The methods of modern research involves dissecting and focusing in on finer and finer details. We would be forever blind to these finer details if it weren’t for instruments such as the microscope and the telescope. These tools allow specialists to focus in on the parts and gain a tremendous amount of knowledge in narrow fields.
But if researchers don’t look beyond these isolated islands of existence they will settle for a fragmented view of reality. And this causes problems for building theories about development and evolution of life. Researchers begin by looking at the parts to try to understand how they “build” bodies. Viewing things from this perspective it was expected that humans would have many more genes than turned out to be the case.. This is the type of error produced by this way of thinking Initially they did not understand the way in which the organism used its genes because they approached it from the wrong direction. Genes are in reality never isolated from the context of networks, cells and organisms.
Jaap van der Wal argues that we have become accustomed to thinking the human organism is made by a process of cells multiplication. But there is another more realistic way of thinking about it. From conception to adulthood a human being has always been a complete organism with a form and function suited to its environment. A machine is assembled from parts and it can only function as intended when all the parts are in place. Organisms are not like this. Where the organism is concerned the cell or cells of which it is composed serve the whole organism throughout its existence. It is not gradually built from parts. Machines are always built from the parts to the whole but organisms are never anything but complete wholes.
It is time to start paying more attention to how the whole determines the parts within it and luckily this view is becoming more prevalent.
Yes. wouldn’t you say that the metaphors someone uses is informative about how they see things? If children have it drummed into them throughout their education that organisms and organic structures can be seen as machines then they will take the metaphors for fact.
If you are thinking that there already existed breeding strategies in which some individuals began breeding at such a young age and because of natural selection the ratio of these individuals in the population is increasing, then give us the evidence.
But even if this were the case that is not what the quoted sentence implies and it is on this that I based my statement.
More examples than I could mention.
BruceS (and now phoodoo) linked to a discussion What Exists? A panel discussion with Don Page, Raphael Bousso, Laura Mersini-Houghton, Carlo Rovelli in which Laura Mersini-Houghton said:
She uses the metaphor of building blocks from which matter originates. This disregards the notion that there can be fundamental fields from which matter originates.
CharlieM,
Interestingly, they must have used that term, ’emergent’ fifty times during that discussion, as if any of them can actually say what emergent means.
OMagain,
They actually were talking about what exists in this world, not what exists in worlds we don’t live in.
So there scientific conclusion about what exists? They have no idea. And you don’t believe in the supernatural? Ha.
“supernatural” seems to be a catch-all world you use to “explain” anything and everything.
Minds must be supernatural.
Atoms exist and that’s evidence for the supernatural.
It is lucky that the world has more people in it then merely those that ascribe anything and everything to something we cannot, by definitional fiat, understand or investigate.
You know those films where a person is born that questions the natural order in primitive societies , and tries to place facts about superstition. You know that priest that exiles that person even after knowing what they are saying is true.
That’s you that is phoodoo. That’s you.
Don’t believe in the thing I believe in but and unable to define in any meaningful way? Too bad for you I am in power and you are not.
Just like you have no actual idea about the supernatural.
For example, things made of certain types of baryonic matter can be bestowed consciousness and presumably souls. Other things, despite being made of the exact same type of baryonic matter, cannot. phoodoo “Knows” this to be true but avoids admitting he cannot explain how by ignoring the question, despite it flowing directly from his very own claims.
Ha indeed.
phoodoo,
Could you name a single thing that the supernatural has “explained”?
So let’s say I “admit” that I now “believe in the supernatural”.
Now what?
I guess I should stop caring about suffering in this world, whipped cream and everything, because in the next life it will be eternal whipped cream?
Is that it phoodoo? Or is it something else? I’m going to guess that “something else” is something else I can only find out for myself, right?
How much do you normally fleece people for before they catch on?
phoodoo, is the supernatural “run” by what we’d call god? Or is everybody equal? Does the supernatrual existing mean god also exists? Does god exist wholly in that realm or does it extend into the next aloing? How many realms are there? How many angels…..
Are our pets there, in the “supernatural” too?
Is the supernatural the place where we go after we die? If so, why are we there now controlling our bodies here? We don’t really “go” there if we are already there do we?
So, um, what’s the point of any of it? Is it like a holiday? If so, does that mean bordom is a thing in your supernatural realm? Then it can’t be heaven, can it?
I suppose I can state it like so:
If the existence of atoms is proof of the supernatural, why are supernatural-atoms not proof of the existence of the super-supernatural?
No doubt phoodoo has some “explanation” for that also, despite claiming the supernatural cannot be understood, but somehow he’ll have an “answer” as to why the origin of atoms requires the supernatural but whatever the components of the supernatural are doe snot.
But then the question becomes why not simply apply that answer to this universe, without adding the unneeded entity of the supernatural that explains everything and nothing? Perhaps this is _the_ universe, in its entirety and it’s beginning needs no explanation for the reason you claim the supernatural needs no explanation for it’s beginning.
Just wondering.
Everything that the material world can’t.
“A theory that explains everything, explains nothing”
Yes, in precisely the same way that “design” is a mechanism for Intelligent Design.
phoodoo,
Is this explanation one that you possess or merely one that you are sure exists?
Can you clarify?
phoodoo,
Can you name someone whose “explanation” of the supernatural you agree with?
What about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Blavatsky
Agree/disagree/nutcase?
So, what is it we should start teaching our kids?
Should we teach them the origin of species was a supernatural event? If so, it’ll be a very short lesson if that’s all we say.
The difference between “design” as a mechanism and “evolution” for explaining extant biology is that we can explore the various proposed mechanisms from an evolutionary point of view whereas for “design” we can only literally say “that was designed, and it cannot be investigated further”
Likewise for this purported “supernatural explanation for the existence of atoms”. All you literally have is that sentence: “supernatural explanation for the existence of atoms”.
That’s all there is. The lesson would be: The explanation for the existence of atoms is the supernatural.
Then the lesson would end and everybody is getting an A+ in the exam.
On the surface “design” and “supernatural” seem like they contain potential explanations.
But “design” is as empty as “supernatural”, as phoodoo demonstrates weekly.
Name the things explained by the supernatural phoodoo. Dare you.
Oh, wait, I already know. It’s “everything”.
CharlieM,
Well, all we need to posit is that (1) there is some variation in age-of-initiating-breeding and that (2) this variation is, to some extent, heritable.
If you really wish to argue otherwise, I reckon the burden is on you to demonstrate that the extent to which the observed variation is heritable is too small to lead to any change in the population over time, especially given the goofiness of your alternative explanation.
Precisely. This was my point. You looked at the sentence
And read into it the implication that
That’s on you, mate. The observed change could be 100% a statistical artefact – if one does nothing but remove the highest values from a population, then the mean and median will drop. Now, to be clear, I think that the quoted sentence implies more than that. But, given what we know about variation in these populations, the idea that Devils are going “Holy crap, my face is falling apart, better get busy while I still can!” is NOT implied by the quoted sentence. Like I said, that’s all you.
Scientists are sometimes sloppy in their use of teleological language to describe effects on populations. In their defense, I will note that they generally assume that they are writing for grown-ups.
Sometimes yes; sometime no.
Best not to jump to conclusions.
Personally, I have never taken organisms to be machines.
A question for CharlieM:
Assume somebody disagrees with me about this. Assume that person believes that organisms are machines.
Is that person disagreeing with me about the nature of organisms? Or is that person disagreeing with me about the meaning of “machine”?
Substitute design. Or god.
Seven blind men an an elephant. Pardon the genderism.
There are, of course, things that can be settled by research.
Alleged genetic meltdown.
Edge of evolution
Behavior of Avida.
Whether people continue to function with the majorit of their brain removed.
I haven’t been trying to explain the circumstances behind the breeding. Without looking into it further I don’t know the truth. I am looking at what I can garner from the sentence as it has been worded. It doesn’t say that there have always been individuals breeding at the earlier age. It says that “individuals have begun breeding at an earlier age”. Do you know enough of the details of their breeding to clarify this?
I pointed out that this is but one interpretation, not necessarily the interpretation I would put on it. I don’t have enough information to know if the sentence was accurate or poorly worded.
And I’m not talking about conscious knowledge. More like instinctive knowledge.
This quote came from the Wikipedia entry and so is for general consumption including children. Was it written by a scientist? Do you know?
I haven’t had time to try to fathom out the facts behind the age range of Tasmanian devils, do you know the facts? Can anyone here give us the facts?
I’ve never attempted to apply for “organic” certification. My style of ranching follows the philosophy of people like Allan Savory and Joel Salatin. The latter has used the term “beyond organic” which is one way I would describe my produce also. My views are that we should not be using pesticides or chemical fertilizers or vaccinations and antibiotics for animals and I do not, so I guess my milk and meat would indeed qualify as “organic.” To me, a more meaningful description of what I do than “beyond organic” is “holistic” which I attempted to briefly describe in my first post here. And that’s why I decided to post this thought in this thread because I have felt for a long time that modern agriculture is reductionist rather than holistic and the consequences are bad for both land health and human health.
True enough.
I’m glad to hear it.
Depends on the individual circumstances. The best thing to do would be to ask the actual person who is disagreeing to clarify what s/he thinks is meant by “machine”. I’d be surprised if they thought of it other than some sort of mechanical device.
I agree with everything you say and I admire you for putting into practice what you consider to be a responsible way of looking after livestock and the land. Apart from informing consumers about what they are buying I don’t see it as important whether or not produce is labelled as organic.
HMGuy,
Tell us about the Robopen, Dave.
phoodoo to CharlieM:
It’s not exactly a secret, phoodoo.
Try Googling ’emergence’, ‘weak emergence’, and ‘strong emergence’.
I know you asked CharlieM, but I’ll take the liberty of responding as well.
This question — “are they disagreeing with me about organisms or about machines?” — can only be settled by way of a dialogue about the compatibility and incompatibility in one’s inferentially articulated commitments involving the use of the words “machine” and “organism”.
If someone uses “machine” in a way that limits “machine” to “what human beings have deliberately constructed to achieve a goal”, then one would indeed find “organisms are machines” to be contradictory.”
On the other hand if one uses “machine” in a broad sense to mean something like “conforming to principles of causal explanation” (e.g. if one thinks that to explain something is to construct a computational model of it, and if one also thinks that all computational models are Turing machines) — then one would not judge “organisms are machines” to be contradictory.
Indeed, on the latter, broad sense of “machine,” the claim “organisms are not machines” entails “organisms are magic” (if one thinks that “magic” and “causal explanation” are disjunctive).
I don’t think the term holistic means anything in the context of agriculture.
One has values and one looks for ways to live without violating them.
This requires inventiveness.
A a boy scout, many decades ago, I was taught to leave a campsite better than I found it. This was, and is, a metaphor. A way of living.
I follow the use of the term, but think the term is hopelessly tainted. Like the word organic.
Every virtue word gets prostituted.
Fair enough. I agree with that.
With that sense of “machine”, I think there are no such things as machines — with the exception of abstract machines (such as a Turing machine).
That is to say, “machine” used in that sense refers to an idealization. But nothing actually exists (apart from abstract objects) that fits the idealization. The idealization works pretty well to model things that fit your first suggested sense of “machine”. But it does not work at all well to model biological organisms.
And thanks for a thoughtful response. Yes, I had asked CharlieM, but he pretty much evaded the question.
Don’t tell Pingu … she thinks I’m persecuting animals with it!! My RoboPen is just an automated version of Joel Salatin’s movable chicken pens and it’s larger to accommodate my small flock of sheep and goats. Most Holistic Management ranchers like Greg Judy move their cows / sheep / goats once or twice a day and use electric fence but some like Neil Dennis discovered that bunching them up more tightly and moving them more often like 8 or 10 times a day caused a significant improvement in grass productivity. Gabe Brown is a large regenerative farmer in N. Dakota (or south?) who farms 5000 acres and he mentions Neil’s technique in his book and has adopted the practice himself. The labor involved in so many daily moves is a challenge and Neil reportedly used automatic gates which is probably the best solution for a large operation. I have a very small flock so I opted for a movable pen which I automated with a Harbor Freight Tool winch and some relays and control electronics. My animals move to new grass every 30 minutes for about a 4 hour period, then rest for about 2 hours, then repeat. I have to reset the winch twice or three times daily so labor is manageable. When I get things fully engineered it will be twice daily which works with my daily town job schedule. There are shade panels on the pen so they get more shade than they would with a different system and I hang water buckets on the pen so they have constant access to water and shade. Lambing on the move like this is not a problem due to the pen wall design and also this breed of sheep delivers very strong lambs that can walk and nurse almost immediately after birth. My goats, on the other hand, are a different story and have to be taught how to nurse which is a pain but it works.
Who said its a secret that scientists are trying to use this term as a substitute for ‘ I don’t know how we go from here to there ‘.
So it’s a silly assumption of yours that I don’t know what the word they are using means. I know exactly what the word means, that’s why I laugh at it.
It’s as if a bunch of materialists at some conference got into a room and said ‘shit , we don’t know how to explain any of this complicated stuff we see in the world what are we going to do? We have to keep people from considering the supernatural. Wait, wait, I got it. Let’s make a new word, which will be vague and universal, and we just throw it out there whenever we falter with an explanation. ‘Why that’s brilliant Steve! ‘
Keith’s and KN are going to love it!
Thus proving that phoodoo has no idea what the word means.
Commence Googling, phoo.
keiths,
I already told you what it means. It means, we have no fucking clue, but I am an atheist dammit!
The alternative meaning is ‘Keith’s will buy it ‘
Who said its a secret that scientists are trying to use this term as a substitute for ‘ I don’t know how we go from here to there ‘.
So it’s a silly assumption of yours that I don’t know what the word they are using means. I know exactly what the word means, that’s why I laugh at it.
It’s as if a bunch of materialists at some conference got into a room and said ‘shit , we don’t know how to explain any of this complicated stuff we see in the world what are we going to do? We have to keep people from considering the supernatural. Wait, wait, I got it. Let’s make a new word, which will be vague and universal, and we just throw it out there whenever we falter with an explanation. ‘Why that’s brilliant Steve! ‘
Keith’s and KN are going to love it!
keiths,
Try googling gullible sap. See if they used a flattering photo.
phoodoo:
As if there were no theist emergentists.
Another concept that’s beyond phoodoo’s grasp.
keiths,
There are lots of theist believers in emergence, because at least it is logical position. You have material, and then through unseeable forces the material transforms to something beyond material. That’s pretty much what most theists believe.
Materialists have appropriated that belief and tried to cover it with their atheist hijab. Unfortunately it’s semi opaque.
Nobody is stopping anybody from “considering the supernatural”.
I think the problem is that nobody really knows what that means. Can you give an example of “considering the supernatural” as an explanation and how we can determine if that is the actual true explanation or if we have missed a non-supernatural explanation.
Or perhaps there is a list of things, worked examples, where the supernatural has been considered and scores higher then any other explanation? Can you provide that?
If these forces are unseeable, how do you know they exist at all?
If something transforms to beyond material, how do you know that has happened at all?
An unseeable force that cannot be quantified, examined or have entailments stated adds nothing and can be discarded.
Can you give an example of an emergent behaviour that you believe 100% is supernatural? And explain how you know? Is all emergent behavior supernatural or only some? How do you tell the difference?
Yes, but that wasn’t relevant for my argument. I mentioned mutations because of their transforming effect on the cells, emphasizing they are not merely multiplying.
If you wish to argue against reductionism, you shouldn’t forget to consider the context of words. 😉
I was referring to the cancer cell lineages that propagate by mitotic division.
You can’t blame a reductionist for focusing on details, can you? Anyway, I don’t think I am ignoring the overall picture. As I see it, you (both of you) argue that researchers (and many others), have inappropriately adopted a reductionist perspective and therefore lost sight of the wholeness of organisms. I disagree, claiming that researchers pragmatically choose the perspective that fits their needs best at the time. Cancer research is a demonstration of that point.
In addition, you used van der Wal’s talk to prop up your own view that organisms have some kind of ill-defined top-bottom “control” over lower-level processes, and that the latter have an exclusively subservient role. I don’t think this claim is well supported.
Is that about right?
The point of the DFTD example was that cancer cells may exist independent of individual organisms contra your claim that
Unless you pay the $12.99 “donation” anyway.
Hey look, he did use “lumbering”.
I can see why you dislike that quote, but he was using that phrase in his book “the Selfish Gene”, in which he demonstrated that certain aspects of biology can best be understood when reasoning from the gene perspective (an idea he got from Bill Hamilton). As Neil pointed out, he was merely using a metaphor to illustrate the usefulness of adopting a gene eye’s view in an evolutionary setting.
I absolutely *love* you making this remark on a site visited by a fair number of ID proponents.
I’m not arguing against reductionism. Reductionism is a legitimate practice which provides us with knowledge of the details. What I’m arguing against is the treatment of reductionist thinking as though it gives us the whole 🙂 of reality.
I don’t think this is worth arguing over.
I would hope that we can both agree that normal cell division and propagation is a controlled process which maintains the well-being of the organism. Cancerous cell division is uncontrolled and is detrimental to the well-being of the organism.
And I don’t blame reductionists for focusing on details. In fact I am thankful for it.
The findings of researchers might be causing them to think beyond reductionism, but it is still the common view among the masses that reality lies in the micro world inhabited by fundamental “particles” much to small to be seen with the naked eye.
Cancer demonstrates what happens when control is lost.
When an animal uses its senses to obtain food or avoid danger it is taking control of its bodily processes. If people stop smoking because they know that it might give them cancer, or they visit their doctor because they have discovered an unexplained lump, then they are taking control over their bodily processes. These examples are not ill-defined.
Organisms are not omnipotent, they do not have supreme control. Just because a small percentage of cars crash that doesn’t mean that in general the vehicles on our roads are not under the control of drivers.
Cancer is the result of the organism losing control and the level at which attempts are made to regain control go even beyond the individual to a coordinated group effort.
And I would call robots machines. My statement was correct, he basically called us lumbering machines.
So do you still believe that we are controlled by our genes?