Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

[Update:] Beliefnet Re-Re-Titles My Piece on President Bush

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At my prompting, Beliefnet has now reverted to the original title (go here).

[Earlier I had written:] After President Bush’s recently stated public support for teaching intelligent design, an editor at Beliefnet asked me to respond to it. Moreover, she asked me to clarify where I stand on creationism. I responded with a brief essay that appears on my designinference.com website (go here). I titled that essay “Why President Bush Got It Right about Intelligent Design.” That essay has now appeared on Beliefnet, where it was re-titled — without my knowledge or permission — “Intelligent Design, Yes; Creationism, No” (go here). This new title is contentious and misleading. My target in this essay is Darwinian materialism. I discuss creationism in this essay to clarify how my understanding of intelligent design differs from it.

Comments
The Biggest Forensics Thus Far, the 911 skies: http://www.geocities.com/chrisbornagFer
November 7, 2006
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Gump, I am really sorry about taking so long. I have been really busy to actually sit down and write out my complete reason against ID. However, I did finish TYPING my paper. I just have to proof read it. I will send it to you after that is complete. And, yes, you are correct, it is mostly philosophical, but it goes straight to key concepts of Dembski's (and somewhat of Behe's) in light of scientific data. I don't really think that Prigogine's ideas DIRECTLY put ID out of business, but, I think my main point was that his ideas go at the heart of what Dembski is saying about how the emergence of life is not what scientists are saying. When I was writing my paper, I was looking at NFL and his comments on the Benard cell experiment. His complaint is that, in that experiment there is a causal specificity, namely heat (excuse if I said this above aready). However, heat (or any other resource in the environment) is not SEEN as a causal specific entity. By bringing in heat into the picture it only sets up POTENTIALS in the environment. Thus, if, when you ask for a causal mechanism you mean an entity that brings another entity INTO EXISTENCE you will NOT find it because that is not what physicists would say (I am not sure what biologists would say). Nothing brings another into existence (oddly enough, that is what Hume actually says). Therefore, emergence is defined by potentials; that is, what the current conditions allow, but when potentials disallow something, the entity will not emerge. As for Dembski not wanting to stop research, I do not know either (I hope not). However, he has misunderstood the key concepts in the literature. As for the "promissary note", he tends to be saying that scientists have to PROVE naturalism (that is, all natural causes can explain everything). First, that is not science, but rather philosophy. Second, philosophy can not prove that as well. All that we have is that MOST phenomena have been explained by natural causes. Since most instances have been proved in this way, naturalism gets the upper hand. There are way too many holes in Dembski's ideas to be considered as science, yet. In the paper that I am writing, I attempt to show that his ideas of intelligence are even flawed. He seems to advocate that intelligence CREATES information by reducing a a reference class of possibilities. However, it is natural information that permits us to do this in the first place. His ideas are a RESULT of information, not the antecedent of information.sartre
August 26, 2005
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"I will look over that abstract in more detail later. I am in midst of writing paper on ID that I would like to finish this week. Perhaps, when finished, you would like to read it." I'd be interested in reading this paper. Considering your background, I'm assuming it'll be discussing ID from a philosophical point of view? "Anyway, the comment about Prigogine’s beliefs are speculative." Definitely. I just don't see how the evidence his research provided directly contradicts ID. "However, it is safe to assume that he DID believe that the origin of life came from structures that tried to stay on the edge of chaos (far-from-equilibrium)." Agreed. But the evidence he provided and his own beliefs are two separate issues. "But that point was only made because Dave gave a quote from a biased Christian and/or ID website (both disciplines used it to further their agenda without actually interpreting what he was trying to do correctly)." I comprehend that what Prigogine was contending that since the origin of life would be based upon natural laws technically that event would not be "accidental". It's still a useful quote if your intention is to show that an accidental origin of life is impossible. I agree there are many Creationist and ID sites that quote mine without checking the context. Fortunately most of them are hosted by laymen and the "good" ID sites understand his real position. Even so, I rarely visit such sites since I do not want my information to be filtered or biased (though that occurs even with publications from PNAS from what I've seen). Now if there was a truly impartial site that covered such information... "Thus, the point is this. ID has not sufficiently considered what emergent, self-organized, chaotic, non-linear systems can actually accomplish." Perhaps, but I did point out an article that shows exactly what such systems can accomplish in regards to the protobiological science. I realize you believe the foundation for your argument is based upon the mere existence of emergent, self-organized, chaotic, non-linear systems. Personally I do not see that as being even a starting point for an argument that ID is generating false positives in regards to biological life. To me a good argument is based in evidence. To me a good foundation for an argument is that there is a natural mechanism that can produce polypeptide chains comprised of 100% left-handed amino acids since all life requires them. If this were a NASCAR race your car would have broken down before even passing the starting line. Now I won't deny your argument may be good in the future...which leads to your next quote. "But it is ignorant because they STOPPED looking at the possibilities. There has been NOTHING to date to show that emergence cannot be extended to the origin of life Even though it has yet been explained to do so either, we must work out the problems to see where they lead us. It seems to me that ID is too impatient. Dembski criticizes the promissory note, where he criticizes scientists for saying that they need more time, more money, better technology, etc. to figure it out. But if emergence has not been proven to prohibit the origin of life (as proscriptive laws state), and we see emergence generating numerous different forms of entities, where these entities are similiar to living organisms (living autocatakinetic forms), don’t we owe it to the scientists to give them time to see where this all goes? That is my point." I agree that research into this subject should continue indefinitely (except in the event of the Second Coming of Christ ;) ). I think Dembski (I could be wrong) is not advocating that they stop such research completely but he is saying they should stop acting as if an unknown future piece of evidence somehow contradicts ID today. "Dembski has not shown that emergence cannot generate complexity." Does he need to? If the complexity being generated has no direct relevance to the origin of biological life or evolution then I don't think he need worry. Of course, I'm "assuming" most of the instances of spontaneous complexity have no direct relevance...Gumpngreen
August 25, 2005
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I will look over that abstract in more detail later. I am in midst of writing paper on ID that I would like to finish this week. Perhaps, when finished, you would like to read it. Anyway, the comment about Prigogine's beliefs are speculative. However, it is safe to assume that he DID believe that the origin of life came from structures that tried to stay on the edge of chaos (far-from-equilibrium). But that point was only made because Dave gave a quote from a biased Christian and/or ID website (both disciplines used it to further their agenda without actually interpreting what he was trying to do correctly). But his work, I believe, poses problems to ID since ID does not give enough attention to spontaneous ordering and misinterprets its results when it does mention it briefly. Before I came to write this post I was reading an article in the journal "Biology and Philosopgy" vol. 14 1999 by Bruce H. Weber titled "Irreducible Complexity and the Problem of Biochemical Emergence" (593-605). In this paper, Weber criticizes Behe for not looking deep enough into self-organization. My claim is that neither has Dembski. In fact, he completely misunderstands emergence of such systems. I say this because he defines emergence as a Local point structure of ONE mechanism, as he says, "'X emerges' is an incomplete sentence. It needs to be completed by reading 'X emerges from Y'. Moreover, the claim that 'X' emerges from 'Y' remains vacuous until one specifies 'Y' and can demonstrate that 'Y' is sufficient to account for 'X'" (NFL, 244). First, I need to admit that I was INCORRECT about Dembski not mentioning the Benard experiment. However, he does not interpret it correctly in modern light. As mentioned in Barab, Cherkes-Julkowski, Swenson, Garrett, Shaw, and Young (1999) "Principles of Self-Organization: Learning as Participation in Auotcatakinetic Systems", the "spontaneous ordering arises when the field potential rises above a minimum threshold and stochastic microscopic fluctuations are amplified to macroscpoic levels at which point hundreds of molecules begin moving coherently together. Because the emergence of order is thus stochatically (randomly) seeded at the microscopic level, there is great variability during the initial stages of the ordering process. Over time, the system passes through a generic development process of selection, including such dynamics as spontaneous vells, until the system achives a final state of regularly arrayed hexogonal cells" (364). Dembski does not give a full account. There is no CAUSAL specification as he states. But rather there are certain CONDITIONS that arise where Prigogine's supposed law takes place. The thermodynamic laws, as Dembski points out correctly, are proscriptive, which show what is not allowed. But it is odd that Dembski further down says that Kauffman's 4th law doesn't state a causal mechanism. Proscriptive laws DON'T look for what brings something into existence, but rather state pathways that are impossible. Anyway, back to my original point. As Weber states, "The application of 'complex systems dynamics' to biological problems is still in its infancy. Nonetheless, the point is that there is a research community, which incldes some 'card-carrying' Darwinians, that is attmepting to address problems of emergence in general and especially in biological systems and thereby to give accounts of what Behe takes to be 'irreducibly complexity'" (600). Thus, the point is this. ID has not suffciently considered what emergent, self-organized, chaotic, non-linear systems can actually accomplish. To say (although incorrect in terminoloy) that there has been no causal specification for the emergence of life YET, but lets devise another system because our information is lacking in this area where complexity has yet to have been followed through to its logical ending. This is why many people say that ID is based on the argument of ignorance. It is not based on ignorance because they say that natural explanations have faltered, therefore design. But it is ignorant because they STOPPED looking at the possibilities. There has been NOTHING to date to show that emergence cannot be extended to the origin of life Even though it has yet been explained to do so either, we must work out the problems to see where they lead us. It seems to me that ID is too impatient. Dembski criticizes the promissory note, where he criticizes scientists for saying that they need more time, more money, better technology, etc. to figure it out. But if emergence has not been proven to prohibit the origin of life (as proscriptive laws state), and we see emergence generating numerous different forms of entities, where these entities are similiar to living organisms (living autocatakinetic forms), don't we owe it to the scientists to give them time to see where this all goes? That is my point. One last thing. Dembski has not shown that emergence cannot generate complexity. I believe that his idea of complexity is misleading since it is based on individual "bits", but this becomes relative. In a social structure, we can have people as bits, but we can also have communities as bits, or cities, counties, states, etc. For example, in his sequence of '110111011111' all the way up to 101 becomes relativized because this is predetermined by our language. Furthermore, Lehn and Ball (found athttp://scienceweek.com/2003/sw030124.htm ; however, I can't get the link to work right now, it worked earlier though) state that "'Complex is not the same as 'complicated'" (4). And Nicolis (found at same website), states that, "...[The] difference between 'simple' and 'complex', and between 'disorder' and 'order', is much narrower than previously thought" (2). Anyway, different langauges can describe what we consider a long series of bits in one word, which reduces its complexity. So it seems that Dembski is trying to develop a standard language here. In my paper, I attack Dembski's version of complexity to be presupposing a more primitive perceptual encounter, what Gibson calls an affordance. An affordance, for sake of brevity, is what an object means with no mind imposing meaning onto it. Thus, Dembski's idea of information (I also show that there is no information that lacks complexity and specificity, so it becomes redundant) presupposes a more primitive account of information.sartre
August 22, 2005
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In order to prevent this discussion from bouncing all over the place... https://uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/253#comments "Anyway, ID has a major problem to solve. It has been EXPERIMENTALLY [shown] that order and complexity are able to form SPONTANEOUSLY as shown in the Pigogine paper." I do not comprehend why you consider Pigogine's work to be so devestating to ID. It's not as if instances of spontaneous complexity is something newly discovered. The old example is the structure of a crystal which are strictly repetitive galleries of geometric repetition. Ocean waves can produce structures with right angles that highly resemble human-made buildings. I fully expect even more instances of spontaneous complexity to be found. But until a mechanism is found that solves a problem like described in my last post I do not see how these minor instances pose a "major problem" to ID since it's not just complexity we consider but specification. You appear to be making a mountain out of a molehole.Gumpngreen
August 22, 2005
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"I was told that he[Prigogine] would have seen ID as non-scientific." Why would Priogogine's WORK and DATA conflict with ID? After all, the first question in the explanatory filter is "Does a law explain it?". Now his personal BELIEFS might (we don't know) have been that ID is getting false positives in regards to biology, but how does that make ID non-scientific? Anyway, I meant to do some more catching up on this subject before responding again but I found myself busy. I did take the time to answer one of my questions: In the last couple years has a natural mechanism been found that can produce a protein comprised of 100% left-handed amino acids? I found this published fairly recently (Nov, 2004) at the Proceedings of the National Acedemy of Sciences: "Spontaneous emergence of homochirality in noncatalytic systems" http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0405293101v1 Their theoretical model describes a dynamic system of amino acids joining and disjoining with a free flow of energy and ingredients (so I suppose it's relevant to this discussion). In the best-case scenario, provided that all the ingredients are present in the right conditions, this system might produce about 70% of one hand in a few centuries (a value that stabilizes and does not rise higher). Even this does not form polypeptide chains, only an excess of one-hand in the amino acids. They say that the formation of the first prebiotic peptides is not a trivial problem, as free amino acids are poorly reactive (peptide bonds tend not to form in water). To solve this part of the problem, they imagine alternate wetting and drying periods and the presence of N-carboxyanhydrides to activate the amino acids. The tests required fairly high concentrations of ingredients, and specific temperature and acidity. They couldn't get any single-handed chains to result, but still feel their model is better than the usual direct autocatalytic reaction models, which they view as “dubious in a prebiotic environment.” Now, has a discovery been made in the last 9 months that I'm unaware of?Gumpngreen
August 22, 2005
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Speaking of describing the long chains of organic materials, where is the experiments performed by ID proponents? Has CSI been used for the origin of life? Not from what I have seen. Maybe ID should provide what they expect from naturalism. You wouldn't seem as hypocritical. By the way, it was seen that in the Benard experiment that, when spontaneous ordering occurs, if the the temperature went below the threshold, the system fails. Uh oh, temperature is viewed as part of the system (that is one thing IC overlooks; the system fails if part of the environment is depleted). However, once the temperature goes above the threshold again, ordering arises. ID's two major ideas (CSI and IC) are in trouble. Again, CSI (I'll use this term even though complex and specified are redundant) says that NO natural means can create it (it does not state anything about the origins of life), but it has. Secondly, IC is in trouble because natural means have created it as well.sartre
August 21, 2005
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Dave, I thought you grew up after you were shown that you didn't even know who you were quoting. That is pathetic. And your sorry excuse that "you are bad at names" does not excuse your poor professionalship. And it is a big deal. He did not say what you quoted him from saying. That is unacceptable. As Carrier says in "The argument from biogenesis: Probabilities against a natural origin of life", "[Worst] of all is Gerald Schroeder’s (1997: 112) quotation of Ilya Prigogine, who wrote “the idea of the spontaneous genesis of life in its present form is therefore improbable, even on the scale of billions of years” (1972). What is most contemptible here is not that no number is given (and thus it is basically a subjective opinion), but that this is stated in the introduction to a paper whose sole purpose was refuting that very statement (it was in fact a landmark work in protobiology, rendering obsolete the conclusions of Salisbury and Morowitz). Schroeder’s failure to mention this is highly suspicious" (748). So yes, it is a big deal. You are supporting a lie and passing it on as a true. Plain and simple. Considering the organization, you are only providing your pathetic subjective opinion. How can I trust someone who provides a supposed quote, where the guy did not even write it. Also, you are dispelling you conspiracy theory again. Scientists would not jepordize their career by acting President for an organization. Your paranoia is getting the best of you (if there is such a thing). Plus, you were so excited that a Nobel Prize might have supported ID, where there is NO EVIDENCE whatsoever. You are poorly reading into his words. All of his experiments required natural mechanisms (By the way, he only won it once in 1977, not twice. Get your facts straight and stop getting you information from those crack-pot ID and Christian sites.) However, if he is connected to people in KNOWN cases, that shows nothing. You have backpeddled so fast that you have tripped over your feet numerous times and fell flat on your back. Do yourself and all of us a favor, stay down. When conferences take place, the President is always present to oversee things. You are misrepresenting AGAIN. You have alot to learn pal. Anyway, I never asked you to come back. You were made a fool when you did not even know who you were quoting. Also, you don't even know what he is talking about. Did you even read the paper. No, wait, you didn't since Speaking of him accepting ID or not, here is what Ms. Harding has to say, who accepts emails from Dr. Prigogine, "“As far as Prof. Prigogine and intelligent design, that concept wasn’t around until recently. I cannot speak for him, but from what I have known of Prof. Prigogine, he would not hold the theory of intelligent design as a relevant scientific theory.” As I said before, this is tentative, but he was around when Behe wrote his book and when Dembski did also. You never seen him accept the idea. He, however, does promote self-ordering entities and spontaneous ordering. Yes, it is a far cry from a ribosome, but many experimentalists are working towards that goal. But the thing to remember is that Dembski said that ID would be in trouble if self-ordering complex entities could arise without intelligence. It certainly appears that we are on our way to seeing this. For some reason, ID proponents want answers right now (even though they lack results on their own). It took 200 years for Newton to be surpassed. The orgin of life is much more difficult to discover than the idea that space and time are relative and light is absolute. The point, we are on the way. And you are still unable to understand his rejection of Darwinism. Darwinism defines organisms as close to equilibrium, not far from equilibrium. He was developing laws that exist througout ALL non-linear systems. Hypothsis testing means we have to go beyond our results, but they must work within the confines of past data. And again, you did not mention anything about the Benard cells, which influenced Prigogine. He wanted to see if spontaneous ordering occurs before the formation of cells, which they did. The middle just needs to fill in the details. Why don't you just take the time to read the paper, since it is obvious that you didn't (like most ID rantings, you conveniently misquoted an author and, when you did quote an actual passage, you stopped right before he got to the relevant material). So read the entire paper and pay attention to the last section. Also, read the experiment from the Benard cells. You might actually learn something for a change, instead of using your ID rhetoric, excuse making, and backpeddling. We have generated complex ordering and we are working from there. Naturalism is generating results, whereas ID has not. Nobody is going to follow ID if they actually read these experimental data, which is why ID fails to cite ANY of these experiments. It is so much easier to ignore the results than attack them.sartre
August 21, 2005
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"The quote was presented as a QUOTE not a paraphrase." BFD The ISSS is still obscure. Just because Prigogine belonged to it doesn't make not obscure. A double noble prize winner likely belongs to scores of organizations, boards of directors, etc. etc. and gets paid for allowing them to use his name. When you get out into the real world, if you ever do, you'd know how it works and I wouldn't have to explain it to you. You don't know if Prigigone rejects ID. Someone that claims to have known is trying to read his dead mind. What he reject is Darwinian evolution and any natural mechanism operating within the familiar space of equilibrium systems. The most concrete real-world examples he gives of spontaneous order in far-from-equilibrium systems is coherent laser light and convection currents in liquids. That's a pretty far cry from a ribosome. As I said, get back to me when someone devises an experiment where long chain organic molecules arise spontaneously and persist long enough to do something interesting. Stay out of my face in the meantime. You bore me.DaveScot
August 21, 2005
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Dave, You are quite possibly correct that the translation may be off, however, it was never cited to be a translation. That article was published in English and that article did not say that it was a translation (it is always cited as such if it is). It was poor citation from the site that you got it from and inaccurately portrays what he actually believes. The quote was presented as a QUOTE not a paraphrase. That's a misrepresentation at it's worst. The two statements are not similiar for the fact that the one that you provided uses the term "accident." The quote in the ACTUAL passage mentions nothing of the sort. Prigogine believed that spontaneous ordering was formed by thermodynamic LAWS, [even activities (non-ordering) at or near equilibrium]. If you look that the two quotes, he says that "the probability at ordinary temperatures" (at or near equilibrium) are improbable. However, the quote that you provided only talks about statistical probability and meandering accidents. They are non-equilvalent since in the REAL quote he is objecting to a certain mechanism, whereas the FAKE quote, talks about lawless activities. This quote summarizes perfectly what I just said, "Obviously, the occurrence of instabilities far from equilibrium is not a universal phenomenon in chemical kinetics. Coherent behavior requires some very particular conditions on the reaction mechanism, whereas the equilibrium order principle is ALWAYS valid (for short- range forces)." Thus, it is another misrepresentation of his ideas. I also said that Prigogine rejected the Darwinian mechanism. Also, so did Swenson (as you are now aware that he participated in a conference that you called "obscure" where Prigogine was President). In fact, Swenson was highly influenced by Prigogine and many of his conclusions were based on Prigigone's results from his books. However, Prigogine rejects ID as well (at least this is what I was told what his reaction was by his center at Texas). But one of the reasons you called Swenson a crank was because he rejected ID and Darwin. Also, you say that ID did not exist at the time of THIS writing, Prigogine passed away in May 2003. He has written books very recently and the arguments of ID have been around for a while. Again, as I wrote a few posts ago, I was told that he would have seen ID as non-scientific. I never said that Darwinism should not be challenged. The grad program that I am applying for is very controversial in psychology, namely direct perception which rejects the view that the mind is an information-processor. Teaching the controversy is not the problem, but rather if ID is a reliable alternative. Again, I never said we shouldn't challenge Darwin, but the data that we do have does not point towards intelligent design. As for the last statements that you made, I think that you are missing the big picture. He is saying that all non-linear systems act similarly. His extension of the 2nd Law is that ALL non-linear systems act in particular ways. The examples that he gives are pre-DNA, which means that the results might be helpful in discovering how DNA was formed. This is important because these results delay any conclusions for ID. This is what is meant by a law, whereas a rule, as I mentioned long ago, can be broken. Laws are universal. Also, he was setting up an experimental methodology that should be used in evolutionary work. Dembski did not critique Prigogine in NFL. I am unsure that Behe has, but in "A Response to Critics of Darwin's Black Box", he never mentioned Prigogine. You also seem to present a double-sided sword here. You say that he never thought of the possibility of ID based on the date of this paper's publication, but then you criticize the minimal extension of his results. It has been 30 years since the publication. He has written much on the subject. It has been shown that COMPLEXITY DOES arise spontaneity. This is enough, so far, to suggest that biological ordering can arise spontaneously without intelligence. Remember, Dembski says that specified complexity CANNOT arise by natural means in any case. However, Prigogine has found such a case. ID has to read this literature to see where it stands. One final note. It is interesting how, in the last quote that you give, you leave out the next paragraph that shows similiarity between biological organisms and his previous examples. Very convenient. They state, "We have investigated systematically the behavior of nonlinear chemical net works of biological interest.4, 6 At first one would expect that those systems that, contrary to the two previous examples, are purely dissipative would always show a tendency to a disordered regime. The surprising result was that in fact they share most of the properties of hydrodynamic instabilities with the additional important feature that the variety of the regimes beyond instability is much greater in chemical kinetics. This is not really surprising when we realize that in chemical kinetics non linearity may arise in a practically un limited number of ways through auto catalysis, cross-catalysis, activation inhibition, and so on. In contrast. the Stokes-Navier equations of fluid dynamics assume a universal form. Beyond instability, which again arises when a critical distance from equilibrium is reached, the reaction systems may become spontaneously inhomogeneous and present an ordered distribution of the chemical constituents in space. Under different conditions the concentrations of the chemicals may show sustained oscillations. Finally, other systems may exhibit a multiplicity of steady states combined with hysteresis. (We will discuss examples later.) You also forgot about the Benard experiment. Swenson and Turvey (1991) summarize this experiment, "A classic experiment in self-organization (first devised by Benard in 1900) is depicted in Figure 4. A viscous fluid is held between a uniform heat source below and the cooler temperature of the air above. That is, there is a potential difference with a field fbrce F of a magnitude determined by the difference between the two temperatures. When F is below a critical threshold heat flows from the source to the sink (entropy is produced) as a result of the disordered collisions between the constituent molecules (see Figure 4a); when F is increased beyond the critical threshold Bdnard "cells" emerge spontaneously, each cell consisting of hundreds of millions of molecules moving collectively together. The major point to be emphasized here is that there is nothing improbable about the emergence of Benard cells; it is a completely lawful phenomenon. Each time F is increased beyond a critical threshold order emerges spontaneously. What is the critical threshold? It is simply the minimum magnitude of F that will support the ordered state. In other words, order production is entirely opportuni5tic: it occurs as soon as it gets the chance. The latter is understandable from the proposed law of maximum entropy productionsystems will produce or select those dynamics that minimize their field potentials at the fastest possible rate given the constraints (Swenson, 1988, 1989b, 1989c, in press-b). Figure 5 shows the discontinuous increase in heat transfer that occurs with the production of the ordered state. Because the second law requires that entropy production increase concomitantly with the local entropy reduction of the ordered state, a phenomenon of the kind depicted in Figure 5 will be the case at whatever level order production occurs: Order is selected inexorably according to the law of maximum entropy production for precisely this reason" (18; from http://www.ecologicalpsychology.com/SwenTurv.pdf). As one can seen from this description, spontaneity in these cells occurs EVERYTIME with a probability one. Thus, Prigogine found spontaneity in pre-biological ordering and Benard found spontaneity in organization of cells. It seems as though we only have to fill in the gap. Also, Prigogine et. al, at the end of the article elaborates on some biological examples. "Some biological examples Dissipative structures have been produced in the laboratory in an organic oxidation reaction.10 More recently, D. Thomas11 demonstrated that an inhomogeneous pH distribution may arise spontaneously inside an artificial membrane wherein two different types of enzymes have been reticulated in a spatially homogeneous fashion. How ever, the problem that concerns us here is primarily the usefulness of the theory outlined in the previous sections in the understanding of biological phenomena. It will be convenient to discuss separately two types of problems: Is it possible to understand the functional order observed in actual living systems? This question refers to the physicochemical basis of maintenance of life. How did the structures observed in living beings (nucleic acids, proteins, cells as a whole) arise from an inert pre biotic mixture of simple molecules? This is the problem of prebiotic evolution or of the origin of life. We shall discuss the first point briefly, postponing for a while the problem of evolution. A number of typical phenomena can be analyzed in terms of the theory outlined in the previous section: regulatory processes, excitable systems and cell aggregation. The existence of elaborate control mechanisms to ensure that the various chemical reactions in living cells happen at the proper rate and at the right time is well known. The first type of control mechanism ensures that there is no excessive synthesis, or lack of small metabolites, for instance, of energy-rich molecules such as ATP (adenosine triphosphate), The usual way this mechanism operates is to affect the rate at which a particular protein (enzyme) catalyzing one reaction step acts, One of the best studied biochemical chains from this point of view is glycolysis, a process of great importance for the energetics of living cells. Experiments show that the concentrations of the chemicals participating in the reaction present undamped oscillations in time, with perfectly reproducible periods and amplitudes. On the other hand, starting from known data on the elementary reaction steps, one can construct mathematical models for glycolysis.12,13 A detailed study of the rate equations shows that the experimental results may be interpreted quantitatively as oscillations of the limit-cycle type arising beyond the instability of a time-independent solution that belongs to the thermodynamic branch. In other words, glycolysis is a temporal dissipative structure. This result is expected to extend to a whole series of regulatory processes at the metabolic level. A second type of control mechanism in living cells affects the rate of synthesis of the various protein molecules that exist in a cell. Usually this mechanism works on a group of more than one enzyme molecule, François Jacob and Jacques Monod have proposed several ingenious models: Either the products of the metabolic action of the enzymes act on the genetic material to inhibit the synthesis, or the initial metabolites added to the medium have the effect of switching on the action of a part of the genetic material. Again, one can construct mathematical models for this process.14,15The study of rate equations reveals that the activated and in activated regimes belong to two different branches of solutions which, under certain conditions, are separated by an instability. A number of vital biological processes, in particular the functioning of the nervous system, rest on the ability of certain cell membranes to switch abruptly from a rest state of low ionic permeability to an excited state of high permeability. The former is a polarized state arising from the maintenance of different ionic-charge densities on the two sides. In the excited state the ionic-charge- density difference tends to diminish in an almost discontinuous fashion (all-or-none transition). This depolarization can be interpreted quantitatively16 as a transition arising beyond the instability of the polarized state and belonging to the "nonthermodynamic" branch. Here the constraint driving the system far from equilibrium is the difference in charge density on the two sides. Certain unicellular organisms develop a kind of organization composed of individual cells aggregated in colonies; a primitive form of differentiation between cells is also observed in these colonies. Among the best studied families showing this behavior are the slim molds. Their aggregation is mediate by a cyclic AMP (adenosine monophosphate) that can be secreted by the cells. The initiation of this aggregation can be interpreted17as an instability of the uniform distribution (corresponding to the absence of aggregation) of the individual cells, which again belongs to the thermodynamic branch. One is tempted hope that these aggregation phenomena will provide valuable indications of how higher organisms develop. In this case the interpretation in terms of dissipative structures would provide a much needed unifying principle for all these extremely diverse and complex processes." Also, Ms. Harding, who works at the Prigogine center, is going to send me the second part of this article as well as other articles. I'll let you know how his ideas have changed.sartre
August 21, 2005
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One other thing - prebiotic evolution, if it happened on the earth, happened in millions, not billions of years. Prigogine evidently wasn't very well informed on the evolution of the solar system and the point at which life emerged on the young earth. In solar evolutionary timescales life on earth appeared almost instantly after it cooled off enough for liquid water to exist. Possibly this was not well known 30 years ago when Prigogine wrote that paper but I seem to recall knowing it in the early 1970's. I tend to put more trust in the panspermia than I do in earthbound abiogensis. That of course leads to needing to learn about the Galactic Habitable Zone which is a fascinating emergent branch of scientific inquiry.DaveScot
August 21, 2005
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I'm bad with names. I was more interested in a two-time Nobel prize winner's words than his name and didn't recall it. I recalled the content of the quote immediately. http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/Authors/Evolution/Prigogine-I/ToE.html#CoherentBehaviorDissipationAndLife It's now claimed he never said it what I quoted. However, it is certainly an accurate paraphrase of what he did say. Since he often published in languages other than english there might simple be a translation issue if someone reading the article in French translated back to english. Here is he DID say from the link above: "The probability that at ordinary temperatures a macroscopic number of molecules is assembled to give rise to the highly ordered structures and to the coordinated functions characterizing living organisms is vanishingly small. The idea of spontaneous genesis of life in its present form is therefore highly improbable, even on the scale of the billions of years during which prebiotic evolution occurred." Here is the quote from other sources: "The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero." It appears to me that either someone's paraphrasing or translation error has been misrepresented as a literal quote. However, the paraphrase is accurate. Prigogine goes on to say: "The conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that the apparent contradiction between biological order and the laws of physics--in particular the second law of thermodynamics--cannot be resolved as long as we try to under. stand living systems by the methods of the familiar equilibrium statistical mechanics and equally familar thermodynamics." "The arguments we have advanced here cannot, of course, suffice for solving the problem of biological order. One would like not only to show that the second law is satisfied as a whole (diS >= 0) but also to indicate how the state of low entropy and high coherence is maintained. The remaining part of our discussion will be devoted to this question, and we shall discuss in some detail the approach we have developed during the last few years." Prigogine thus admits that under the familiar laws of thermodynamics spontaneous creation of life is practically impossible. He THEN runs up the flagpole a EXTENSION to thermodynamic theory that might, possibly, maybe, explain how life could spontaneously arise in evident violation of 2LOT. "A new evolutionary principle, proposed recently by Manfred Eigen. would replace Darwin's idea in the context of prebiotic evolution." There we go. Darwin is out. Prigogine said it. While not supporting ID, which DID NOT EXIST AT THE TIME OF WRITING, he explictely discounts Darwinian mechanisms. Teach the controversy. Ever heard that? Well, here's a two time Nobel prize winner controverting Darwinian evolution at the prebiotic level. Recall that my point of contention is how DNA/ribosome came to exist from prebiotic chemicals. Prigogine has identified the $64,000 question exactly where I place it. So far so good. "We here propose an alternative description of prebiological evolution. The main idea is the possibility that a prebiological system may evolve through a whole succession of transitions leading to a hierarchy of more and more complex and organized states." Keywords to take home are "propose", "possibility", and "may". One might propose that invisible green men from Mars made entirely of dark matter/energy are a possibility that may account for prebiotic evolution. Almost anything is possible. It's a matter of what's probable. So what does Prigogine say to encourage one to believe his hypothesis has more merit than the invisible green man hypothesis? Let's look. "The best known examples of this duality in behavior are instabilities in fluid dynamics, such as the onset of thermal convection in a fluid layer heated from below. For a critical value of the external constraint (temperature gradient), that is, beyond a critical distance from equilibrium, an instability arises that causes the spontaneous emergence of convection patterns." "In a quite different domain, a spectacular example of emergence of order far from equilibrium has been worked out recently by Hermann Haken.5 He shows that the generation of coherent light by a laser may be interpreted as a nonequilibrium phase transition. Be low instability is the incoherent regime; beyond the transition threshold, corresponding to a critical value of the radiation field, the system switches spontaneously to the coherent state." I'm sorry guys, but going from convection patterns in liquids and coherent photons to self-replicating organic molecular machines is quite a stretch. I'll concede it's marginally less of a stretch than invisible green men though if that's any consolation. I'm going to stop fisking it right there. If convection patterns and photon coherency are the best physical examples he can offer to support his far-from-equilibrium auto-catalytic hypothesis I'm shining it on until someone can demonstrate something a bit closer to home like a soup of amino acids forming some sort of stable macromolecules in an environment that could have reasonably existed and persisted in nature long enough for interesting things to emerge. He's equating convection patterns in liquids to the kind of complexity that self-replicating biological molecules exhibit? Uh huh. A bit of a stretch there it seems.DaveScot
August 21, 2005
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Gump, I emailed Annie Harding, who handles emails for the late Dr. Prigogine. She is sending me the second half of this paper, http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/Authors/Evolution/Prigogine-I/ToE.html , since it seems, unless I have overlooked it, the quote that Dave gave us, is not from the paper he cited. This also means that the cite(s) he got this from (see above for a search) are misinformed. Anyway, I also asked her what Dr. Prigogine thought about ID. "As far as Prof. Prigogine and intelligent design, that concept wasn't around until recently. I cannot speak for him, but from what I have known of Prof. Prigogine, he would not hold the theory of intelligent design as a relevant scientific theory." This is tentative of course. However, given the misquotation above and the fact that it was taken out of context, I do sincerly feel that his ideas were far from anything ID believes. This mostly comes from the fact that complexity can be generated without intelligence, which is what ID is trying to show to be false. More later.sartre
August 19, 2005
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Gump, That's fine. I will try to respond tomorrow as I said (its been pretty hectic lately).sartre
August 18, 2005
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"However, I did not say Prigogine and Swenson, but Schneider and Swenson." Oops. You're right. Accidentally typed "Priogogine" instead. Will respond with more later.Gumpngreen
August 18, 2005
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Gump, I do not think that I have put words into Dave's mouth, but you are, obviously, free to believe that. However, I did not say Prigogine and Swenson, but Schneider and Swenson. What I was stating was that Dave seems to be against the idea that thermodynamics have anything to do with evolution, "Both Schneider and Swenson are obsessed with thermodynamics." Here, I take the term "obsessed" to connote a negative feeling. Also, I was showing a link between Prigogine and Swenson where Prigogine seems to indicate that thermodynamics in nonequilibrium is the answer. For more of this, look at his post at comment #51. Anyway, Prigogine DID find a mechanism. He DID find ways to CREATE complexity. Also, Swenson comments on a famous experiment called the Bernard cell experiment, "This is further illustrated with a classic laboratory example of spontaneous ordering, or self-organization, known as the Bénard experiment (see Figure 4). In this experiment a viscous fluid (silicone oil) is placed in a dish and heated uniformly from below. As a consequence of the difference in temperature, or gradient, between the hot bottom (source) and the cool air on top (sink) a potential exists which results in a flow of energy as heat from source to sink. Figure 4 shows two time slices from this experiment. The left-hand photo shows the disordered or Boltzmann regime where the potential is below a minimal threshold, and the source-sink flow is produced by the random, or disordered, collisions of molecules. In this regime, the surface of the system is smooth, homogeneous, and symmetrical. Any part can be exchanged with any other without changing the appearance or dynamics of the system at all. When the potential is increased beyond the critical threshold, however, the situation changes dramatically as spontaneous order arises and the symmetry of the disordered regime is broken. The dynamical ordering of the system produces macroscopic discontinuities with distinct space-time orientations that make it no longer possible to arbitrarily exchange one part for another Here, spontaneous ordering occurs at symmetry breaking events as minimal critical thresholds of atmospheric oxygen are reached with the system, as a consequence, progressively filling new dimensions of space-time, and moving, contrary to the Boltzmann interpretation of the second law, increasingly further from thermodynamic equilibrium. This relationship between spontaneous ordering and the filling, or extension of space-time dimensions, as the final section of this paper will show, provides an important piece to the apparent puzzle of the river that flows uphill. From this, evolution on Earth can be seen as a process of symmetry-breaking events by which the terrestrial system as a whole accesses new dimensions of space-time, and moves progressively further from equilibrium. This provides a set of observables that establishes the direction or time-asymmetry of evolution" (18-20). Found at: http://www.spontaneousorder.net/humaneco.pdf Also, both Prigogine and Swenson criticize Darwinian theory BECAUSE of the limitations to not be able to generate complexity. But they do not think ID is the answer. Remember, Prigogine did find some mechanism that CREATES complexity and the experiment shown above shows how complexity arises by natural means, something ID says is impossible. Swenson states that, "Finally, returning once again to the Bénard experiment to emphasize here perhaps the most important point with respect to spontaneous order production, it is seen that order arises, not infinitely improbably, but with a probability of one, that is, every time, and as soon as, the critical threshold is reached. Spontaneous ordering occurs, in other words, as soon as the opportunity arises. This conforms with the biological extremum (the fecundity principle) that takes it to be the "inherent property" of life to produce as much biological order as it can, and the evolutionary record writ large which suggests that the production of higher-ordered forms, including the origin of life itself occurred, not as a repeated series of astronomically improbable accidents (which certainly would be "infinitely improbable"), but a soon as it had the chance (viz., the origin of life on Earth not after some long lifeless time, but as soon as the Earth was cool enough to support oceans, and the origin of higher-ordered forms as soon as minimal levels of atmospheric oxygen were reached [Figure 1]). If the world in general produces as much order as it can, what is the nomological basis? The answer is given in the next section, which, as a consequence provides the principled basis for unifying the otherwise apparently two incommensurable rivers" (23). From same paper above. Actually, this quote shows what Prigogine ACTUALLY meant from Dave's quote. Thus, it is not that MORE mechanisms must be found to generate complexity because it HAS already been found in experimentation that complexity CAN be created. However, more experiments must be conducted for a more COMPLETE picture. The problem isn't IF complexity can be generated, but WHAT is the most detailed explanation that we can give.sartre
August 18, 2005
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Dave, You are completely insane. Here is what you said: "The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.” - Ilya Prigogine (Chemist-Physicist) Recipient of two Nobel Prizes in chemistry I. Prigogine, N. Gregair, A. Babbyabtz, Physics Today 25, pp. 23-28" This is where "on Earth" I got that idea. It is amazing that you don't even know what you said.sartre
August 18, 2005
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Uhh... Dave, you quoted Ilya Prigogine in post 65 of this thread and you claimed due to that quote he was a supporter of ID. Now whether or not Prigogine supported ID right before he died I have no idea.Gumpngreen
August 18, 2005
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Ah, didn't realize he had died. Explains why I haven't seen anything from him in a while... "Dave auggested that Schneider and Swenson were cranks because they reject BOTH ID and neo-Darwinism" Neo-Darwinism presupposes the existence of complex life. Obviously the mechanisms of Neo-Darwinism have little or no relevance to the protobiological sciences. I'm mostly going to let Dave defend himself but to say that Dave claimed Prigogine and Swenson "rejected" Neo-Darwinism based upon the quote you cited seems incorrect. Just saying this because I've noticed you putting words in his mouth in the above posts. If you're going to argue at least argue with he actually said. "It is clear here that he discovered SOME mechanisms, but a complete account is lacking." What I meant by "though perhaps the results of his research could be construed as indirect support?" is that his negative results could be seen as evidence for ID. Discussing the assumption that there are more physical mechanisms waiting to be discovered would only lead to yet-another-gap-argument.Gumpngreen
August 18, 2005
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Sartre, Where on earth did you find me saying anything at all about some cat named Priogione? I don't know him from Adam and neither quoted him nor made any other comments about him. In fact I have no bloody idea who he is and quite frankly I'm not about to waste any more time indulging your juvenile maunderings in junk science. Adios.DaveScot
August 18, 2005
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Gump, Unfortunately, Prigogine passed away in May of 2003. Also, you are correct that Prigogine was not a supporter of neo-Darwinism. However, this is another crucial point. Dave auggested that Schneider and Swenson were cranks because they reject BOTH ID and neo-Darwinism where Dave writes, "Island was enamored of Eric Schneider’s intothecool.com which also rejects algorithmic processes in nature, rejects both the mainstream evolution narrative and intelligent design, and posits that some spooky necessity requires self-organization of life. Both Schneider and Swenson are obsessed with thermodynamics." However, Prigogine has done the same thing. I disagree that Prigogine could implicity agree with with ID since In contrast, creation of order may occur far from equilibrium and with specific non linear kinetic laws, beyond the domain of stability of the states that have the usual thermodynamic behavior. Traditionally, thermodynamics has dealt with the first type of behavior, but an extension of irreversible thermodynamics that permits treating the other aspects as well as this one has been developed recently.” “In all these phenomena a new ordering mechanism, not reducible to the equilibrium principle (equation 2), appears. For reasons to be explained later, we shall refer to this principle as order through fluctuations. The structures are created by the continuous flow of energy and matter from the outside world; their maintenance requires a critical distance from equilibrium, that is, a minimum level of dissipation. For all these reasons we have called them dissipative structures.” “A new evolutionary principle, proposed recently by Manfred Eigen would replace Darwin’s idea in the context of prebiotic evolution. It amounts to optimizing a quantity measuring the faithfulness, or quality, of the macromolecules in reproducing themselves via template action. We here propose an alternative description of prebiological evolution. The main idea is the possibility that a prebiological system may evolve through a whole succession of transitions leading to a hierarchy of more and more complex and organized states. Such transitions can only arise in nonlinear systems that are maintained far from equilibrium; that is, beyond a certain critical threshold the steady-state regime becomes unstable and the system evolves to a new configuration. As a result, if the system is to be able to evolve through successive instabilities, a mechanism must be developed whereby each new transition favors further evolution by increasing the nonlinearity and the distance from equilibrium. One obvious mechanism is that each transition enables the system to increase the entropy production.” It is clear here that he discovered SOME mechanisms, but a complete account is lacking. But the point is this: Prigogine states that order arises from NATURAL causes, but these causes are pre-Darwinian. Thus, he is not supporting ID or is he supporting Darwin because the answer of order is before Darwin's account, which is exactly what Swenson states (if you recall). As for Swenson being a crank, I am unsure how one could think that he is because of his articles and the conferences he has attended. For Prigogine to be associated with Swenson in some manner (recall that Prigogine was president in the very same year Swenson presented a paper the first year Swenson attended the conference). Anyway, I am glad to see that you are not jumping to conclusions. I will give a more thorough account later (hopefully tonight, but definitely by tomorrow, depending on what I have planned).sartre
August 18, 2005
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Dave was definitely wrong to label Prigogine as a direct supporter of ID (though perhaps the results of his research could be construed as indirect support?) since he is still (I think?) searching for mechanisms or properties of matter which could explain the origin of life and its complexity. A recent published letter between Karl Priest (an ID proponent) and Prigogine shows the situation as it currently stands: "The results of my research in thermodynamics were to show that non-equilibrium systems may lead to complex structures. For a recent account, see my book "Modern Thermodynamics, From Heat Engines to Dissipative Structures" (D. Kondepudi and I. Prigogine, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 1998). However, this is still far from a theory of biological evolution. To my knowledge, we have still not discovered the mechanisms, which lead to the remarkable adaptation between life, and environments, which we observe in nature." If I remember correctly the subject of self-organizational scenarios came up this spring at the Life Detection seminars hosted at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Nothing much has changed in the protobiological sciences and the researchers all defended their own scenarios and pointed out the glaring holes in the others. Anyway, whether Swenson is a crank or not I have no idea but I'm still waiting for a good argument for why the usage of "genetic code" is invalid (and, yes, I did read Swenson's work and your earlier argument).Gumpngreen
August 18, 2005
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Dave wrote: "Island was enamored of Eric Schneider’s intothecool.com which also rejects algorithmic processes in nature, rejects both the mainstream evolution narrative and intelligent design, and posits that some spooky necessity requires self-organization of life." Prigogine et al wrote: "The thermodynamic theory of open systems, systems exchanging both energy and matter with the environment, has long been developed by Théople DeDonder and the Brussels school (for a historical account, see reference 1). Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1940)2 and Erwin Schrödinger3 have insisted on the importance of this feature for biological systems. One of us has formulated1 an extended version of the second law that applies both to isolated and to open systems." They also wrote: "Darwin's principle of "survival of the fittest" through natural selection can only apply once pre biological evolution has led to the formation of some primitive living beings. A new evolutionary principle, proposed recently by Manfred Eigen. would replace Darwin's idea in the context of prebiotic evolution." Sounds exactly what Swenson was arguing. Very interesting. A "crank" arguing similarly what Nobel Prize winner wrote and this Nobel prize winner invited a "crank" to a conference where he was president. But you wouldn't know that since you didn't read much of Swenson's paper and, obsviously, Prigogine et al's. paper. Maybe you should stop relying on your telepathy of thinking that you come to the same conclusion as the thinker and ACTUALLY READ the works. This is the THIRD TIME YOU WERE SHOWN TO DRAW A FALSE CONCLUSION BECAUSE YOU DID NOT READ THE MATERIAL.sartre
August 17, 2005
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Dave, I found your quote from Prigogine et al. That quote has been a focal point for Christian and ID proponents, which creates a strawman of Prigogine et. al's. point of view. Prigogine et al. does NOT think that the absence of "accident" must fall back onto the idea of a designer. You are using a classic CREATIONIST argument, horribly misunderstanding a scientists's view and only showing part of what he means due to a lack of ability to synthesize the entire argument. This is what Prigogine et. al say in the entire context (found at http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/Authors/Evolution/Prigogine-I/ToE.html): "The destruction of order always prevails in the neighborhood of thermodynamic equilibrium. In contrast, creation of order may occur far from equilibrium and with specific non linear kinetic laws, beyond the domain of stability of the states that have the usual thermodynamic behavior. Traditionally, thermodynamics has dealt with the first type of behavior, but an extension of irreversible thermodynamics that permits treating the other aspects as well as this one has been developed recently." "In all these phenomena a new ordering mechanism, not reducible to the equilibrium principle (equation 2), appears. For reasons to be explained later, we shall refer to this principle as order through fluctuations. The structures are created by the continuous flow of energy and matter from the outside world; their maintenance requires a critical distance from equilibrium, that is, a minimum level of dissipation. For all these reasons we have called them dissipative structures." "A new evolutionary principle, proposed recently by Manfred Eigen would replace Darwin's idea in the context of prebiotic evolution. It amounts to optimizing a quantity measuring the faithfulness, or quality, of the macromolecules in reproducing themselves via template action. We here propose an alternative description of prebiological evolution. The main idea is the possibility that a prebiological system may evolve through a whole succession of transitions leading to a hierarchy of more and more complex and organized states. Such transitions can only arise in nonlinear systems that are maintained far from equilibrium; that is, beyond a certain critical threshold the steady-state regime becomes unstable and the system evolves to a new configuration. As a result, if the system is to be able to evolve through successive instabilities, a mechanism must be developed whereby each new transition favors further evolution by increasing the nonlinearity and the distance from equilibrium. One obvious mechanism is that each transition enables the system to increase the entropy production." One of the key points here is ..."[Creation] of order may occur far from equilibrium and with specific non linear kinetic laws, beyond the domain of stability of the states that have the usual thermodynamic behavior." Thus, order arises from natural processes of thermodynamic laws. The accident that Prigogine et. al. are referring to is the idea of a lack of mechanism, not chance. Ordered structures are generated by "the continuous flow of energy and matter from the outside world; their maintenance requires a critical distance from equilibrium, that is, a minimum level of dissipation." This is precisely what Swenson states. This is the key point behind autocatakinetic systems. What your quote ACTUALLY describes is the fact that, "In the first place one has systems that have evolved spontaneously to extremely organized and complex forms. On the other hand metabolism, synthesis and regulation imply a highly heterogeneous distribution of matter inside the cell through chemical reactions and active transport. Coherent behavior is really the characteristic feature of biological systems. In contrast to this is the familiar idea that the evolution of a physicochemical system leads to an equilibrium state of maximum disorder. In an isolated sys tem, which cannot exchange energy and matter with the surroundings, this tendency is expressed in terms of a function of the macroscopic state of the system: the entropy. It amounts to saying that entropy S increases monotonically until it becomes a maximum. This celebrated second law of thermodynamics implies that in an isolated system the formation of ordered structures is ruled out. Unfortunately this principle cannot explain the formation of biological structures. The probability that at ordinary temperatures a macroscopic number of molecules is assembled to give rise to the highly ordered structures and to the coordinated functions characterizing living organisms is vanishingly small. The idea of spontaneous genesis of life in its present form is therefore highly improbable, even on the scale of the billions of years during which prebiotic evolution occurred. The conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that the apparent contradiction between biological order and the laws of physics--in particular the second law of thermodynamics--cannot be resolved as long as we try to under stand living systems by the methods of the familiar equilibrium statistical mechanics and equally familar thermodynamics." Thus, his conclusion is that "the apparent contradiction between biological order and the laws of physics--in particular the second law of thermodynamics--cannot be resolved as long as we try to under. stand living systems by the methods of the familiar equilibrium statistical mechanics and equally familar thermodynamics." His conclusion IS NOT design because "a prebiological system may evolve through a whole succession of transitions leading to a hierarchy of more and more complex and organized states." And remember, the "CREATION OF ORDER may occur far from equilibrium and with specific non linear kinetic laws, beyond the domain of stability of the states that have the usual thermodynamic behavior." Note the emphasis of "CREATION OF ORDER."sartre
August 17, 2005
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Dave, Earlier, I wrote that Swenson presented a paper at the “International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS)”, originally “International Society for General Systems Research (ISGSR)”. However, the most interesting thing is this. You cite Prigogine as a prominent scientist, even though you mislabel him as a supporter of ID (he is one of the co-founders of self-organization, which presents problems for ID). Prigogine "was President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) in 1988." http://www.isss.org/lumprig.htm . So, why do you say that, "Getting invited to present a paper at an obscure conference isn’t a credential," where the president was someone who you think is admirable. It is safe to say that Prigogine did not think Swenson was a crank. I would, and apparently you do too, consider Prigogine much better at assessing scientific credentials and sniffing out cranks than you or I. This goes to show that you were wrong about Swenson. I mean, think about. First, you errantly claim that Prigogine was a supporter of ID, even though he was one of the founders of self-organization and emergence, and started the trend to use thermodynamics for living systems (something you were critical about). Secondly, you describe Prigogine as a genius for winning two Nobel Prizes. However, thirdly, you implicitly associate this genius with a crank for letting Swenson into a conference that Prigogine was President for. Swenson's ideas of thermodynamics and autocatakinetic systems are the same ideas that Prigogine was working on. Also, it shows that you considered a prominent conference as obscure just to accomplish some agenda without finding out about the conference, just as you did when you refused to read Swenson's work because it went against your own ideals. That is the true sign of a crank. So, let me ask you (in parody of your comment). In 1988, Rod Swenson was presenting a paper at a conference that had a winner of two Nobel Prizes, where the material Swenson presented was in the same area of Prigogine (he also was ASKED back to the conference the following year). What were you doing in those two years? I hate to say it, but you lost this issue. Swenson was a part of conference that you called obscure, even though the President was a Nobel Prize winner in the same area of Swenson's topic and he was someone who you admire. Case closed.sartre
August 17, 2005
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Dave, You wrote: "Island was enamored of Eric Schneider’s intothecool.com which also rejects algorithmic processes in nature, rejects both the mainstream evolution narrative and intelligent design, and posits that some spooky necessity requires self-organization of life. Both Schneider and Swenson are obsessed with thermodynamics." And you also stated: "Here’s another supporters not on DI’s list. Make that at least 401 scientists including the winner of two Nobel prizes. “The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.” - Ilya Prigogine (Chemist-Physicist) Recipient of two Nobel Prizes in chemistry I. Prigogine, N. Gregair, A. Babbyabtz, Physics Today 25, pp. 23-28" However, "Prigogine greatly enhanced the understanding of irreversible processes, particularly in systems that are far from equilibrium. Prigogine also was the first to apply thermodynamics to the study of irreversible processes in living and inanimate systems." Thus, Prigogine was also "obsessed with thermodynamics" for living organisms. Interesting.sartre
August 17, 2005
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I thought this was interesting (even though I know you won't agree with it considering the source). But it looks like I won't get to the post until tomorrow. However, if credentials are important to you, no one can deny Varela's credentials and was against the strict sense of algorithms and codes. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA118.htmlsartre
August 17, 2005
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"The information conveyed by genes is not intrinsic to its physical properties." The neoDarwinian narrative apologists would sure like it to be intrinsic but so far they've been long on hypotheses and short on anything that survives actual experiment. Their Holy Grail right now is to find a RNA scaffold where RNA condons show a binding preference for amino acids in correspondence to the genetic code. It's a merry chase that generates many published papers to fluff out otherwise uninspiring CVs but when we move from paper to test tubes the requisite biochemistry just can't be made to work even in the best designed laboratory conditions to say nothing of happening in the real world by accident. The hypothetical RNA world is about as real as Harry Potter's world.DaveScot
August 16, 2005
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Fellow IDists, I don't have time to create a post at this time. It will have to wait until tomorrow night or Thursday (most likely on Thursday). However, here is Varela's resume where you can find his credentials. Remember, Varela wa against the idea of instructions where the result was known ahead of time. So from the above website, an algorithm was defined as "a finite set of well-defined instructions for accomplishing some task which, given an initial state, will terminate in a corresponding recognizable end-state." Hence, he was (he passed away a few years ago) against the idea of algorithms (I am going to mentor his former student tonight to see if this is correct however). As for codes, Varela was also against any form of representation. Instead, his view was that of enaction where meaning (be it visual or genetic) contains BOTH the environment and the organism. Thus, we do not have codes of the environment since that presupposes a dualism. Gump, I guess you can put it that way. However, Varela has does research that shows that we do NOT carry copies of the environment or of organisms, but rather the genes are self-organized through interaction. Anyway, here is his website and I will get back to this in a bit. http://www.ccr.jussieu.fr/varela/varela/index.html http://www.ccr.jussieu.fr/varela/publications/index.htmlsartre
August 16, 2005
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The information conveyed by genes is not intrinsic to its physical properties. Unless I'm horribly misinformed, that simple statement appears to be more than enough justification for anyone to use the term "genetic code" even if there were no prior examples of its use.Gumpngreen
August 16, 2005
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