Comment of the week

_{Denyse O'Leary

June 6, 2015

Intelligent Design}

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Science is a method, not a result, nor a being. “Science” doesn’t say anything. With highly politicised topics like this, it is not the data that tells the tale, but rather those flawed humans who may or may not appropriately report the data that tells the tale. There has been enough fraud discovered in academia alone, without systemic bias toward a given result, that to fail to question these results is a major failing on the part of anyone who takes them at face value. – tmosley

Comments

Eugene Wigner, a physicist and a Nobel prize winner:
The first point is that the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and that there is no rational explanation for it [emphasis mine - ES].
From "The unreasonable effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural sciences" A very good read, BTW. Sorry, only just noticed there is already a pointer to Wigner up the thread. Another relevant read is Henri Poincare "The Foundations of Science".EugeneS_{June 9, 2015
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Mung:
Carpathian: Are you disputing kairosfocus’s view of the importance of mathematics? Mung: I’m asking you why you’re making the claims you’re making. I assume you have reasons for them. Or not.
And I'm asking you about your statements. To clarify: Do you believe that math does a good job of helping us understand the universe? Do you believe math is an invention of God or an invention of man?Carpathian_{June 9, 2015
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Carpathian: Are you disputing kairosfocus’s view of the importance of mathematics? I'm asking you why you're making the claims you're making. I assume you have reasons for them. Or not.Mung_{June 9, 2015
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Silver Asiatic, I'm pretty much in agreement with your #70.daveS_{June 9, 2015
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Mung:
Carpathian: Because a hammer doesn’t do the job as well. Neither does math.
Are you saying that neither a hammer nor mathematics do a particular job as well as mathematics, i.e., A is not A? Are you disputing kairosfocus's view of the importance of mathematics?Carpathian_{June 9, 2015
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Carpathian: Because a hammer doesn’t do the job as well. Neither does math.Mung_{June 9, 2015
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Mung:
Carpathian: Mathematics is the tool that man created to try and understand the universe. Why mathematics?
Because a hammer doesn't do the job as well.Carpathian_{June 9, 2015
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Carpathian: Mathematics is the tool that man created to try and understand the universe. Why mathematics? Carpathian: Mathematics is the tool that man created to try and understand the universe. At least you're not one of those nutcases who thinks that mathematics was invented so a man could count how many wives he had.Mung_{June 9, 2015
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bornagain77:
Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe. Galileo Galilei
This a purely religious statement. The fact that Galileo said it does not make it any less religious. Mathematics is the tool that man created to try and understand the universe.Carpathian_{June 9, 2015
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daveS - As I see it, it's not merely that particles correspond to mathematical models or can be described by them, but that the geometry is somehow part of the interaction. I don't know what it would mean to say that a "mathematical object interacts" with something. But I think it's more than "its movements can be comprehended mathematically" I'm far from an expert in this area - I'd love to hear Berlinski's explanation.Silver Asiatic_{June 9, 2015
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kairosfocus:
Carpathian, You have not engaged the issue, just spoken dismissively.
I have to disagree since I have shown you an example of what I mean. How is that not engaging? Here is another: C - A = B. From my supplied statement you can derive other relationships. The fact that we can do this is not in any way astounding. We make mathematical statements to describe the world in the best way we can. Since the mathematical statements we make rarely define reality with exact precision, we can make the assumption that math is not divine in origin.Carpathian_{June 9, 2015
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Silver Asiatic, That's a very interesting article, but I don't think it addresses my point. Clearly Lie groups and various manifolds are used in models which describe particle physics, mechanics, and so forth. But I don't think it's correct to say that Lie groups themselves interact with particles. For example, QCD, as far as I know, describes how gluons and quarks interact, not how SO(3) interacts with any of these particles.daveS_{June 9, 2015
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daveS Mathematical objects (geometric) are "fundamental components of reality".
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20130917-a-jewel-at-the-heart-of-quantum-physics/ The revelation that particle interactions, the most basic events in nature, may be consequences of geometry significantly advances a decades-long effort to reformulate quantum field theory, the body of laws describing elementary particles and their interactions. Interactions that were previously calculated with mathematical formulas thousands of terms long can now be described by computing the volume of the corresponding jewel-like “amplituhedron,” which yields an equivalent one-term expression.
Silver Asiatic_{June 9, 2015
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I totally agree with your idea about science. Because I am working for a biological science company. I love its magicTargeted Metabolomics_{June 9, 2015
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So for that matter is the fact that mathematical objects such as a Lie Group or a differentiable manifold have the power to interact with elementary particles or accelerating forces.
Can you explain what this means, BA77?daveS_{June 8, 2015
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Carpathian as to: "Mathematics is simply a man-made tool to help us “understand” physics, it has nothing to do with reality." That claim is false Actually,,,
An Interview with David Berlinski - Jonathan Witt Berlinski: There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time …. Interviewer:… Come again(?) … Berlinski: No need to come again: I got to where I was going the first time. The number four, after all, did not come into existence at a particular time, and it is not going to go out of existence at another time. It is neither here nor there. Nonetheless we are in some sense able to grasp the number by a faculty of our minds. Mathematical intuition is utterly mysterious. So for that matter is the fact that mathematical objects such as a Lie Group or a differentiable manifold have the power to interact with elementary particles or accelerating forces. But these are precisely the claims that theologians have always made as well – that human beings are capable by an exercise of their devotional abilities to come to some understanding of the deity; and the deity, although beyond space and time, is capable of interacting with material objects. http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/found-upon-web-and-reprinted-here.html Wheeler's Classic Delayed Choice Experiment: Excerpt: Now, for many billions of years the photon is in transit in region 3. Yet we can choose (many billions of years later) which experimental set up to employ – the single wide-focus, or the two narrowly focused instruments. We have chosen whether to know which side of the galaxy the photon passed by (by choosing whether to use the two-telescope set up or not, which are the instruments that would give us the information about which side of the galaxy the photon passed). We have delayed this choice until a time long after the particles "have passed by one side of the galaxy, or the other side of the galaxy, or both sides of the galaxy," so to speak. Yet, it seems paradoxically that our later choice of whether to obtain this information determines which side of the galaxy the light passed, so to speak, billions of years ago. So it seems that time has nothing to do with effects of quantum mechanics. And, indeed, the original thought experiment was not based on any analysis of how particles evolve and behave over time – it was based on the mathematics. This is what the mathematics predicted for a result, and this is exactly the result obtained in the laboratory. http://www.bottomlayer.com/bottom/basic_delayed_choice.htm Wheeler's Delayed Choice Experiment - 2010 Excerpt: The Delayed Choice experiment changes the boundary conditions of the Schrodinger equation after the particle enters the first beamsplitter. http://www.physics.drexel.edu/~bob/TermPapers/WheelerDelayed.pdf Reality doesn’t exist until we measure it, quantum experiment confirms Mind = blown. - FIONA MACDONALD - 1 JUN 2015 Excerpt: "It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it," lead researcher and physicist Andrew Truscott said in a press release. http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-measure-it-quantum-experiment-confirms Colossians 1:17 "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together."
It is also interesting to note that 'higher dimensional' mathematics had to be developed before Einstein could elucidate General Relativity, or also before Quantum Mechanics could be elucidated;
The Mathematics Of Higher Dimensionality – Gauss and Riemann – video https://vimeo.com/98188985 The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences - Eugene Wigner - 1960 Excerpt: We now have, in physics, two theories of great power and interest: the theory of quantum phenomena and the theory of relativity.,,, The two theories operate with different mathematical concepts: the four dimensional Riemann space and the infinite dimensional Hilbert space, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html BRUCE GORDON: Hawking's irrational arguments - October 2010 Excerpt: The physical universe is causally incomplete and therefore neither self-originating nor self-sustaining. The world of space, time, matter and energy is dependent on a reality that transcends space, time, matter and energy. This transcendent reality cannot merely be a Platonic realm of mathematical descriptions, for such things are causally inert abstract entities that do not affect the material world. Neither is it the case that “nothing” is unstable, as Mr. Hawking and others maintain. Absolute nothing cannot have mathematical relationships predicated on it, not even quantum gravitational ones. Rather, the transcendent reality on which our universe depends must be something that can exhibit agency - a mind that can choose among the infinite variety of mathematical descriptions and bring into existence a reality that corresponds to a consistent subset of them. This is what “breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe.” Anything else invokes random miracles as an explanatory principle and spells the end of scientific rationality. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/1/hawking-irrational-arguments/ Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe. Galileo Galilei
bornagain77_{June 8, 2015
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Carpathian, You have not engaged the issue, just spoken dismissively. There are entire diverse domains of math coming together neatly in that expression, in a way that has long earned the respectful admiration of a lot of thinkers. From there, linked lines of thought flow out across frequency space and the complex frequency domain, with dynamics in tow. Something is there, if you are willing to look. KFkairosfocus_{June 8, 2015
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'Something restricts random change,....' It always seemed to me that random change had a predisposition towards intelligent design; a proclivity for it, a bias. And I wonder if, in fact, it cribbed from previous human civilisations, before the extinction of the dinosaurs, or from aliens on other plants and reverse-engineered from their designs; in a random sort of way, of course. 'Something'.... There's a word to conjure with isn't it? 'Something happened here.'Axel_{June 8, 2015
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Querius @ 42 "Thanks for the link to the 1919 Biology textbook, which relies mainly on rhetoric. The arrogant use of “thinking people” was particularly appalling" Yes and if you scroll to the bottom of the page you find another appalling page from Elements of Biology by Ruth A. Dodge 1952 (revision of Smallwood’s Elements of Biology under copyright heading Biology for High Schools) Pub. Allyn and Bacon Page 256, 257 So an outright lie regarding origins was taught to high School kids for 40 years. Anyone else consider that be as morally obscene as I do? http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/showthread.php?s=3cf7cc14dd346d1d47eea13631e16d39&t=100902&page=18 http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zrdckq8Cva0/U34_CNaRHzI/AAAAAAAABLo/9i1RXSd4nPo/s1600/PiltIntrHumBiol256.jpgreverendspy_{June 8, 2015
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bornagain77, If a sexually reproducing population were randomly "searching a space", and each parent only contributes a "single bit change", the search space could be traversed very quickly. With each "randomly mutated" generation, the bit changes of all ancestors get incorporated into the population. Children would thus have 2 changes from the original, grandchildren 4, great grandchildren 8, then 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, etc. Like a chessboard, by generation 64, you can have changed the entire genome. Something restricts random change, since if it didn't, all life could have completely altered from its initial "information".Carpathian_{June 8, 2015
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Carpathian: We created math and that is why it has limitations in expressing reality. Thank God you're not one of those weirdos who thinks that math created us.Mung_{June 8, 2015
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bornagain77:
There is not enough opportunities in the whole history of life on earth to search but a tiny fraction of the space of 10^77 possible combinations that correspond to every functional combination.
Physics is not totally random. If I have two bar magnets and keep dropping them on a table, they will never, in the entire history of the universe, fall so that the two north poles are touching each other. Physics is restricted, it is not a wide open game of chance as theists keep presenting it. Your improbability argument is not scientific since you ignore the forces of physics. This is not what happens.Carpathian_{June 8, 2015
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"Faith is a spiritual concept and should be kept out of the sciences." Do you really, really, really, believe that? If so then: I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Have-Enough-Faith-Atheist/dp/1581345615 "In light of Doug Axe's number, and other similar results,, (1 in 10^77), it is overwhelmingly more likely than not that the mutation, random selection, mechanism will fail to produce even one gene or protein given the whole multi-billion year history of life on earth. There is not enough opportunities in the whole history of life on earth to search but a tiny fraction of the space of 10^77 possible combinations that correspond to every functional combination. Why? Well just one little number will help you put this in perspective. There have been only 10^40 organisms living in the entire history of life on earth. So if every organism, when it replicated, produced a new sequence of DNA to search that (1 in 10^77) space of possibilities, you would have only searched 10^40th of them. 10^40 over 10^77 is 1 in 10^37. Which is 10 trillion, trillion, trillion. In other words, If every organism in the history of life would have been searching for one those (functional) gene sequences we need, you would have searched 1 in 10 trillion, trillion, trillionth of the haystack. Which makes it overwhelmingly more likely than not that the (Darwinian) mechanism will fail. And if it is overwhelmingly more likely than not that the (Darwinian) mechanism will fail should we believe that is the way that life arose?" Stephen Meyer - 46:19 minute mark - Darwin's Doubt - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg8bqXGrRa0&feature=player_detailpage#t=2778bornagain77_{June 8, 2015
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kairosfocus:
what hit me between the eyes was seeing how entire domains of Math that I had every reason to believe were divergent (try IMAGINARY numbers!) suddenly, step by step, thanks to the power series formulations, came together, and Bang: 0 = 1 + e^ i* pi
I would expect something like this to happen. We develop a math statement that declares this: A + B = C. You would expect A, B and C to now be related to each other because of this statement and we find proof that they are. Why would anyone be surprised? All of our math is related in this way and these relationships, both explicit and implicit, have been defined by us. We are restricted by the type of math that we have created to not being able to come up with an exact relationship of PI. That doesn't mean there is something wrong with physics, it means there is something wrong with us. We created math and that is why it has limitations in expressing reality.Carpathian_{June 8, 2015
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bornagain77:
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences – Eugene Wigner – 1960 Excerpt: ,,certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin’s process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.,,,
This is simply a plea to the God Of The Gaps. Secondly, we're not very good at reasoning at all. If that was the case, we wouldn't have hundreds of religions. Clearly, everyone would adopt the most "reasonable" one, and yet that hasn't happened. Faith is a spiritual concept and should be kept out of the sciences.Carpathian_{June 8, 2015
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Carpathian, what hit me between the eyes was seeing how entire domains of Math that I had every reason to believe were divergent (try IMAGINARY numbers!) suddenly, step by step, thanks to the power series formulations, came together, and Bang: 0 = 1 + e^ i* pi When I saw that, I saw there was a hard core there that does not look invented at all, it is embedded in the roots of reality, waiting for us to discover. And, BTW, you do the power series a dis-service. Our decimal place value system is actually a particular case of a compressed way to write out power series. Mathematics, in powerful ways, states necessary connexions of reality driven by logic, beyond our intuitions. My fav case was the interference and diffraction Math. Attempted absurdity: a shadow of a small ball under relevant circumstances should have a dot of light in the middle. Then somebody looked. It was there. KFkairosfocus_{June 8, 2015
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bornagain77:
No thanks Carp. Since both Wigner and Einstein are on record agreeing that the applicability of mathematics is a ‘miracle’, and since you are merely a belligerent atheist on a blog who has never accomplished anything of note save for irritating Theists, I’ll let my post stand as is:
In what way am I belligerent? By disagreeing with theists? Mathematics is not a "miracle" any more than anything else man has invented. Again, if math was a "miracle", it would be infallible, yet it does not accurately reflect reality. This is proof that it is "our" invention.
The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.
This is a plea for belief and faith in his statement, nothing more. Mathematics is simply a man-made tool to help us "understand" physics, it has nothing to do with reality.Carpathian_{June 8, 2015
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No thanks Carp. Since both Wigner and Einstein are on record agreeing that the applicability of mathematics is a 'miracle', and since you are merely a belligerent atheist on a blog who has never accomplished anything of note save for irritating Theists, I'll let my post stand as is:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/comment-of-the-week/#comment-567858 The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences – Eugene Wigner – 1960 Excerpt: ,,certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin’s process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.,,, It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here, quite comparable in its striking nature to the miracle that the human mind can string a thousand arguments together without getting itself into contradictions, or to the two miracles of the existence of laws of nature and of the human mind’s capacity to divine them.,,, The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html “You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery. Well, a priori, one should expect a chaotic world, which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way .. the kind of order created by Newton’s theory of gravitation, for example, is wholly different. Even if a man proposes the axioms of the theory, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori. That is the ‘miracle’ which is constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands.” Albert Einstein – Letters to Solovine – New York, Philosophical Library, 1987
p.s. if you and Byers ever get in a debate let me know :)bornagain77_{June 8, 2015
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bornagain77:
Carp, that has to be one of the worse arguments against math that I think I have ever heard.
It is not an argument against math, it's an argument against bad reasoning. Show me where it's an argument against math.Carpathian_{June 8, 2015
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bornagain77:
1. If God did not exist the applicability of mathematics would be a happy coincidence. 2. The applicability of mathematics is not a happy coincidence. 3. Therefore, God exists.
This quote by Craig is one of the worst arguments for God. It tries to relate something man created to a cause for the universe.Carpathian_{June 8, 2015
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