Re: and yet, curiously, it is still explained by evolution ...
Complexity is another word for order. The greater the knowledge we have of the location and properties of particles, the greater the amount of order or complexity. In the free expansion of a gas, there is a decrease in order because there is a decrease in the knowledge of the location of the gas molecules. There is a high degree of order in a protein because the location of each amino acid is known.
We're getting closer.
Quantify "complexity" or "order." I ask once more, is rice more or less complex than a human being, given that rice has orders of magnitude more genes than humans do? What defines the "amount" or "order" in a life form? Does a granite boulder, which contains countless ordered crystals where the "location" of each molecule of the crystals are "known," have more or less "complexity" than an amoeba? Is an elephant more or less "complex" than a duck-billed platypus? Is size related to "complexity?" Is "complexity" in life defined by the number of morphological features you can count? Or is it determined by genetics? How to you gauge the "complexity" of living vs. nonliving things?
I'm not trying to bombard you with questions here. I'm simply pointing out that, while you're getting closer to a definition for "complexity," you have not provided a definition that is useful - we cannot look at two examples and tell whether Example 1 is more or less "complex" than Example 2, and by what amount. So far, it seems that if I ask you whether a person is more or less "complex" than a computer or a diamond or a snowflake or a grain of rice, you'll say that the person is "more complex," but I cannot fathom the rule you are using to determine why the person is "more complex."
What I;m asking for when I ask you to define "complexity"is for you to enumerate the specific rule you use to ascertain an object's degree of "complexity," and how you compare it to the "compelxity" of other objects.
For instance, if you were to ask me to define how I determined the relative mass of two objects, I would tell you that I compare their gravitational attraction using the constant of the Earth as a comparison, since mass causes gravitational attraction. An object with a greater mass will be pulled to the Earth with greater force than an object with lighter mass. This can be measured using a variety of tools, the easiest of which is a simple scale, and the mass is measured in grams (where 1 gram is the mass of a cubic centimeter of water at 4 degrees Celcius). This provides a numerical representation for the mass of a given object, and that number can be compared against those of other objects to determine which is the more massive.
I have no idea what tool you use to measure "complexity." I have no idea what units you use. From all appearances, you seem to be subjectively deciding what is more or less "complex," not actually comparing an observable, quantifiable property. Do you see what I'm getting at?
Re: and yet, curiously, it is still explained by evolution ...
Hi, Kroemer.
dkroemer writes:
You are saying: Natural selection + random mutations + genetic drift + billions of years + chemistry + etc explains the complexity of life.
We are all saying this.
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dkroemer writes:
You are saying things biology textbooks and peer reviewed journals do not say.
You really think so? I just did a database search on ISI Web of Science (peer-reviewed literature search engine) for evolution and complexity in the title. Here is one peer-reviewed paper that I came up with:
quote:Our results suggest that evolution always guides complexity change, just not in a single direction. We also demonstrate that neural complexity correlates well with behavioral adaptation but only when complexity increases are achieved through natural selection, as opposed to increases generated randomly or optimized via a genetic algorithm.
Unfortunately, my university does not have a subscription to HFSP Journal (I’d never even heard of it before today), so I am unable to read anything but the abstract (which includes the above quote).
I could provide dozens more articles, if you’d like: my ISI search came up with 277 articles with evolution and complexity in the title.
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dkroemer writes:
You are saying things that Kirschner and Gerhart do not say.
You really think so? I googled Gerhart and Kirschner (just those two names, and the word and). Here are some snippits from the very first link that came up:
quote:Our theory of "facilitated variation" is meant to explain how rare and random mutation can lead to exquisite changes of form and function...
... The thrust of our argument is that rather few mutational changes, affecting regulatory components, are needed to generate complex innovation...
... roughly two billion years ago, as the first eukaryotic cells evolved... Genomes got larger, a complex cell cycle arose... These new processes entailed the evolution of many new proteins, which seem to have originated from old proteins of bacteria.
You can read this whole interview with American Scientist online, because my little snippits do not do it justice: especially read their reply to the second question. You should be able to quickly realize that these guys also think evolution (i.e. natural selection + mutation + ... + etc.) is the cause for increased complexity.
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Regardless of whether your ideas about metaphysics and evolution are correct, you are wrong that professional biologists think evolution does not explain complexity.
Re: and yet, curiously, it is still explained by evolution ...
Complexity is another word for order. The greater the knowledge we have of the location and properties of particles, the greater the amount of order or complexity.
So if humans were not around to observe proteins then life would not be complex? In fact, we didn't even know about amino acids and nucleic acids until very recently. Does this mean that life was not complex until these things were discovered in the mid-1900's?
Hello Dr Roemer, I've really attempted to engage with you on this topic, but you seem more keen on discussing it with other members, which is fine.
I will make this final attempt to get to the bottom of what you are trying to say here, if you wish to continue exploring it with others instead that is perfectly fair and I will leave you alone to do that.
So let's look at your video to see if that gives me any further insight into what you are trying to say:
quote:Free will is under 'Fundamental Theology' because it is not an observation.
That strikes me as odd. I thought it was an observation. How are you defining observation here?
quote:We know we have free will because we can make ourselves the subject of our own knowledge.
This seems to me to be highly controversial. You seem to be suggesting that because we think we have free will we do, even if we don't know what free will is.
I will point out that it is an observation that human beings report a sensation of being able to 'freely decide' between alternatives. I will also point out that subjective reports on internal states are evidence, but there is no reason to inherently trust them.
Plenty of experiments in psychology have shown that what a person says they are experiencing when it comes to making a decision is quite different than what is going on. If you are hooked up correctly, a neuroscientist can predict when you are going to press a button before you yourself have had a conscious experience of 'willing' your finger to press the button.
So I think relying on self-reports on this issue is doomed to catastrophic failure.
I think taking a Heterophenomenological point of view is better in this arena:
wiki writes:
{Heterophenomenology} consists of applying the scientific method with an anthropological bend, combining the subject's self-reports with all other available evidence to determine their mental state. The goal is to discover how the subject sees the world him- or herself, without taking the accuracy of the subject's view for granted.
It is contrasted with the Cartesian phenomenology which takes a subjects reports as being authoritative. Using Heterophenomenology, we take those reports as being authoritative only in so far as understanding what it 'seems to be like' as far as the subject is concerned.
wiki writes:
n other words, heterophenomenology requires us to listen to the subject and take what they say seriously, but to also look at everything else available to us, including the subject's bodily responses and environment, and be ready to conclude that the subject is wrong even about their own mind. For example, we could determine that the subject is hungry even though they don't recognize it.
You go on to discuss NOMA and suggest that evolution is only concerned with the change in phenotypes and not souls. I agree with this.
Then you provide a quote from Hawking the context of which I do not know. In it he says, to paraphrase "as far as we are concerned we should disregard ideas of 'before the big bang' as not being addressable to science". And you conclude from that that this means there is no scientific explanation for what 'started' the big bang.
This is clearly premature. Hawking was talking to a lay audience and seems to be saying that for the purposes of his discussion, we can simply ignore before the big bang. Hawking's most famous model is one where there is no abrupt start of time, but a gradual emergence of time - which if true, would render it potentially meaningless to talk about origins in that context.
There are many physicists out there who would be perfectly content to tell you about scientific hypotheses for a pre-big bang universe. Laurence Krauss, in this video, gives one such model.
And others have yet more.
Then you go on some strange discussion about finite beings and infinite beings but you don't really give us the argument, just the conclusions.
quote:After billions of years, stars formed
That doesn't seem to be the consensus scientific opinion, which suggests 30-200 million years. It's not really vital to the argument, just thought I'd throw that out there for you.
Then you take a quote that says there is nothing certain about evolution of pre-bacterial life and concluded that Kirshner/Gerhart were saying that there is 'no scientific explanation for the origin of life'. That isn't what they were saying in that quote which wasn't actually about the origin of life. You do tend to go a bit mad interpreting little snippets of quotes, have you noticed that?
Then you start making some more spurious timing claims. Chimpanzees appeared 8 million years ago? Are you not getting confused with the purported time that the human and chimpanzee common ancestor lived?
quote:The least complex organisms are bacteria and the most complex are homo sapiens
I assume you've done the maths for this. Please show me, I'd like to see this very much!
quote:1)The birth of more individuals than the environment can support leads to a struggle for survival. 2) Individuals whose inherited characteristics fit them best to the environment are likely to leave more offspring than less fit individuals. 3) This unequal ability of individuals to survive and reproduce will lead to a gradual change in a population, with favorable characteristics accumulating over the generations.
You say this is from Campbell and Reece. Which edition? The edition I am looking at says things a bit more precisely:
Campbell and Reece writes:
Observation #1: Members of a population often vary greatly in their traits Observation #2: Traits are inherited from parents to offspring. Observation #3: All species are capable of producing more offspring than their environment can support Observation #4: Owing to lack of food or other resources, many of these offspring do not survive. Inference #1: Individuals whose inherited traits give them a higher probability of surviving and reproducing in a given environment tend to leave more offspring than other individuals. Inference #2: This unequal ability of individuals to survive and reproduce will lead to the accumulation of favorable traits in the population over generations.
And that's the 8th edition. And it stresses that this is the Darwinian view. It also gives a brief summary of Natural selection:
Campbell and Reece writes:
Natural selection is a process in which individuals that have certain heritable characteristics survive and reproduce at a higher rate than other individuals.
Which you seem to disagree with.
Then you quote Reece's probability discussion. Here is what the 8th edition says:
Campbell and Reece writes:
Each of the four identical polypeptide chains that together make up trymsthyretin is composed of 127 amino adds. Shown here is one of these chains unraveled for a closer look at its primary structure. Each of the 127 positions along the chain is occupied by one of the 20 amino acids, indicated here by its three-letter abbreviation. The primary structure is like the order of letters in a very long word. If left to chance, there would be 20127 different ways of making a polypeptide chain 127 amino acids long, However, the precise primary structure of a protein is determined not by the random linking of amino acids, but by inherited genetic information
For some reason, you neglected to include that bit at the end. I wonder why?
Your conclusion is essentially you repeating three of the many assertions you made during the video.
1. Evolution does not apply to souls: Agreed. 2. Darwinian evolution (or as Darwin called it - "Descent with Modification") only explains adaptation, not common descent. - Disagreed. 3. There is no scientific explanation for the origin of life or the big bang: Half disagreed - there is no explanation which has received sufficient evidential support to be regarded as being true beyond reasonable doubt for those things, but there are plenty of explanations which are scientific...
Your video lacks any coherent structure, with no real point being made. Just a sequence of points dotted around the place. This seems consistent with the information on your website regarding the termination of your teaching position. If the video is remotely indicative of your alleged teaching style, I'm not surprised they terminated you for incompetence. I realize that was a cheapshot - I read through some of the documents and realize it's more complex than that. That said, with a small edit here and there, one comment in that stood out:
quote:It lacked a plan and a focus and a clear sense of direction. Posters questions were not answered. Posters left the thread still not sure of what your point was.
That's basically my conclusion here, if I do not receive a response that is all I can leave this thread thinking. I'm bewildered as to your point. You start talking about Free Will, Theology, and infinite beings as if your position was obviously true and provide no background or argument about it. But before telling us why you mentioned all of that, you talk about cosmology and take a quote of Hawking's and go a little nuts with it. But without really explaining your point there you give us a brief history of the universe (with a few errors), make an assertion about relative complexity without backing it up, quote something about Darwinian evolution - say that someone wasn't trying to explain complexity before launching into a discussion about thermodynamics and some quote mining from Reece.
But top marks for getting a professional voice artist to do the video - much more tolerable than listening to someone with a crappy mic breathing for ten minutes.
Re: and yet, curiously, it is still explained by evolution ...
Are you saying a bacteria is not less complex than a monkey?
I'm saying that you have not given me a definition of "complexity" functional enough to make that determination at all, one way or the other.
How can I say "x is more complex than y" if I have no way of measuring how complex x is and how complex y is so that the two can be compared?
Let me ask you: Is John taller than Dave?
The answer is "I don't know; you haven't given me enough information."
So too with what you're asserting. You claiming that some things are more "complex" than other things, and you've given us some words about "complexity," but you have no rule by which you can objectively establish the amount of "complexity" possessed by any given subject. It's like asking whether John is taller than Dave, without giving any method to measure the two for a comparison.
I have no idea whether "a bacteria" is more or less "complex" than "a monkey." I have no way to measure either, because you have not given it.
If you cannot measure the "complexity" of a given subject, it is then impossible to say whether that subject is any more or less "complex" than anything else.
You certainly seem to think that "a monkey" is more "complex" than "a bacteria." You seem to have such confidence in that belief that you consider questioning it to be ridiculous. Can you tell us why you think that "a monkey" is more "complex" than "a bacteria?"
Is it the fact that monkeys are multicellular, while bacteria are only a single cell? Is it the number of genes? The number of chromosomes? The number of morphological features?
I need your method of measurement for "complexity" before I can say anything at all regarding what is more or less "complex" than anything else.
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