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Wednesday, 31 August 2005

The Git has been sucked into participating in the sci.bio.evolution newsgroup, though he's not sure how long he will continue to participate. He needs time out for watching awesome Aurora Borealis displays, gardening and working for a living, too... You, dear readers, have priority. Of course The Git isn't truly an altruist. These words he writes are as much a record of his thoughts for himself as anything. Some of the words at sci.bio.evolution inspired today's line of thinking. Some believe science to be a philosophy-free zone, others that it ought to be and some of course accept Dan Dennet's summation, that there's no philosophy-free science, merely unexamined philosophical baggage.

-oOo-

Mr Anonymous wrote:

Surely if we take your concept of there being no species division throught time, then the concept of species is entirely imaginary. Sort of one are all and we are allone mystical eastern bullshit...

Well, The Git can't take credit for the concept and yes, you are correct in your summation. It's almost a certainty that Darwin knew that he had unified all life through all time into one sort of bushy super-organism. When you eat that living, raw carrot, you are eating a cousin ;-) And I'm also certain that "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford knew it too at that fateful British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting. Oh, and be careful when you refer to bullshit; it's mostly bacteria and they are all relatives of yours as well :-))))

-oOo-

And yet another Anonymous correspondent proffered the following:

You quoted Sterleny and Griffiths as saying: "One version of the biological species concept is the recognition concept, which defines species as systems of mate recognition." So homosexuals are a species? (ducking and running)

Er... New Zealanders are sheep? Nar! Kim Sterelny's a philosopher, not a sheep... :-)

In Search of Intelligent Design

 First, a Thought for the Day that will be explained (hopefully) by the end of the story. "One might still like to ask: 'How does it work? What is the machinery behind the law?' No one has found any machinery behind the law... "

-- Richard Feynman

The Git has a confession to make -- he got part of the Galileo demythologising story wrong. To be precise, the story of dropping cannon balls from the tower at Pisa appears to originate some decades after Galileo's death. In hindsight, The Git should have taken his own admonition in the piece to heart, and concentrated more on what Galileo actually wrote, rather than witlessly accepting part of the myth.

Aristotle had taught, and the Medieval Scholastics all agreed, that objects fall at a speed proportional to their weight: an object of one unit will fall at half the speed of a weight of two units.

Galileo asked us to consider what would happen if two iron balls were tied together as one by an iron rod. The smaller and lighter ball, according to Aristotelian physics, would slow down the ascent of the larger, heavier ball. Yet the combined weight, being greater than either ball alone, meant that they would fall faster when tied together, as well as slower. Since a contradiction was (and remains) not allowed, the answer to the problem was that objects necessarily fall at the same rate, regardless of their weight. Galileo had successfully demonstrated that Aristotle had been wrong about falling weights.

Now Galileo was a philosopher, it was the job he was paid to do, and he was recognisably (in hindsight anyway) a great physicist. The question The Git asks is: "Where do you demarcate the philosophy and science, or is the question irrelevant?"

Wirt Atmar wrote in the sci.biol.evolution newsgroup:

"The scientific enterprise is inherently empirical, not rational. Its ideas prosper only by their ability to be shown to be true in repitious demonstrations to skeptical peers, not on the basis of eloquent pronouncements. Nor is the process complex or convoluted, nor should it ever become so. Robert MacArthur wrote in the preface to his 1972 "Geographical Ecology" that the only rules to the scientific method are honest observation and accurate logic."

Now let's grab a couple of simple definitions that most would agree on. Rational means "consistent with, or based on, or using reason". Logic means "the branch of philosophy that guides reasoning". Thus The Git takes Dr Atmar's statement to mean that science is inconsistent with reason while it uses the tools of reasoning; illogical logic if you will. Now The Git does not intend to belittle Dr Atmar who is doubtless most expert in a field that The Git would flounder in. More interesting than Dr Atmar's poor deduction is that he believes science to be "inherently empirical". Let's have Galileo do things a little differently.

Pompous Git: "Hey, Galileo, we want to see you being a bit more empirical. Your argument about cannonballs isn't convincing enough!"

Galileo: "Oh, it's you again. What is it this time?"

Pompous Git: "We want you to go to the top of the tower at Pisa and prove empirically that differing weights fall at the same speed."

Galileo: "Bastard. Somehow I knew somebody would ask me to do that one day. Ah, well, since it's you..."

A brief interlude during which we can ponder the unlikelihood of The Git having the remotest chance of communicating through time without taking Phil Dow's Time Travel class.

Galileo: "Hey, you Pompous Git! It didn't work!"

Pompous Git: "What do you mean it didn't work? Here in the Twenty First Century, everyone knows that differing weights fall at the same speed."

Galileo: "I dropped the cannonball and my pocket handkerchief at the same time. The handkerchief blew away over the town and the cannonball plummeted. Plummeted, I tell you! Handkerchiefs don't plummet. You've completely ruined my wonderful refutation/reputation [delete whichever is inapplicable]."

Pompous Git: "Not really. The reason the handkerchief didn't plummet is that friction with the air vastly exceeded the pull of gravity. Why don't you try it with a great big cannonball and a small cannonball like in the story everybody knows is true."

Galileo: "If you think I'm going to climb that fucking great tower again with two thumping heavy cannonballs, you're out of your tiny little mind!"

Pompous Git: "OK. I'm out of my tiny little mind and this is my story, so why don't you stick to it?"

Galileo: "Bloody hell!"

Another brief interlude during which we contemplate how much easier it seems to deduce things than establish them empirically.

Galileo: "You complete and utter bastard! It still didn't work."

Pompous Git: "What happened this time?"

Galileo: "The great big cannonball beat the tiny little cannonball! All is lost..."

Pompous Git: "Friction again. Let's eliminate the friction by creating a vacuum around the tower..."

Galileo: "If you think I'm going to lug sodding cannonballs about in a vacuum that Aristotle says doesn't exist..."

And here The Git takes pity on Galileo to make a couple of points. Despite the claim of his rival university professors, Galileo had rejected neither Aristotle, nor the Christian teaching of the Scholastic synthesis. True, he rejected the falling weights argument, but he accepted the Truth of the Christian God, and Aristotle's theory that planetary orbits were perfectly circular, just as Copernicus had. There's a mystery here as to why some people insist that if you reject one of a suite of theories, (in this case the Scholastic Synthesis) it's the case that you have rejected all of it. It's difficult to see how Galileo had rejected Aristotle and used Aristotle's Natural Logic to make his point. Perhaps it's the case that Natural Logic is so much a part of our background, we can't see it for what it is. And the reason we use it so badly so often is because it's no longer a standard part of our learning. And we don't care: "It's only philosophy after all."

The story also shows just how difficult it can be to design a foolproof empirical experiment that eliminates all "unnecessary" parts of the messy real world. In order to perform the perfect experiment in Galileo's case, we would need a universe containing only three objects: the two cannonballs and a planet earth of uniform density. Galileo and Pisa's tower would need to be made completely massless. The empiricist might counter by proposing a process of looking at a series of experiments designed to show that in the limit, two objects of differing weight will fall uniformly, but that's a mathematical (deductive), not empirical argument. The Git thinks we are stuck with varying combinations of rationalism and empiricism dependent on individual cases.

The varying combinations of empiricism and rationalism across the sciences is a contributing factor mitigating against a satisfactory integrated description of science; one that eliminates what we call pseudo-science from "real" science, without simultaneously rejecting some of what we want to call "real" science. Another is almost certainly a failure to identify thought processes that are introspectively unavailable:

Not uncommonly, deductive syllogisms such as "Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, therefore Socrates is mortal", are offered as examples of reasoning. This is not how I am employing the term, which is why it appears in quotation marks. I mean for it to refer to whatever thought process lies at the heart of ampliative inference, a process often associated with "Aha!" or "Eureka!" experiences, but commonly falling below the threshold of an identifiable event in which much, if not most, of the processing is not introspectively available. Even so, I believe enough is available for us to make a reasonable guess that the cognition of similarity and difference (analogical/metaphorical "reasoning") does most of the heavy lifting. But then I am hardly the first introspectionist to arrive at that conclusion... Phil Roberts

-oOo-

The Git is going to introduce another thought experiment of quite a different nature to Galileo's. In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein wrote:

...Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is by looking at his beetle. Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? If so, it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. No one can "divide through" by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is. 

Rather than attempt to explain Wittgenstein's beetle, I will allude to it. My good and God-fearing friend Fran, who helped me to build The House of Steel, has a very effective method of solving problems. That includes inventing new tools to efficiently construct things, whether they be houses, furniture, or replacement parts for another failed tool. Fran prays to God. Invariably God provides the solution to Fran's problem. The (agnostic) Git has no problem with that whatsoever.

So let's invert Wittgenstein's beetle and postulate that not only might it be possible for everyone to have something different in his box, there might be a box with something identical in it, but everyone gave it a different name. Some might call theirs Lord Krsna, others creative human imagination, others Jehovah, and yet others Tarquin Fin Tim Lim Bim Whin Bim Lim Bus-stop F'tang- F'tang Olè Biscuitbarrel.

So back to Dick Feynman's statement at the beginning: "What is the machinery behind the law? No one has found any machinery behind the law... " The machinery behind the law is human consciousness/imagination/ingenuity and it's not fixed, it is constantly evolving. And we are, to steal a phrase from the biologist and philosopher Jack Cohen, merely Figments of Reality...

Afterthought

Much of this thread has skirted around the virtue, or otherwise, of a belief in God/Intelligent Designer versus atheism. One of the notable features of the Twentieth Century is the rise in secular humanism a.k.a. atheistic-materialism. John Dawkins wrote:

"Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche: mindless cowardice. "Mindless" may be a suitable word for the vandalising of a telephone box. It is not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from.

It came from religion..."

The total number of deaths caused almost exclusively by political violence of secular states during the Twentieth Century is "somewhere around 180 millions". Rummel claims 170 millions and that this is more than all of the atrocities in recorded history up to the end of the Nineteenth Century. Much to his annoyance, The Git cannot find the reference to the historical comparison. 

Dawkins can bluster all he likes about one incident, but The Git suspects it would make more sense to compare total deaths from secular political violence with the total of those possibly attributable to a religious cause. Stalin's secular murdering accounted for 62 millions, and Mao's Cultural Revolution caused more than 30 millions. Hitler's 20 millions included between five and six million Jews, so it could be said there was a religious cause, but those believing in God were those on the receiving end rather than dishing it out. I can't think of any massacre in the name of God that comes even close to these data for secular political leaders! 

If we subtract Rummel's figures for the top three secular regimes from the total and attribute all of the remainder entirely arbitrarily to religious violence, we are left with a maximum of 60 millions, or approximately a third of the total. That is certainly an overestimate and far from a majority.

This is not an argument for God, nor even against atheism. It's a plea for tolerance. 

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Thoughts for the week:

As my conclusions have lately been much misrepresented, and it has been stated that I attribute the modification of species exclusively to natural selection, I may be permitted to remark that in the first edition of this work, and subsequently, I place in a most conspicuous position -- namely at the close of the Introduction -- the following words: "I am convinced that natural selection has been the main, but not the exclusive means of modification." This has been of no avail. Great is the power of steady misrepresentation. -- Charles Darwin 

-oOo-

Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don't. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever. -- Philip Adams 

-oOo-

I've never known a Christian who wasn't improved by a little doubt, nor an atheist who wasn't improved by a little faith -- but with too much of either, you'll end up with crusades, witch hunts and gulags. -- Matthew White

Current Listening:

Johnny Winter -- Self-titled

Thijs van Leer -- Introspection

Viv Stanshall -- Teddy Boys Don't Lie

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