The State of Evolutionary Theory

Evolutionary theory: A dog's diner of notions.  But then real life is a bit of a dog's diner!

Evolutionary theorists are ill at ease it seems - mostly with one another: In a post which appeared on evangelical atheist's blog, PZ Myers, he expresses his impatience at the "Extended Evolutionary Synthesis" movement. See here:

Not impressed by the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (freethoughtblogs.com)

This post by Myers was in response to a Guardian article entitled "Do we need a new theory of evolution?" .  This article starts with the headline paragraph:

A new wave of scientists argues that mainstream evolutionary theory needs an urgent overhaul. Their opponents have dismissed them as misguided careerists – and the conflict may determine the future of biology

....and goes on to say somewhat sensationally (My emphases on the use of emotive terms). 

Behind the current battle over evolution lies a broken dream. In the early 20th century, many biologists longed for a unifying theory that would enable their field to join physics and chemistry in the club of austere, mechanistic sciences that stripped the universe down to a set of elemental rules. Without such a theory, they feared that biology would remain a bundle of fractious sub-fields, from zoology to biochemistry, in which answering any question might require input and argument from scores of warring specialists.

...the stress, then, is on internal conflict. Myers' gripe with the article seems be this: Evolutionary theory, probably necessarily, is a complex stew of diverse theoretical elements and will likely remain so; in fact there may be yet more elements to be added to the theory to enhance its comprehensiveness: I think I agree; unlike physics I very much doubt evolutionary biology is going to reduce to those overarching grand narratives conveyed by elegant equations. Given this context Myers therefore sees the EES pundits as not necessarily being wrong but simply adding to the stew of ideas. Where the problem seems to lie is in the competitive contention that so frequently surrounds social status ladder climbing: May be because the EES aficionados are being a little too melodramatic they (whether intentionally or not) are effectively positioning themselves as heroic paradigm breaking revolutionaries and this apparent career move has stirred up hard feelings and controversy among traditionalists.  If you don't want to cause a storm of hard feelings one's social status is something best left to the judgment of others whose opinions effectively confers one's social status; DIY status conferment is certainly not advised; it will upset all sorts of people (see Luke 4:9-11).  But there is little one can do if conflicting communities confer on an individual entirely different status values....Jordan Peterson's following has raised him up to the heights of social glory which needless to say absolutely peeves PZ Myers and his associated community. 

Having said all that, however, according to Myers the article does partly redeem itself toward the end where we can read:

What Doolittle and like-minded scientists want is more radical: the death of grand theories entirely. They see such unifying projects as a mid-century – even modernist – conceit, that have no place in the postmodern era of science. The idea that there could be a coherent theory of evolution is “an artefact of how biology developed in the 20th century, probably useful at the time,” says Doolittle. “But not now.” Doing right by Darwin isn’t about venerating all his ideas, he says, but building on his insight that we can explain how present life forms came from past ones in radical new ways.

The computational biologist Eugene Koonin thinks people should get used to theories not fitting together. Unification is a mirage. “In my view there is no – can be no – single theory of evolution,” he told me. “There cannot be a single theory of everything. Even physicists do not have a theory of everything.”

People trained in physics and mathematics like myself are inclined to be instinctively be repelled by "postmodern" ideas of a patchwork of pragmatic little narratives that are here today and gone tomorrow.  Physicists are used to looking for and finding over-arching elegant theories that all but clear the theoretical board: Given the glorious highly progressive intellectual history surrounding Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Dirac and Feynman et al, who can blame them? The expectation in physics therefore is that the apparent incommensurability between gravity and quantum mechanics will one day be fixed. 

But there is no reason why such should be true in biology. Biology, being a kind "natural" technology, may follow the model of own technology in that it consists of a complex of techniques and tools that are invoked in different connections.  But in spite of that there is no need to go all postmodern about this departure. Biology is still a rational system if rather more algorithmically complex than was at first hoped by the authors of the neo-Darwinian-synthesis.

***

As I've said several times before anyone who believes that the natural history of life to be spread over millions if not billions of years automatically accepts evolution in the trivial sense that life has changed and developed over that time, although via unspecified mechanisms. Natural history by itself leaves the engine driving evolutionary change unspecified. In fact even if one accepts the notion of common descent and that genetics is taken as evidence of the cladistic nesting of life forms developed from the "tree of life", the question remains as to the agency/processes/mechanisms that have generated this tree of life.  

In my mathematical "spongeam" metaphor of natural history I use the "potential" term "V" to represent what some might call the "fitness landscape" of evolution. This term could hide any number of informational factors ranging from the laws of physics, through teleological influences to ad-hoc divine patches, all factors (if present) we've yet to fully understand. If evolution is to work, the random agitations encapsulated in the diffusional term of my mathematical metaphor must be highly constrained by the information implicit in the term "V".

Myers may well be right about evolution being a kind of dogs dinner of processes. But to me he looks as though he's caught in the usual dualistic linguistic trap. Viz: if it can be said that "evolution did it" then that must imply "God didn't do it". If  all the ingredients thrown into the stew simply fall under the nomenclature of "evolution" that, for some, is enough to satisfy the metaphysical conclusion that "if evolution did it, God didn't do it".  Myers' thinking is as much trapped by the connotation of deism in the label "evolution" as is the thinking of the de facto IDists who simply reverse the sign of the conclusion: Viz "Evolution can't do it, therefore God did it". De facto ID has committed itself to the same connotative dualistic verbalism; they can't see that the very introduction of intelligent creation introduces a huge wild card which means that the possibilities open to intelligent action breathes new life into the possibilities open to the processes "evolution"; who can tell how a practically omnipotent omniscient intelligence can resource "evolution" informationally? The de facto IDists have also painted themselves into a corner with their commitment to the absence of Junk DNA; for in introducing the wild card of a super intelligence they really can't be sure what such an inscrutable & powerful intelligence would leave in or edit out of his DNA libraries. Although like John Polkinghorne I'm strictly speaking a Intelligent Design Creationist, I dissociate myself from the stuck-in-a-rut de facto ID right-wingers who are a faction within a politically polarized community. They can't see the implications of intelligent creation but have in fact unconsciously taken on board crypto-deist and dualist categories. With their politics and their philosophical categories, de facto IDists have walked down a blind alley.

***

Reading the Guardian article I was fascinated with the evolutionary ingredient called "plasticity".  Here's how the article described it:

Emily Standen is a scientist at the University of Ottawa, who studies Polypterus senegalus, AKA the Senegal bichir, a fish that not only has gills but also primitive lungs. Regular polypterus can breathe air at the surface, but they are “much more content” living underwater, she says. But when Standen took Polypterus that had spent their first few weeks of life in water, and subsequently raised them on land, their bodies began to change immediately. The bones in their fins elongated and became sharper, able to pull them along dry land with the help of wider joint sockets and larger muscles. Their necks softened. Their primordial lungs expanded and their other organs shifted to accommodate them. Their entire appearance transformed. “They resembled the transition species you see in the fossil record, partway between sea and land,” Standen told me. According to the traditional theory of evolution, this kind of change takes millions of years. But, says Armin Moczek, an extended synthesis proponent, the Senegal bichir “is adapting to land in a single generation”. He sounded almost proud of the fish.

The crucial thing about such observations, which challenge the traditional understanding of evolution, is that these sudden developments all come from the same underlying genes. The species’s genes aren’t being slowly honed, generation by generation. Rather, during its early development it has the potential to grow in a variety of ways, allowing it to survive in different situations.

Plasticity doesn’t invalidate the idea of gradual change through selection of small changes, but it offers another evolutionary system with its own logic working in concert. To some researchers, it may even hold the answers to the vexed question of biological novelties: the first eye, the first wing. “Plasticity is perhaps what sparks the rudimentary form of a novel trait,” says Pfennig.

If these observations aren't misconstrued then who knows what influence is being applied here to drive this rapid adaptive change. 

Dualist Examples

As I've said in my last post: 

Western Dualism was historically expressed as deism; this is the view that God is to his created world as the skilled human artisan is to the automata of the 18th century. In both cases the created object is thought to have an animus of it's own, an animus by which it is able to function autonomously: Sci-fi stories where the created object runs out of the control of its creator tap into this paradigm. When pushed too hard deism leads to a creation cut adrift from its Creator and eventually death of God secularism: Somehow it is supposed that the cosmos is sufficiently self-provisioned to create and run itself.

 ...this kind of thinking represents a cultural legacy whose effects can be found among both atheists and Christian theists.  It is a short step from deism to atheism. and the consequence is that some Christians see it as their duty to do all in their power refute any hint that so called "natural forces" have the efficacy to generate life, because for them such an efficacy can only mean "God didn't do it". See this for example:

DUALIST: What some of us find curious is that Christian evolutionists so seldom want to grasp the fact that the problem for most Christians is Darwinism, which is an explicitly materialist and naturalist theory of everything

(https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/biologos-hopes-to-calm-the-fears-of-ignorant-christians-about-evolution/)

MY COMMENT:  The above presents us with a "Darwinist" strawman frequently seen among anti-evolutionists; that is: an explicitly materialist and naturalist theory of everything . No! Real "Darwinism" does not claim to be a theory of everything except in the minds of some atheists and Christian theists who think alike on this question, But Darwinian-like processes, if they are to work at all, are necessarily provisioned by highly contingent conditions and information. Therefore "Darwinism" is far from a "natural process". And at least some of those "Christian evolutionists" the hack above refers to do grasp this fact. 

Although I'm not necessarily committed to standard theories of evolutionary mechanisms myself, I would never argue against evolution in the fashion presented above: Given that this quote comes from what claims to be an Intelligent Design stable I find it curious that this pundit does not want to grasp the facts of her glaring inconsistency: For although one might argue against evolution from a Biblical literalist standpoint, ID per se doesn't contradict evolution. This followers because effective evolutionary mechanisms require such a high degree of contingent input that this too is easily cast into the mold of Intelligent Design. 

Below we have another hack who also thrusts his misconceptions into the mouths of Christians who don't agree with him: 

DUALIST: So why aren’t the idea of the big bang and the creation account in Genesis compatible? Well, the big bang is based on the religion of naturalism, which assumes that the universe arose by natural processes. It’s a way of trying to explain everything without God. We should never take elements of a different religion and mix them in with Christianity and the Bible....(https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/universe-final-era/)

MY COMMENT:  Once again we see a crypto-atheist concept of "naturalism" being used as the strawman by which an attempt is made to spiritually intimidate Christians into accepting the misleading views of this author. Once again "natural forces" are wrongly portrayed as the automatic nemesis of a creator God; therefore, according to this author one must reject "the religion of naturalism" unconditionally.  It  is true that many an atheist thinks just like this author and believes that "natural processes... explain everything without God".  So here we have a Christian fundamentalist with an atheistic mindset skipping over the fact that it is logically impossible for natural processes to explain themselves: they can only ever be descriptive of natural history and therefore are bound to be the depository of a  high informational contingency.

Now consider the following from the same post: 

DUALIST: Now, what many Christians don’t realize is that the big bang isn’t just a story about the origins of everything—it’s also a story with predictions for the future. In the most common model, the universe eventually reaches thermal equilibrium with zero energy available (a “heat death,” but it’s not hot as there’s no energy—so it becomes cold). But this is opposite of what the Bible states will happen in the future! 

Once again we see this author thrusting his strawman arguments into the mouths of Christians who disagree with his own flawed way of thinking. He's assumed the because atheists extrapolate the laws of physics willy-nilly into the future then so must Christians who accept the big bang. Now, one can understand why from an atheist standpoint there is little choice but to assume one can extrapolate physical laws into the far future; what else can they do? But unless one makes predictions to test hypotheses, far-flung predictions of this ilk are metaphysical because unlike the past we get no observational messages from the future. So unless we can go there ourselves such predictions cannot be tested. See here where I took this issue up with another fundamentalist.

Science and Religion Part II

(For Part 1 see here)

Did Lawrence Krauss really say that? Is Deism the thin end of the theist wedge?  Deism has been an exit point for faith, so perhaps it can also be an entry point? However, the second part of that statement looks as though it's there to keep the atheist gallery happy by signaling that Krauss  still has a gung-ho anti-religious stance. But I think he needs to brush up on just what theistic evolutionists are saying.

In his book The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins tells us:

Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

 (The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Chapter 1 “Explaining the Very Improbable” p. 6)

This view, I submit, is evidence of the Western Dualist paradigm which sees so-called natural forces and God's creative action as two very distinct and mutually exclusive modes of creation: For Richard it was an exclusive-OR between the "natural forces" of Darwinian processes and the supernatural power of God. But since Richard is an atheist he therefore votes for the natural forces party.

Western Dualism was historically expressed as deism; this is the view that God is to his created world as the skilled human artisan is to the automata of the 18th century. In both cases the created object is thought to have an animus of it's own, an animus by which it is able to function autonomously: Sci-fi stories where the created object runs out of the control of its creator tap into this paradigm. When pushed too hard deism leads to a creation cut adrift from its Creator and eventually death of God secularism: Somehow it is supposed that the cosmos is sufficiently self-provisioned to create and run itself. But as I've pointed out before the material of the cosmos has no property of aseity: The simple logic of the mathematical elementa of physics can't be the source of aseity: That logic necessarily starts with brute-fact contingencies, not aseity. In contrast, God being infinitely complex, could hide aseity in that complexity although we would be hard put to it to understand the infinite logic of aseity. Hence it is written: And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6). That verse is the axiomatic cornerstone of a successful epistemology in that it provides the template for its natural analogue: Viz: anyone who comes to the cosmos must believe that it is organised, coherent and rational and that it rewards those who earnestly seek that rationality. Without this epistemic assumption we move dangerously close to the nihilist abyss. But axiomatic belief that nature conforms to intelligible and ordered patterns of behavior doesn't necessarily entail a belief in the autonomous animus of nature or the connected idea that  if "natural forces did it God didn't do it!". 

Is the axiomatic & metaphysical belief in the independent animus of nature right?  It seems that evangelical atheist PZ Myers thinks so; see the following comment which Myers posted in 2014. In this comment Myers is criticizing those evolutionists who seek common ground with "creationists" through theistic evolution, an approach Myers most definitely rejects...... 

Coyne also has some ire for the theistic evolutionist perspective, as well. So do I. I think it distorts the science in an ugly way. It’s effective with some soft creationists in the same way the approach I mentioned in the last paragraph works. You find common ground: “I believe in God, too!” Then, unfortunately, to bring them around to your side, what you then do is produce a mangled, false version of evolution — “It’s guided by a higher power!” — in order to get them to accept “evolution”. A gutless, mechanistically compromised version of evolution.

No thanks. Darwin’s great insight was that you don’t need an overseer guiding evolution — that local responses to the environment will produce efficient responses that will yield a pattern of descent and diversity and complexity. To replace “intent was unnecessary” with “God provided intent” does deep violence to the whole theory, and completely misses the point. (My emphases) 

And the point? The metaphysical idea of the animus of natural forces is clear here: Viz: you don’t need an overseer guiding evolution. The general notion here is that the physical laws are a kind of proactive guiding hand rather than a passive description of patterns of behavior sustained by God himself. 

But evolution as it is currently understood would not work without some kind of a priori information reservoir. See chapter 8 of this document where I discuss this question. It follows then that evolution isn't in fact a purely random process (something PZ Myers agrees with - see here). As such it displays a very constrained pattern of behavior; forget those claims about evolution being nothing but "randomness" because if standard evolution is to be viable any such randomness can only generate life if it is constrained within a very tight envelope defined by the natural physical regime - if this constraint didn't exist there would be no evolution. 

But for Myers the existence of those highly constrained patterns of behavior must mean that evolution has all it needs in terms of physical resources and therefore doesn't need any further input from deity.  Viz: Darwin’s great insight was that you don’t need an overseer guiding evolution.  For Myers somehow those very constrained patterns sustain themselves and have an intrinsic animus to do so. Well, that's understandable given his atheism; he's actually following in the footsteps of those deists who conceived that God was to nature's mechanisms as man was to his automata and therefore God can at least stand back if not take leave of absence altogether while nature performs according to its own inner drives. 

But for (non-deist) theists like myself, the origin and sustenance of those strange and very contingent laws of behavior can not be either self-created or self-sustaining; they require deity in constant attendance and therefore in that sense for Christian evolutionists God must be the ever-present and immanent "why" behind the "how". What justification does Myers have for claiming that theistic evolutionists have produced a mangled, false version of evolution..... a gutless, mechanistically compromised version of evolution.....To replace “intent was unnecessary” with “God provided intent” does deep violence to the whole theory, and completely misses the point? Just what violence is being done to the theory and what point is being missed?  Yes, to imagine that there is a God behind the scenes constantly creating, sustaining & managing natural patterns, patterns which have no aseity of their own will no doubt seem to Myers eccentric to the point of crankiness. But if he could humor the theistic evolutionists for a while he might then realize that their cranky extra-evolutionary obsession does no violence to the theory itself since it doesn't change the patterns of behavior or add anything observationally to them; they remain the same.  This also voids Krauss' criticism: There is no necessary internal inconsistency in theistic evolution because it doesn't necessarily change the observable evolutionary patterns of behavior. 

Theistic evolution is in fact a interpretation layered on top of the science and what does change is the intuitive opinion about the meaning of those patterns: Viz: For Myers his intuition is that we need look no further for explanation than in a very contingent natural pattern; for him those patterns are just brute facts and that is the end of the matter (See Bertrand Russell's opinion here which is analogous). But for theists like myself this leaves us with an empty and meaningless absurdity: In my opinion that absurdity can only be dispelled by the intuition that those patterns have an intentionality about them..... so it's all down to a difference in intuition. Although I have no strong commitment to affirming standard evolutionary mechanisms I find nothing absurd about theistic evolutionist's notion that God is the creative force in a standard evolutionary scenario. 

***

In a post on Panda's Thumb, mathematician Jason Rosenhouse tells us about his book entitled "The Failures of Mathematical Anti-Evolutionism".  In his book he challenges anti-evolutionist's misuse of mathematical results such as the second law of thermodynamics, a law which fundamentalists and de-facto IDists never seem understand (Perhaps with one notable exception). But for reasons other than  his useful critique of anti-evolutionism the following paragraph by Rosenhouse is notable (In particular see the two sentences I've emboldened):

Sometimes the anti-evolutionists invoke a mathematical principle rather than carry out a calculation. They go on at length about the “No Free Lunch” (NFL) theorems, for example. These are legitimate mathematical results that establish the non-existence of a universally successful search algorithm. Dembski, sometimes with various coauthors, has argued that since evolution is in some way analogous to a combinatorial search, these theorems imply that any success that it has can only result from intelligent tailoring of nature’s fitness landscapes to the “algorithm” of natural selection. But once again the theorem plays only a rhetorical role in the argument. Since nature’s fitness landscapes arise ultimately from the laws of physics, Dembski and his collaborators are really just asking why the universe has just the properties it does. It’s a reasonable question, but it’s not one biologists need to worry about, and it’s not one to which the NFL theorems make any contribution toward answering.

(Note: What Rosenhouse refers to as the Fitness Landscape I refer to as  The Spongeam). 

Rosenhouse's comment at the end here is comparable to one made by mathematical biologist Joe Felsenstein (See below); namely, that the a priori information content demanded by standard model evolutionary mechanisms is found in the fitness landscape and this information in turn must be implicit in the physical regime. ID guru William Dembski drew attention to the fact that this a priori information must be present somewhere. But what Dembski did not show was that this information wasn't present in someway in the physical regime. He more or less admitted as such in this lecture.  De facto IDists misused NFL theory in that it was assumed by many of them with dualist habits of mind to imply that natural forces in the form of evolutionary mechanisms had been eliminated from the inquiry - in fact those proposed mechanisms were still very much part of the inquiry.  As Felsenstein said in a comment on this blog post of mine: 

If the laws of physics are what is responsible for fitness surfaces having "a huge amount of information" and being "very rare object[s]" then Dembski has not proven a need for Intelligent Design to be involved. I have not of course proven that ordinary physics and chemistry is responsible for the details of life -- the point is that Dembski has not proven that they aren't.

The question of direct Intelligent Design thus shifts from ad-hoc paranormal interventions to the origins of the contingent information implicit in the cosmic physical regime; it is this, according to Felsenstein, which has made standard evolutionary mechanisms  possible. As Felsenstein went on to say:

Biologists want to know whether normal evolutionary processes account for the adaptations we see in life. If they are told that our universe's laws of physics are special, biologists will probably decide to leave that debate to cosmologists, or maybe to theologians.

Now there's a challenge for the theologians! As with the quote from Lawrence Krauss we see a crack in the wall of atheism through which light is streaming!

So, the conclusion is that whether or not life has arisen via standard evolutionary mechanisms, either way we talking about Hard Creationism in so far as a huge reservoir of a priori contingent information is required to resource creation and in particular evolutionary mechanisms.  But the hardened atheist response is unlikely to concur even with Krauss's admission that because the universe is an amazing place then deism isn't an implausible postulate. To neutralize any amazement about cosmic contingency some kind of multiverse is often resorted to. Multiverse postulates are intended to reduce the surprisal value of our information rich universe to the level of trivial expectation by placing it in an all but infinite sea of pure randomness.

The Western deist response, which at least gives a starting role to God (but thence forth God is retired from the scene), partly has its origins in a reaction to the automata of the enlightenment. But for myself I think it likely that the information input from deity is on-going and not a once-for-all act. 

Brian Cox on The Cosmic Perspective

Brian Cox's "Sunset of Mankind"*

Brian Cox: The contemporary (and in the last analysis, nihilist)

 guide to the Cosmic Perspective

According to my reading of Brian Cox's Wiki page he's not an outright atheist which I suppose makes him agnostic. He always comes over as Mr. Nice Guy, completely genuine in his atheism agnosticism. For me he challenges the Christian fundamentalist tendency to use Romans 1:18ff as an indictment on outgroups, sometimes as a pretext to accuse them of suppressing the truth in their wickedness. That, I believe, is not true of Brian Cox; he's entirely genuine in his expression of what I would identify as his resigned nihilistic world view. Let's remember that Romans 1 was written in Roman times and was addressing a very different cultural landscape of myriad minor gods and contrasting it with Judeo-Christianity's strict monotheistic creationism.

In Brian's latest series, Universe, he does his best to wring out some kind of meaning & comfort from his depiction of an eons long cosmic history that ends in the absurdity of meaninglessness and darkness. From my perspective the story Brian tells, although intriguing & aesthetic, has a denouement that is dreary and devoid of eternal hope. He charts the relatively brief flicker of human civilization which according to Brian must, in the vast expanse of cosmic time, ultimately be snuffed out like a candle and forgotten. Brian might be agnostic but really his is an atheistic view of the cosmos which gives no cognizance to the theistic possibilities of agnosticism; in fact I would go as far as to say it is not unlike H. G. Wells' nihilistic vision of the destiny of human civilization we find in Wells' book "The Time Machine". 

However, I wish there were more affable atheists and agnostics around like Brian. Ironically, I feel I have more in common with his epistemic attitudes than I do with vociferous fundamentalists like Ken Ham.

In the following interleave format I provide a selection of Brian's comments around the subject of meaning that I found in the first episode of his Universe series. This isn't a verbatim transcript and it's highly selective in its quotes.

***

Brian: There are 200 billion stars in our Galaxy and 2 trillion Galaxies in the universe.

My Comment: Breath taking statistics in one sense, but in terms of the computational resources needed to create living complexity those stats are actually quite miniscule. Take the logarithm of those figures and you end up with small numbers. 

Brian: The universe is vast, terrifying and incomprehensible. It's only natural for us live out our lives oblivious of it. There are two perspectives: We are grains of sand adrift in an infinite indifferent ocean or nature's most magnificent creation.

My Comment: Yes, Brian's right, the Universe is vast, terrifying and incomprehensible. It's incomprehensible because on the face of it is devoid of anthropic significance & relevance, an utterly anti-anthropic enigma to average opinion; better to remain abstracted by commonplace necessities!  And yes, Christian theists have been hard put to it to make full sense of it all since the demise of the Ptolemaic Solar System. As for the two perspectives, I'll vote for the second perspective; the human organism is a magnificent creation, an informational miracle, an organized material contingency of unparalleled surprisal and completely unwarranted by any logic known to man.  If the configurations of life really were the result of a mere random selection you could search all the grains of dust across the visible universe and not find an example of life.

Brian: The story of the cosmos is surely the greatest story ever told. 

My Comment: Certainly a great story but not quite the greatest story in my opinion. The greatest story is the the revelation of the story of salvation (Philippians 2:1-11). 

Brian: The Sun has created the things which brings meaning to the cosmos - life & human beings. Ancient cultures deified the Sun. 

My Comment: The traditional deification of the Sun is seen here to have a metaphorical truth. This metaphor recognizes that without the Sun life wouldn't happen.  The prehistoric agriculturalists understood the importance of the Sun and the cycles of the heavens. Not surprisingly then, they saw those cycles as having divine significance.  It is this tendency to deify the heavens (and nature) that Genesis 1 tries to head-off

Brian: Far back at the beginning gravity began to sculpt the universe in hydrogen and helium. The thing that brings meaning to the universe is life and life is just complex chemistry.  The Sun had power to turn planets into worlds. Quite by chance the earth formed. 

My Comment: In this first episode of Universe Brian repeats more than once his view that he sees meaning exclusively intrinsic to the very ephemeral appearance of life; nowhere else is meaning to be found. If the chances he talks of failed to bring about the existence of life then there would be no meaning; in Brian's world meaning is captive to chance. Brian uses that emotionally loaded word "just"; Viz: "life is just complex chemistry".  But given that this chemistry, if appropriately configured, generates the conscious first person perspective there is no "just" about it far as I'm concerned; this is a highly anthropocentric feature of matter. Chemistry has been miraculously provisioned to generate consciousness, if used rightly. The human mind is more than the third person perspective, a perspective which is bound to only see the first person perspective as a complex organization of interacting particles (i.e. chemistry). 

Brian: How can the complexity of life emerge completely naturally in the universe: It's the huge temperature difference between the Sun and the cold of space which creates life. This temperature difference allows for the building of complexity.  Life is miraculous! 

My Comment:  In talking about life emerging "completely naturally" I guess Brian is thinking of its emergence being sufficiently provisioned by the natural laws of physics. The extremely low entropy of the Hot Sun/Cold Space temperature difference is exploited by those laws to create the low entropy configurations of life. Many naïve Christian young earthists still falsely believe the second law of thermodynamics is an outright barrier to the emergence of life, not realizing that entropy is a crude parameter which only measures the statistical weight of a total system. Entropy is an extensive rather than an intensive variable and therefore given that the 2nd law only pertains to this extensive variable it is not in-and-of-itself sufficient condition to rule out the possibility of increases in order in localized pockets of the system; the second law only tells us about the inevitably increasing statistical weight of the whole system. Crystal formation is a simple case in point: Crystal formation entails a considerable local increase in order although the overall system in which crystals are formed increases in entropy. 

To be fair, however, life in its complexity of organization is a very different kettle of fish to simple crystals. But to prove that localized increases in order can't happen and that life can't evolve requires a much more thorough understanding of the implications of the natural physical regime and whether it allows for the probable existence of localized pockets of complex organisation. In particular there is neither proof nor disproof of the mathematical existence of the spongeam, the necessary condition for evolution. The spongeam is a structure in configuration space that considerably constrains the random diffusive dynamic of conventional evolution. This structure entails an overall increase in entropy with time and yet pockets of complex order may be permitted if the channels of the spongeam funnel evolutionary migration through regions of complex order.  But at least one fundamentalist seems to have twigged that the analytical difficulties here are such that he has advised the 2nd law not be used as a way of trying to refute evolution. 

Brian rightly sees life as a miracle. But in what sense does he see it as a miracle? Is he aware that any physical system which generates life in a relatively short cosmic time must have a miracle of contingency at its heart? (See here for more)

Brian: We exist because of the sun. We don't need to invent imaginary gods to explain the universe. We can replace them with the real thing; everything has been created and crafted  by stars. 

My Comment:  This really does look like the sort of thing an atheist would say.  It also looks like the classic exclusive-OR of dualism, that is, the "God did it" or "natural forces did it" paradigm where the suggestion is that if it's one then it's not the other. I criticize this false dualism more fully here. 

Brian: But dark will eventually descend as the stars fade. Red dwarfs like Trappist-1 (already 7 billion years old)  will, 5 billion years from now, see our Sun flicker and fade way forever. The death of the Sun is just one of many and cosmically speaking is an inconsequential event. But it would be the end of a glorious time of art, music, poetry and science and that does matter. The fragility of our lives makes them valuable. 

My Comment: But valuable only to us, otherwise, according to Brian, our lives are of no significant import in the wider cosmic context.  

Brian's prognostications here are very reminiscent of H. G. Wells' The Time Machine a story which contrasts the halcyon days of human civilization with its eventual & inevitable demise when seen  in the big picture. The Sunset of Mankind, Wells called it in his chapter 6. The above is Brian's Sunset of Mankind. His quoting a glorious time of art, music, poetry and science  is a bit one sided though: The history of humanity includes many, many brutally ugly injustices & sins, injustices & sins that will never be called to account & settled according to Brian's Sunset picture (Or Wells' picture for that matter). 

Brian: In 10 trillion years the last star (which will be a red dwarf) will fade. The universe becomes a void without light, life or meaning. The darkness will last forever. As the stars fade so does all possibility of  life and meaning. The stars illuminated the dark and allowed us to illuminate it too. 

My Comment: The anti-climax to end all anti-climaxes!  Brian is asking us to gain some comfort from the idea that we are, or rather were, a tiny island of meaning which is eventually and inevitably swallowed up by the dark abyssal deep of chaos (See Genesis 1:2). The kaoskampf ends in defeat for humanity on this account. If Brian is agnostic and caught between atheism and theism he's not giving much space to the possibilities of theism. Perhaps he's hoping for a revelation and a ray of light to break through the gloom.  That, we can only leave in the hands of the Almighty Himself. 

***

Notice that in order to sketch out his grim prognostication for humanity Brian has assumed it's just a case of extrapolating the laws of physics far into the future. But there is an asymmetry between past a future: The past provides us with observational evidence of itself in terms of the signals it sends us; a consequence of increasing entropy. There are no such signals and therefore no such observations to be made of the future. See this book where I take up this question with a Genesis 1 literalist & fundamentalist who thinks that for scientists reconstructing the past is just a case of back-extrapolation rather than of observation and therefore treats the past and future symmetrically and as equally speculative. 

Relevant links:

Brian Cox and the Fallacies of Hope

The Wrong Scent

Footnote

* The Sunset of Mankind was the title of chapter 6 of H. G. Wells' science fiction romance, The Time Machine. 

Creation, Evolution and Information

 

Here is the link to my latest interleaved commentary which I have entitled Creation, Evolution and Information.  Nominally, it is a response to the comments of an anti-evolution fundamentalist but it goes a lot further than that.  Below I reproduce the contents. 

Introduction 

01. Fundamentalism 

02. Character assassination 

03. The good but imperfect creation 

04. On Genesis 1 

05. Evolution and dualism 

06. Natural selection 

07. Patent law and invention 

08. Information can be created 

09. Genetic mutation 

10. Genetic drift 

11. Conclusions 

The Epilogue 

Relevant Link:

Epistemology, Ontology, Creation and Salvation

Concerning Conspiracy Theorism

In this document I use my interleaved commentary format to counter Covid 19 vaccination conspiracy theories. My host in this case is someone I shall call Agent-Y. Agent-Y may (or may not) be a fiction or partly a fiction from my imagination, an agent provocateur invented to act as a sounding board for anti-conspiracy theory theory. I preproduce  the introduction to "Concerning conspiracy theorism" below.  

Introduction

This small book concerns the modern day phenomenon of conspiracy theorism. The layout of this book takes the form of an email discussion with someone I shall call Agent-Y. I think of Agent-Y as having projected themselves into the psyche of an advocate for conspiracy theorism and thereby giving us a window into their world view. But I must caution here that Agent-Y may or may not be a fictional or partially fictional character. That is, Agent-Y could be a figment of my imagination created in order to bring out the errors of the conspiracy theorist world view.

Conspiracy theorists seek to make sense of social reality with their “join-the-dots” explanatory narratives, narratives whose chief feature are shadowy and malign agencies who, it is alleged, subtly direct the course of history from behind their cover. These nefarious agencies, we are told, are hidden deceivers whose all but omniscient information and control is a major source of social angst.  The true motive of these hidden agencies is not always clear but the old-fashioned lust for power, wealth & glory is often implicated. But “glory” is problematical if power & wealth isn’t public. As we shall see this is just one aspect of conspiracy theorism which cuts across what we know about human nature.

This book starts with the Loveworld  news item which appeared in the January 21 edition of Premier Christianity magazine (See left). Loveworld is a Christian satellite TV channel that was airing false conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 virus. This group believed that the social dynamic surrounding Covid-19 to be the planned product of mysterious conspirators who have such exquisite information and control that they can both effectively rule and at the same time remain almost completely undercover to most us, except of course to the enlightened conspiracy theorists who can pride themselves in having cracked the code of appearances and seen behind the façade to the underlying secret of the “deep state” illuminati.

I have written articles criticising the “Fearlosophy“ behind conspiracy theorism elsewhere, but in this short book I enlist the help of the capable Agent-Y who has succeeded in getting into the psychology of the conspiracy theorist and reveals their inmost fears and thoughts that drive them.  Without the help of Agent-Y this work would not have been possible. The identity of Agent-Y is above top secret and this means that I can’t even reveal whether (s)he is real or just a fiction created by myself or someone else’s imagination. Agent-Y may or may not be my alter ego or the alter ego of someone who is working with me.

This book then, like conspiracy theory itself, may be a creative artistic license, a fiction, but which integrates itself into reality with probing tentacles. To quote H G Wells’ Time Traveler in chapter 16 of his book The Time machine……

Consider I have been speculating on the destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?

Science and Religion. Part I

True, but I would want to add that religion can also suffer from idolatry & false absolutes
...and science can be infected by error and superstition. Let's face it, both are human activities and will therefore suffer from the vagaries & foibles of human behavior.

As I've said many times before, our current grasp of the explanatory objects developed by scientific epistemology explain nothing at all in a intuitive & deeply satisfying way; for those objects are in actual fact descriptive devices (Although I hesitate to say "just descriptive devices"). These devices exploit the highly contingent organization of the created cosmos to arrive at compressed descriptions, descriptions often expressed as succinct mathematical one-liners. Clearly, however, data compression can only go so far before it eventually hits a point of mathematical incompressibility, the compressibility barrier. At that point the progress of scientific "explanation" comes to an end with no real answer to those nagging intuitively sensed questions which arise when descriptive science has left us at a place of extreme  contingency (albeit succinctly expressed contingency). 

The descriptive laws of physics appear to be arbitrarily selected from the platonic world of mathematical possibility, the only sure constraint on this arbitrariness being the weak anthropic principle. Descriptive laws of this type can never make claim to explanatory completeness in an absolute sense. Moreover contemporary physics seems to be at a stage of diminishing returns as the development of physics logjams over gravity and string theory. This may be an outcome of the fact that further data compression becomes harder on already very highly compressed forms.

The unnatural contingency that scientific epistemology has uncovered is acknowledged in a backhanded way by those  strenuous attempts to minimize the surprisal value of this contingency with multiverse models. The trick of multiverse theories works by immersing cosmic contingency in huge seas of randomness*, thus making the contingent uniqueness of the cosmos no more surprising and startling than if one would find a run of ten heads in a million throws of a coin. Some semblance of explanatory completeness may then be claimed and intuitions that a creator God is the author of cosmic contingency neutralized - at least in the minds of some. The human surprisal instinct is a noteworthy intuition in any case. 

If we leave the curiosity numbing effect of multiverse notions aside we are then left with the enigma of "why" those physical laws are the way that they are and "why" they are so reliable in anticipating and unifying our conscious experience and assimilating that experience into a rational grand narrative. But then what does the question "why" mean in this context? If I am going to claim that descriptive physical laws have an inadequate explanatory status in an absolute sense what other ways can the question "why" be defined and answered? This leads us into theology where the question "why" is best defined and satisfyingly answered in the context of the intentionality and purposes of a creator God. Here the infinities & complexities of the Godhead, unlike the simplicity of natural law, could conceivably hide the concept of aseity, thus ending the search for absolute explanatory completeness, albeit in a way that may well be beyond human understanding. The alternative is to fall back on the irreducible kernel of brute contingency necessarily present in the compressed simplicity of physical law explanations. 

But although the inevitably descriptive role of science is destined to always leave us with an irreducible kernel of unexplained brute fact, the explosive surge of scientific discovery from Copernicus onwards has weighed strangely in the intellectual scales and, let's face it, has been a challenge to theists. Although I'm not a science & cultural historian, in my quest for understanding I've had to come up with my best shot as to the whys and wherefores of the receding sea of faith and why science has generated a challenging intellectual environment for theism. Below is my list of scientific challenges to theism. I have touched on them to a greater or lesser extent in various blog posts & articles but in this post I bring them together into one pen. None of them, in my opinion, are insurmountable problems to theism although some are more tricky to deal with than others, particularly the last three in my list. But they all give rise to intuitive objections to theism that should be addressed.

***

1. Copernicus: This one is well known of course. The "Copernican revolution" is often lauded as the first step in a series of demotions of human kind from that apparently special cosmic status humanity was used to, the multiverse being the most recent step in the history of this series. In fact Copernicanism has become prototypical. Since Copernicus and the demise of the Ptolemaic universe humanity has lost that center stage feel which was once sure evidence that (wo)man had a significant place in the heart of an existing God. But the temple universe with humanity as manifestly centre stage has long since departed and  the belittling effects linger in our cultural consciousness.  For my response to this one see The Cosmic Perspective. 

2. Localised laws: One of the bugbears with the common concept of "mechanism" is that it is conceived as entirely a matter of local interactions between the parts of the mechanism. Those parts, such as atoms or fundamental particles, have a few relatively simple rules governing their near-neighbor interactions and it is thought that these "mindless" rules are then the source from which all else incidentally and purely fortuitously emerges. It is further assumed that these rules are the fundamental & primary reality of the cosmos and all else is secondary and ephemeral. No further questions are then asked about whether this system of rules, if it supports the development and maintenance of life, must therefore be algorithmically pre-biased.  Moreover, it is further assumed that these rules do not include global teleological constraints, constraints which (as they would imply "spooky" action at a distance) would really blow away any semblance of local interaction completeness & primacy. The oft overriding and superficial gut reaction to this picture of local mechanical interactions is that it is clearly entirely mindless in that in and of themselves these interactions obviously have no sentient apprehension of what they are doing and therefore any complex development built on them (such as life) is purely accidental and incidental. But this reaction misses the fact that a randomly chosen set of laws are very unlikely to favour the generation of life as is the case in our cosmos. This tends to prompt a retreat into multiverse ideas in order to neutralize the surprisal of cosmic contingency. 

3. Mechanism & Deism: The discovery of those quasi-localized laws governing the cosmos superficially made it look like a clock, an object which maintains its motions without human supervision. It was a metaphor only but nevertheless this metaphor, I propose, helped prompt a belief that somehow these laws sustain themselves by their own intrinsic animus. Although perhaps at first regarded as inferior to the creative power of God, they set up the initial hint that Deity may have some emerging competition over the question of creative origins and sustenance. Those laws started to assume an independent status and became in the minds of some so-called "natural forces" with not only autonomy, but perhaps themselves an engine of creation. At best the outcome of this drift of thought is deism and at worst belief that the notion of God is redundant in the face of this new creative kid on block. 

But the laws of nature are no engine. Strictly, as I've already said, they are descriptive rather than being explanatory in a deep way and as such only postulate patterns of operation; mostly patterns of high order and rationality which the true underlying cause, whatever that may be, maintains. For the Christian these patterns of operation are God reified everywhen and everywhere; that is, moment by moment and place by place. In that sense they earn the epithet "supernatural forces" rather than mere "natural forces", so perhaps we can expect miraculous output from those laws; they are, after all, the instruments of the cosmic Sovereign.  As descriptive devices those (super)natural laws are without prejudice & don't include any assumption as to the existence of an autonomous internal animus which drives them; that's something we may or may not add in our minds eye: If for example we attribute to them an impersonal internal animus and thereby raise natural law to a level where it has an autonomy of its own the laws of physics are then thought of as "natural forces" rather than "supernatural forces". This raises them to a level where they have the potential to compete with God as creator. 

Some may withdraw completely from the questions surrounding the origins of these contingent descriptive laws and just accept this happens to be the way the world is and that is all there is to it. Beyond us securing these succinct descriptions all other questions are considered to be meaningless or impossible to answer. That's more or less the line Bertrand Russel took in the Coppleston-Russell debate. For Russel the regular ordered world that is amenable to the predict and test epistemic is the only & ultimate reality. The faint signal of the anomalous, the erratic and the apparitional, which are far from epistemically tractable, is discounted out of hand or shoehorned in to the framework of the  knowable and repeatable world. 

However, I don't think contingency, as Coppleston hinted, is proof of God: Rather it's a pointer for the curious to progress further in making sense of the human predicament; in particular the primacy of consciousness.....

4. Absence of consciousness? Close observations on the human brain reveals nothing immediately obvious that one can identify as consciousness; at close quarters the observer only sees a neural dynamic. Conclusion for some: Consciousness doesn't exist and is an illusion worked by the brain; therefore humans are reducible to complex mechanism and as such have no more mystery behind them than any other complex product of "natural forces".  But of course consciousness is not going to be found if you are an observer beyond the person being observed and therefore, by definition, standing outside the experience of the person you are observing; you're just seeing the second person view of the first person. To discover consciousness and the first person perspective you have to look back at yourself to find it. Don't be fooled by an observer's use of third person language, a language which only makes an implicit reference to the fact that all observations on the working brain only make sense if they are carried out by another observer whose observations, of course, trace back to another conscious first person perspective. (See here for more). All third person language has its (implicit) origins in a first person experience. However, my own view is that the first person perspective will only arise if matter is configured in the right way; presumably as the biological brain configures it. Therefore formal complexity alone, such as would be seen in a computer simulation of the brain is insufficient condition for consciousness; the necessary conditions are that the right qualities of matter, along with the right formal configuration  of matter be used in conjunction before consciousness is generated. (I have a lot in common with the views of Philosopher John Searle on this question)

Consciousness has an irreducible place in our reality; in fact without conscious perception the material stuff of the universe has no meaning: In a self affirming loop that material stuff generates consciousness therefore making that stuff register in conscious observation, thus in turn giving matter an existential meaning. That consciousness has such an elemental and irreducible place in the scheme of things is once again another pointer for the curious to follow. That we are in a very contrived universe which generates the first person perspective prompts the search for the ultimate conscious intentionality; i.e. God. No surprise then that those who feel uncomfortable with this prospect, seek to head it off by denying the existence of the first person perspective and get hung up on third person language. 

5. Determinism takes away our humanity: It is unlikely that the laws describing our rational world are deterministic, but even if they were deterministic and moreover fully described the formal structure of human thought, that doesn't mean that "free agents" cannot be defined and be considered responsible for their choices. (See here for more)

6. No observational evidence for God.  This is not actually true: People invoke the concept of God in order to make sense of their life experiences by placing that experience in a theological explanatory framework (or "narrative"; in most cases this theoretical leap is carried out very informally). Experience, after all, is observation. Those theological frameworks (or "narratives") are ways of joining the dots of experience. But, of course this can be done with varying degrees of rigour and moreover some objects are less amenable to "dot joining" and testing than are others. 

With God, as with many other social constructs, we are not talking about simple physical objects like test tube precipitates and Hooke's laws springs whose simplicity, regularity & reliability makes them amenable to elementary predict and test laboratory science; for the objects of the social sciences are much more complex and erratic and therefore of greater epistemic difficulty. To only confer the status of existence to elementary, regular, repeating objects which are amenable to highly controlled laboratory procedures is a form of epistemic self-mutilation. When it comes to those complex social constructs the epistemic keyhole through which we see the world becomes an all too obvious limitation. In short we have great difficulty picking up a strong existential signal from all but the most simple regular objects. It's no surprise then that the social sciences (being the science of hugely complex social objects) are so controversial. But epistemic intractability and erratic behavior doesn't imply non-existence. With God we are well out of the zone of test tube precipitating and spring extending science. I've written many articles on epistemic status. (See here & here for example)

***

So ends those challenges for which I feel reasonably confident in handling the relevant material. But that is not true of the following questions where I have much less confidence.

7. Suffering & Evil: Viz: If a sovereign loving God exists why does he allow....etc. I have to confess I have not much to say on this question which has consumed gallons of ink. My small offerings on this subject are here & here. Better to consult C S Lewis (among others) on this one. 

8. The Problems of Natural History: For standard evolution to return a realistic probability of generating life it necessarily demands the a priori constraints of a highly organized world and this therefore begs questions about intentional design. However, although at this level evolution looks to be a highly contrived process, at another level, the level of natural history, it looks haphazard, untidy, wasteful, a hit and miss affair subject to a great deal of randomness, suffering and survivalist ruthlessness. In my spongeam model of evolution we see a similar distinction in the difference between the highly constrained channels of the spongeam network (which are evidence of the contingency of an overall bias toward high order) and the random diffusion. It is the random diffusion component which gives the whole of evolution its dynamic.

When we look at the details of natural history we are faced with questions like where was God during those apparently wasteful mass extinction events? The inefficient hit and miss survivalist ethic of natural history seems more pointless than it is meaningful; it doesn't have the touch and feel of an intentional creation by a loving Deity. However, it has been pointed out by Christian Biologist Denis Alexander that the word "good" in Genesis 1 doesn't connote perfection but rather "fit for purpose" whatever that divine purpose may be (presumably ultimately to do with the plan of salvation & restoration). Even in everyday parlance "good" is not strong enough a word to entail perfection ....we can all be merely "good" by human standards even though we know we are far from perfect in our dealings with God and (wo)man; "good" may be, but not "good" enough. 

It is clear that (wo)man (and also Satan) had a propensity to fall and deviate from his/her ordained path of introducing purpose & meaning to the imperfect chaos of the Earth (See the "subduing" of the Earth in Genesis 1:28). The existence of that propensity along with the need to subdue the earth implies creation was not perfect from the first day; it was intrinsically chaotic and had a propensity to go wrong. The emergence of purpose from meaninglessness and the emergence of order from chaos was one of the original aims of creation and in particular the work of its human stewards, but this work was marred by the fall (presumably to be eventually restored by the plan of salvation).

This particular question is a close relation of the problem of suffering and evil.

9. Christian Crackpotism: There are more than enough sectarian and exclusive cultic expressions of Christianity out there along with plenty of bizarre Byzantine thoughts like flat earthism, QAnonism and conspiracy theorism doing the rounds in Christendom to be a serious challenge to any claim that the God of Christian revelation actually exists. The naïve "answers" of say Answers in Genesis which demand a perfect original cosmos, tyrannosaurids with 6 inch fangs eating melons and oranges, men riding dinosaurs, a mere 6000 years of geology and crass solutions to the starlight problem are simplistic treatments which belong to the pages of children's picture books. They have no doubt brought an untold blight upon the Christian witness. All this even before we get started on the worldwide religious situation. 

As with points 7 & 8  I don't have much I can offer as an apologetic on this one (but see my small offering here and also on pages 8 & 9 of  this document).  

***

If you are an atheist and very much against your expectation you one day find yourself at the Pearly gates, but you are barred from entering because of your atheist background, then simply tell them that in your evaluation of Christianity you had ruled out Christ's claims because of the antics of the likes of Westborough Baptist church, the cultic Jehovah's witnesses and personalities like Kent Hovind & John Mackay. On top of that floating about the God-o-sphere you witnessed bizarre notions like Mormon history, pervasive Christian conspiracy theorism, Christian flat earthism, and a gamut of anti-science notions. Mention these items and there's a good chance you'll be able to claim mitigating circumstances and be let in. One word of warning though: You might find Ken "hell and hamnation" Ham there, but please don't let that put you off: It'll give him a really big shock to see you and I for one am looking forward to the look on Ken's face when you enter.

And while you are there you might like to cite issues 7, 8 & 9 above as also being a problem for you. I'll certainly be asking about those myself.

***

In Part II I will be looking at the connotations behind the labels "natural forces" and "materialism" and in particular how they have detrimentally impacted the thought life of Christian fundamentalists and the de facto Intelligent Design community. 

Footnote

*  If we are going to posit the existence of a multiverse that rings the changes of platonic possibility then because disorder has such a high frequency representation (i.e. a high statistical weight) then disordered universes will be overwhelmingly represented in the multiverse ensemble.

The Transaction Web

Society is a web of connections and transactions

I have to say thanks to my friend James Knight for on so many occasions of getting me out of my shell and dragging me kicking and screaming into the muddled but real world of social, political and economic commentary. The complexity of these subjects and their epistemic intractability  means they are as open ended & contentious as they are significant. Below is my reply to some thoughts James had on using the arborescent and rhizomic networks seen in plant life as social metaphors. I think he will be commenting fully on these matters at a later date. 

***

Hi James,

Here are my comments!

I'm not quite clear how you are applying the arborescent and rhizomic metaphors to society. I think I can just see how you are applying the rhizomic metaphor: it would seem quite a good metaphor for the way people and groups of people and institutions are connected into a very complex network of transactional links through which ideas, information, materials, wealth and resources spread.  If you could map this system of connections visually it would be staggeringly complex. I suppose those visual pictures we see of web connectivity [See above] are a close analogy, showing a power law distribution among the nodes in terms of their number of connections: Viz: there are many nodes with just a few connections and just a few with many, many connections - and that gives us our ~ x^-n distribution graph. Such a picture displays a mix of centralized influences and decentralized influences and is evidence that the "market" and government are actually part of one and the same phenomenon and differ only in their degree of connection. (It's like when they discovered that radiant heat and light - apparently two very different phenomena as far as the senses were concerned - were one and the same). Given the way evolution has gone this is no surprise - it too has given us organisms that are a mix of central and decentralized networking and processing 

So I think I can grasp that, but I'm not sure where the arborescent metaphor fits in. The rhizomic metaphor covers both central and decentralized influences - seemingly. Or are you thinking of the difference between very visible and public transactions versus the myriad minor & private transactions that take place between those minor nodes of connection? Ironically, if we take the links between trees themselves in terms of chemical and  gamete connections we end up with a rhizomic looking network. 

As you know I'm pretty anti-Matt Ridley and the kind of "libertarianism" he affects to promulgate: I find fault in his view of evolution which fails to see that given the rhizomal metaphor, informal unplanned evolution covers both government and the market. As I've already said evolution has given us organisms that display both centralized and decentralized processing. It's a straw man to characterize government as a failed or incompetent "planner"; because of chaos all collective identities, whether organic or societal, are forced into the role of being complex adaptive systems - that is they are opportunists who necessarily have to adapt to changing circumstances as those circumstances come up. Apart from God himself there are no long term planners - there can't be in a chaotic reality.  It's clear to me that those centralized highly connected nodes are as much an aspect of evolutionary change as are the broad mass of little folksy nodes with few connections. 

Those highly connected centralized nodes are needed, as is the spider in the middle of the web, in order to respond to systematic threats and changes that decentralized processing cannot respond to fast enough or perhaps even be aware of. Moreover evolution wouldn't work at all were it not for a highly organized regime of physical laws & influences that constrain and regulate what is possible; it is an error to think of evolution as a random process - far from it. In that sense evolution itself requires both centralized and decentralized inputs. As you know I'm very much for the market and its powers of innovation, wealth distribution & creation, but frankly I see subliminal & crypto right-wingers like Ridley misrepresenting the argument for the market. I really fell out with him when he started hobnobbing with conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck (just as Trump did with QAnon and Alex Jones).  He was (perhaps unintentionally) playing into the hands of the far-right.

Political reality seems to be a curved space. As the far-right and the far-left both seek the dismantling of the state in favour of their ideologies which purport to aim for an ultimate decentralized folksy society, they seem unaware of the inevitable lurking opportunists in their midst who may seize on the chaos of social break-down to edge toward totalitarianism, the ultimate authoritarian version of the state, the ultimate "big" government. Thus, far-left and far-right meet each other as they converge from opposite directions. How ironic!

For Queen, Country and the Market!

Tim

Quantum Non-Linearity: Matt Ridley's Facts vs Science Paradigm (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

Quantum Non-Linearity: Contradictions, The Academic Establishment and Matt Ridley. (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

***

Some of those ideas I offered above are rather seat-of-the-pants and need a little more developing - in particular the idea that Market and Government are aspects of the same underlying phenomenon of transactional connectivity and an aspect of complex adaptive systems theory.

I had to take a much needed bash at right-winger Matt Ridley: He would likely object to the label right-winger, but that label has got more to do with the people and partisans he identifies with. The result is that it is possible to predict in advance, with a reasonable probability, what stance he will take on certain issues.....

Is he going to be critical of the Greens? Of course he is.

Is he going to favour living and let live re: CO2 emissions? Of course he is.

Is he going to be critical of the academic establishment? Of course he is.

Is he going to have trouble wrapping his mind round the relation of theory and observation? Of course he is.

Is he going to favour theories that Sars-CoV-2 was lab leaked? Of course he is.

Is he going to protest about pandemic lock-downs? Of course he is. 

Is he going to be a Brexiteer? Of course he is.

Is he going to write for the Telegraph? Of course he is.

Is he going write for the Guardian ? Of course he isn't

Is he prepared to go on the show of  conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck? Of course he is. 

I'm not going to comment whether Ridley is right or wrong on these matters (He may or may not be right), but merely point out the predictability of his stance because of the tribes he identifies with. But I will, however, venture to comment that he made a huge mistake in hobnobbing with Glenn Beck - that's the crackpot stamping ground of the Donald Trumps of this world. But then, like Trump, Ridley has got to think of his constituency and audience.