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Posted by The Natural Philosopher on 12/20/07 12:57
Erwin Moller wrote:
> Steve wrote:
>>
>> erwin, on the notion of irreducibly complex...has the proponent of
>> that argument *ever* been able to show something that was? and that's
>> forgiving the man-made, relative notions of complexity, order,
>> randomness, etc..
>
> No never.
> The guy that coined the idea of irreducable complexity, Behe, received a
> warm welcome from the (USA) religious fanatics that saw in his book a
> confirmation of their creationist ideas.
> Behe was a biologist after all, and see now: Even a biologist agrees
> with creationism!
> But Behe didn't stand a chance when the critiques came in.
> A famous agrument is the human eye: When you study it, it is indeed very
> complex, and it is not easy to see how such a thing could evolve. It
> *seems* that it should arise in that form at once, and that no simpler
> eyes can exist, because it doesn't work as an eye then.
> But that argument was bollocks as was shown by many others.
> The religious fanatics tend to ignore that, and keep shouting
> 'irreducable complexity proves a creator exists'.
>
> Here is a good read if you want more opinions:
> http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html
>
> And if you are in the mood, go to youtube and find 'the four horsemen'.
> It is a discussion between Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens.
>
> I didn't see it yet (little time at the moment), but 3 of my heroes are
> in it (Dawkins, Dennett and Hitchens).
>
> Ah, back to PHP now and finish my project. ;-)
>
> Regards,
> Erwin Moller
One of the most fascinating things I saw was a design process known as
stepwise optimisation..
It depends on the thing yopu are trying to optimise being a more or less
continuous low order function.
Essentially you take your 'thing' - in the case in point it was a wing,
such as a bird might have - and select your target optimal - say 'good
for gliding' - and then plop a shape in your mathematical 'wind tunnel'
and start perturbing its shape, Every time a perturbation results in a
slightly better shape, you use that as your new starting point. Over a
period of time, what emerged was pretty much a seagull.
Now the mathematics of flight are quite complex, but not as complex as
the description of a seagulls wing.
Its fairly clear that all you need to evolve a seagull is a mechanism that
- allows perturbation - genetic variation and mutation
- eliminates 'less successful' seagulls before they can breed..
I have spent many happy hours with crude computer simulations that
produce extraordinarily complex results..the mandelbrot set of course.
We did another one called 'planets'..random objects of variable mass
were set in motion, and the inverse square law applied.. The ONLY stable
sets end up looking REMARKABLY like our solar system. You need a single
large mass with smaller masses in orbit, or its very unstable.
All others fly apart..and even ones like our solar system had nasty
things with highly elliptical orbits like comets,which if they had
reasonable mass were capable of destroying the stability of the planets.
All from a simple mathematical equation...
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