chinglu's version of evolution and abiogenesis

I'm not sure why he introduces this, other than to dispute something like:

from a NYT obituary entitled "Sewall Wright, 98, Who Formed Mathematical Basis for Evolution".

Exactly. The basis for applying a mathematical principle isn't done in a vacuum. It comes out of rational relationship between the observed phenomenon and the applicable principle.

You are demonstrating an actual working knowledge of how and why particular principles can be linked to the observed phenomena. Now imagine trying to take this kind of analysis to the question of giving a "mathematical proof" that evolutionary theory is correct. It's bizarre; I think you said "nonsense".

I have no doubt that we can start identifying all kinds of mathematical principles in the way bond angles work out to give the helix its particular geometry, or whether a particular selective pressure is acting on a population uniformly or in a normal distribution, and how to collect the statistics, and so on. Obviously heredity and the way traits are distributed among the products of hybridizing follow some straightforward ratios but are also probabilistic.

But this is just one person's weird way of demanding a contrived proof. Until he can address the question of where the Galapagos finches came from, and why this posed a such a serious "proof" to Darwin, chinglu will be skirting the most fundamental issues facing creationists.

Everyone should try to walk through this at least once. It quite an eye opener. And fun, like solving a puzzle. That chart isn't there for its own good looks. It follows directly from "generating" the orbitals by order of ascending energy level and according to the formulaic pattern. It's neat to find a governing principle to the thing that at first glance looks kind of arbitrarily put together.

And come to think of it, this is the huge appeal the ToE holds for scientists of every persuasion. It's elegant, it's concise, and it works. That, and nothing more, is the appeal. People aren't "blindy following a crackpot", nor is it a matter of some (historically) fraternal conspiracy. It's simply good science. Darwin is to the speciation of creatures in the wild as Pauli is to the speciation of the elements. These things validate each other (obviously for much deeper reasons) and validation is what science is all about. We don't need to try to "demand proofs" for the origin of Darwin's finches any more than we might "demand" an explanation for the "origin" of lithium, or the noble gases, or the Lanthanide series. We are so far down the road from oversimpifications like the ones posted here, that the creationists simply "think" we're wrong. A high school education in math and science ought to alleviate most of their concerns. And I still think reading The Origin of Species ought to be a prerequisite to passing judgment on Darwin or his theory.

 

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The basis of almost* all knowledge is perception of "observed phenomenon." Pauli Principle, PP, for ferimons does not come from Quantum Theory ,QT, (which is also of course based on observations). It is an independent discovery about nature. In post 137 (a number ironically by chance also important in physics, called the "fine structure constant") I told how I had once used PP to construct the easier first half of the periodic table. As the PP does not fall out of QT, I started to wonder, if Pauli had done the inverse - i.e. from observations / knowledge of the periodic table, constructed PP. In fact that is the case:

"... In 1922, Niels Bohr updated his model of the atom by assuming that certain numbers of electrons (for example 2, 8 and 18) corresponded to stable "closed shells". Pauli looked for an explanation for these numbers, which were at first only empirical. At the same time he was trying to explain experimental results in the Zeeman effect in atomic spectroscopy and in ferromagnetism. He found an essential clue in a 1924 paper by Edmund C. Stoner which pointed out that for a given value of the principal quantum number (n), the number of energy levels of a single electron in the alkali metal spectra in an external magnetic field, where all degenerate energy levels are separated, is equal to the number of electrons in the closed shell of the noble gases for the same value of n. This led Pauli to realize that the complicated numbers of electrons in closed shells can be reduced to the simple rule of one per state, if the electron states are defined using four quantum numbers. For this purpose he introduced a new two-valued quantum number, identified by Samuel Goudsmit and George Uhlenbeck as electron spin. ..." From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_exclusion_principle

This is an excellent example of how valid** knowledge grows. - It is built on prior knowledge + observations. Bohr´s correct guess that "certain numbers of electrons (for example 2, 8 and 18) corresponded to stable closed shells" plus the observed separation of electrons into slightly different energy levels in a magnetic field with the number of levels "equal to the number of electrons in the closed shell" gave Pauli the clues he needed. I. e. there had to be some distinguishing features to make the electrons have different energy levels, yet at the time (< 1922 or 1924 anyway) only three quantum numbers were known. Pauli guessed there was another, which could take only two values, now called the electron´s spin with values called "up" and "down." Then, he could explain why the elements exist in different chemical groups.

ToE is (like all knowledge) build upon observations of nature, but not just the two clues (and known chemical groupings of the elements) that Pauli had but literally 10s of thousands of independent observations and confirmed by several dozens of predictions that turned out to be true. (My favorite was done in Brazil with tiny, rapid sexually maturing fish that had to lay a few eggs before they were eaten by the larger fish that swam in the same water below the water fall, being transferred above it. In a decade, as predicted, in the very different selection environment, they evolved: grew to be much larger, sexually matured much later, and laid many dozens of eggs, as they were not eaten at age of a few months or less.)

Back on Pauli: The PP may be the most important fact of nature (except for gravity). - Without it, there would be no chemistry , nor any band gaps in solids, so no transistors (or computers) and no sciforums for me to posts these facts in. Not even any life forms to read them! (As metabolism, a chemical process providing energy, is essential to all life forms.)

* A few facts do seem to be innate - not learned, but gifts of evolution, and many of them are found in other primates too. I will just mention two: (1) Brain has a special area for processing faces - If hours old baby is shown an oval with two circles for eyes in the correct places to represent a face etc. it is more attractive than if same items are not properly arranged. I.e. one "eye circle" above the other and both off center, with mouth a vertical rather than a horizontal line inside the oval. Even if he has never seen a face before! (More easily done with non-human primates born in the dark.) Many of the Gestalts ("good continuation," etc.) also are innate, but not all. (2) There is innate knowledge that falling is not a good thing to do. When very young child is able to crawl, if placed on large stiff glass plate that more than covers the small table it rests on, the baby will not crawl out into the region of the perfectly safe glass surface with no table visible below it. This also shows that when there is a conflict, the visual sense wins over others, in this case the tactile sense. (Called the "visual cliff" experiment, if you want to read more about it. It was first done at Cornell, a decade or so before I went there.) I tend to agree with Chomsky that the ability to learn languages is innate (and parts of it relating to parsing continuous sound streams into words and separation of vowels from each other and from constants, which even non-primate guiney pigs have!).

** It is a shame, that "faith", with zero foundation in observed phenomenon, often overrides observed phenomenon and very confirmed theories built on it.

 

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Happy for you, but note I said: "..."faith", with zero foundation in observed phenomena,..." I.e. was certainly not condemning all faith - in fact, despite not being able to prove it true, I have faith the sun will rise tomorrow.

Once you speak of some concept* or behavior in a child old enough to speak, it is very hard to to be sure it has an instinctual rather than learned basis. If it is instinctual and you are clever enough with testing pre-speach babies, most instincts can be found, I think. One great advance in such testing is the electronic pascifier - Tells minor environmental changes were noticed by changes in sucking rates that heart beat rates, skin resistance, etc. don´t, so even non scary things that just have longer or lesser attention spans can be observed. Eye dwell time is also very useful.

* very young (certainly pre-speach) babies do have a lot of demonstrable concepts, include ideas about number, shape and color constancy. For example if two dolls sitting on a table in their view have screen block the view for only a second, but during that second one doll turns its back or becomes bigger, or there are three, etc. they notice that. Pre-speach babies probably are learning much more than most think they can.

 

My point to you is you are wrong.

In order to support a TOE, one must provide the necessary conditions to that position.

You must obey the rules of mathematics to support your theory.

All we have available is the Kleene recursion theorem that requires a base case and if case n is known, then we know how to construct the case n + 1.

So, you have no rational basis for you claims since you have no mathematical or logical basis for your claims.

Therefore, since you have no logical basis for TOE, then TOE is a religion.

 

There is nothing to support. You have it backwards. The theory has to explain what nature is doing, nothing more, nothing less. You must explain how the birds got to Galapagos. The ToE, and nothing else, explains it. Until you get past this threshold, you are operating outside of science.

There is no "your" theory. There is no other theory. And the math is quite simple. The species on Galapagos originated there. The problem is, the islands were born long after the parent animals roamed the mainland. The animals on Galapagos therefore evolved.

No, this has nothing to do with evolution. You simply need to explain how the varieties of animals got to Galapagos.

The rational basis for the ToE is expounded in The Origin of Species. It's a question of natural history, not math.

All the logic you need is in The Origin of Species. Until you can address where the Galapagos animals came from, nothing you are saying has any merit. You have to explain what nature is doing, nothing more, nothing less. The rest is all styrofoam.

 

There is nothing to support. You have it backwards. The theory has to explain what nature is doing, nothing more, nothing less. You must explain how the birds got to Galapagos. The ToE, and nothing else, explains it. Until you get past this threshold, you are operating outside of science.

What mathematical basis do you have to support that a theory does not have to explain its fundamental existence?

Since a theory is mathematical in nature, it is on you to prove this. In fact, any theory must provide its fundamental basis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_(mathematical_logic)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_theory

 

chinglu

Not all theories are mathematical in nature. Mathematics is a tool, as is logic. Stop spamming us with idiotic Creationist boilerplate lies.

Grumpy

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The Kleene theorem has absolutely nothing to do with evolution. You're very obviously just trying to throw around the one complicated thing you think you understand in an attempt to bamboozle people whose specialities are biology related, not mathematics related. Unfortunately for you, when you do so you do it so badly that even people who don't know what the theorem is know you haven't got a bloody clue what you're talking about.

 

I will accept I am wrong but only if you admit that theories in science are not based on logic.

Otherwise, you lose and my logic holds since my reasoning is based on logic.

 

Are you claiming Creationist boilerplate is based on mathematical logic and should be ignored?

Can you explain why?

 

Let me try to explain it to you since the links went over your head.

All theories are based on logic. My links showed that.

Now, if you claim TOE is not based on logic, I agree.

Is that your claim?

That would prove my claim that TOE is a religion.



Bring all your troops out here because all of you are going to lose.

Here is the game. Is TOE based on logic yes or no.

If not, what is it based on?

 

But Evolution is based on logic, like any theory is.
So if you agree that it isn't, please demonstrate why.

Oops, forgot, you have no idea how to do that do you? And what the hell is this supposed to mean:

??

If a theory isn't based on logic, what is it based on? Wishful thinking?
Since you know FA about logic, but you seem to know a lot about wishful thinking, perhaps you can enlighten everyone (but I seriously doubt that).

 

Good. Then TOE is based on the Kleene recursion of logic that requires a base step to TOE since it is based on logic

So, what is the base step for TOE for abiogenesis that proves how all his happened?

Or, do you believe in magic?

 

I only know the religion of TOE has a creation myth.

Is that false? Can it prove the creation of life?

 

That is false, since the Theory of Evolution is a scientific theory that describes a specific process and not a comprehensive explanation for the existence of life.

 

Unless you are trying for the most stupid question award, you must think neither you, nor any other creature, is alive. We are as they say: the "living proof" that the creation of life occurred (is not a false myth) by some process on a very hot and sterile earth in the distant past.

I´ll reject what I think you believe was that process (God made the earth and life on it) by noting that only pushes the question back one stage: Who made god? Answer: an older and greater god, etc. for as many stages of an infinite regression as you like to consider.

Science has an embarrassingly rich list of "one stage" answers to how first life arose - just not able yet to selection even the most probably process.

 

Please state the Kleene recursion theorem and describe how evolution is based on it.

Kleene's theorem is in the domain of strings in an abstract language, arguably DNA and mutations are connected somewhat loosely, but how does the recursive definition of strings over an alphabet form a basis for evolution? What does "recursion of logic" mean? Does Kleene recursion prove the existence of alphabets, or is their existence an axiom?

Oh right, you have no idea.

 

Mod note: Okay chinglu, enough is enough. I’ve let you go on for far too long.

In my opinion you are pseudoscience trolling, and have been doing so for a long time. You demonstrate an awful knowledge and appreciation of science and the scientific method. You cherry-pick your evidence and present out-of-context research. You present fringe hypotheses as fact. You quotation mine. You demonstrate the typical creationist’s fixation on Darwin and his words despite the modern theory of evolution having moved well beyond his originating ideas. You present inaccurate representations of evolutionary theory and science. You obfuscate around basic explanations that are given to you. You present fundamental misinterpretations of the nature of a scientific theory. And in the end you resort to outright, totally unscientific creationism. And by all accounts you are exhibiting this intellectually dishonest behaviour and hubris in multiple forums.

I have issued you a formal warning for trolling and meaningless post content on the basis of this whole thread. It is the first and last I will issue to you. This thread will be moved to the Pseudoscience forum. As far as I am concerned you are welcome to continue your discussions with anyone who can be bothered in that venue; the Pseudoscience moderator will have jurisdiction once the thread is moved there. Any attempt to move your trolling back to B&G will result in a ban as per Sciforum’s policy on Warnings, Infraction points and Bans.