From Philip Cunningham at YouTube: It all began in 1922, when Einstein and Bergson met in an unplanned but fateful debate. Einstein had been invited to give a presentation in Paris on his theory of relativity. Time was central to Einstein’s work. It was, however, also the central issue in Bergson’s philosophy. Their conflicting views on the meaning of time set the scholars on collision course. In the debate, Bergson made it clear he had no problem with the mathematical logic of Einstein’s theory or the data that supported it. But for Bergson, relativity was not a theory that addressed time on its most fundamental, philosophical level. Instead, he claimed, it was theory about clocks and their behavior. Bergson called Read More ›

Further to “Evolutionary informatics has come a long way since a Baylor dean tried to shut down the lab,” Philip Cunningham writes to introduce a new vid, Darwinian Evolution vs. Mathematics, documentary support here. Question: Will post-modernism give Darwinism an extra lease on life, by making clear that mathematics is a tool of oppression anyway? If people feel that Darwinian evolution is culturally right, isn’t that better than good mathematical results? See also: Evolutionary informatics has come a long way since a Baylor dean tried to shut down the lab On Basener and Sanford’s paper falsifying Fisher’s Darwinism theorem: It will be no small thing to make reality matter again and Can science survive long in a post-modern world? It’s Read More ›

Yes, yes, it’s Friday night. Philip Cunningham offers us some notes on the subject. We rather suspect he agrees. 😉 A single sand grain harbours up to 100,000 microorganisms from thousands of species.” Your visit to the beach will never be the same. The sand you sit on, build sand castles with and bury yourself in is crawling with germs. But not to worry; they’re good germs. They’re doing you and the world a favor by helping keep the ocean clean and keep earth’s nitrogen and carbon cycles going…. You travel to Antarctica. Now are you germ-free? No;… Surprisingly, the same kinds of bacteria live at both poles…. Bacteria Rule the Earth – David F. Coppedge, December 14, 2017 Information Read More ›

This sort of finding, assuming it holds up, is killing Darwinism. From ScienceDaily: The amount of close and comforting contact between infants and their caregivers can affect children at the molecular level, an effect detectable four years later, according to new research from the University of British Columbia and BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute. The study showed that children who had been more distressed as infants and had received less physical contact had a molecular profile in their cells that was underdeveloped for their age — pointing to the possibility that they were lagging biologically. “In children, we think slower epigenetic aging might indicate an inability to thrive,” said Michael Kobor, a Professor in the UBC Department of Medical Genetics Read More ›

Which, in the context, can only mean naturalist efforts to identify free will as an illusion, like consciousness, that evolved to help spread our selfish genes. From Ari N. Schulman at Big Questions Online: For example, let’s say I decide not to commit murder. My decision is rational not only because I have deliberated about the reasons not to do it, but also because my decision flows from a character that has been formed in a rational way. When faced with the choice to murder, my dispositions have already been shaped, e.g., by membership in a society that professes to value human life, by individual reflection, or by both. And if this is the case, then when confronted with the Read More ›

Philip Cunningham draws our attention to “New records set up with “Screws of Light””: In principle, twisted light can carry an arbitrary large amount of information per photon. This is in contrast to the polarization of light, which is limited to one bit per photon. For example, data rates of up to 100 terabits per second, which correspond to about 120 Blu-Ray discs per second, have already been achieved under laboratory conditions. The transmission under realistic conditions, however, is still in its infancy. In addition to transmission over short distances in special fiber optics, transmission of such light beams over free space, required for instance for satellite communication, was limited to three kilometers so far; achieved by the same Viennese Read More ›

Sources See also: Philip Cunningham’s critique of methodological naturalism

Watch the human genome fold itself in four dimensions: By removing and then adding this protein, called cohesin, researchers made specific DNA loops that disappear and then reappear, they report this month in Cell. But cohesin really only affects looping that brings genes on the same chromosome into contact. A second, still-undefined mechanism seems to bring genes from different chromosomes together, the team notes. Notes: Will we ever… reveal all the secrets of life from DNA?: Our metaphors let us down. Science writers like to compare the genome to a textbook or a blueprint. That conveys the fact that it stores information, but glosses over its buzzing, dynamic nature – proteins docking on and off to control the activity of Read More ›

From Phys.org: Rudimentary life may have existed on Earth 3.95 billion years ago, a time when our infant planet was being bombarded by comets and had hardly any oxygen, researchers said Wednesday. … A team presented what they say is the oldest-known fossil evidence for life on the Blue Planet—grains of graphite, a form of carbon, wedged into ancient sedimentary rocks in Labrador, Canada. … For the new study, Komiya and a team studied graphite, a form of carbon used in pencil lead, in rocks at Saglek Block in Labrador, Canada. They measured its isotope composition, the signature of chemical elements, and concluded the graphite was “biogenic”—meaning it was produced by living organisms. The identity of the organisms, or what Read More ›

Physicalism is a variant of naturalism: “Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on the physical. ” (Stanford Plato) Naturalism: “… reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the ‘human spirit’” (Stanford Plato) Philosopher of physics Dr. Bruce Gordon (Houston Baptist University) talks about the tension between Quantum physics and physicalism: Note: Gordon was one of the editors of The Nature of Nature See also: Consciousness as a state of matter Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

From Fern Elsdon-Baker at New Scientist, reporting on that recent study of people who question evolution, It sounds startling. Nearly 30 per cent of adults in the UK say evolution can’t explain the origin of humans. That rises to nearly 50 per cent for human consciousness. Does that mean we’re increasingly following a vocal minority in the US who deny the science on fringe religious grounds? … Unexpectedly, 44 per cent felt that evolutionary processes cannot explain the existence of human consciousness. It might be tempting to assume that this is just a reflection of the number of religious believers. However, while faith does appear to amplify individual doubts about evolutionary explanations, it is not the only factor at work. Read More ›

But will it really lead to a hack-free internet? From Lee Billings at Scientific American: In a landmark study, a team of Chinese scientists using an experimental satellite has tested quantum entanglement over unprecedented distances, beaming entangled pairs of photons to three ground stations across China—each separated by more than 1,200 kilometers. The test verifies a mysterious and long-held tenet of quantum theory, and firmly establishes China as the front-runner in a burgeoning “quantum space race” to create a secure, quantum-based global communications network—that is, a potentially unhackable “quantum internet” that would be of immense geopolitical importance. The findings were published Thursday in Science. More. We do not live in the world we think we do. That said, probably, any Read More ›

From Robert H. Nelson at the Conversation: The question of whether a god exists is heating up in the 21st century. According to a Pew survey, the percent of Americans having no religious affiliation reached 23 percent in 2014. Among such “nones,” 33 percent said that they do not believe in God – an 11 percent increase since only 2007. Such trends have ironically been taking place even as, I would argue, the probability for the existence of a supernatural god have been rising. He offers five reasons God probably exists, but that’s not new. This is: As I say in my book, I should emphasize that I am not questioning the reality of natural biological evolution. What is interesting Read More ›

From Natalie Wolchover at Quanta: In recent years, a revolutionary understanding of thermodynamics has emerged that explains this subjectivity using quantum information theory — “a toddler among physical theories,” as del Rio and co-authors put it, that describes the spread of information through quantum systems. Just as thermodynamics initially grew out of trying to improve steam engines, today’s thermodynamicists are mulling over the workings of quantum machines. Shrinking technology — a single-ion engine and three-atom fridge were both experimentally realized for the first time within the past year — is forcing them to extend thermodynamics to the quantum realm, where notions like temperature and work lose their usual meanings, and the classical laws don’t necessarily apply. … “Many exciting things Read More ›