Engineering

In our final video for the Engineering and Metaphysics conference, we have Dr. Walter Bradley, famous in ID circles for his book, The Mystery of Life’s Origin. Here Dr. Bradley shares with us his work on helping relieve poverty in third-world countries through engineering. He also tells us about practices that people attempt to use to relieve poverty which are unhelpful. This is a great summary of the practices that work and the practices that don’t work. If you have trouble with this, you can see it at the following URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X92BDBku6g4 I hope you enjoyed the Engineering and Metaphysics conference! It was great to get to know everyone, and to get to spend time talking about these things with Read More ›

Intelligent Design is relatively new in its present form. Proponents often argue that there are features of biology that look like engineering, and in particular, that the programming of life, the DNA software that goes along with the cellular hardware, is analogous to the programming of computers. However, we haven’t yet been able to fully unpack the implications of that, partly because both computer science and genomics are developing disciplines. The following is merely  a speculative suggestion in the hopes of inspiring further investigation: Could it be that the designer(s) of the genomes of living organisms made use of code libraries in order to do so, as is done in computer software engineering? A code library is a suite of Read More ›

In the next video for the Engineering and Metaphysics conference, we have our keynote speaker, Walter Bradley, author of The Mystery of Life’s Origin (the book which kicked off the Intelligent Design movement). Here Bradley presents an overview of the cosmological case for design. Lots of interesting information from the man who started it all! There are a few breaks in the video due to tape changes. If you can’t see the embedded video, the YouTube URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLd_cPfysrE

Next up in our Engineering and Metaphysics conference lineup is Baylor’s William Jordan. Jordan compares the way that physics models relate to engineering with the way that theological models relate to religious practice. He looks at how innovation works in both theological and physical models, and how engineers and practitioners should treat them. He also looks at the way in which realism affects education in both systems. I don’t have slides for this, but you can see the slides pretty well on the video.

In Bejan’s “Design in Nature”, Bejan promotes what he calls the “constructal law,” which states, “For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.” Bejan has denied that this relates at all to any ultimate form of design, but is this claim correct? In our next Engineering and Metaphysics video, Halsmer and Odom look into the constructal law and whether it indicates design, as well as other, new aspects the constructal law might be applicable to. If you are unable to see the video properly, the YouTube link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eda6Mls1RBk

Next up in the Engineering and Metaphysics series is a presentation by Winston Ewert. This one is on a new informatics metric, called conditional Kolmogorov complexity. Check it out!

For the next installment of the Engineering and Metaphysics Conference Videos, we have a talk on setting up a testable line between physical and non-physical causation, as well as how one can integrate non-physical causation into models of cognitive processes.

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The next video from the Engineering and Metaphysics conference is with Dr. Mark Hall. Hall attempts to reconnect with historic architectural principles through architecture critic John Ruskin, and show what, besides just functionalism and good looks, are needed for lasting architectural impact. We don’t often think of truth as an architectural value, or even see how it could be. Hall brings out Ruskin’s perspective of architecture, and how we can use it to bring deeper meaning into modern architecture. (Yes, the YouTube thumbnail is broken. The video, though, is just fine.)

The first video from the Engineering and Metaphysics conference is from Arminius Mignea. His talk is about self-replication, and what is really required for self-replication to occur. Mignea reviews current attempts at self-replication, and shows the minimal structures needed for it to occur. The slides for the talk are available here. Enjoy!