Hail, ceaseless complexity: Review of 'Reinventing the Sacred'
by Henry Gee
Reposted from:
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20080928_Hail__ceaseless_complexity.html
An argument that complex systems transcend natural law, and thus are symbolically sacred.
Reinventing the Sacred
A New View of Science, Reason and Religion
By Stuart A. Kauffman
In Unweaving the Rainbow, Richard Dawkins boasted that he once told a child that Santa Claus didn't exist. The argument was that Santa couldn't possibly visit all the world's deserving homes in a single night, quite apart from the physical difficulties of flying reindeer, narrow chimney stacks, and so on.
As well as illustrating the intellectual level of Dawkinsian discourse, this anecdote betrays a lack of knowledge of contemporary physics. Santa could do what he does quite handily, you see, if you consider him as a macroscopic quantum object - something that behaves according to the weird world of quantum physics but is large enough to be visible.
In such a guise, Santa could appear in as many places as he wanted to, simultaneously, without having to negotiate chimneys, provided nobody was watching. If he were caught in the act, his wavefunction - the probability that he might be everywhere at once - would collapse and he'd be revealed as your grandpa, after all.
And quantum effects are manifested at the macro scale only in extremely cold conditions, which explains why one routinely addresses one's Christmas list to Lapland or the North Pole, rather than, say, Brazil or Equatorial Guinea.
My Quantum Santa Hypothesis (QSH) works better than Dawkins' classical one because it explains the taboo about watching Santa at work, as well as his traditional location in cold climates - aspects Dawkins fails to tackle. The QSH explains more of the evidence in a single theoretical scheme than his does.
This is not to say that Santa exists, however. I have never challenged Professor Dawkins with the QSH. But the reaction of some of his acolytes to my original exposition (in the Guardian of Dec. 14, 2000) was predictable: Anyone who challenged Dawkins' view on this question was obviously a believer, and therefore not to be trusted.
This simplistic, with-us-or-against-us worldview is as deficient in subtlety as it is in humor. We know what we know because of science, it says. Science explains everything. So anything that falls outside that explanatory system must be false, illusory, even evil. What such defenders of science fail to see is that this line of reasoning betrays a dreadful misuse of the scientific method.
Theoretical biologist Stuart A. Kauffman, who taught at the University of Pennsylvania from 1975 to 1995, is unlikely to fall into that trap. In Reinventing the Sacred, he takes aim at reductionist reasoning, much used in the sciences. Reductionist thinking takes complicated systems to pieces, studies all the pieces in isolation, and then sticks them back together again. Powerful and useful. Kauffman argues, however, that reductionism fails to explain the properties of systems that are "emergent" - that come into being by virtue of their inherent complexity, and whose properties cannot be explained by reducing them to the simpler systems from which they arise.
Say you have a few pounds of carbon compounds and a bucket of water, and you know how these behave chemically. It's nevertheless impossible to predict that the combination of these substances might be capable of evolving into structures (human beings) capable of self-reflection: Cogito ergo sum. Darwinian adaptations, agency, awareness, economics and human history are all emergent, and cannot be reduced to what Kauffman calls the physicists' system of "particles in motion."
Caution: This is not the same thing as the "irreducible complexity" that the intelligent-design camp claims is a sign of the hand of God. Such is no more than politically motivated special pleading. Instead, Kauffman goes to great lengths to suggest, in intense detail and with a rigor that, frankly, takes no prisoners, how emergence arises.
The message in chapter after chapter is that any reasonably complex system - whether the global biosphere or human technological ingenuity - betrays a "ceaseless creativity" that transcends fundamental natural laws and requires no prime mover.
Kauffman's reasoning is, in the main, faultless. It falls down, however, in two places. The first is his proposal that consciousness is based on the quantum mechanical properties of cellular substructures. Some recent work does show that certain proteins, in the dense milieu of cells, can manipulate electrons Santa-fashion, keeping all quantum possibilities open for as long as possible.
!!! This idea is fascinating, but Kauffman appears to speak as if such properties were confined to neurons in the brain. Nowhere does he explain why they should not exist in other kinds of cell - a flaw that exposes him to accusations of arguing that brain cells are somehow exceptional. By the same token, he dismisses, out of hand, the idea that "mind" might be an emergent property of the trillion-fold interconnectedness of billions of neurons - a casual swipe that goes against everything else he says in the book about complex systems. !!!
The second failure is the whole God business. The concluding chapters are more readable than the rest (in a book that is often an eye-watering challenge to read), but they degenerate into a repetitive mantra in which Kauffman says that the "ceaseless complexity" of the world, while not being evidence for a Creator God, should somehow be "symbolic" of God, or, at least, of something "sacred." He cannot prove this logically, he says; he can only try to persuade us.
This appeal to a kind of primitive pantheism is both sincere and charming, but in the end it is simply more special pleading. The fact is that in Kauffman's scheme, God is unnecessary, even if reductionism fails, so in the end one wonders about the point of preserving a sense of God. !!!
!!! To be sure, certain scientists could surely use a dose of humility before the evidence. Science cannot explain why human beings act and feel and think in the way they do in specific circumstances, and spirituality might even be important, valuable and worthy of respect. But what does God have to do with any of this?
I'm hedging my bets - I'm asking Santa for a quantum computer for Christmas.
Henry Gee is a senior editor of the science magazine Nature. His latest novel, "By the Sea," is available exclusively at http://www.lulu.com/content/2839972.
Posted: Sunday, September 28, 2008 | Permalink
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1. Comment #255948 by petrucio on September 28, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Kill me. Kill me now.
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2. Comment #255962 by Opisthokont on September 28, 2008 at 3:53 pm
This article is not as bad as it first seems -- in fact, it is largely on the atheist side. Yes, it joins in with the shrill, chiding masses in claiming that Dawkins is too shrill and chiding, but reread it from "The second challenge..." on: Gee regards Kauffman's arguments for some ill-defined God-thing as unconvincing and unnecessary. The worst that I can accuse the article of is an insufficiently scrutinised tendency towards wit.
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3. Comment #255979 by Vinelectric on September 28, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Santa could do what he does quite handily, you see, if you consider him as a macroscopic quantum object
NEXT........!
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4. Comment #256001 by Ex~ on September 28, 2008 at 4:29 pm
>This simplistic, with-us-or-against-us worldview
>is as deficient in subtlety as it is in humor. We know
>what we know because of science, it says. Science
>explains everything. So anything that falls outside that
>explanatory system must be false, illusory, even evil.
>What such defenders of science fail to see is that this
>line of reasoning betrays a dreadful misuse of the
>scientific method.
No, it's called REASON. REASON is our ONLY way of explaining ANYTHING. Anything that falls outside of reason is laughable.
>Science cannot explain why human beings act and feel
>and think in the way they do in specific circumstances
Why the fuck not?
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5. Comment #256015 by Corylus on September 28, 2008 at 4:40 pm
At first I thought I was reading an idiot's ramblings...
Santa could do what he does quite handily, you see, if you consider him as a macroscopic quantum object - something that behaves according to the weird world of quantum physics but is large enough to be visible.
But then...
The QSH explains more of the evidence in a single theoretical scheme than his does.
Ahah! (I thought). Tis nonsense! That still leaves unexplained the fact that the rich kids always get better presents ;-)
The fact is that in Kauffman's scheme, God is unnecessary, even if reductionism fails, so in the end one wonders about the point of preserving a sense of God.
Well, well, well.
In both cases, the Parsimony Police arrest whodunnit.
The author is smart and understands the issues. However, by not resisting the impulse to make 'funny' comments he does himself a disservice in the eyes of the casual reader.
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6. Comment #256018 by CoryWhiteland on September 28, 2008 at 4:42 pm
"The author is smart and understands the issues. However, by not resisting the impulse to make 'funny' comments he does himself a disservice in the eyes of the casual reader. "
I have a similar problem when writing a position paper. I just cannot resist the funny. Thank the FSM for editors.
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7. Comment #256034 by Steinsky on September 28, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Those who enjoyed the humour should subscribe to Henry's blog:
http://network.nature.com/people/henrygee/blog
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8. Comment #256039 by adonais on September 28, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Gee, what an absolutely content-free review, wasting the first third of it raving about Santa and Dawkins, and the latter half on two "softer" subjects at the end of the book (mind and God). That leaves only a handful of paragraphs in the middle saying anything about two of the salient topics of the book, complexity and reductionism, and here he does little more than just mentioning the presence of the topics. What about Kauffman's long and detailed work on trying to figure out the *laws* of complexity? What about the chapters on abiogenesis, agency, value and meaning, nonergodicity, order and phase-transitions in self-organization systems? Not a single word on anything of what I found the most interesting when I read the book.
It looks like Gee has employed an inverse principle of charity by selecting the most boring and uninteresting chapters for his review and ignoring all the important and fascinating groundwork that genuinely deserves reporting on. Sheesh.
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9. Comment #256058 by jt512 on September 28, 2008 at 5:23 pm
The bit about a quantum Santa being everywhere at once reminds of this joke:
Q. What's the difference between a quantum mechanic and an auto mechanic?
A. A quantum mechanic can get his car into the garage without opening the door.
/nerd-humor
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10. Comment #256063 by alexmzk on September 28, 2008 at 5:29 pm
what an unpleasant-sounding person.
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11. Comment #256071 by ACJames on September 28, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Its nice to see mysticism reduced to such silly little notions. How many gods can you fit on the head of a pin? As many as you want.
hahaha.
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12. Comment #256104 by PaulJ on September 28, 2008 at 6:20 pm
This quantum stuff, about how things can be in indeterminate locations until observed - I thought Heisenberg's point was that the observation itself necessarily has an effect on the thing observed. Or am I missing the point? (Yes I know the article is not serious about Santa, but the Principle of Indeterminacy seems so fundamental to quantum mechanics that people ought to get it right or else keep quiet.)
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13. Comment #256115 by Bonzai on September 28, 2008 at 6:38 pm
PaulJ
I thought Heisenberg's point was that the observation itself necessarily has an effect on the thing observed. Or am I missing the point?
That was his point, but he was wrong
He thought that while observing one quantity, say the momentum of an object, you would disturb the object in such a way that you would no longer know its position Conversely, measuring the object's position would disturb the object in such a way that we would no longer be able to precisely measure its momentum. So, there is a limit to how precisely we can know simultaneously the position and momentum of a particle. There is a trade off. Hence uncertainty principle.
Quantities such as momentum and position of a particle, which cannot be simultaneously measured with arbitrary precision are called "conjugate variables".
But based on today's understanding, it is not quite right to say that conjugate variables cannot be measured simultaneously because of disturbance on the object caused by measurement. To say that the object's momentum/position is disturbed while a measurement of its conjugate is carried out, one would have to assume that it make sense to talk about the simultaneous, objective existence of the conjugate variables to begin with; there has to be "something" in order that it can be "disturbed".
Today's view is that these conjugate variables cannot even be simultaneously defined, the fuzziness is intrinsic. The sharpness of defining these quantities simultaneously is limited by Heisenberg's inequality)
It is not that we cannot measure a particle's trajectory because we necessarily "disturb" it by the act of measurment. It is much more drastic. It would lead to contradictions even by talking about a trajectory (i.e by simply assuming that the particle has a definitive position and momentum at each instant of time even though we don't know what they are) An elementary, but dramatic illustration of this is the famous two slit experiment.
Instead of "uncertainty", a more accurate terminology should be "indefiniteness" or "indeterminancy".
EDIT: According to urban legends Bohr and Heisenberg almost got into a fist fight over this. For a whole night Heisenberg was trying to persuade Bohr that things get "disturbed" while measured, Bohr would grab Heisenberg by the collar and scream "No, No, there is nothing to be disturbed!" almost choking him. Don't know if that was true.
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14. Comment #256136 by Goldy on September 28, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Saw "Heisenberg", remembered I just read this
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?MLC=/earth/science/large_hadron_collider&xml=/earth/2007/11/14/scisurf114.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox#comments
Some of the comments are pure gold!
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15. Comment #256146 by Janus on September 28, 2008 at 7:36 pm
The argument was that Santa couldn't possibly visit all the world's deserving homes in a single night, quite apart from the physical difficulties of flying reindeer, narrow chimney stacks, and so on.
As well as illustrating the intellectual level of Dawkinsian discourse,
You mean that 'Dawkinsian' discourse is clear, concise, rational, and wastes no time with ridiculous possibilities?
My Quantum Santa Hypothesis (QSH) works better than Dawkins' classical one because it explains the taboo about watching Santa at work, as well as his traditional location in cold climates - aspects Dawkins fails to tackle. The QSH explains more of the evidence in a single theoretical scheme than his does.
Yeah, that's about the level of the discourse we Dawkinites have to deal with.
This simplistic, with-us-or-against-us worldview is as deficient in subtlety as it is in humor.
You certainly aren't against us on 100% of issues, but then very few people are. Most of us are perfectly willing to team up with Christian fundamentalists to fight against Islamic supremacists, for example. There are, however, issues on which Christian fundies are against us, and there's at least one issue on which you are against us as well, namely, our opposition to the spreading of unsupported implausible beliefs.
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16. Comment #256153 by Janus on September 28, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Could someone more learned than I am give me one example of an emergent property which obviously can't be explained by a description of its parts and the pattern they are arranged in?
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17. Comment #256163 by Gondooley on September 28, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Science cannot explain why human beings act and feel and think in the way they do in specific circumstances...
I'm sorry, can anyone tell me to which specific circumstances he is referring?
I cannot think of any human action, however irrational, that cannot be explained by a rational analysis.
And while I'm at it... Dawkins has had to point out more than once that he was not trying to show off his superior grasp of physics to a minor, he was inviting the girl (his daughter by the way) to think for herself about the issue! To engage her in discourse about some received wisdom!
And I know Gee was trying to be funny. He's just not as good at it as some science writers I could mention...
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18. Comment #256172 by jwdink on September 28, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Dawkins' definitive answer, which predates Kauffman's argument.
http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Reviews/1985-01-24notinourgenes.shtml
Today's other barrel, fired off with equal monotony and imprecision is "reductionist".
"(Reductionists) argue that the properties of a human society are... no more than the sums of the individual behaviours and tendencies of the individual humans of which that society is composed. Societies are 'aggressive' because the individuals who compose them are 'aggressive', for instance.''
As I am described in the book as "the most reductionist of sociobiologists", I can speak with authority here. I believe that Bach was a musical man. Therefore of course, being a good reductionist, I must obviously believe that Bach's brain was made of musical atoms! Do Rose et al sincerely think that anybody could be that silly? Presumably not, yet my Bach -- example is a precise analogy to "Societies are 'aggressive' because the individuals who compose them are 'aggressive"'.
Why do Rose et al find it necessary to reduce a perfectly sensible belief (that complex wholes should be explained in terms of their parts) to an idiotic travesty (that the properties of a complex whole are simply the sum of those same properties in the parts)? "In terms of" covers a multitude of highly sophisticated causal interactions, and mathematical relations of which summation is only the simplest. Reductionism, in the "sum of the parts" sense, is obviously daft, and is nowhere to be found in the writings of real biologists. Reductionism, in the "in terms of " sense, is, in the words of the Medawars, "the most successful research stratagem ever devised" (Aristotle to Zoos, 1984).
Brilliant.
I like Kauffman a lot, and I think his arguments are pretty valid. But they make a mistake. The claim, I think, is two fold:
We can't explain certain things by reducing them to physics. Therefore:
a) In practice, we need to explain emergent properties in other ways, possibly less reductionist.
b)In principle, emergent properties are INEXPLICABLE. Not only epistimilogically, but ontologically as well.
The a) claim is definitely solid and agreeable. The b) claim is something I have never, ever heard defended independently of a). It needs a special kind of argument: not just that we can't explain some things with glib reductionism practically but that we can't explain them in principle, because in principle they are fundamentally different. As far as I can tell, this is unsupported.
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19. Comment #256175 by Elles on September 28, 2008 at 9:24 pm
"In Unweaving the Rainbow, Richard Dawkins boasted that he once told a child that Santa Claus didn't exist. The argument was that Santa couldn't possibly visit all the world's deserving homes in a single night, quite apart from the physical difficulties of flying reindeer, narrow chimney stacks, and so on."
If I hadn't lost my copy of Unweaving the Rainbow, I would go look that up. All I can say is I don't quite recall that part. I recall a part where Dawkins was talking about his childhood and he thought that it was okay for children to read faery tales and stuff as long as they eventually grew up.
That's what I remember, at least.
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20. Comment #256176 by Diacanu on September 28, 2008 at 9:32 pm
In Unweaving the Rainbow, Richard Dawkins boasted that he once told a child that Santa Claus didn't exist.
Is that meant to offend?
If that story is true, *shrug* good.
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21. Comment #256184 by suffolkthinker on September 28, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Lighten up people: QSH is a joke - just listen in on conversations in a decent physics faculty tea room to hear lots of similar musings. The rest of the review is sympathetic to our cause.
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22. Comment #256189 by Spinoza on September 28, 2008 at 11:35 pm
I am having a profoundly frustrating argument over reductionism (I am in favour of its continued dominance as a powerful scientific methodology). This article, and the linked-to Dawkins tract, have made my evening.
Janus, the standard non-reductionist example is of a hurricane's behaviour. The claim is that the behaviour of a hurricane is so complex that it cannot be explained in terms of its parts. (I disagree, but there you go).
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23. Comment #256191 by Shane McKee on September 28, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Brilliant! Well done, Henry.
[People, look up "irony"...]
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24. Comment #256192 by Janus on September 28, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Yes, the Quantum Santa stuff is a joke, but what's the intent behind it? Is the part where the author sneers at Dawkins and those of us who agree with him a joke too?
Spinoza,
I know that the behavior of a hurricane can't be predicted with perfect accuracy because of its complexity, but I don't think that "not predictable" is equivalent to "not explainable".
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25. Comment #256193 by adonais on September 29, 2008 at 12:05 am
the standard non-reductionist example is of a hurricane's behaviour.
I'm not sure this is quite it; isn't this chiefly an expression of deterministic chaos? You would still describe a hurricane in terms of its fundamental variables, pressure, temperature, humidity, velocity etc (although these are arguably one level up from an even more fundamental description in terms of the interaction of molecules and particles in the atmosphere).
As an example of emergent phenomena people often cite the flocking behavior of birds and fish, but the defining feature I think is that the description of the phenomena can not be reduced to the fundamental level, but has to take place several levels up. In flocking, it's the interaction between birds that describes the emergent behavior, not the interaction between atoms. Kauffman calls this ontological emergence, and I think this is equivalent to what Dennett describes as the "design level," as opposed to the physical level (Dennett uses the Game of Life and its array of ontological entities as an illustration). At every step up of ontological emergence, while violating no laws of physics, new rules apply that can not be reduced to or deduced from the rules on the lower ontological levels. Some of the rules are even platform independent, like evolution, and can therefore not even be tied down to any specific physics. At least, I *think* this is the idea Kauffman is arguing for.
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26. Comment #256201 by Thor'Ungal on September 29, 2008 at 12:31 am
I have a feeling many people rail against reductionism because of the amalgamating effect the brain has on experience. Things feel distinct and unreducible, reducing it therefore feels unnatural. The feeling of red or falling in love or teenage angst at living in practical world with ideological notions just doesn't seem to break down to chemistry and physics. This is of course irrespective of whether it does or not but hey we're all human I guess.
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27. Comment #256202 by jwdink on September 29, 2008 at 12:36 am
??? Kauffman calls this ontological emergence, and I think this is equivalent to what Dennett describes as the "design level," as opposed to the physical level (Dennett uses the Game of Life and its array of ontological entities as an illustration). At every step up of ontological emergence, while violating no laws of physics, new rules apply that can not be reduced to or deduced from the rules on the lower ontological levels. Some of the rules are even platform independent, like evolution, and can therefore not even be tied down to any specific physics. At least, I *think* this is the idea Kauffman is arguing for.
See, this is where I become confused. Maybe the terminology is just confusing. I'm sure that Dennett never (in Freedom Evolves) claimed that the design level has an ontological separateness from the physical level. I think it's just an epistemological claim. For Kauffman, it seems to be more.
I know that the behavior of a hurricane can't be predicted with perfect accuracy because of its complexity, but I don't think that "not predictable" is equivalent to "not explainable".
I think, in this case, the two are the same. Explaining what happens in a hurricane on the level of our experience of a hurricane is apparently impossible via an explanation of the atoms within the hurricane. We know that one is built up from the other, but we don't know how this happens.
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28. Comment #256216 by stephenray on September 29, 2008 at 1:17 am
For a science editor, his understanding of quantum mechanics seems a little faulty.
Santa might be the equivalent of a sub-atomic particle, but how is such a particle to retain its quantum characteristics while it tows a sleigh big enough to carry presents for every house in the world?
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29. Comment #256245 by dvespertilio on September 29, 2008 at 2:20 am
"Science cannot explain why human beings act and feel and think in the way they do in specific circumstances, and spirituality might even be important, valuable and worthy of respect."
Science is, in fact, making significant strides forward in explaining EXACTLY why human beings act and feel and think the way they do in many, if not all, circumstances, and to imply otherwise is to be disingenuous. And spirituality is important, valuable and worthy of respect, but need have nothing to do with god or belief in the supernatural. A naturalist spirituality is the only kind that makes any sense at all. See http://centerfornaturalism.blogspot.com/2008/07/case-for-naturalistic-spirituality.html for an opinion on naturalist spirituality.
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30. Comment #256266 by Szymanowski on September 29, 2008 at 3:03 am
QUANTUM SANTA! From a "senior editor" of Nature... oh dear FSM. It ruins the review somewhat.
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31. Comment #256277 by Peacebeuponme on September 29, 2008 at 3:20 am
In Unweaving the Rainbow, Richard Dawkins boasted that he once told a child that Santa Claus didn't exist. The argument was that Santa couldn't possibly visit all the world's deserving homes in a single night, quite apart from the physical difficulties of flying reindeer, narrow chimney stacks, and so on.
Don't think this has been completely cleared up. I'm calling bullshit on this.
As I recall, Richard was getting the child (his own?) to think logically about the possibility of Santa (nay, Father Christmas if you please) being able to do what he is supposed to. The child drew her own conclusions. Richard did not betray the myth in the way described.
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32. Comment #256332 by jonjermey on September 29, 2008 at 4:26 am
According to Wikipedia:
-----------
Godwin's Law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies)[1] is an adage formulated by Mike Godwin in 1990. The law states:[2][3]
"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."
---------
Let me propose Jermey's Corollary: "As an argument approaches incoherence, the probability of a link being made with quantum theory approaches one also."
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33. Comment #256370 by Azven on September 29, 2008 at 5:07 am
reductionist reasoning doesn't work very well in biology. You take a cat apart - you get a dead cat. You put the peices together again - you still have a dead cat.
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34. Comment #256380 by Bonzai on September 29, 2008 at 5:16 am
I think the champions of "reductionism" here should understand the difference between "describe" and "explain".
??? You can "explain" thermodynamics in terms of atoms and molecules, so, temperature of the gas = the mean kinetic energy of molecues etc, but this doesn't "reduce" thermodynamics to mechanics(quantum or classical), thermodynamics still represents a different level of descriptions which raises and answers questions that are only meaningful at its level.
Another way to think of this is, even though you can "reduce" the image of a photograph to dots on paper or pixel patterns on a screen, but you won't be able to see the picture at the level of pixels and dots, or raise and answer questions about the pitcures at that level. Those questions have no meaning at that level of discreptions.
Finally, biology can be "explained" in terms of particle physics in the sense that genes, animals and everything is ultimately made up of quarks but that fact is really not very useful for remarkable to a biologist who studies evolution. It answers none(as far as we know) of the questions that might interest the evolutionary biologist, and these questions are not even meaningful in the world of quarks.
Being in principle able to "reduce" a subject to a lower level of "explanation" is often irrelevant and uninteresting as a way to understand the subject. What can we learn about hurricanes by "reducing" fluid dynamics and thermodynamics to the atomic description? Practically zilch.
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35. Comment #256523 by Spinoza on September 29, 2008 at 7:50 am
Bonzai, it depends on what questions you're asking.
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36. Comment #256542 by aquilacane on September 29, 2008 at 8:17 am
symbolically sacred
Symbolically sacred objects are those irrelevantly important things ignorant people worship because they are told
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37. Comment #256741 by D'Arcy on September 29, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Jeez, it's not yet October, and here we are talking about Santa. It must be that black hole under Geneva causing some time dilation effect.
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38. Comment #256758 by Border Collie on September 29, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Santa is the mythic personification of the abundant, giving, caring father figure with a dash of being everything and everywhere all the time ... as little children see their fathers. It isn't religious, it isn't scientific, it isn't quantum physics, it isn't difficult ... it's simply symbolic.
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39. Comment #256813 by D'Arcy on September 29, 2008 at 2:36 pm
"You're everywhere and nowhere baby,
"That's where you're at".
Hi Ho Silver Lining!
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40. Comment #256881 by Lemniscate on September 29, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Those later chapters on God sound to me like Kauffman wants a Templeton prize.
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41. Comment #256941 by Rational_G on September 29, 2008 at 7:07 pm
WTF?
More quantum mumbo jumbo masquerading as science.
What an asshole.
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42. Comment #256992 by TuftedPuffin on September 29, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Bonzai:
Statistical thermodynamics is actually the quintessential example of reductionism. Reductionism is simply the ability to derive the general, macro level descriptions from the properties of mirco level particles, something done in great detail in the case of thermodynamics.
What opponents of reductionism question, primarily, is the ability of science to create such a description, either in practice, or in some cases (Kaufman's?) in principle. The mere presence of interesting macro level descriptions has never been an argument against reductionism.
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43. Comment #256994 by Bonzai on September 29, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Tufted
You can "derive" the macro description to a degree,--many questions remain open for systems far from equilibrium,-- but it is not the same as replacing it.Thermodynamics is a valid subject on its own, just ask the combustion engineer how useful it is for him to think in tetms of partition functions and grand canonical ensembles. You can surely derive a picture from patterns of pixels but you still don't see the picture unless you rise above the pixel level.
What opponents of reductionism question, primarily, is the ability of science to create such a description, either in practice, or in some cases (Kaufman's?) in principle
"In principle" is the key word. We know thermodynamics and fluid dynamics can *in principle* be "reduced" to chaotic motion of atoms and molecues, but what does that tell us about hurricanes?
What you are arguing is "reductionism" as a philosophical principle. But it is often not very useful in answering specific scientific questions posted at a higher level.
General philosophical principles that don't yeid useful methodology to answer specific questions are of little interest to scientists. Keep that in mind and we may understand where Kaufmann is coming from. It is likely that "reductionism" doesn't provide a useful methodology to study the class of phenomena he wants to undertsand, whether it is valid in some abstract philosophical sense is moot for him.
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44. Comment #257100 by Alastor on September 30, 2008 at 4:12 am
No, I'm reading the book now. Kauffman rejects reductionism ontologically, and continually blathers about 'causal powers' and other such philosophical jibber jabber. In fact, he even attempts to make the case that the "quintessential example of reductionism", thermodynamics to statistical mechanics, is a failure because it does not explain the arrow of time. The arrow of time is explained by statistical mechanics along with a low-entropy boundary condition (commonly called the big bang). But he says nono, that is not a reduction in terms of stat. mech. alone, so it doesn't count. So, right, if we ignore the thing that explains the arrow of time, then it is unexplained.
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45. Comment #257122 by Kraes85 on September 30, 2008 at 4:49 am
I'm reminded of a short talk Kaufmann gave at a conference held by The Science Network. I think it was "Beyond Belief" or "Brais, Minds and Consciousness".
Kaufmann was talking about the Quantum Theory of Mind which he is advancing alongside Roger Penrose.
Lawrence Krauss stood up after to talk and called it bollocks. I liked that...
Anyways... Reductionism, materialism, and emergent materialism are the same thing. It's just that some sciencists can't get their heads around the fact that others choose to express the idea differently - as Dawkins has expressed so finely. The discussion is not worth having.
Edit: Shit. Got names mixed up. Stuart Hammeroff gave that talk. Ignore it.
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46. Comment #258299 by adonais on October 1, 2008 at 7:05 pm
This just in: http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.0151
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47. Comment #259005 by Rational_G on October 2, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Bonzai is correct. Things like the ideal gas law make sense only at the macroscopic level. It is said that the kinetic theory of gases explains the ideal gas law, but that's assuming that the atoms are all a bunch of billiard balls obeying Newton's laws as they collide.
Only trouble is, when examined at the atomic level, Newton's laws vanish into nothingness. I'm paraphrasing physicist Robert Laughlin here. He has an interesting take on what is "fundamental". I'm as reductionist as the next guy but there appears to be more to it than that. I recommend Laughlin's book - "A Different Universe, Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down". It's an eye opener.
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