Scientific Quandary- or Logical Devil's Advocate

Post Reply New Topic

Like twoshots said, it's difficult to determine. There are limits to human memory capacity and processing power, but collectively, humans can understand more than a single individual. It's not yet clear how far that collective understanding can be pushed. Even if there were no inherent limit to collective knowledge, as long as you have a finite number of humans there is a finite limit to the complexity of things humans may understand as a group.


What does understanding have to do with whether something is natural or supernatural? And what would make human understanding the yardstick for the division? Why not a wombat's understanding. If human understanding is the yardstick, does that mean that whenever humans understand something new it changes from being supernatural to being natural?

Gromit wrote:

It has everything to do with it. Our perceptions of natural laws are based upon our own senses. Our logic is created by our mind.
It may not necessarily be the truth in the larger scheme of how the universe operates.


-Wikipedia

The topic of the conversation was stated as being about whether the supernatural could be proven or not (using methods that rely on natural law). None of that requires or implies that the normal meaning of 'evolution' be abandoned for some made up as you go along definition that you spring on everyone half way through the thread, and expect everyone to adhere to because it conveniences your argument.

Evolutionary theory does not argue that life can or did occur spontaneously. Evolution is not about the origin of life, it is about the origin of species, in other words it is about variability between life-forms. Evolutionary theory explains why life-forms are varied, it does not explain how or why life forms came to exist initially.

It is highly illogical to argue that because you conflate B with A, and do not believe B is true, that therefore A is false, when A and B are in fact two distinct (and separate) things.


No, it does not. It rests on these premises;
life-forms are individually varied in ways that are heritable
Individual varied forms experience varied reproductive success resulting in varied rates of heritable traits being transmitted to the next generation
As you can see, no premise about how or why or by what means life initially occurred is necessary.

scroll down to the 2nd part of the argument. right there. the part about cell theory and spontaneous generation. that's part of the original argument and it deals with origin of life.

if evolution didn't rest on naturally occurring abiogenesis they wouldn't teach it like they do.

I am not redefining evolution, merely focusing on the part that is relevant to the conversation. Because the remaining parts of the theory are not. Because the first part of the discussion is not relevant to any specific scientific theory, though it is indirectly relevant to evolution as people claim evolution proves that there is no possibility for the existence of supernatural beings. It really just relates to people attempting to prove or disprove supernatural beings with scientific methods relying on strict adherence to natural law and the uniformity of nature.

They would and they do.

You are redefining it as being something that it sometimes is merely associated with (and other times has no particular relationship to at all).

Then the entire theory is not relevant. If you do not know that evolution is a theory entirely separate to abiogenesis, then you simply do not know what evolution is. The simple fact is, the soundness of the theory is unaffected by the truth value of the premise "life initially arose via the process of abiogenesis".
Which people? Certainly no honest person who knows what the theory of evolution is, and comprehends it and its implications. Evolution has a particular meaning. Many people do not understand evolution, evolutionary theory, what these refer to (and what they do not refer to, apparently yourself being an example of the latter), much less what the theory of evolution does or does not imply or necessarily imply. To randomly pick out assorted ramblings of these people and reformulate what evolution means based on their misunderstanding of the same is far from logical. In fact it strikes me as absurd and hopelessly muddled.

well since you completely skipped the part of my quote where abiogenesis is relevant. And you are, to date, the only person who claims abiogenesis is not part of evolutionary theory. And the fact that I have previously studied evolutionary theory. And that it is put forth at both the high school level and college level as such... Though I could go with the "no honest person who knows what the theory of evolution is, and comprehends it and its implications"

it would just indicate most people aren't honest. Or don't understand. And most scientists won't admit that until you pin them down with it.


And as I have already stated that I am NOT reformulating evolutionary theory. I just don't get what on earth are you complaining about. And the fact that you readily admit that something not considered evolution is taught as evolution even if it is not evolution is a little silly.

So if abiogenesis is not part of evolution... then how does an evolutionist explain where cells come from? A theory would be useless if it can explain where life comes from, but not where life comes from. And why is abiogenesis (naturally occurring) taught as evolutionary theory? And why do professors at a college level, and researchers include abiogenesis as part of evolutionary theory? and why do you define evolutionary theory differently then pretty much every other evolutionist on the planet? And I suppose specifically how do you define evolution since it is different than pretty much all other definitions.

And why do you not understand that evolution is an umbrella theory that connects multiple other smaller independent theories together to form a theory of the beginning of the universe to now? adaptation exists on its own, speciation exists on its own, abiogenesis exists on its own. And evolution is the basic theory that connects aspects of those smaller theories together to formulate one big theory. Sort of the T.O.E. version of the theory of life, including paleontology, biology, geology, etc.

Depends on how narrowly or broadly you define evolution. People who study the origin of life often talk about chemical evolution. To get evolution, you need heritable variation, that variation must affect contribution to the next generation through effects on reproduction or survival. If you want to see speciation, you also need a fitness landscape with multiple peaks and some mechanism that reduces gene flow between populations to the point where they can be distinct. All of these things can happen to entities that we would not normally define as life (though I am not sure anyway that there is any natural demarcation point that separates life from non-life). Because nobody knows any natural process that could have generated life apart from chemical evolution, the field of abiogenesis is the attempt to extend evolution from where it's known to work to where one should expect it to work. So whether you include abiogenesis within evolution depends on whether you are talking about more narrowly defined biological evolution, studied by evolutionary biologists, or more broadly defined evolution. The people who work on abiogenesis are usually chemists and physicists, for good reason.


Most likely "Not sure yet, this is still being investigated, ask again in 20 years when we may be able to tell you possible origins, but if there is more than one viable path, it may never be possible to be definite."


Sorry, don't understand this one. Would you reformulate?


That is an exaggeration. Neither biological nor chemical evolution have anything to do with the beginning of the universe. That's the domain of cosmology. People do sometimes talk about "the evolution of the cosmos", but then they use the word "evolution" in the sense of change, not in the sense in which evolutionary biologists use it. Creationists like to exploit that potential for confusion, but cosmology really is a different subject.


You have to be a bit careful here. You are right that geology provides important information about how old fossils are. And once you know when a species lived, you can use that as a short cut to date geological layers. but geology is not a subset of biological evolution.


Do you remember the names of some of these people? I know Dawkins would like to prove there is no god, but I' don't know whether even he claims that evolution proves there is no god. I think the most anyone can say is that, as a scientific explanation of thunder removes the need for a thunder god, so a scientific explanation explanation for the origin of species removes the need for the kind of creator god who handcrafted each individual species. You can still say that Thor makes thunder by creating large differences in electric potential that lead to lightning and lightning creates a shock wave. you can still say that a creator god used evolution (perhaps divinely guided towards a goal) to create species, but there is less need for that explanation. That is all.

That is true. I mostly included evolution as they would believe in a naturally occurring abiogenesis, where creationists would believe in a supernaturally occurring abiogenesis. It is really the only thing that separates evolutionists and creationists. Many creationists are intelligent design adherents or theological evolutionists (who believe that God created life and evolution acted on it). So all I am really looking at is the one thing that does not blend together to form a myriad of theories in between.[/quote]

I think I have had only 2 professors that honest. One just stated that he didn't think life developed from nonlife on earth, but maybe on another planet and was brought to earth on an asteroid/meteoroid. I prefer the honest view of "We just don't know" but it doesn't seem like people are likely to admit that, considering how much we don't know. It was the one thing that frustrated me enough about Biology that I dropped out of the program to pursue Molecular Biophysics and then I switched again to Math. The other guy I met was a Biochemist. He is my favorite scientist to date. We spent a whole semester discussing biochemical evolution and mathematical probabilities.

It was just the idea that they try to explain where all life on Earth comes from (species-wise) but somehow did not explain where life first began (non-life to life cell-wise). It was sarcasm.

In that instance I am not talking about biological evolution. See that's is part of my frustration with trying to understand evolution is that it is so fluid and people apply it to anything. Its not consistent. I need better definitions. And Biology frustrates me so much because their definitions suck so much butt. The way one person uses it seems to be different than the way another person uses it. I know cosmology, and I know where geology is defined. I guess because I had to study geology a bit and evolution is referred heavily there. That I am not limiting my perspective to biological evolution, but to the combination of chemical evolution, geological evolution and biological evolution, and cosmology as making up the overarching theory of evolution from the big bang until now.




You could do a google search but you won't turn up anything reliable, right now it is all about peanut butter... I feel like I missed something. And granted I have met a few honest scientists, they just oddly enough... weren't when I studied Science. It was when I studied Math. But several are like Dawkins or Gould. Usually the people are sort of hardcore atheist. I prefer agnostic scientists. But when I studied Biology it was in California, that place is hard to navigate when it comes to avoiding crazy left-wing people. In the same way living in the south and the midwest makes it hard to avoid crazy right-wing people... particularly Kansas.

the most logical people I know are agnostics. Or atheist/religion with a good dash of agnosticism. Something along the lines of "this is what I believe, but I can't guarantee 100% for sure that it is correct." They are easier to talk to and debate. Like my mathematical biology teacher. At the end of the class we talked about the probability that evolution occurred (biochemically-life from nonlife) and while he still believes in evolution, I was seriously hit by the probabilities. But at the same time we both agreed that it was possible... just not very probable. And I still sit on the fence. And we are both ok with each other's position. We can discuss the actual issues and neither of us argue over what the other person believes.

The uniformity of nature is an assumption. I think it is a necessary assumption, in the absence of which we would have no rational basis for making predictions or formulating explanations of what we experience in the world.

Since none of us have been everywhere in the cosmos we have no firm empirical proof that nature is uniform. On the other hand we have no proof that it isn't. It is a working assumption we must make to get anything done.

ruveyn

Could be a cultural thing, could be contextual, or a combination of both. I quoted what I understand to be the orthodox position, but my sources for statements to the general public are European (lectures, science broadcasts), and I think what I quoted is also the orthodox position in scientific publications, no matter where the authors come from. Could be what you experienced comes from communicating with a more general audience in the presence of creationists who exploit anything they think they can portray as a weakness. The combination could lead to a more extreme position. Adopting a more extreme position is a common response to attack. I know I have to guard against the temptation when I encounter creationists.


A very visual metaphor that leaves a very biological aftertaste. That aside, I suggest four reasons. Biology often deals with continua, where categorical distinction are either arbitrary or statistical. People still try to define categories, because it makes thinking easier. Then you often find people attacking analogous problems independently. By the time they discover each others work (about 20 years in one case I read about), they have developed inconsistent nomenclature. Often people don't make up an entirely new word, they take a word with a meaning close to the new concept and use it in a technical and more restricted sense. The mixing up of the general and specific meanings of "evolution" is an example. I will demonstrate in a moment how difficult it is. A final reason for definitions less stringent than you like is that nobody seems to have deep and broad enough knowledge of both mathematics and biology to develop a set of definitions as precise as what you see in mathematics.

And here comes what I think is a demonstration of how easy it is to use ambiguous language even when someone knows the difference:

"Theory of evolution" normally refers to biological evolution, which you know does not apply to most of cosmology and geology (and I don't know of any demonstration that is applies to anything in cosmology or geology, unless you count Cairns-Smith's theory of abiogenesis). But if I didn't know that you are aware of the different meanings, I would have thought you had confused them in this sentence. I wouldn't use the phrase "theory of evolution" for what you are trying to do, to avoid confusion with biological evolution. I think you are in the situation I described above. You need a new term, you use the one you know that is closest in meaning to what you intend, at the risk of blurring distinctions you know of. You are clearer than many others, you added "overarching" to emphasize the distinction that matters, but without the context I still would have thought you had mixed up different meanings.

(Second example: I had to edit this bit to clear up poor phrasing of my own )


I take the definition you quoted next to refer to the truth in the larger scheme of how the universe operates, not the present level of understanding.


If "scientifically visible" referred to the present understanding of the world by either an individual or a group, then the border between natural and supernatural would move as understanding changes. "Supernatural" would become synonymous with "not yet understood". I would not see that as a useful definition of supernatural.

Last edited by Gromit on 03 Jan 2009, 3:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I was reading recently about the gap in our knowledge that is the generation of life from single amino acids. It is true that current evolutionary theory cannot explain this, as the probabilities are so low that the chance of life occurring is too small within the given time frame. I had a college professor that was a firm advocate of panspermia - this could explain how the original cells arrived on earth, that then would have evolved in ways we do understand today. Of course, these cells themselves must have originated in some way, even if not on earth. Perhaps in another part of the universe, favourable conditions operated for long enough that the probabilities for life arising were higher.

An alternative possibility that I have only just heard about, is that quantum mechanics might have played a role. Unfortunately I do not have my copy of the article I read on me (left it at work), but it was a review of how quantum mechanics could be a possible way of filling in gaps in our knowledge of things such as consciousness and origin of life. The general idea is that quantum computing is so much more hugely efficient than mechanical computing that low probability events, if they are somehow desirable, can be selected for with a much higher probablity than expected. This is a bad explanation on my part - I do not currently understand enough about quantum theory to be able to evaluate this hypothesis sufficiently (I plan to increase my understanding if I can ever find time amongst all the other things i want to do) or to explain it properly, but I do not think that the supernatural need be invoked, just because we do not understand something.

I would be greatly surprised if humanity had the capability of understanding everything in the universe (there hasnt been any need for this during our existence - no evolutionary pressure to force such an understanding). In addition, as has been pointed out, our systems of rational and logical thinking may be completely flawed - suitable for our life on earth maybe where we grow and evolve to recognise and rely upon cause and effect, but maybe not suitable for understanding the universe. I know this sounds illogical, but maybe cause and effect doesn't happen at large scale (or small scale - after all such 'chance' is a part of quantum theory if I am correct), and perhaps the natural explanation is that the universe came into existence randomly from nothing.

If so, then I am the second. Darwin, for starters, never attempted to explain how life originally came to be. He attempted to explain how life changes over time and how new species come about.

Evolutionary biologists generally do not attack the problem of abiogenesis. Even if someone created a living substance from non-living material that would not explain how life came to be on this planet in the first place.

ruveyn

I could be cultural. It seems perhaps Americans are less sure of their positions and are more defensive.

biochemistry and Molecular Biology do, and are more rigorous, so of all the areas of Biology I tend to gravitate to those.

And here comes what I think is a demonstration of how easy it is to use ambiguous language even when someone knows the difference:


Definitely. As when you cross different content areas, the same definitions are applied to that subject... with differing results. And at least here... there is no attempt to make a distinction, or to use different terminology. It is merely called evolution. I used the terms biological, geological, biochemical/chemical, etc. to distinguish the terms in a discussion on evolution. But doing so is not that common. Maybe in America it is cultural to be vague.



Which is why I want to at least attempt to separate supernatural from "not yet understood" to define it more along the lines of "violates natural laws". But part of it that I find odd is "supernatural" could be just "natural" and we have relabeled things we do not understand as "supernatural", and then claimed they do not exist.

Last edited by Shiggily on 03 Jan 2009, 11:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You really should look into acquainting yourself with a better learning institution. I have never heard any educator claim to know where life on earth came from and how it started. No educator has ever told me that abiogenesis and evolution are the same theory, on the contrary it was educators who explained the independence of each from the other to me.
I have to ask, does your educational institution give out jobs to anyone who cuts a degree off the back of a cereal packet?

How odd. We do not know, there is not enough information, it is hopeful we will one day discover, and similar such pervaded class discourse, lectures and assigned texts in every biology paper I have ever taken. For just about any fact there was an equal or greater amount of questions yet to be answered or explored.


This is what you seem to not understand. However life came to be, much time appears to have passed since, and interestingly, life forms on the planet are varied. Some of us wish to understand something about this variation, whether or not it can be discovered how life came to be. You might not approve of people seeking to answer what can be answered, it might be that to get your seal of approval one has to pretend to know or answer more than one is addressing. But in science this is not practical and practical people want the answers they can have. Thus evolution. Even if we cannot figure out how life came to be here, or have not done so yet, that does not mean we cannot know something about the variations and changes life has undergone since it came to be here.

You seem to be unable or unwilling to comprehend the very simple distinction between the origin of species and the origin of life. The earlier is about the origin of variation, the latter is about the origin of life. The two are completely distinct and separate. Neither Darwin nor Wallace believed in abiogenesis, nor did Larmarck for that matter. So clearly abiogenesis is not the basis of any of their theories, the most famous of which being evolution.


This is simply a result of the way humans use and acquire language. Evolutionary theory and evolution in the context of evolutionary theory have distinct meanings. The word evolution existed before these meanings became associated with the word. This is a very common happening. Take the word suffer. It simply once meant to allow (hence the biblical 'suffer the children' is not asking that children be victimized, it is asking that they be allowed).
If I use the word equity am I referring to something to do with fairness or something to do with interest in a property?

It seems that the pragmatics of language is one area where AS can impact. All humans sometimes struggle with the ambiguity of our languages, but it seems more an imposition for many with AS than for the average population.

In regards to evolution, I have never encountered any definition within biology that includes abiogenesis as part of biological evolutionary theory. As someone who struggles a lot with ambiguous language, biology did not strike me as being particularly unclear and ambiguous, in fact biology often has it's own very precise meanings associated with words for the purpose of reducing ambiguity.


That's funny, because much of what you attribute to 'evolutionists' is what I read on googled anti-evolution sites. Funnily enough I have never come across any educated person who claims any interest or study in evolution, and who claims that evolution explains how life came to exist, but I've come across countless anti-evolutionists who claim that all evolutionists believe evolution explains the origins of life. If I did not know better, I would form a belief that you are simply regurgitating their uneducated and often out-right dishonest bunk because you lack the interest and effort to learn what evolutionary theory really means for yourself....as it happens, I do not know better.

Sorry, but it is not so. Orwell has also clarified this point for Shiggily's benefit. Not only am I not the only one, I'm not even the only one in this thread. But at least you're in good company!

evolutionary theory has extended past where Darwin established it... much in the same way Calculus is not limited to the developments of Newton and Liebniz.

That being said, I believe Darwin did suggest his concept of the origin of life.

Last edited by Shiggily on 04 Jan 2009, 1:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

A degree does not indicate honesty. And I have been to 6 different universities. And instead of finding a better learning institution I merely moved to a better, more rigorous subject area.

Theories extend beyond the content established by the founder. There is post-darwinian evolution, pre-darwinian evolution, darwinian evolution, neo-darwinism, complexity theory, synthetic thoery, etc, etc, etc

http://ncseweb.org/files/images/21_12defining-f3.jpg

Theories do not stay the same, they... evolve, are revised. Evolution does not merely mean Darwinism anymore. It applies to theories established after Darwinism, that are now included in biological evolution, or attempts to revise Darwinism.



Chemistry- evolution - the origin of elements from hydrogen

Cosmology- evolution - the origin of time, space, and matter, and stars and planets

Biochemistry and Molecular Biology- Abiogenesis- evolution - origin of life from nonlife

Geology-Evolution - evolution of the planet, rocks, etc. overlaps Paleontology.

Biology- Evolution- Macro-evolution/Micro-evolution, origin of species and man

there could be more. that's all I can think of.



I really only read .edu sites. I usually skip .com sites and pro or anti evolutionary theory pages. Takes awhile, but produces better results. In fact I generally skip most pages google offers. However if it seems more science based, I read it.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=2640

Here is an excerpt from the National Science Education Standards (1996)
describing evolution as it relates to science education. Italics added.
"EVOLUTION AND EQUILIBRIUM Evolution is a series of changes, some gradual and some sporadic, that accounts for the present form and function of objects, organisms, and natural and designed systems. The general idea of evolution is that the present arises from materials and forms of the past. Although evolution is most commonly associated with the biological theory explaining the process of descent with modification of organisms from common ancestors, evolution also describes changes in the universe."

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=4962&page=119