a new phase arises and why.
Permalink
02.18.09
Posted in Philosophy, Science at 5:29 pm by nemo
Discussion of Stuart Kauffman’s Reinventing The Sacred, at The Gurdjieff Con
James said,
15.02.09 at 3:29 pm ·
I have been harsh towards Kauffman, but I think he deserves credit for trying to rescue the “God” concept from the Judeo-Christian baggage (for some reason Spinoza didn’t succeed here). Nobody would care if the non-anthropomorphic philosophical concept of the Greeks, Plotinus, etc. had won the day.
As I note at the linked post at The Gurdjieff Con the Spinozism latent in Kauffman’s book/formulation is almost as problematical. It is correct that Kauffman’s approach could resolve much of the confusion in Judeo-Christianity, but at a price.
The ‘flat’ reality proposed by science, and Spinoza, suffered its classic collision during the period of the German Enlightenment, witness the responses in Kant, then Hegel.
For me, the Kantian framework challenges this ‘flat’ nature in Spinoza, in a way that could in some higher system reconcile the two. And Hegel perhaps attempted to produce that higher system. But I think Kant hit the nail on the head, in many ways, with his preoccupation with freedom in the context of Newtonian physics.
Kauffman should acknowledge, at least, that science has stopped, and that this is philosophy, and not expect that Spinozism is going to be science and the dialectical wake of Spinoza is mere philosophy.
I am suspicious that self-organization is philosophy too, ideology in fact.
At one point we are dealing with molecules, the next moment we are dealing with Kauffman’s defense of ‘free markets’ with the same theory!!??
Kauffman’s approach has some highly attractive features, but everything you hope to accomplish with the ‘god’ concept will fail and generate its inexorable dialectic.
I am no Hegelian, not by a long shot, but here the ‘inexorable dialectic’, pace Hegel, itself becomes the object of consciousness, not the sterile god/no god dialectic prior to its ‘third’ aspect, in the progression of ideas as the history of philosophy. It is that history that replaces the dilemma of god/no god in the projected ‘sublation’ of the dialectical sequence in a higher unity. Thus spake Hegel.
His point is significant: to choose a spinozistic ‘god’ definition as a polarity with another view of divinity (e.g Judeo-Christian) simply ignites that dialectic, and the result is….
Still, Kauffman’s perspective has its uses, and interest.
But I think noone is going to listen to a scientist on the sacred.
The picture is too stripped of its crucial issues. What happened to freedom, self, soul, the occult, ….
Kauffman is more broad minded that the reductionists, but relative to the history of religion he has a weak hand.
This criticism is better directed toward the New Atheists, perhaps, who ignite this dialectic powerfully, and lose all their momentum in that.
Meanwhile, beside the abuse of theory for economics, Kauffman’s attack on Kantian ethics, with no explanation, or any citation of the literature, is egregious, and causes me at least to stand back in surprise, asking ‘who is this guy’? Not another Nietzschean down-slide via the anti-Kant route, please.
Kant’s ethical theory is distinct, yet connected, from his basic critique of metaphysics, and is in fact itself a kind of metaphysics. Its success or failure doesnt’ change the fact of the tremendous importance of the Kantian system for any reconsideration of religion.
Permalink
02.14.09
Posted in Science at 7:14 pm by nemo
Bladerunner? comment
James said,
February 13, 2009 at 12:37 am
The Blade Runner reference was a joke, but I don’t think that becoming trapped in the Iron Cage is unlikely.
It is past becoming. It has happened.
Permalink
02.11.09
Posted in Philosophy, Science at 3:54 pm by nemo
Hucklebird comments on ‘Dover Documentary and the Iron Cage’:
Stephen P. Smith said,
February 10, 2009 at 10:28 pm
The problem with the so-called “naturalistic version of design,” is the word “naturalistic.” We keep coming back to the issue where reality finds itself divided into natural and supernatural realms, and that division is not science!
Science has to come to terms with something that is acausal in evolution. Nothing else need be said.
You are quite right: debating methodological naturalism is generally pointless, because we can’t say what the boundaries of nature are.
My use of ‘design’ is perhaps inappropriate: I mean ‘natural teleology’ in a kind of Kantian sense.
You pick a good Kantian consideration: there must be something acausal in nature. In Kant’s work the reality of freedom is paradoxical: by definition it must be acausal. Kant never quite says finally whether it is therefore supernatural. The issue shows the dilemma of scientific naturalism. Something as basic as freedom flunks the naturalism test (at least that of the reductionists).
Permalink
01.28.09
Posted in Evolution, Science at 7:13 pm by nemo
Elevating Science, Elevating Democracy
Trying to assess the position of science in society requires more than a one line answer, that is, like a dialectical question, the yes and the no come inexorably to answer the question multidimensionally, and with more than the adherence enthusiasm of believers.
That dialectical moment (whatever we mean by ‘dialectic’) came in the Enlightenment, or in one aspect of it, beginning with Rousseau, proceeding to Kant, the German Enlightenment, and a host of developments from that.
And the simplest of critiques, in essence, emerges from that interaction, the discourse on the dialectic of the idea of freedom in relation to legacy of physicalism. The point is in one way completely obvious, yet in another consistently eliminated in the swift downshifting of science in the coming of science, prophesied, because already observed, by figures such as Kant.
The point is that as a public philosophy, science is insufficient, it needs an extended analysis of a fuller set of conepts to make itself ready for action as more than an experimental methodology, as a public philosophy.
Beyond that, yet illustrative of the issues raised in Kantian critique, lies the question of Darwinism, and the failure of modern science to produce an adequate theory of evolution, or of the relation of such theories to social action. The inability of modern science to see the limits of their evolutionary generalizations seems to show the way in which reductionism has crashlanded far short of an account of the larger dimension of man and society. The inability of science in its current form to deal with this, or even see the existence of a problem, must enter somewhat ominously into this discourse on the place of science in society.
The knock on science from its cultural and religious critics is that it is arrogant and materialistic. It tells us wondrous things about nature and how to manipulate it, but not what we should do with this knowledge and power. The Big Bang doesn’t tell us how to live, or whether God loves us, or whether there is any God at all. It provides scant counsel on same-sex marriage or eating meat. It is silent on the desirability of mutual assured destruction as a strategy for deterring nuclear war.
Einstein seemed to echo this thought when he said, “I have never obtained any ethical values from my scientific work.†Science teaches facts, not values, the story goes.
Worse, not only does it not provide any values of its own, say its detractors, it also undermines the ones we already have, devaluing anything it can’t measure, reducing sunsets to wavelengths and romance to jiggly hormones. It destroys myths and robs the universe of its magic and mystery.
So the story goes.
But this is balderdash. Science is not a monument of received Truth but something that people do to look for truth.
That endeavor, which has transformed the world in the last few centuries, does indeed teach values. Those values, among others, are honesty, doubt, respect for evidence, openness, accountability and tolerance and indeed hunger for opposing points of view. These are the unabashedly pragmatic working principles that guide the buzzing, testing, poking, probing, argumentative, gossiping, gadgety, joking, dreaming and tendentious cloud of activity — the writer and biologist Lewis Thomas once likened it to an anthill — that is slowly and thoroughly penetrating every nook and cranny of the world.
Permalink
01.26.09
Posted in Science at 2:39 pm by nemo
Secrets Of Stradivarius’ Unique Violin Sound Revealed, Professor Says
ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2009) — For centuries, violin makers have tried and failed to reproduce the pristine sound of Stradivarius and Guarneri violins, but after 33 years of work put into the project, a Texas A&M University professor is confident the veil of mystery has now been lifted.
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01.23.09
Posted in Science at 5:19 pm by nemo
Stephen Smith responds to Rightfull Place question (from Seed)
See the Seed invitation
Dear Rightful Place
By all means, improve the placement science in our culture and schools. However, we have a problem with a neo-Darwinism that pretends to be the cornerstone of evolution, when it is not.
I have collected the following ideas, and your organization is free to use them.
(1) What does the evidence imply about Darwinian evolution? Darwin’s theory did not anticipate biological symbiosis. It did not explain the extreme convergences of a kind noted by Simon Conway Morris (see his book “Life’s Solution”). It did not anticipate the fewness of our genes (humans only have 25,000 by most counts). It did not anticipate the Hox systems, and the extreme examples of cooption noted by the interactive complexity apparent (and necessary) in the genome. It did not anticipate the findings of epigenetics where DNA is found activated by environmental cues. Darwin’s theory anticipates little, it is merely rationalizes itself after the fact of discovery.
(2) What can we say about the theory in an abstract sense? Darwin’s theory assumes a friendly sample space given as Richard Dawkins’s bioform space, and it assumes a dynamic (responsive to biological change) and smooth ( friendly to natural selection) fitness landscape. That is, Darwin’s theory comes with a precondition that natural selection can never explain, as this boundary is hardwired into the very fabric of space-time. Or stated another way: Randomness and selection are not context independent. Randomness depends on the sample space, and selection depends on the fitness landscape. This dependence cannot be argued away, and so natural selection is not self-contained. Natural selection is found depending on the very fabric of space-time, its boundary condition. Therefore, natural selection is incomplete; randomness and selection are only abstract caricatures of the space-time fabric. Space-time is concrete, not abstract. And in deed, the boundary can be co-opted by an agency turning natural selection into artificial selection that has goals. And you see natural selection cannot explain the precondition or the
agency that co-opts the space-time fabric.
Here is a collection of books that can give support to my observations:
http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Beyond-Darwin/lm/R21N3IK5VPAKGS/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full
Glad to help!
Sincerely, Stephen P. Smith
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01.22.09
Posted in Evolution, Science at 8:35 pm by nemo
via sciftp: a letter from Seed about Obama’s pledge to restore science to its ‘rightful place’.
We can think about that tonight, and take up the discussion further tomorrow.
[UD already has a post on this]
The question of science’s rightful place is probably beyond resolution at this point: it is certainly not science’s rightful place to promote Social Darwinism disguised as Darwinian science, or to promote ideologies of social competition and conflict in the name of science, or to try and replace the ethical traditions of genuinely humantist/religious culture with the junk theories of population genetics.
It is possible to argue that, as Kant so clearly described it, science is not able to resolve the basic metaphysical issues that confront man (divinity, self, freedom), certainly not with crackpot theories like Darwinism.
It is futile to debate science’s ‘rightful place’ if its basic disposition is crackpot evolutionism.
Since the issue is the misplaced power granted to science for its technological prowess it is sheer hypocrisy to babble on piously about science’s rightful place.
More tomorrow.
“Dear Seed friends,
In his first speech as President-elect last November, Barack Obama reminded us of the promise of “a world connected by our own science and imagination.” And on Tuesday, in his inaugural address, President Obama cemented his commitment to a new ethos and culture by vowing to “restore science to its rightful place.”
At Seed, we are firmly committed to President Obama’s vision and want to help make it a reality. We begin today by asking you, our friends and colleagues in science, and outside science, to respond to the President’s idea of a “rightful place” for science. What is science’s rightful place?
Restoring science to its rightful place in government and in wider society will be no simple task; it will demand fresh ideas, the engagement of America’s scientists and engineers, and the collaboration of other cultural and social institutions.
On Tuesday we bore witness to a milestone with multiple facets: the victory of racial equality, the demise of anti-intellectualism, the triumph of hope over fear, and the evolution of democracy itself. Today we also entered a new era of curiosity, open inquiry, and hard work in pursuit of something bigger than each of us. History will call this the birth of our scientific renaissance.
We invite you to share your thoughts and comments on the rightful place of science. Send text, audio, video, image to responses@rightfulplace.orgor join the conversation on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rightful-Place-Project/46391575761
Kindest regards,
Adam Bly
Editor-in-Chief, Seed”
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01.21.09
Posted in Science at 3:45 pm by nemo
The Magic Cube
Michael Shermer, SkepticBlog
Past Shermer videos in this series:
Skeptic Contacted By Aliens
How to bend a spoon with just your mind
Reposted from: Dawkins site
http://skepticblog.org/2009/01/20/the-magic-cube/
Read the rest of this entry »
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