What part of biology do you think is not governed by physics?
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T, your breadth and depth and stamina and grace are awesome.
What we have been talking about, Natural Selection. If you have an explanation for it, than you should have offered it a long time agoâŚ
I still find the attitude of many scientists that âMy discipline is purer that yoursâ is unfounded and reprehensible. There is no hierarchy or sciences.
I hope that @Sy_Garte will respond.
What aspect of natural selection isnât?
Physics is involved from root to stem. Physics governs the genetics that underlie traits, the cell biology that expresses those traits as a phenotype, and the interaction between the organism and the environment. What is it about natural selection that you think is exempt from physics?
It was a comic, and it was making fun of scientists who take on those attitudes. Nonetheless, all of biology is applied chemistry and physics.
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Please give a straight answer for once.
Thar is an assertion, not an explanation.
What is the interaction between the organism and the environment? How does physics govern it? Why is discussing with you like pulling teeth?
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To what question?
What part of natural selection isnât governed by chemistry?
Itâs basic biology. Pick up a textbook on molecular biology. Do you think genetics works through supernatural magic?
For example:
Protein folding relies on the physical interaction between charged, polar, and non-polar amino acids and moves towards a thermodynamically stable conformation within a given medium, usually water with salts.
Pull the other one. You seriously donât understand the concept of an organism physically interacting with the universe around it?
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That is not the issue.
The point is that Galileo thought that God wrote the universe in the language of mathematics.
And this is just one example of how you have been spinning your wheels going nowhere in this discussion.
I do and Galileo who said those words did too. @T_aquaticus does not.
LOL nothing is more mechanical than mathematics, as any computer can prove.
Ooh ooh ooh! I know this one!
It evolves.
You thought right! This physicist however admitted quite frankly (via the cartoon) that physics, being just applied mathematics, is only another link in that chain.
Is that what you are hijacking the thread over to. Looks to me, the discussion everyone else is having is more about purpose and self-replication.
Just spinning your wheels again⌠There is a good objection to make here but you are failing to make it. Here are severalâŚ
- The incorrect part of the cartoon is the âjust.â Sociology is not just applied psychology. Psychology can be applied to many things in this case it is applied to social interactions. And the same objection can be repeated down the line. And yes as @T_aquaticus explained it is a cartoon making fun of all this.
- To say that something applies something else does not mean that is contained in that something else. That would be like saying that since books are ink on paper we donât need the books but only the ink and paper. It is extremely foolish. In each stage of the hierarchy there is an emergence of its own rules and a science quite apart from what it applies.
- In a hierarchy, the idea that the base is more important than the top is as foolish as the reverse. I am reminded of Paulâs discussion of the body of Christ in 1 Cor 12. All parts work together.
Just as physics is applied mathematics. I think you are teasing the poor fellow.
Could it be that your underlying point here is that there is no gap here in which to insert anything divine or magical? Except⌠there are gaps⌠both those imposed by the methodology of science and those discovered by the science in such as quantum physics (where there are no hidden variables however much we may wish there to be). But the nature of these gaps do greatly limit what you can insert into them.
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My point is that may be significantly true of astronomy which was Galileoâs field, so I am not saying he was wrong, but science has expande3d a great deal since his day. I do not think that he would agree the same thing about biology, ecology, and evolution.
If the universe is structured only by the language of math, then we can understand it only through the language of math. There are many thongs that we can understand about this world that do not require a degree in math, so I would way the Galileo was wrong. My concern is that some people think that they understand the world much better than other because they think they understand math and even physics. I am not putting down science because i think that Stephen Hawking was the wisest person in the world.
Darwin did not say that evolution was powered by gravity. Darwin said it was powered by Variation and Natural Selection, which are not a part of physics.
Darwin did not say that evolution was powered by gravity. Darwin said it was powered by Variation and Natural Selection, which are not a part of physics.
1. Evolution is about the living biological world, which is not mechanical and basically mathematical. RAS
LOL You seem to have completely misread my post. I said that evolution is NOT mechanical, which is true, so how can it be mathematical as YOU say.
I think that you are being touchy. As @T_aquaticus admitted the cartoon was aimed at people who do think that their discipline was âpurerâ, that is better than others, because it was more objective, closer to the ideal of purely physical, and therefore less human than other ways of thinking.
Darwin and everyone else says that meaning is based on natural selection. @Sy_Garte thinks differently. I think that I have the right to disagree with him and explain why I do.
[quote=âmitchellmckain, post:30, topic:43926â]
In a hierarchy, the idea that the base is more important than the top is as foolish as the reverse. I am reminded of Paulâs discussion of the body of Christ in 1 Cor 12. All parts work together.[/quote]
We are in agreement with Paul and I never said that they base is more important than the head.
When we have a linear, mechanical concept of truth based on math, you miss the reality of the true nature of the universe which is much more subtitle than math⌠Science does not = math, nor doe science = Trth. Math is part of science as it ia of other thins and science is a part of Truth, but science and truth are bigger that math.
That is the primary point I am making. I do not see why this should be a isue, but it seems to be.
At the risk of appearing to pick nits, isnât every explanation composed of assertions? You might wish that someone would assert more or you might wish for assertions to be backed up with citations, but I see no way to provide an explanation without asserting what one thinks.
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And yet the variations are in the chemical composition of DNA and both the alterations and operations of this are according to the laws of physics.
Speaking in such absolute terms is producing nonsensical claims. I would agree that evolution is not entirely mechanical (i.e. not entirely deterministic), but mathematics can describe things which are not deterministic. Mathematics is very good at describing all of the objective physical aspects of our existence and the phenomenon of life is definitely both physical and objective.
I donât think so. I never heard any such thing from anyone. I think you just made that up. A search turns up nothing. And I donât see Sy_Garte saying anything about that either. I have heard in philosophy, denials that there is any such thing as meaning. I donât agree with that, of course. I would call that meaningless philosophy or as Kierkegaard complained, philosophy with no value for human existence. It probably comes from excessively idolizing the objectivity of science which can only result in lifelessness.
Get thee to a biology classroom. Biology is very mechanical. Have you ever taken a cell biology class or a class on molecular biology, genetics, protein chemistry, anatomy, or physiology? For that matter, have you ever taken a class on population genetics? Why donât you check out this short review of the math involved in evolution:
If you want to wax poetically about the philosophy of life then go ahead, but that wonât change the fact that math and physics is a central part of the scientific explanation of evolution and biology.
I appears that you are accusing me of bad faith. I resent that. Assuming that you are acting in good faith, that is not how one handles a situation like this. You ask for clarification and evidence to back up my statement, and then if you are not satisfied , you make your criticism , which in this case is most unfounded so you are wrong.
If you read @Sy_Garte essay you will know that he began it with a well known statement by Dawkins, " The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.â
The universe as Dawkins observes is natural selection based survival of the fittest, which has no design, no purpose, nothing but pitiless indifference. Now Sy disagreed with this, but in terms of logic. That is, if the universe had no meaning and purpose, then human beings must not be part of the universe, and expressed hope that the purpose and meaning would be found in self-replication>
For the record, the universe is not a hostile environment or even a new3traol environment for life. Look at the Anthropic Princip[le which clearly says that the universe is structured in a precise manner to make life possible and even probable. This indicates the decisive influence of the environment on l, but sadly @Sy_Garte ignores this fact.
Again there are two kinds of science that deal with how life reproduces, evolution and ecology. Evolution is the old entrenched science based on survival of the fittest, while ecology is the ia relatively new science that requires scientists to rethink their assumptions. It is based on symbiosis. It appe4aerds that many scientists are unwilling to rethink their assumptions even though ecology and symbiosis are better documented than survival of the fittest.
Are you saying that life is determined? This does against the fact that biologists say that evolution is random. If it is random, then how can it determined mathematically? Besides the reality of quantum mechanics, which brings into question the4 physics of cause and effect.
Darwin is considered the Father of Ecology. Ecology has been part of the evolutionary theory from the very start.
Symbiosis and survival of the fittest are one in the same.
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Are you saying that mathematics is wrong?
Ever heard of the mathematical concept of probability?
The above quotation of your words contradicting my own demonstrate something about your posts, whether you want to call it bad faith, poor reading skills, spinning your wheels, or just making stuff up. You have not shown us WHERE Darwin or anybody else has said ANYTHING like âmeaning is based on natural selection.â Since you reply with a quote of Dawkins I wonder if you simply made a typo when you wrote âDarwin.â I donât see Dawkins saying that either, but I wouldnât be surprise to hear a claim from him that there is no such thing as meaning, so I wouldnât have objected if you had named him instead. His explanation of evolutionary science is good but his philosophy is not.
And I gave a response which was both agreement and disagreementâŚ
HoweverâŚ
This nonsense is just like the typical treatment by creationists of evolution as philosophy rather than science. There is nothing entrenched about the science of evolution. It is the analysis of an every increasing enormous body of hard evidence.
Now to be sure the philosophical interpretations of the science have gone willy-nilly in a number of directions starting with social Darwinism which is deplorable. I myself am an advocate of seeing a much more central role for cooperation in the evolutionary process.
Some might say that this sounds like we are saying very similar things. Is it just semantics? Probably. But sometimes semantics important â the difference between a scholarly discussion and drunken bar-room banter.
First of all you are confusing the fact that something is composed of matter with the fact that it may not have a material function. A song is art, spiritual, even though the sound is so to speak physical as is the air that carries the sound and the instruments that produce the sound.
Variation is a key part of evolution and a key aspect of Variation is sexual reproduction which God invented so that progressive change is possible without destroying the continuity needed for live to survive. Sexual reproduction is a part of evolution, but it is not necessary to evolution. Life and evolution came into evolution long before sexual reproduction, so it is not necessary, so why did it happen? It is not required by mathematics, so why do we have it?
Sexual reproduction requires an explanation, which is more than an assert6ion. Anyone can make an assertion, but an explanation needs rational evidence, which is often not obvious. A scientific explanation needs more than theory and more than math. It demands experimental evidence.
God is not monolingual. God speaks many languages, including math and empiricism, the more the better. God requires we look at life from all sides before we make final decisions, ands even then tentatively in faith rather than certainly. Einstein used thought experiments to establish his ideas, but used math and experiments to confirm them.
Sexual reproduction is biological, not physics. Natur4al selection is biological, not physics. Maybe that is the reason it seems to be such a mystery to many scientists. Again it is a unique tool of biology, which has physical aspects, but is used to create new living things, both flora and fauna, (flora seems to be largely overlooked.)
People on this blog refuse to discuss the relationships between species and their environments and how it determines their forms. And how cli change caused the dinosaurs except for the avian dinosaurs, to go extinct and this enabled the mammals to become dominant
Science is about description and explanation. It seems to day that some people are saying that it is only about description. They have a word for it, phenomenology, but this takes the rational aspect out of science and leaves it a shell of itself.
Where? When? How? Why? Presumably meiosis couldnât have emerged from mitosis? You know this how?
Sexual reproduction can be advantageous because it involves genetic recombination. This can combine beneficial mutations from separate lineages which canât be done with asexual reproduction. It is also worth noting that many (perhaps all?) bacteria are not strictly asexual, and there is genetic exchange and genetic recombination within and between species of bacteria:
Also, all aspects of reproduction, genetic recombination, and genetic variation are governed by physics.
Biology is physics.
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