Teleological Science?

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at least think about the idea. I started by trying to envision what teleology - if true - would look like

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Jacques Loeb sets out a case against “purpose” in biology in his book ”Forced Movements, Tropisms and Animals Conduct (Google Books)’ back in 1918 and this kind of thinking has continued to the present day.I find that IF TELEOLOGY were true that it (statements based on the truth of it) would have to “reject” Stu Kaufmann’s general notion of ”order for free’ (it could still be applicable in particular instances). There would have to be some kind of “deep theory of order” missing from the interpretations of our current data divisions of non-genetic and genetic variance combined, contrary to the position of Dr. Kaufmann as presentedhere. This continues to be my position.I reflect that Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Judgment” presents the best text for investigating in one’s own thought, what part of teleology might or might not possibly subsume in reality but it seems largely because his transcendental aesthetic (which in that book depends on the relation of science and art) has been flunked historically(by Bertrand Russell) and that Kant’s 'Critique of Practical Reason' comes mentally before this reflection that there is little space given in academia to considerations of what teleology might look like.The difficult writing on the subject would have to take into accounts, that generally trend that Quine was correct that Darwin got rid of Aristotle’s 4th cause and that Mayr supposedly made some advance with separating proximate and ultimate causation. I tend to doubt this stuff, but heck, it is too much for me to write comprehensively on all this apprehension just now.

There is still yet again another layer of purely potentially evolutionary causality in here ("future" effects affectable) before one might be certain that one was observing "teleogy in action".In Niche Construction, the authors describe evolutionary inertia and time lags when niches affect gene frequency changes under the 'standard' theory. Thus past niche construction can affect future gene selection on this view causing lags in fixation of genes and the appearence of inertial effects over longer time frames. This need not be teleological at all.Within this nonstandard evolutionary theory one would THEN have to refine what teleology looks like, it seems to me.

Well, I do not think it is nonesense at all. It is just about keeping everything well ordered. The reflection on this issue takes more time than is usually available. Gould once said he doubted that people could be arm-chair scientists but science needs more time in the chair.For me I do not have the stamina to keep up the entire reflection in the wayward nature of our posting on EvC but I feel that the split division algebra of quaternions that distinguishes two emf provides bifurcation I would predict is responsible for reptile and amphbian symmetry but because Loeb made such a case against tropisms being in any way purposive and post Chardin speculations failed to impress grad students in the 60s there was little room for a pasigraphy that was not simply a transitional grammar and thus logic either is or is not working for this horizon.The notion of environment includes places INSIDE the creature on the teleological view and IT IS THIS that needs to be refined. Saying simply that it is nature or nurture fails to find the intricay beyond the CURRENTLY used statistical divisions (take Wright as an example etc.)Consequently I find that your position bails or bailed BEFORE it distinguishes purpose from vital force. I have not read all of your posts however.Kant reflected on a RECIPROCAL relation of cause and effect and this is NOT something that is necessarily contained within the notion of postive and negative feedback (pricipally due to Wiener use of phone notions of information; which may not be what is involved in the division algebra electically made somatic)(but again I do not have the stamina to keep this up at every momemnt, as there are many things that can come to mind).This "membrane" for me is the different proportion of lipids in the skin only, not Gould's view of Fantasia writ large.

Yes,yes yes-but if I am correct....The reason we do not have a clear case for teleology in action is not because there is no apriori hope of evidence (to cite your use of the word in another thread) but because the kinematics of nonstandard evolutionary theory isnt even a standard part of the teaching and training of evolutionists let alone on the radar screen of two model creationists.The reflection itself DOES open up to the supernatural but emprical science breaks off its funding and work BEFORE this stage so it is so so hard for any one individual to do not only the whole institution of science but there is no plan laid out for reasearches to even get presort the even potential data. As I said, some changes even in physics seem required for me. Getting to the atoms from the atomic logic is the step that one has to cross when keeping purpose but rejecting vital forces.That I feel is the place that science needs to suport proposals geared toward teleolgy but the taste of empirical scientists goes first against vital forces which rather are not gone against by creationsits writ small.I understand your position, but there was no need to try say what I said was so thick, it is actually as thin as thoughts are.There are no "angles" from which teleology can be 'assualted' from as Kant already made this a difference of reflection and determination. One either assists in the determination or has a different asthetic (such as a humanist one etc).There are futher points to reflect on, but I can not see responding further in this tree to you. Two model creationists will probably eventually fill this place in mental space. So far I have not seen it but YECism may turn this way, I would guess, but then that is hubris speaking for me.God Bless,
Brad.

It seems to me that the entire plenum revolving around teleology, purpose and final causes depends on rethinking why Boltzmann felt it necessary to describe that atomism was not incompatible with infinite divisibility.But the kind of “atom” here is not the one we learn of post WWII but simply the particle that got chemistry a lot more quantitative. Feynmann makes this difference of type in his Lectures on Physics(6 pieces) talking about the generic vs the nuclear atom.
Poincare describes this general atom here:

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Science and Method by Henri Poincare page 92-93

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Gladyshev’s invocation of the principle of substance stability has been used for either kind of atom. Biology however really is about limiting the biophysics to the generic atom. It is my opinion that the “carrying capacity” of the environment is limited by this distinction and that this is the cause behind Darwin’s notion of wedging not Huxley’s “red in tooth and claw”.Now this opinion IS rather thick. On my view the “infinite divisibility” instead of atoms is not one of matter but of space, in the inifinite possible behavior of colliding attractions and repulsions(to use Poincare’s use of Thompson), as larger genus supremums are considered species>kindgom, life on Earth>anyother LIFE. Whether the latter life breaks the strong and weak force barrier and capacity of life on Earth no one knows, but it matters little (electron vs photon) whether this is in the thrip or the thrifty human. What becomes sizeless IS NOT what is materially IN the void but what separates the taxonomy in the life contrary to Aristotle.
Democritus of Abdera and other atomistsThe trajectory of life is infinitely divisible eventhough the materiality is not. I sometimes fancy the reason there is RNA and no direct formation of proteins from DNA base pairs is because of the need to keep the near attractive and repulsive collisions separate but I have not worked out the full implications of this idea. It depends on how artifical and natural selection can be combined and hence how man can be goal directing evolution itself.Insofar as this is possible anthropocentric purpose and with it the thought of God centered direction of the man doing the direction is certainly retainable with the very best of knowledge in science, it is only that it need not be -- till someone starts this kind of project. Plans come before implementation. This vision of mine falls within Boltzmann’s notion of infinity space of motion of electrons in atoms. I see no reason to avoid Poincare’s criticism of Russell as long as the space is determinant. That is what I try to demonstrate. Thus I DO think of the origin of genetic information as infinite pasigraphic design (not a transformation grammar of order for free) but not something that MUST be associated with a GOD behind ID. It might be but it is hard to think that far ahead of science with so many “what ifs” and to know whether one has selected them correctly. I think Phil Johnson erred this way. Poincare made the good point that it does not make any difference if man symbolizes “if” with a backward ”c’ or not. Whatever IC(irreducible complexity) is to express depends on a definition per genus proximum et differentiam specificam and this may be a property like Kepler shapes (Lenten Pretzel-the period of Lent)

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The Book Nobody Read page 50 by Owen Gingerich

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of where life is headed rather than where it came from. Gould sides with Cuvier over Darwin on this. I have no confidence whatsoever however that Behe’s ideas and those that attempt to delimit this within the creature HAVE to work. Niche and Phenotype are different.I have no problem with people thinking that there might not be or they can do biology without using teleology etc, but I see no reason to think that the membrane is out of position in any way. Frogs jump where we can not.Anyone who feels that this topic does not entail as complicated a position as the one I attempt to construct is welcome to read the script of Darwin/Gray correspondence I saw tonite (to be posted on http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/content/view/99/83/ ) and explain to me how Will Provine insisted to me after the performance that the difference of Gray and Darwin WAS EVEN WIDER THAN THAT represented by Gould and performed this evening.Gould wrote on page 753 (Structure of Evolutionary Theory)

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From the other side, Asa Gray understood Darwin’s central contribution as the proper reintroduction of purpose, or functionalism, into biology. In 1874, Gray wrote to Nature (quoted in Ospovat, 1981 p 148) that Darwin had done great service for biology by “brining back to it teleology; so that, instead of morphology vs. teleology, we shall have morphology wedded to teleology” in other words, fuctionalist hegemony by proper criteria of primacy and relative frequency.Darwin certainly appreciated the argument, for he wrote back to Gray:"What you say about teleology pleases me especially."

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The wedding was slightly misrepresented in the play but it was closer than Gould wrote. The misrepresentation in the play was due to failure to differentiate French and Russian views. My view differs from Provine’s but we both agree about disagreeing with Gould to some extent. Provine explained that Darwin used Gray's views on teleology *against* his religious critics. It is hard to say who is the kettle here.Edited by Brad McFall, : link,graphic,word

Well, if you have any prediliction towards Margulis' view there was some symbiogenesis BEFORE mitochondrial inclusions.

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Does this mean you believe the code came before the implementation of the code, and that the code therefore did not evolve alongside the organisms? If so, I disagree: there are several known variations of the code (UGA is a stop codon in our nucleus; it codes triptophan in our mitochondrion, though).

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Thus any codable difference betweem a stop and tryptophan happened later.Before this difference, suppose one has only DNA and dynamic self-assembly of microtubules. I wonder if there-then a kind of self-life (not Dawkin's vechicular selfish gene) could exist such that there is an active sorting of molecular attractions and repulsions across biotic potentials of population of supramolecular complex increases. This might *not* be dependent on proteins per say but on relations of the attractions and repulsions across relative motion of electrons and photons framed by H+ etc which could resultin triplet coding I might try to suppose or propose if we could ge the DNA and some precusor at least to microtubule self assembly.It might be possible to derive this idea directly from substance stability of macrothermodynamics. I do not know. This would occurr before the mitochondira became involuted in the same system.The importance of thinking of the"the code" occurred because while language was being used as an analogy to organ organization during the 60s. I think this was overblown by exubrance towards advances in linguistics. Any form of symbiogenesis obviates the analogy as we have to think without the creature with organs here, per say.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : No reason given.

Notice that "infinity" on my view has do to with a discrete space that life crosses. Cantor may have been the first to see that continuous motion was physically possible in a discontinuous space.I will be writing later how macrothermodynamics may be the cause of symbiogensis on http://www.aexion.org @
http://aexion.org/orthogenesis.aspxWhether "the code" is a design (teleological or anyotherwisesense) seems to depend on whether the infinite divisibilty really is extant from which life segregates genes.While working in Parks' lab of Animal Science in 1991-2 on cell blocks to artifical insemination I came to cognize what I called then the "centriolar cycle", which was the passage of information across generations molecularly but independent today of DNA. Then I recognized that the guanosine content of DNA might be kinematically iteractive with tubule dynamics. So yes, I even think that there might be some kind of still extant "coding" between DNA and tubules independent of the proteins concurrent. I think of RNA as a STRAIGHT line between the reactivity and as sorting attractions from repulsions.This might be designed or not. I still dont know for sure. If I can rigoursly effect symbiogenesis from phenomenological thermodynamics I might be able to state such more definitively.Edited by Brad McFall, : link material added off site

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I think there is sufficient evidence for a teleogical explanation of aspects of the Universe, that we ought to spend some effort in looking.

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One may need to look no further than here .

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Earth Ethics Evolving Values for and Earth Community Vol7No1 Fall95

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James Nash marshals an excellent view of teleology which is supported by the notion of conation. (the full paper I will shortly upload as a powerpoint (BioticRightCase), here.If one works in the teleomatic/teleonomic difference at this place the Nash text, I see no reason to fail to be able to find what one is looking for in/on this topic. I see no reason for anyone to find that it does not or can not exist in this case.This is a tall order, but to me, it seems possible to find that the recent ecologically reformed faith and ethics has inverted Darwin’s diagram and de jure bound the parallels drawn below. With a full discussion of changing selection pressures ecologically transmitted across generations under niche construction, man can find a way beyond the simple symbiogenesis of our past, into new regions where more physical and less competitive pressures reside while the incomprehensibility of Wright (gene combinations per individual vs gene frequency in a population) is made inscribable in the “w” FORM above as the teleomatic process of Macrothermodynamics become grown in a new ecological economics striving to exist in the limit and genetic “program” of future generations. The “prima facie” hierarchy of biotic rights would have a biophysical reality.Edited by Brad McFall, : fixing links

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Here is a quote from 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions', where Kuhn is discussing paradigm shift;

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First, the new candidate must seem to resolve some outstanding and generally recognized problem that can be met in no other way. Second, the new paradigm must promise to preserve a relatively large part of the concrete problem solving activity that has accrued to science through its predecessors.

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Teleology is very far from passing these tests, especially the first.

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Up thread, Bluejay raised the issue of changes in the genetic code overtime
EvC Forum: Teleological Science?

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This supports the notion that the code itself is also capable of adapting and "evolving" alongside the organisms that use it. It also suggests that the genetic code is not a teleological design, as is often quoted in creationists' "arguments from ignorance."

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His notion of “alongside organisms” might simply be the FORMAL similarity of the relation of potential and kinetic energy for a mass in gravity (organism) WITH charges under Coulomb force (metabolism) GIVING the creatures side being thus accounted in. That is not something possible in 'organic soup'.The explanation of the changes in this code, I givehere IS considerably less clear than my last background post which in substance called for us to discuss some subjects.But I can not rule out teleology if indeed this is a difference of rotations caused by differences of 4 and 3 dimensions. It might be possible to do that thought, but I have not thought that far through the details.The Christian presentation of biotic rights however, does not go into this detail and thus it does not pass the “test” ( I was using it to get a very specific as opposed to less clear 'heirarchy')however here, if I end up predicting what codes can go with what amino acids and other “instructions” (stop etc) and if this difference comes from within this Christian work then we may see it ”pass’. But ecloite is correct that science is not set up to do this work. It also doesn’t seem to be pursuing the specific physical proposal I made in the link either.Strange enough.This less clear idea (than a form of natural theology) is that Schrodinger's “a periodic crystal" being DNA is a proton reference system to which electron kinetic energy (being and in the opposite direction than the system’s potential energy) constrains the like charge repulsions (after for instance light removes an electron or x-rays mutate a gene) as Mendelian traits change over generations. This physicality implies some results in Macrothermodynamics but as to the code, rotational energy is specific for the system.This may be represented by the triplet (code) with the fourth base being someplace else in the genome (and subject to crossing over going out of code). Teleology may be immanent in the population expression of this but because we have not talked about gene frequencies per population and gene combinations in an individual AS NOT IMCOMPREHENSIBLE (seems to be in your “must the scientist have to study any and every ”cause’)and I have not worked that out completely in my own mind, I do not know if designs are still involved (this would implicate Gould reference to "reptile design") or if more random factors come into play there.Teleology remains an open object of thought where ecloqite begs off.Edited by Brad McFall, : letter

Well, you ARE correct about that.I do agree that "oughts" can and probably should be kept seperate from searching for facts etc. The whole idea of a real notion of "a priori" pretty much necessitates the seperation (mentally).That however is a very general view or statement while there can be the social observation that science itself in its pursuit of discovery and invention, in its operation that Kuhn insisted on( that ticked off Popper (in debate in the early 60s at Oxford (L Pierce Williams was in attendance but later failed me in an independent study where I attempted to relate Feynman's view on color(QED ot the Goethe/Newton debate (via Figenbaum etc)))to snake color patterns)) is actually hostile to minds dependent on such seperation.I can not be certain that the claims made by R. Boyd that I, Brad McFall, "was getting religous" on him do not reflect rather the need for a more tolerant and inclusive meta system for science overall. "Ought" is however a little too strong indeed. Perhaps I should dig up my source on the 60s debate between Kuhn and Popper to see perhaps what eclogite might be defended to have said.The trick for the scientist REALLY IS to select what facts to work with. I only tried to do so.BradEdited by Brad McFall, : No reason given.