I recently read Philip Adams blog post entitled What makes us special. Apparently Phil has the answer to that question. Turns out it is...nothing. That's right, sweet nothing. In fact we're downright arrogant and full of ourselves. Not Phil of course. Sure, he has just answered one of life's most complex questions in one piddly little post, but that's just par for the course for uber-atheists such as Adams.
You see, some of us just aren't absorbing the lessons that science is teaching us. Such as cosmology (one little planet and sun amongst billions). And apparently we (humans) have come along really late in the "cosmic calendar" - but maybe that's our fault for being born when we did. And the harsh lesson of Darwin. I always thought Darwin was a rather kindly old chap, and I can't recall him being described as harsh before.
I suppose that means the people who lived before these scientific discoveries are excused then, because how were they to know? But we, oh yes we, know what we need to know. Even though, by Phil's own reasoning, modern science has been around for only a ridiculously short period of time, we can be assured that nothing new will come up that may require humans to change their minds about their "specialness". Now that's hubris.
Turns out that Phil's quite the statistician also: "The trillions of life forms that seem statistically inevitable on the billions of other planets...". Hmm, lets see, we have a sample of one, so yeah, we can extrapolate from that. No problems.
But I really must disagree with the following assertion of Phil's: "Everything we do impresses us enormously, no matter how eccentric or insane". Phil's blog post is definitely insane, but I for one am not terribly impressed by it.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Dastardly Dawkins
Let me come clean. I'm a bible-believing christian. And I read Dawkins. I find Dawkins interesting, irritating and incredibly infuriating. But...I do to some degree empathise with some of Dawkins' sentiments. As a bible-believing christian this may seem odd, but let me explain.
It is clear that he is enamoured with the idea that life can be explained by a small set of principles. In his case it is of course the relatively simple principles of evolution, such as natural selection and genetic mutation. The idea that complex things can be 'explained' by simple ideas/principles is an alluring one, and one that appeals to me also.
For example, I have always enjoyed mathematics, and in particular the approach as exemplified by Euclid whereby you start off with a small set of core axioms and then build up via 'pure' logic/reasoning to more complex theorems. Many problems can be solved by applying the reverse process - break (reduce) the problem down into it's core, essential components, which can then be solved by using the basic theorems, which then leads (going back the other way - deduction) to a solution of the main problem.
But this leads to a particular mindset that many of us analytical, scientific types have - that ultimately anything can be sufficiently explained through the axiomatic/deductive approach. Or put another way, via a basic principles + reasoning approach. I suppose this is called the scientific method (but probably a fairly narrow version of it), and it has had great success, not just in the sciences but in economics, engineering and elswhere.
And people keep searching for more basic, fundamental principles on which to build their understanding of the world. Physicists search for the unifying concepts that will harmonise their theories. Management gurus search for that secret ingredient which makes some companies succeed and others fail (or they just make up something which sounds cool, has a modicum of logic to it, and has the potential to make them a lot of money). Computer science theorists agonise over what are the fundamental concepts that programming languages should be built upon.
But is it enough? Is it sufficient? Does an understanding of the basic principles, followed by correct reasoning really provide full knowledge of a complex entity/process? Is the whole really just the sum of the parts? But what is sufficient knowledge anyhow? Even if I had a good definition of what sufficient knowledge is, how would I go about proving that the basic principles/reasoning method does not always lead to sufficient knowledge? But then I'd be using the self-same method to show that it isn't sufficient, so would my conclusion be sufficient? Am I going around in circles here?
Anyhow, I think this issue is a good one to pursue to understand what underlies much of Dawkins arguments. Perhaps I'll tackle this in my next post. Perhaps not.
It is clear that he is enamoured with the idea that life can be explained by a small set of principles. In his case it is of course the relatively simple principles of evolution, such as natural selection and genetic mutation. The idea that complex things can be 'explained' by simple ideas/principles is an alluring one, and one that appeals to me also.
For example, I have always enjoyed mathematics, and in particular the approach as exemplified by Euclid whereby you start off with a small set of core axioms and then build up via 'pure' logic/reasoning to more complex theorems. Many problems can be solved by applying the reverse process - break (reduce) the problem down into it's core, essential components, which can then be solved by using the basic theorems, which then leads (going back the other way - deduction) to a solution of the main problem.
But this leads to a particular mindset that many of us analytical, scientific types have - that ultimately anything can be sufficiently explained through the axiomatic/deductive approach. Or put another way, via a basic principles + reasoning approach. I suppose this is called the scientific method (but probably a fairly narrow version of it), and it has had great success, not just in the sciences but in economics, engineering and elswhere.
And people keep searching for more basic, fundamental principles on which to build their understanding of the world. Physicists search for the unifying concepts that will harmonise their theories. Management gurus search for that secret ingredient which makes some companies succeed and others fail (or they just make up something which sounds cool, has a modicum of logic to it, and has the potential to make them a lot of money). Computer science theorists agonise over what are the fundamental concepts that programming languages should be built upon.
But is it enough? Is it sufficient? Does an understanding of the basic principles, followed by correct reasoning really provide full knowledge of a complex entity/process? Is the whole really just the sum of the parts? But what is sufficient knowledge anyhow? Even if I had a good definition of what sufficient knowledge is, how would I go about proving that the basic principles/reasoning method does not always lead to sufficient knowledge? But then I'd be using the self-same method to show that it isn't sufficient, so would my conclusion be sufficient? Am I going around in circles here?
Anyhow, I think this issue is a good one to pursue to understand what underlies much of Dawkins arguments. Perhaps I'll tackle this in my next post. Perhaps not.
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