Evolution

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Originally Posted by The Atheist

Only if you can find something which doesn't conform to an algorithm.

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I thought my comments were clear and I was hoping for a clear response. Your response referring to conformation with an algorithm is not clear to me.

Mathematical reasoning has certainly demonstrated its usefulness to scientists, especially physicists, who try to understand how the world
"works." A "problem" with seeing mathematics as "science" is that mathematics is really a mind game (admittedly a very elegant one) like Chess or Go. The physical world (including everything from subatomic particles to galaxies and living and non-living things) is what it is. We humans, who can think about stuff, try to make sense of the physical world. We use all sorts of strategies to make sense of it. One of these strategies is to find "laws" that describe (and can predict) what we percieve and experience of the physical world.

Equations are nice when you can find them, like F=ma, but Darwin and Wallace's hypothesis about biological evolution by natural selection is an example of a profound "non-mathematical" insight into the way the world works. The fact is that mathematics gives not a whit about the physical world. There are plenty of "valid" mathematical formulations that may or may not be found by "scientists" to be useful in describing this or that aspect of
the world as we experience it.

Nick

Mathematics is OK when we look at the decay of a group of uranium atoms, but doesn't help much when we look at just one.

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Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli

A "problem" with seeing mathematics as "science" is that mathematics is really a mind game...

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Yes. Mathematics is used to model fragments of our universe, sometimes well, but never perfectly because the physical world is orders of magnitude more complex than our puny models.

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Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli

I thought my comments were clear and I was hoping for a clear response. Your response referring to conformation with an algorithm is not clear to me.

Mathematical reasoning has certainly demonstrated its usefulness to scientists, especially physicists, who try to understand how the world
"works." A "problem" with seeing mathematics as "science" is that mathematics is really a mind game (admittedly a very elegant one) like Chess or Go. The physical world (including everything from subatomic particles to galaxies and living and non-living things) is what it is.

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That's it! The last sentence.

And so far, aside from Nick's objection below, and maybe quantum mechanics, maths can be used to show exactly what the physical world does and is.

Given enough time and computing power, literally any physical problem can be reduced to maths. The reason it isn't is simple. Take a thunderstorm, for example; to work out precisely where every electron in that thunderstorm is, where it's moving to, and what its movement will generate is entirely possible.

The problem is simply that it would take all of the computers on the planet and a billion programmers to work out one storm on our current calculation ability.

Bit hard to make that pay just yet. Another century.

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Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli

We humans, who can think about stuff, try to make sense of the physical world. We use all sorts of strategies to make sense of it. One of these strategies is to find "laws" that describe (and can predict) what we percieve and experience of the physical world.

Equations are nice when you can find them, like F=ma, but Darwin and Wallace's hypothesis about biological evolution by natural selection is an example of a profound "non-mathematical" insight into the way the world works. The fact is that mathematics gives not a whit about the physical world. There are plenty of "valid" mathematical formulations that may or may not be found by "scientists" to be useful in describing this or that aspect of
the world as we experience it.

Nick

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I'm glad you mention evolution, because all of evolution can indeed be broken down into mathematical modelling.

Not very easily, and the maths used is so far above my pathetic ability that it's scary, but trust me, it can be done. It is being done as we speak and results are astounding.

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Originally Posted by billl

Mathematics is OK when we look at the decay of a group of uranium atoms, but doesn't help much when we look at just one.

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Annoying but true.

Could be that quantum physics has some answers, but the other side of the coin is the question of how much or whether the decay matters on a physical level.

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Originally Posted by Gladys

Yes. Mathematics is used to model fragments of our universe, sometimes well, but never perfectly because the physical world is orders of magnitude more complex than our puny models.

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"Ability to compute" is more accurate.

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Originally Posted by billl

Mathematics is OK when we look at the decay of a group of uranium atoms, but doesn't help much when we look at just one.

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Yeah. Your point might be obscure to folks who haven't taken college level Calculus I, Physics I, and Basic Statistics, but those of us who have get the point. The radioctive decay of a large mass of radioactive atoms with a certain "half life" seems to be described by a simple antiderivative (integral) dt/t function. But this dosen't allow us to predict whether or not any one atom will decay while we are looking at it. For all we know, we can sit and watch that atom forever, and it might or might not decay without violating the general rule we've established to describe the behavior of a large population of these atoms. Am I getting this right so far?

I say, so what? It's apples and oranges. Science is full of these apparent mathematical versus experiential connundrums, especially when the science employs probabalistic versus descrete/finite mathematics to escribe "reality."

Thermodynamics is a good example. I love classical thermodynamics because
it is a branch of physics whose laws deal with physical experience in a way that seems to blighthy accept probabalistic and finite mathematical aspects of "reality" without choking on the apparent contradictions. The laws of thermodynamics (e.g. the Second Law) predict that a glass of water at room temperature on your kitchen table will not spontaneously turn into ice. However, such a glass of water could do so, though it would be highly improbable.

We humans have come up with some pretty impressive explanations of how the world "works." For what my opinion is worth, I have been most impressed
by Classical Thermodynamics and the Darwin/Wallace Theory of Natural Selection.

Nick

I admit there might be some nuance there I missed, but I will basically say I agree with you NC.

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Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli

Yeah. Your point might be obscure to folks who haven't taken college level Calculus I, Physics I, and Basic Statistics, but those of us who have get the point. The radioctive decay of a large mass of radioactive atoms with a certain "half life" seems to be described by a simple antiderivative (integral) dt/t function. But this dosen't allow us to predict whether or not any one atom will decay while we are looking at it. For all we know, we can sit and watch that atom forever, and it might or might not decay without violating the general rule we've established to describe the behavior of a large population of these atoms. Am I getting this right so far?

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Spot on

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Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli

I say, so what? It's apples and oranges. Science is full of these apparent mathematical versus experiential connundrums, especially when the science employs probabalistic versus descrete/finite mathematics to escribe "reality."

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Right again.

In a nutshell, the small stuff seems to be largely irrelevant in reality.

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Originally Posted by billl

Mathematics is OK when we look at the decay of a group of uranium atoms, but doesn't help much when we look at just one.

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While Nick Capozzoli addresses this matter well, there is more to be said. Although science can say nothing about the decay of a particular atom, no one can confidently exclude a scientific breakthrough, human or alien, a hundred or a billion years from now. Like Aristotle's long-revered solar system, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, for instance, may not be the last word. The mathematics of radioactive decay may eventually, in the distant future, address more that just the probabilistic.

While The Atheist may argue 'the small stuff seems to be largely irrelevant in reality', past breakthroughs relating to 'small stuff' have led to electricity, electronics and nuclear technology, which are far from irrelevant - and all this in a couple of centuries. Why would breakthroughs in millennia to come count for little?

Yeah, I believe the small stuff is going to be very important, actually.

That doesn't discredit what science has accomplished, and it of course doesn't mean at all that science won't have anything to do with the new things we learn. And, with any luck, there'll always be new stuff to figure out.

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Originally Posted by Gladys

While The Atheist may argue 'the small stuff seems to be largely irrelevant in reality', past breakthroughs relating to 'small stuff' have led to electricity, electronics and nuclear technology, which are far from irrelevant - and all this in a couple of centuries. Why would breakthroughs in millennia to come count for little?

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I don't mean small in size - nuclear fission & fusion and electricity are not what I'd class as small. I'm referring to quantum effects, which appear not to have an effect on everyday things, and the random decay of U238, again, hardly something which has a measurable effect on the world/universe.

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Originally Posted by billl

Yeah, I believe the small stuff is going to be very important, actually.

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You could be right, but the consistency of physics in the universe measured against the incosistency of quantum mechanics tends to suggest the opposite.

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Originally Posted by billl

That doesn't discredit what science has accomplished, and it of course doesn't mean at all that science won't have anything to do with the new things we learn. And, with any luck, there'll always be new stuff to figure out.

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You'd hope that discoveries just become part of science. If it works, we can measure and quantify it.

Isn't the real truth, that none of us know the real truth?

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Originally Posted by AlaskaDan

Isn't the real truth, that none of us know the real truth?

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Depends on how pedantic you are on the meaning of "true".

You could claim that you cannot prove 1+1=2 if you like. Technically, you'd be right, but in reality, it's pretty silly.

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Originally Posted by Gladys

No scientific theory can claim to be 'true' in the way that, maybe, God can.

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Actually, you've got that backward. If God is "true," it's true in a way that's vastly different from the way we define "true" in any other context.

It's about approaches to knowledge. When we say we know humans and chimps have a common ancestor, or that the Earth orbits the Sun, we're affirming the validity of empirical evidential inquiry. We're saying that the process of hypothesizing and testing actually tells us reliable things about our universe.

However, saying we know God loves us affirms an approach to knowledge that's very different: we say these things out loud, but they can mean something different to each person who says them, if in fact they mean anything at all.

Regards,

Istvan

In point of fact it is very essential to discern a line between science and faith.
And evolution kind of completely revolutionizes everything and today it has reversed or uprooted our age old belief systems.

But the theory of evolution cannot answer every question that may crop up in our minds

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Originally Posted by blazeofglory

And evolution kind of completely revolutionizes everything and today it has reversed or uprooted our age old belief systems.

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Philosopher Daniel Dennett says the validity of evolution by natural selection nullifies one of humanity's most cherished myths: that design presupposes a designing intelligence. The notion that a set of natural algorithms operating without foresight for billions of years produced the staggeringly complex wonders of Nature does away with our philosophical fetishes about will and intention.

Regards,

Istvan