Quantum Non-Linearity: Terminal Moran

Monday, June 30, 2008

Terminal Moran

It’s all too typical to see Larry Moran getting uptight in this blog entry about the Darwin symposium held at the Royal Ontario Museum. Apparently an inordinate amount of time was given to the adaptionist view of evolution and other mechanisms of evolution were all but ignored. He called it an adaptionist lovefest. Now, I have favoured Prof Moran’s ‘pluralist’ view on evolution from day one - in particular the notion that ‘genetic’ drift is a factor in evolutionary change. Genetic drift reminds me of the tendency of a language to drift over time – random changes in the language move it along a line of possibility where functionality is neither impaired nor enhanced and this constitutes a ‘neutral’ change. The abstract construction I have in my mind is of morphospace being laced with contours of structural stability and a kind of diffusion motion exploring these morphological ‘isobars’ in a cosmos that is in morphological disequilibrium. The conjectured fibril/spongey structure of functionality in morphospace may have a diversity of regions displaying equilbria, instabilities and non-linearities, and these might provide a way to explain the vagaries, surprises and starts and stops of evolutionary change.

Larry gets uptight about a non-pluralist view because an exclusively adaptionist view weakens the explanatory power of evolutionary theory. And Larry needs a strong theory of evolution because it defers or even obscures the deep questions over ultimate ontology that are waiting in the wings and which might threaten a vanilla atheism. Anyone like myself who so much as conjectures about the outer theoretical context framing our cosmos and the possibility of a God like object is likely to be looked at askance, if not accused of superstition.

On the other hand perhaps the emotional investment here is needed, needed to propel the investigation down a particular avenue of research. People like myself who are under motivated about whether or not evolution is a ‘fact’ perhaps will lack the focus on a particular theoretical outlook. What better person to the drive evolutionary option than someone who has backed themselves into an ontological corner because their world view and everything they stand for is threatened if evolution doesn’t stand up?

But by the same token we need those of an opposite persuasion. The theoretical notion of a morphospace with connected domains of functionality requires adversaries to generate contra evidence. Hence I have turned to the ID people on Uncommon Descent. They are delighted with a question like ‘Is Darwin past its sell by date’, a question, which was bandied about at the symposium much to Larry’s annoyance. Such phrases hint that evolutionary theory is not as robust as Larry, with his atheism or bust weltanschauung, would like. For me the input from ID theorists is not only respected but is vitally important to test this vague notion of a connected morphospace probed by the requisite motions. Given my state of knowledge there is the possibility that the ID contention about the unevolvability of biological structures is right and therefore it needs to be investigated. However, to so much as take their efforts seriously will upset people like Larry; he - necessarily in order to protect his world view – regards them all as ‘IDiots’, because that excuses him from giving them countenance! Trouble, is some of the ID people have also backed themselves into a corner and like Larry are effectively partisan and crusading converts to their cause. They are all liable to shoot first and asked questions afterwards, or even worse not bother with the questions at all. If you go in make sure you’ve got a skin as thick as a rhinoceros. Both are at the end of the line with no way out.

2 comments:

Larry Moran said...: Let's get a few things straight. I agree with the IDiots that there are serious debates going on within evolutionary biology.

What I objected to at the symposium was that the speakers all but ignored those controversies. There's much more to evolution than just Darwinism. That's a lesson that the IDiots could learn as well.; 1:52 AM, July 01, 2008
Timothy V Reeves said...: Thanks for turning up Larry: this is a nice quiet and cosy corner of the Internet that doesn’t often get celebrity visits, so I’m honored.

Yes, the symposium seems to have passed on that greatest of human insults: that of ignoring the work of others (ignoring people certainly isn’t one your faults!)

Let me be frank Larry: I try hard to face my demons and worst nightmares, particularly that of being radically wrong in my guesses as to the fundamental nature of the cosmos. A theist? Then face the possibility that the outermost ontological explanatory framework may be utterly impersonal. An atheist? What if aseity only works if that outer framework has a priori intelligence and personality? (if so I don’t fancy ignoring the work of that Person!) An evolutionist? What if there are hidden ‘bugs’ in the complex object of evolutionary theory that causes the putative evolutionary ‘change’ to ‘lock up’? An ID theorist? Isn’t intelligence itself a trial and error process akin to evolution?

Some people aren’t facing their demons. But it is easy for me to say that – I’m not being hassled by a following or benefactors I’m trying to be answerable to. (Apart from the wife!); 9:10 AM, July 01, 2008

THE IDEAS-EXPERIENCE CONTENTION

“Ideas Versus Experience!" is a slogan expressing the uneasy relation between what we think the world to be and what our actual experience suggests it is. Experience makes or breaks ideas. But the reverse is also true: Well established ideas can influence the recognition, acceptance and even the perception of experience. In short there is a two way dialogue between ideas and experience. Sometimes that dialogue can turn into an argument, even a row.

The success of Science is based on a formalisation of this potentially contentious relationship as it seeks to support or refute theoretical notions by systematically comparing them with experience. In the far less formalized contexts of daily living we probably are using a similar heuristic when we display a tendency to drop ideas that lose the confrontation with experience, and retain those that win. Winning ideas, like the gladiators of the Roman arenas, live to fight another day. This Darwinian slant on the struggle for ideological survival is itself ideology that must, for consistency sake, submit itself to the very process it purports to describe. For example, it should be able to give account of the resilience of traditional theories in the face of contra indicators. And in the extreme, explanation also needs to be given of how conspiracy theorists continue to hold on to a ramifying structure of untested elaborations.

Human theoretical visions are often grand and sweeping, confidently affirming states of affairs that are far beyond immediate sensation. The vast unseen domains covered by our best theories contrasts with the limitations on human perceptual resources, resources that only allow a very sparse experimental sampling of our most ambitious ideas. Even a professional scientist only ever tests a small portion of any theoretical structure. Moreover, our theoretical concepts are ambitious enough to cover unreachable areas like the center of distant stars, sub-atomic dimensions, events long past into history, and very complex inscrutable objects like the human mind and its societies. Thus, science is metaphysical in as much as it has to admit that it covers vast domains inaccessible to testing in practice if not in principle. For the intelligent layman even the keyhole view of the experimental scientist may not be available. So whence comes the authority to affirm ideas that are often so grandiose in their sweep that they make claim to impinge upon the very meaning of life the universe and everything?

The fact is that for most of us the really big ideas diffuse through to us from our societal context, and at most these big ideas are only illuminated here and there, at a very few places, with actual direct experience of the phenomenon they conceptualise. These big ideas float around in the ether-like-media of society in the form of books, lectures, programmes, and the Internet etc, objects that the postmodernist philosophers call "texts".

For someone such as myself the battle to make sense of life was joined as soon as I was aware of mystery. But looking back it is clear to me that I haven't done an honest scientific experiment in the whole of my life. For me the effort to bring sense and integration to the complexity of life boils down to grappling with the many texts of society; These texts carry both big theoretical ideas and raw data from which ideas crystallize. These texts are compared with other texts in the search for coherence and consistency. These texts take the place and role of experiments as one tests theories using texts. These texts are in effect the experience of life. My own modest attempt at grandiose theorising has already been presented to the world. (See this blog "Physics and the Wild Web") and my excuse is that I have simply inherited the theoretical hubris of the human race.

The postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida said, "There is nothing outside the text". I think he was at least right about the primary role texts play in the life of those like myself whose instinct has been to grapple relentlessly with the riddles of life, and to seek out meaning and go where no man has gone before. But one could equally claim, "There is nothing outside the experience". For one might read the "text" of the clouds in the sky as a predictor of impending weather just as one reads socially generated symbolic configurations as the predictor of certain kinds of thought or potential experience. For the text is just as much an experience as more primeval phenomenon like thunder and lightning. Texts are part of our cosmic experience and they imperceptibly grade into the more conventional notion of experience. Where the crossover point is, is difficult to say.

Postmodernism may have got it right about the primary role of the text, but it has made one very serious mistake. Where I would radically differ from the postmodern view is that I believe the mass of social texts, if we allow them, naturally converge upon grand consistent narratives and those narratives are here to stay. And that is because these texts, I submit, are part of a world with an underlying rational integratedness and that integratedness is being revealed to us bit by bit. For revelation it is: Revelation is what we cannot discover unless God chooses that we discover it. My perceptions and reason, limited though they may be, were not self-made, they had to be discovered as gifts. These gifts are given to all of us; one can but trust and use them. Reason is a grace of Revelation. For this reason the hubris of theory making is justified.

Quantum Non-Linearity

Monday, June 30, 2008

Terminal Moran

2 comments:

My Other Blogs

Papers and Essays etc

About Me

Blog Archive

Labels

THE IDEAS-EXPERIENCE CONTENTION