A Different Perspective on Evolution

Anything that doesn't fit anywhere else below.

Moderators: kiore, The_Metatron, Blip

User avatar
Fenrir
Posts: 4460
Joined: Mar 25, 2011 10:12 am
Country: Australia

Re: A Different Perspective on Evolution

Post by Fenrir »

Gibberish interspersed with links to people you think make a lot of sense.
Religion: it only fails when you test it.-Thunderf00t.
sean_w
Posts: 205
Joined: Jan 27, 2014 4:32 am

Re: A Different Perspective on Evolution

Post by sean_w »

The voice of wisdom says, 'if you would faithfully trace the course taken by the mind of man since it first began to apprehend regularity in nature then you must distinguish in the domain of nature herself between the earth and the universe beyond it. It was in the universe beyond, among the stars and planets that regularity and irregularity were first ditinguished. It wa not until men had transferred the habit of that discernment from the heavens to the earth that they beheld upon the earth too any laws of nature, and this they could do because it is out of that universe that the body of the earth has shrunk together. It has shrunk together and gathered into itself the life of the universe as the seed shrinks together with the parent plant. All its exterior irregularities point back to that origin, But the earth is not a lifeless relic. It is also the living body of mankind and permeating the old machine there is the new life that looks forward to the future'.
This is awful. It expresses simple facts in a convoluted way, and where it does make a claim, there's no reasoning or evidence provided to support it. Maybe it's an attempt to be poetic, and I just don't like his style. --dunno

--//--
The human is a microcosm reflecting the macrocosm that is the cosmos.
We're stardust. But it's probably better to wrestle with the difficulty of understanding emergent phenomenon, than to accept that everything, living and not, can be neatly combined into a single entity. --we are borg!
User avatar
BlackBart
Posts: 12695
Joined: Feb 26, 2010 11:29 am
Name: rotten bart

Re: A Different Perspective on Evolution

Post by BlackBart »

sean_w wrote: Oct 09, 2024 11:46 pm
The voice of wisdom says, 'if you would faithfully trace the course taken by the mind of man since it first began to apprehend regularity in nature then you must distinguish in the domain of nature herself between the earth and the universe beyond it. It was in the universe beyond, among the stars and planets that regularity and irregularity were first ditinguished. It wa not until men had transferred the habit of that discernment from the heavens to the earth that they beheld upon the earth too any laws of nature, and this they could do because it is out of that universe that the body of the earth has shrunk together. It has shrunk together and gathered into itself the life of the universe as the seed shrinks together with the parent plant. All its exterior irregularities point back to that origin, But the earth is not a lifeless relic. It is also the living body of mankind and permeating the old machine there is the new life that looks forward to the future'.
This is awful. It expresses simple facts in a convoluted way, and where it does make a claim, there's no reasoning or evidence provided to support it. Maybe it's an attempt to be poetic, and I just don't like his style. --dunno
Vogon poetry! :lol:
You don't crucify people! Not on Good Friday! - Harold Shand
User avatar
CharlieM
Posts: 1500
Joined: Jun 23, 2010 10:39 pm
Name: Charlie Morrison
Country: UK

Re: A Different Perspective on Evolution

Post by CharlieM »

sean_w wrote: Oct 09, 2024 11:46 pm
The voice of wisdom says, 'if you would faithfully trace the course taken by the mind of man since it first began to apprehend regularity in nature then you must distinguish in the domain of nature herself between the earth and the universe beyond it. It was in the universe beyond, among the stars and planets that regularity and irregularity were first distinguished. It was not until men had transferred the habit of that discernment from the heavens to the earth that they beheld upon the earth too any laws of nature, and this they could do because it is out of that universe that the body of the earth has shrunk together. It has shrunk together and gathered into itself the life of the universe as the seed shrinks together with the parent plant. All its exterior irregularities point back to that origin, But the earth is not a lifeless relic. It is also the living body of mankind and permeating the old machine there is the new life that looks forward to the future'.
This is awful. It expresses simple facts in a convoluted way, and where it does make a claim, there's no reasoning or evidence provided to support it. Maybe it's an attempt to be poetic, and I just don't like his style. --dunno
You expect to find answers and supporting evidence in one short passage spoken by the character, 'voice of wisdom', in Barfield's novel, Unancestral Voice? Barfield can hardly be blamed for the lack of context when I was the one who tore this paragraph out of one book which itself is a small part of Barfield's writings. Only you can say if your judgement above was made after familiarizing yourself with the source of the passage and the further writings of Barfield. I know that being quick to judge without a serious attempt at understanding is something of which I myself have often been guilty.

The Wikipedia entry for Barfield begins:
Arthur Owen Barfield (9 November 1898 – 14 December 1997) was an English philosopher, author, poet, critic, and member of the Inklings.
and gives a short introduction on him.

Supporting evidence for those words spoken by 'the voice of reason' can be found here and in the books Barfield has written shown here
Max Planck: "I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivitive from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness."
sean_w
Posts: 205
Joined: Jan 27, 2014 4:32 am

Re: A Different Perspective on Evolution

Post by sean_w »

Barfield can hardly be blamed for the lack of context when I was the one who tore this paragraph out of one book which itself is a small part of Barfield's writings.
That’s fair, and if your intention was only to introduce Barfield as someone who argues for a living cosmos, then I could’ve just said the writing is convoluted and not to my taste.
I know that being quick to judge without a serious attempt at understanding is something of which I myself have often been guilty.
That’s a fair point too. Have you also ever been guilty of doing all a thinker’s work for him?

--//--

Anyway, here’s a simple passage that expresses simple facts simply, and promises to explain more difficult things later:

“We animals are the most complicated things in the known universe. The universe that we know, of course, is a tiny fragment of the actual universe. There may be yet more complicated objects than us on other planets, and some of them may already know about us. But this doesn’t alter the point that I want to make. Complicated things, everywhere, deserve a very special kind of explanation. We want to know how they came into existence and why they are so complicated. The explanation, as I shall argue, is likely to be broadly the same for complicated things everywhere in the universe; the same for us, for chimpanzees, worms, oak trees and monsters from outer space. On the other hand, it will not be the same for what I shall call ‘simple’ things, such as rocks, clouds, rivers, galaxies and quarks. These are the stuff of physics. Chimps and dogs and bats and cockroaches and people and worms and dandelions and bacteria and galactic aliens are the stuff of biology.”

The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
User avatar
CharlieM
Posts: 1500
Joined: Jun 23, 2010 10:39 pm
Name: Charlie Morrison
Country: UK

Re: A Different Perspective on Evolution

Post by CharlieM »

sean_w wrote: Oct 09, 2024 11:46 pm
CharlieM: The human is a microcosm reflecting the macrocosm that is the cosmos.
We're stardust. But it's probably better to wrestle with the difficulty of understanding emergent phenomenon, than to accept that everything, living and not, can be neatly combined into a single entity. --we are borg!
Our bodies are concentrated stardust, but with our minds we transcend the boundaries of our skin and expand into the universe. An example of the polarity between expansion and contraction.

The unity I'm am talking about is the opposite of the collective mind of the borg. Henri Bortoft writes about this in the article, 'The Form of Wholeness: Multiplicity and Unity', linked to below.
Goethe: "It had occurred to me that in the organ of the plant which we ordinarily designate as the leaf, the true Proteus is hidden, who can conceal and reveal himself in all forms. Forward and backward the plant is only leaf . . . .

[Nature] produces one part out of another and creates the most varied forms by the modification of one single organ. . . .

It is a growing aware of the Form with which again and again nature plays, and in playing, brings forth manifold life."
Henri Bortoft on Goethe and the above quote: This is the dynamical thinking of the participant mode of consciousness, instead of the static thinking of the onlooker consciousness. This way of seeing turns the one and the many inside-out. Instead of many different ones that are the same, we now see one which is becoming itself in many different ways. What we have here is self-difference instead of self-sameness; each is the very same one, but differently, instead of each of the different ones being the same. We now have difference within unity, instead of a unity that excludes difference. Furthermore, it is concrete instead of abstract. So instead of “unity in multiplicity” we have “multiplicity in unity,” which is the unity of the living source.
The quotes from Goethe are from his 'Italian Journey: 1786-1788' which can be downloaded here, and his Essay on the Morphology of Plants
Max Planck: "I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivitive from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness."
User avatar
Fenrir
Posts: 4460
Joined: Mar 25, 2011 10:12 am
Country: Australia

Re: A Different Perspective on Evolution

Post by Fenrir »

All we need is a bit more ethereal imagiwanking and we can all ttanscend the unitary singularity
Religion: it only fails when you test it.-Thunderf00t.
User avatar
CharlieM
Posts: 1500
Joined: Jun 23, 2010 10:39 pm
Name: Charlie Morrison
Country: UK

Re: A Different Perspective on Evolution

Post by CharlieM »

sean_w wrote: Oct 10, 2024 1:48 pm
Barfield can hardly be blamed for the lack of context when I was the one who tore this paragraph out of one book which itself is a small part of Barfield's writings.
That’s fair, and if your intention was only to introduce Barfield as someone who argues for a living cosmos, then I could’ve just said the writing is convoluted and not to my taste.
That's fair too.
sean_w wrote: Oct 10, 2024 1:48 pm
I know that being quick to judge without a serious attempt at understanding is something of which I myself have often been guilty.
That’s a fair point too. Have you also ever been guilty of doing all a thinker’s work for him?
No. But I have had conversations in which a person has said what they think and I have replied, "My thoughts exactly".
Max Planck: "I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivitive from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness."
User avatar
CharlieM
Posts: 1500
Joined: Jun 23, 2010 10:39 pm
Name: Charlie Morrison
Country: UK

Re: A Different Perspective on Evolution

Post by CharlieM »

sean_w wrote: Oct 10, 2024 1:48 pm Anyway, here’s a simple passage that expresses simple facts simply, and promises to explain more difficult things later:

“We animals are the most complicated things in the known universe. The universe that we know, of course, is a tiny fragment of the actual universe. There may be yet more complicated objects than us on other planets, and some of them may already know about us. But this doesn’t alter the point that I want to make. Complicated things, everywhere, deserve a very special kind of explanation. We want to know how they came into existence and why they are so complicated. The explanation, as I shall argue, is likely to be broadly the same for complicated things everywhere in the universe; the same for us, for chimpanzees, worms, oak trees and monsters from outer space. On the other hand, it will not be the same for what I shall call ‘simple’ things, such as rocks, clouds, rivers, galaxies and quarks. These are the stuff of physics. Chimps and dogs and bats and cockroaches and people and worms and dandelions and bacteria and galactic aliens are the stuff of biology.”

The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
It's been a very long time since I read that book.

Dawkins simplifies to the extent that compared to reality his models bear only the slightest superficial hint of resemblance. Take this quote for example:

The Blind Watchmaker page 59:
Nothing in my biologists intuition, nothing in my twenty years' experience of programming computers, and nothing in my wildest dreams, prepared me for what actually emerged on the screen. I can't remember exactly when in the sequence it first began to dawn on me that an evolved resemblance to something like an insect was possible. With a wild surmise, I began to breed, generation after generation, from whichever child looked most like an insect. My incredulity grew in parallel with the evolving resemblance. You see the eventual results at the bottom of figure 4. Admittedly they have eight legs like a spider, instead of six like an insect, but even so! I still cannot conceal from you my feeling of exultation as I first watched these exquisite creatures emerging before my eyes.
Image

The descendants are selected according to the goal of looking 'most like an insect'. In what way do two dimensional static stick figures, having emerged from a single dot of ink, resemble insects with their complex developmental history, host of microbiological processes and metabolisms?

When Goethe compared organisms and organs he considered all of the external and internal morphologies, their environments, development over their lifespans, and much more. Dawkins is doing the equivalent of looking up at the clouds and being amazed at the resemblance one has to a duck.
Max Planck: "I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivitive from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness."
User avatar
The_Metatron
Moderator
Posts: 23121
Joined: Feb 28, 2010 8:32 pm
Name: Jesse
Country: United States
Location: Lewis County, New York

Re: A Different Perspective on Evolution

Post by The_Metatron »

Otto: “Apes don’t read philosophy!”
Wanda: “Yes, they do Otto! They just don’t understand it!”

Just like you thought Dawkins was trying to model insects with his biomorphs program.

No. He was demonstrating how selection produces results by letting the user be the force of selection.
User avatar
CharlieM
Posts: 1500
Joined: Jun 23, 2010 10:39 pm
Name: Charlie Morrison
Country: UK

Re: A Different Perspective on Evolution

Post by CharlieM »

The_Metatron wrote: Oct 11, 2024 12:17 pm Otto: “Apes don’t read philosophy!”
Wanda: “Yes, they do Otto! They just don’t understand it!”

Just like you thought Dawkins was trying to model insects with his biomorphs program.

No. He was demonstrating how selection produces results by letting the user be the force of selection.
The trouble is he was writing a book for the general public and his books have had a tremendous influence on how the public come to understand biology. His enthusiasm for making the comparison that he does rubs off on his readers. And so people are bound to make the same comparison that he does. And it is no real comparison at all, so why does he put so much emphasis on his trivial observation?

And the only thing his demonstration shows is that selection can follow a preordained path. It is aimed at producing physical forms in accordance with those forms that have been pictured in the mind of a rational thinking being. "I have an idea in my mind of what insects look like and I am going to select the forms that more closely conform to this idea."
Max Planck: "I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivitive from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness."
User avatar
Spearthrower
Posts: 33949
Joined: Feb 25, 2010 6:11 pm
Country: Thailand
Location: กรุงเทพมหานคร

Re: A Different Perspective on Evolution

Post by Spearthrower »

CharlieM wrote: Sep 26, 2024 3:28 pm I'd like to make a prediction. It will not be long before this thread is moved out of the "Evolution & Natural Selection" topic.

Any bets on where it will end up?
Philosophy?

That's where it should be as it's not science (i.e. this subforum's focus), just about a scientific topic. It's philosophy of science.

But as it didn't move... I guess we were both wrong?
I'm not an atheist; I just don't believe in gods :- that which I don't belong to isn't a group!
Religion: Mass Stockholm Syndrome

Learn Stuff. Stuff good. https://www.coursera.org/
User avatar
Spearthrower
Posts: 33949
Joined: Feb 25, 2010 6:11 pm
Country: Thailand
Location: กรุงเทพมหานคร

Re: A Different Perspective on Evolution

Post by Spearthrower »

CharlieM wrote: Oct 11, 2024 12:55 pm
The_Metatron wrote: Oct 11, 2024 12:17 pm Otto: “Apes don’t read philosophy!”
Wanda: “Yes, they do Otto! They just don’t understand it!”

Just like you thought Dawkins was trying to model insects with his biomorphs program.

No. He was demonstrating how selection produces results by letting the user be the force of selection.
The trouble is he was writing a book for the general public and his books have had a tremendous influence on how the public come to understand biology. His enthusiasm for making the comparison that he does rubs off on his readers. And so people are bound to make the same comparison that he does. And it is no real comparison at all, so why does he put so much emphasis on his trivial observation?

And the only thing his demonstration shows is that selection can follow a preordained path. It is aimed at producing physical forms in accordance with those forms that have been pictured in the mind of a rational thinking being. "I have an idea in my mind of what insects look like and I am going to select the forms that more closely conform to this idea."

It's obviously been explained to you already, but there's no 'preordained path' at all, I have no idea what you're talking about as it's completely false and directly contradictory to facts.

Rather, it shows how selection can sculpt organisms. It doesn't matter whether the selection is conscious or not - this is a red herring on your part. The principle of random variation with generational non-random selection is established in a manner clear to everyone except those motivated towards bad faith arguments.
I'm not an atheist; I just don't believe in gods :- that which I don't belong to isn't a group!
Religion: Mass Stockholm Syndrome

Learn Stuff. Stuff good. https://www.coursera.org/
Post Reply