Rats’ whiskers can vary quite a bit in appearance but a team that wanted to find out how rats get information through their whiskers discovered something quite interesting about the math behind them:
We found that rat whiskers can be accurately described by a simple mathematical equation known as the Euler spiral…
The Euler spiral – also called the Cornu spiral, Spiros or Clothoid – is a shape whose curvature changes linearly with its length. It looks quite like an s-shape, where the tips of the “s” carry on curving in to spirals that get rapidly tighter. As a result, aspects of the curve can fit a wide variety of shapes including those that are straight or s-shaped, those that increase in curvature and those that decrease in curvature.
This is why the Euler spiral can be used to describe all types of rat whisker, even though they come in many different shapes. Some are s-shaped, some get more curly towards the tip and some get less curly towards the tip.
Robyn Grant, “How we found a special maths equation hidden in rat whiskers” at The Conversation
Grant adds, “In this way, maths can give us a special insight into how biological structures and systems work.”
Indeed. It is called structuralism, a first cousin of ID. But shhhh!! Darwin dogma is:
The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.”
As usual Darwin was creating a rhetorical fog. There is no conflict between design in nature and the operation of fixed laws of nature. Quite the opposite. The Euler spiral is a fixed law of the mathematics that helps hold our universe together, resulting in the design we see. There is no reason to believe that the rat went through hundreds of flopped, fatal designs for whiskers (natural selection acting on random mutation) before hitting on the Euler spiral. It was probably implicit from the beginning because the nature of reality in our universe would enact it.
Call that creationism if you want. And yes, it does lead many to think that there must be a Mind behind the universe, to derive such mathematics. But that is a separate discussion. Grant’s idea, to study other mammals’ whiskers to see if similar patterns turn up, sounds like a good next step for a biologist.
Accepting Darwin forces one to believe in more miracles than even creationists believe in. It’s amazing what they unquestioningly accept in order to prop up Darwinism/evolutionism.
Interesting point. Yes, it’s like a precursor to inferring that there’s a Mind – so pre-ID. It’s just an observation that we observe in nature these structures, patterns and mathematically precise forms. In another article, scientists refer to these as “coincidences” of fine-tuning, but why not just accept that nature does not show the expected results of blind experimental tests. The Euler spiral has a quality of perfection and precision. They show mathematical beauty and order, and are not really “necessary” for the function of an organism.
“Euler spirals are widely used as transition curves in railroad engineering/highway engineering for connecting and transitioning the geometry between a tangent and a circular curve.” ( Wikipedia )
Apparently that’s done to increase safety while allowing higher speeds than other curves would.
The appearance of design is just an illusion.
Only those who don’t understand evolution can believe such an absurdity.
@PavelU:
You are the ridiculous “illusory” human who thinks the OOL has been explained.
Reality check, PavelU: you have NOTHING.
Duh.
Pareidolia is the tendency to accept an illusion as being a meaningful pattern such as seeing shapes in clouds, seeing faces in inanimate objects or abstract patterns, or hearing hidden messages in music.
Michael Shermer says that we evolved to believe in illusions because
So, it is said that evolution makes us believe in illusions. We see the face of Abraham Lincoln in a cloud. We observe the complex functions of a cell and some people believe the illusion that all of this was created through random mutations and natural selection.
They believe that illusion because, perhaps, they think it is too painful to think that it was designed by an intelligence.
Silver Asiatic
“We observe the complex functions of a cell and some people believe the illusion that all of this was created through random mutations and natural selection.
They believe that illusion because, perhaps, they think it is too painful to think that it was designed by an intelligence.”
That’s excellent!
Your comment is at the level of Dr John Lennox’s response to Dr Stephen Hawking’s 2011 comment in The Guardian:
“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark,”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/may/15/stephen-hawking-interview-there-is-no-heaven
@Silver Asiatic
In a world of “Illusions”, what is the “truth’?
Let’s remind our naturalist friends that they are solipsists:
The naturalist’s problem is that his own gratuitously-assumed physicalism leads him to the absurd inference that all he really knows are images inside his brain.
https://strangenotions.com/the-big-problems-with-naturalism/
At 4 PavelU claims that:
First off, apparently PavelU believes he is the only one in the world who fully understands evolution. Perhaps he can inform Philip Ball and the rest of us exactly how evolution works:
There are a few more devastating problems with PavelU’s claims.
First off, if the reductive materialism of Darwinian evolution were actually true, then everything in PavelU’s Darwinian worldview, including PavelU himself, is just an illusion:
In short PavelU, because of his atheistic materialism, is forced into the completely insane position of holding that he is merely a ‘neuronal illusion’ who is having an ‘illusion’ of seeing design. i.e. An illusion having an illusion if you will. Or a dream within a dream as it were. Small devastating problem for PavelU,, illusions and dreams are only possible for conscious minds:
Second devastating problem for PavelU, for something to be proven to be merely an illusion of design, that so called ‘illusion of design’ would have to be compared to something that we know to be really designed, say a computer, and found to deficient in some significant ways to that ‘real design’.
But that is not what we find, When we compare the so called ‘illusion of design’ in living systems to what we know to be really designed, again say a computer, we find that the so called ‘illusion of design’ in living systems exceeds the design of what we know to be really designed.
For instance, the information storage capacity of DNA vastly exceeds the best efforts of man to store information in his computers. In fact, just 4 grams of DNA, as of 2011, can ‘theoretically’ store the total world information content:
Even that astonishing capacity for information storage was found to be an underestimate:
As well, “”A single cell in the human body is approximately 10,000 times more energy-efficient than any nanoscale digital transistor, the fundamental building block of electronic chips.
Moreover even that astonishing level of efficiency was found to be an underestimate, “the computational efficiency of translation, defined as free energy expended per amino acid operation, outperforms the best supercomputers by several orders of magnitude,”
Moreover. the cell is apparently ingeniously programmed along the very stringent guidelines laid out in Landauer’s principle, (by Charles Bennett from IBM of Quantum Teleportation fame), for ‘reversible computation’ in order to help achieve such amazing energy/metabolic efficiency as it does.
The amazing energy efficiency possible with ‘reversible computation’ has been known about since Charles Bennett first laid out the principles for such reversible computation in 1973, but as far as I know, due to the extreme level of complexity involved in actually designing such ingenious ‘reversible computation’ in our own computers, has yet to be accomplished in any meaningful way in our computers:
As well, in terms of engineering, memory storage, computational power and efficiency, the human brain also trounces anything man has ever engineered.
Thus to sum up, PavelU’s claim fails on two fundamental levels. Firstly, illusions are only possible for conscious minds, but Darwinian materialism denies the reality of conscious minds. i.e. PavelU has no foundation for reality in order to discern reality from illusions!
Secondly, when the supposed ‘illusion of design’ in life is compared to what we know is really designed, in this case computers, we find that the supposed ‘illusion of design’ greatly exceeds what we know to be really designed, in fundamental engineering parameters, by several orders of magnitude.
In short, the supposed ‘illusion of design’ in life displays far more real design than what we know to be really designed.
Funny sort of ‘illusion of design’ that turns out to be even more real in terms of design parameters than what we know to be real design in computers.
But never fear, I sure PavelU, and his Darwinian cohorts, will explain to us how illusions of design can be even more real than real design. 🙂
Either that, or PavelU has no clue what Darwinian evolution is actually suppose to explain. i.e PavelU just does not understand evolution! 🙂
My bet is on the latter.
PavelU, as well as others who feel the same., believe things to be an illusion due to their own inability to comprehend basic logic. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transferred. Those like PavelU never stop to ask themselves the most basic question that should follow. If energy cannot be created, then where did the energy come from? We know energy exists and not even the most staunch Darwinist can deny this to be true.
Set aside your evolutionary glasses for a moment and ask yourselves where energy came from. Energy cannot be created, yet it is here. Only something with great intellect, far greater than man, could have put energy in place and set the laws of physics, Chaos does not create order and the removal of God is the removal of order from the beginning.
PavelU @4
you wrote: “The appearance of design is just an illusion.”
Pavel, i already told you – you are a very confused guy. So confused…
Moreover, you don’t entirely understand what the word “DESIGN” mean.
I assume, that English is not your first language …. am i right ?
The word “DESIGN” on English has several meanings, for example – “a physical appearance of something (the way someone or something looks) ”
Pavel, and now, please read slowly and very carefully:
When we, ID-community / creationists speak about DESIGN, we mean something completely different…. We speak about DESIGN, WHEN MULTIPLE PARTS WORK IN CONCERN / WORK TOGETHER / CO-OPERATE …. FOR A PURPOSE.
Now have a look at the cell, or the human body…there are thousands of parts working in concert for a purpose = DESIGN.
WAS THAT CLEAR ENOUGH ?
DO YOU GET IT PAVEL ?
Abiogenesis is Impossible
https://borne.wordpress.com/2017/11/12/abiogenesis-is-impossible/