Problems with a Matter-based Universe
Einstein said that if we remove matter, space and time would cease to exist. However, this is a purely matter-based view of the Universe. We need not appeal to Kant to undermine this view; quantum physics does it for us. By expanding our definition of reality to include mind, it is not a question of removing space and time with matter but removing them with mind. Space and time may indeed go away with the phenomenal concept of matter, but they were never real in themselves to begin with. And in removing matter, we are only removing its ideation, not its noumenal identity.

We know from quantum physics that an observer, as a thinking, perceiving subject, effects the state of subatomic particles by the very act of his observation of them. Mind, by this god-like demonstration to alter the underlying structure of matter at a microcosmic level, is therefore something that cannot be left out of a complete account of reality at a macrocosmic level. Its inclusion renders the materialist view insufficient in understanding the nature of the Universe, as well as its beginning, evolution, and projected demise.

I will shortly discuss the mind/matter paradox, though its central unresolved problem undermines the materialist’s goal to join quantum physics and gravity in a unified field theory. This unity of reality does not arise from seeing the Universe as being exclusively matter-based, but as a co-creation of mind and matter, which is a transcendental unity that can never be scientifically demonstrated.

The best argument for mind being a principle player in reality lies not merely in its quasi-mystical nature, but in the strength and creativity of the very ideas it generates. From the discovery of the processes of the Natural World to the intricacies of self-creation found in mathematics, technology, philosophy, and the arts, it boggles the mind when it pauses to consider its own accomplishments. As Hegel would agree, we see not only structure in history through these ideas, but also a kind of identity to the ideas themselves—an ontology that, once brought to light, seems to have always been with us. (6/29/10)

Space and Time versus Ontology
“Regardless, what limits our knowledge on one level binds our souls on another. Schopenhauer and Kant provided a metaphysical foundation for something the Buddhists had known from antiquity: Everything in the Universe, from every atom to every galaxy, is—transcendentally speaking—the one same thing. We perceive this thing as being something other than ourselves, but this is only an accident of our birth. As children of Prometheus, we pay a price for having stolen fire from the gods: amnesia every time we go to look for ourselves in our thoughts. ” ~from Omar's letter, Chapter Seven of An Aversion to Ladders

Above the level where quantum entanglement occurs, one wonders what role space and time play in defining or limiting the identity of living organisms.

I am reminded of a story I once heard about the discovery of an ailing plant long believed to be extinct. As it was the only specimen of its kind, a cutting was removed from it and flown to the other side of the world, in hopes the sample could be nursed back to health and the species saved. Some time past with little progress, and then one day a researcher came into the lab to discover the cutting had bloomed a flower. Shortly thereafter, those in charge of the effort learned that the plant on the other side of the world had likewise revitalized and bloomed—and at precisely the same time!

This mystery can be locally appreciated in the behavior of groups of organisms, as when birds in flight move in step, resembling a flag rippling through the air, or ants behave as though a single organism with a single mind.

It can be argued from a Schopenhauerian view of Kant, that particles as waves, or waves as energy, or energy as matter, is all that exists as a physical fact*, and whether that energy is measurable, as with electromagnetism, or immeasurable, as with dark energy, the space this energy occupies is only an illusion. Put another way, nothing cannot exist, for what we perceive as being nothing (or empty space) is in fact noumenal. All matter/energy, whether as real or virtual particles, shares the same undivided identity.

As the processes of phenomena builds up from the molecular level to the level of organic and inorganic compounds, and then finally to living organisms that achieve a degree of consciousness, this single identity is never fully abandoned or forgotten; and no amount of space and time can cloak the intuited truth of it.

(*In The Standard Model of quantum mechanics, this is indeed true: empty space cannot exist because it is filled with a Higgs field, which has physical reality in space without a physical force.)  (6/29/10)

 

X-ray of Molecule

Life, Evolution, and Design

Evolution: The Unintended Road to Everything
“More to the heart of the matter, scientific reductivists assume the inherent ontological state of things to simply be what they are and do what they will requires no suppositions before single cell organisms and no explanations after random adaptation. The whole world, then, can be reasonably deduced from blind energy and dumb luck. Buildings logically follow from bricks, and it is in tidying up the job site where we will discover not only how bricks became their own bricklayers but also why they should want to build anything at all. Reductivists, with the faith of the converted, write such difficulties off as being the domain of yet to be discovered scientific law. But this leads one to incredulously ask: Why should blind laws conveniently favor order over chaos, especially given Chaos Theory prides itself on providing theorems that show chaos is not only inevitable, but determined?” ~from Omar's letter, Chapter Twenty-six of An Aversion to Ladders

We know more about physics and chemistry than we know about biology, for we know next to nothing about biology’s first principles. From this shaky foundation we strike out into evolutionary biology, which at least can employ a detective’s cold case trade in deducing motives from bones.

Evolution, as the case is made in the fossil record, is not gradual as Darwin supposed, but either punctuated or static as the evidence shows. Regardless, Evolution is easier to conceive and map within a few degrees of separation, even though the quantum leap required to get from an existing species to a new one is neither accounted for as a mechanism within Darwinism nor convincingly demonstrated as having occurred in the fossil record.

This is only the beginning of the problems.

Evolution cannot explain how the robustness of organisms should arise entirely from a mechanism of base randomness, or why, in light of the relative simplicity of the human genome, randomness, as a discordant and undirected pursuit, should be more complex on paper than is order. (Paradoxically, order in practice displays infinitely more complexity than randomness). Many within the evolutionary camp are troubled by the anemia of means when looking at the rich diversity of ends. And this bemusement begins well before we reach the complexity of mind and culture that, by extension, must be secondary, unintended luxuries of simple chance.

Through ideas like group selection, there is a worried if not openly defiant reaction against Darwinism’s blind process. And yet, as these few critics lurch forward to do battle with their nagging doubt, they function as headless swordsmen for a cause they cannot envision: for they believe in science so strongly as the revealer of truth, it is inconceivable their objections could be more than temporary stumbling blocks. But these objections allude to more than gaps requiring caulk—they get at the underlying dilemma for science: the nature of being itself.

Again, this is appreciated if not fully acknowledged as a philosophical point by some within evolutionary science, but philosophy is not science. And so, by default of its own parameters, science must sally on as though it anticipated a better explanation. It postulates, for example, the existence of hitherto undiscovered algorithms to explain Natural Selection’s preferences, and as if dry, computational pattern seeking as a process was somehow less soulless and more goal-oriented than randomness. Here, one is only delaying the same unsatisfying conclusion by means of extended elaboration on the problem.

Evolution versus Intelligent Design: Reductivism’s Reduction to Absurdity
“In the larger scheme, these three paradoxes (space, time, causation) form the bedrock fundamentals upon which all science is predicated, and this is necessarily done to make sense of the world. Yet to group these intangibles under the banner of brute facts is only to join the exposition late. Brute facts are not scientific explanations of any kind. They are the same mysterious blank canvas science shares with theology, art, and metaphysics. It is science alone that believes every phenomenon must causally account for itself; and it is science alone that checks the scope of its inquiry by this definition; and ultimate reality does not stand or fall by this criteria.” ~from Omar's letter, Chapter Six of An Aversion to Ladders

We are told, given an infinite amount of time, life was destined to evolve. Yet this is only to use one unexplained phenomenon (infinite time) to explain another unexplained phenomenon (self-directed matter). Given this impossible predicament, it is the great conceit of scientific reductivism to believe itself to be in possession of anything more than physical processes that cannot otherwise account for themselves. The debate, from this end, always begins in the middle of the debate; and by this means inconvenient paradoxes are left out of the discussion.

Contrary to scientific reductivist assertion, religion and metaphysics are not bound to scientific methodology for their legitimacy. Some in science pay lip service to the idea science and religion do not overlap, but this is less to patronize its opposition than to shutdown any deeper discussion into ontology and epistemology. The news and print media, which tars all questioning of Evolution’s first principles as the misguided preoccupation of conservative evangelicals, is obliged, by its lack of curiosity in a more comprehensive discussion, to let all-knowing science have the last word: Science and religion do not overlap: meaning, only the former can claim legitimacy as an extant explanation for the world. Science, therefore, is the sole arbiter of all that can be arbitrated by virtue of what it chooses to talk about.

Those in the Intelligent Design camp nevertheless play into the game, for they too believe themselves to be in possession of more than they can demonstrate by their own “scientific” terms. The central problem in this debate is one of believing ultimate reality is rational by our understanding and, consequently, knowable down to the umpteenth degree. Whether by scientific methodology or articles of faith, this debate proceeds from a mutually agreed upon faulty premise.

Still, I believe ultimate reality is closer in essence to Intelligent Design than to the materialist model advocated by such evolutionary stalwarts as Richard Dawkins. (Simon Conway Morris’ Convergent Evolution is more to my liking. He is Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the University of Cambridge.)

“That satisfactory definitions of life elude us may be one hint that when materialists step forward and declare with a brisk slap of the hands that this is it, we should be deeply skeptical. Whether the “it” be that of Richard Dawkins’ reductionist gene-centred worldpicture, the “universal acid” of Daniel Dennett’s meaningless Darwinism, or David Sloan Wilson’s faith in group selection (not least to explain the role of human religions), we certainly need to acknowledge each provides insights but as total explanations of what we see around us they are, to put it politely, somewhat incomplete.” ~Simon Conway Morris

“Any attempt to explain, entirely in naturalistic terms, the fact that the universe can now understand itself seems doomed to failure. Not only is the Creation open-ended and endlessly fertile, suggesting that in the future science itself faces an infinity of understandings, but so too there is good evidence of realities orthogonal to every-day experiences. Rather than trudging across the arid landscapes skimpily sketched by the materialists, we need to accept the invitation and accompany the Artist that brought Creation into being.” ~Simon Conway Morris

One can assume a degree of self-direction from the very fact life exists at all. Scientific reductivists are quick to argue impersonal scientific laws—and only impersonal scientific laws—determine the world we have; and these laws inexplicably (if conveniently) favor order over chaos and life over non-life. It is an extraordinary leap of faith to suggest blind energy and dumb luck should eventually lead to photosynthesis and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel—but there you have it with a straight face.

However, scientific reductivists undercut their argument in the God-like way they describe these determined, impersonal laws. The word “elegant” pops up time and again, which, arising from soulless matter, is a morbidly personal way to characterize something that is impersonal. Value as a human concept is by definition non-scientific and personal, yet it abounds everywhere as the unexamined fact in supposedly value-neutral fact-finding pursuits. The way many cosmologists lament the prospect of an ever-expanding, ever-diminishing Universe is a curious thing, for example. Why should an expanding or contracting Universe matter as an outcome to any branch of science?

“In truth, reductivists gaze into a starry heaven with just as much wonder as do mystics and theists, though without explaining how anything born of soulless accident should merit soulful reflection. To claim the value we attach to stars is a function of our endorphins may be true as a technical matter, but it is not the thought of endorphins that induces endorphins—it is the thought of something immaterially bigger than ourselves.” ~from Omar's letter, Chapter Twenty-five of An Aversion to Ladders

Selective Natural Selection
Many in evolutionary biology insist Natural Selection is value-neutral: It plays no favorites. Though it can be argued Evolution is brutally cutthroat, it is preferable among biologists to glowingly emphasize the “biodiversity” and “ecological balance” that comes about when random selection does its thing. In fact, many go so far as to suggest it is incumbent upon us as top dog in the food chain to become stewards of the planet and protect this balance and rich diversity.

Yet if evolution plays no favorites, and by this random process our species has become top dog, then why should we show favoritism toward those species lower than us on the food chain? Indeed, even if we were to recklessly destroy our habitat, as species before us have surely done, then is this not also Natural Selection at its value-neutral best? Either Natural Selection posits no value in any outcome or there is some compelling reason for us to circumvent it as a process.

Calling Darwinism teleological is not an exaggerated accusation. At the very least there is a latent pantheism among some evolutionists, and an assumed affinity between all creatures on this planet that must flow from an unscientific notion of shared dignity. This is naturally undeclared, as only the scientific demonstration of shared biology is offered as compelling reason for environmental intervention. Still, Darwinism is objectified ipso facto as an agent of the good, and as appealing as this may be to our moral and anthropomorphic reason, Darwinism cannot be so praised.

It is not my intent to deny scientists their emotional affinity with the Natural World, only to point out that in a Natural World dictated by survival of the fittest there can be no benevolent guiding hand in randomness. Natural Selection, here, in worshipful feeling if not in intellectual honesty, is simply a surrogate for God; and this need in all men is a clue.

Can't Get There From Here
There are many perfectly rational arguments for the nonexistence of God, assuming rationalism is the end-all and be-all of every belief system. It is like shooting fish in a barrel to take on arguments for God, though, when the barrel has been emptied of its fish, and one is left with an empty barrel, it is a hollow victory and unpromising start from which to strike out into the world and create an ethic by which one can live, and a hope to which one can aspire. And yet, on closer inspection, many of these arguments against God require blockheaded literalism to be believed. Let us take the Watchmaker Analogy, for example, where Creation must have a Creator by virtue of its apparent design. David Hume challenged this argument on the following grounds:

Hume argued that design, as defined as something that is created, applies to only a small fraction of the things we see. A watch may be designed, but a snowflake, it would be argued, is not. Snowflakes presumably follow natural processes where randomness is checked by laws that can be described mathematically, as with Mandelbrot fractals.

The difficulty with analogies, of course, is the assumption that things which are similar in some respects are similar in all respects, and this makes analogies no stronger than their weakest link. Calling God a Watchmaker is arguably a faulty analogy. Furthermore, calling God a Creator may be equally flawed. Perhaps it is not the case God creates anything, but that He is, in a dimension of timeless, space-less, causeless infinity, everything that is or ever will be. (Here I borrow from Schopenhauer’s crucial fix of Kant’s uncaused thing-in-itself, which Omar briefly explains in Chapter Seven):

“Simultaneously, whatever else the noumenon is in itself, it is necessarily the double aspect of what we understand to be elemental matter/energy. As a chair is both a collection of molecules and something to sit on, so too the thing-in-itself lies at the bottom of our understanding of these concepts. It does not cause the molecules or chair—it is the molecules and chair as they exist outside perception. More subtly, this relationship can be appreciated in the mathematical fix of Zeno’s Paradox. By saying all-possible infinities are equal to the finite, an indirect proof is provided that demonstrates a relationship of equivalence between the noumenal and the phenomenal realms. ” ~from Omar's letter, Chapter Seven of An Aversion to Ladders

This God-as-Noumenon argument also addresses Hume’s infinite regression argument, where causation, being seen as an end-in-itself, demands a prefect designer have a prefect designer, and then that prefect designer have a prefect designer, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. Again, infinity is not a property of a finite world where finite designers create finite designs. Infinity is the transcendental half of finitude. Hume is mixing apples and oranges by insisting we can reach across platforms to make a case; but in his defense, he is only arguing in terms set by the original analogy, which we have concluded are probably faulty. On purely logical grounds, Hume makes a sound argument, but this is not the end of the discussion, only a missed opportunity for a deeper discussion, since logic, when presented with infinity, has real and demonstrable limits.

Hume then goes on to argue the Watchmaker Analogy is incomplete, because we have only human-designed artifacts to look at and no other kind of designed artifacts to compare them to. The only comparisons we can make are between natural objects, such as trees, and creature-made objects, such as cell phones. It is supposed that some other kind of creation would appear different to us than what we encounter in either natural or man-made structures.

The weakness in this aspect of Hume’s case does not arise out of inferior logic, but inferior imagination (unless one believes imagination has less value than logic in contemplating unanswerable questions). Would not any creation by any “Divine” Creator be seen as natural by those emerging out of that creation? And would not unnatural creations, as with creature-made creations, always strike these creatures as being creature-like? This would include any extraterrestrial creations, which, as long as they conformed to known laws of science, would never be described as supernatural. What then would Hume imagine the work of a “Divine” Creator should look like by any other criteria? Would there be inscriptions like “created by a Supernatural God” written in the DNA? Would this handiwork be required to violate known laws of physics? Obviously nothing short of this would be regarded as compelling evidence for the hardcore empiricist.

Richard Dawkins, expanding on this by-design argument, claims computer simulations can create “highly complex systems” working from a simple set of rules, and they do not require an Intelligent Designer.

This may be demonstrably true, but we are light-years away from this kind of simple, one-dimensional complexity to what we see around us in three-dimensions. The computer that executes the complex system does not create itself, or the language by which it does its computations. Yes, the computations themselves are self-executing by rule, but nowhere in this simple one-dimensional model of complexity is it explained how we leap from math to living organisms to living organisms that create computers that simulate simple one-dimensional models of complexity. In Dawkin’s estimation, the only missing ingredient is time—lots and lots of time.

However, I recall a mathematical puzzle posed by Simmel to refute Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence, where three wheels rotating on the same axis were initially lined up by a mark on each wheel’s circumference. If the second wheel rotated twice as fast as the first, and the third was one-over-a-projection of the speed of the first, then the initial alignment would never recur. If every potential combination, it is presumed, repeats given enough time, then not even infinity would reproduce this configuration. In short, time could not guarantee unlimited access to every conceivable variable or combination of variables so they may fall into place for life to emerge. Dawkins might concede this point, but argue that not every variable need be available for life to accidentally flower. However, this concession does not aid his thesis—it only adds burden to those elements that are continuously available to make the most of an already impossible situation.

“As for Dawkins, fifteen billion years of random evolution could never spell out all the works contained in the Library of Congress with dead leaves in a fast moving river current. Such blind faith in the happy accidents of irrationality, like the hopeful belief chimpanzees could type out the plays of Shakespeare if given enough time and good typewriters, hovers somewhere between willful delusion and religiosity by another more disingenuous name. ” ~from Omar's letter, Chapter Twenty-six of An Aversion to Ladders

Yet one need not go as far as this to appeal to common sense. I once heard Many-Worlder, David Deutsche, lecture on the mathematical odds of us being here, and his calculations start well before we get to primordial soups, single cell organisms, and random mutations.

Since the Universe is almost entirely made of empty space, the chances of us being anywhere near a star are slim to none. Then, allowing we would be near a star, the chances of us being in orbit around a stable star are even more remote. Then, allowing for us being in orbit around a stable star, the chances of that star being at the right distance and right temperature so life may evolve on our planet are so statistically unlikely, it is impossible we should exist.

True. One can conceive complexity and order without a God, but in view of the inevitable role chaos plays in foiling any advantages complexity or order may unintentionally create, one does need something else rising up through the noise to point the way out. This assertion may be improvable by empirical means, but consider this:

Human action are to some degree freely willed, in that we are capable of setting rules aside to make decisions that benefit us. We cannot change the Laws of Nature or mathematical probability, but we can direct things, to some extent, in effecting outcomes. If chaos is the natural outcome of most activities, regardless how much order is present from the outset, then something more than order or complexity is needed to effect the desired outcome. This implies intention, and intention, since not randomness, would not only explain the orderly traffic jam we see around us, but also our existence as thinking things that can reflect on orderly traffic jams. If one rejects this, then one must fall back on counter-arguments presented by Dawkins and others, which, in themselves, demonstrate nothing of substance.*

*One is reminded here of The Weak Anthropic Principle in science, where “conditions that are observed in the universe must allow the observer to exist.” In other words, if we are here, then this must be the best place for us to be. This, of course, is empty and unsatisfying tautology to the hardcore reductivist, yet if one holds that the Copernican Principle is true in denying man any special standing in the Universe, then what manner of explanation can account for a complexity that is as delicate as it higher? Updated: (5/23/10)

Charles Darwin

One Size Fits All: When Sociology Becomes Science
I accept, with limitations, Darwinism as a reasonable deduction from evidence. But—again—we are talking about process, not the thing-in-itself. Accident is arguably one means by which life evolved on this planet, but to insist planetary order of this magnitude is logically deducible from chaotic quarks is to insist Victorian houses are logically deducible from their welcome mats. Many scientists accept that causation breaks down in the realm of quantum physics, yet in the next breath many will just as readily insist everything we are in human thought and deed, from morality to mental illness to art to religion, can be causally explained via evolutionary biology. However, this is less a demonstration of fact than a profession of belief.*

Sociology relies on rational argument for its proofs, and because it is difficult to determine the necessary connection between an individual’s stated motive and an individual’s action, and then translate that to an understanding of group motive and group action, the empirical evidence in sociology comes up wanting as science. With sociobiology, however, the influence of society has been replaced by the influence of animal behavior and biology, as seen through the lens of Evolution. And since animal behavior is as straightforward and as empirical as actuarial tables used by insurance companies, sociology gains scientific respectability. Yet what we have done is gone from a mind-shapes-matter argument (posited in sociology) to a matter-shapes-mind argument (posited in sociobiology); and it is as if this historical all-or-nothing debate never took place in the Enlightenment two hundred years ago.

It can be argued there are less politics and more empiricism in sociobiology than in sociology, but the sociological dimension of the new science remains a rational matrix: meaning, once you get past the fossil record, its all opinion and conjecture.

Though life itself is regarded as an accident in Natural Selection, nothing derived from it is seen as incidental to it. Evolution provides a rational explanation and utilitarian purpose for all things by a reductivist scheme; and like Marxist theory in days of yore, it becomes the coarse sieve through which everything is facilely reduced to absurdity.

For example, according to some in evolutionary sociobiology, guilt (moral conscience) arises in our mind because our bad actions done to second parties can be communicated via our language to third parties, which in turn may damage our reputation, which in turn may be injurious to our ability to procure mates and procreate, which in turn prevents us from passing on our genes. Thus, guilt over sin is simply Natural Selection’s way of making sure we get laid.

What is not considered in this one-trick-pony explanation is the nature of morality in directing people to aspire to a selfless good, as when someone gives charity anonymously. An even more elaborate evolutionary explanation is required here, for one can imagine the evolutionary sociobiologist analogizing the selfless act to selfish sperm: both can be cast as widely and as indiscriminately as possible as an overabundance of our procreative tendency. (Once you get the hang of it, conjecture in evolutionary sociobiology is an easy game to play, as long as you keep the endgame [passing on genes] in mind.)

Yes. We share biology and behaviors with the animal kingdom, though as Schopenhauer pointed out, as big as the leap is from non-life to life, the leap from animal to man is of equal or greater distance. Evolutionary sociobiologists routinely lowball the extraordinary capacity of the human mind to acquire and formulate knowledge, and so make little distinction between (let's say) Shakespeare and ground squirrels, since the similarity of their animal natures must be the thing by which both can be explained.

Man might be a reed, as Pascal said, but he is a thinking reed. Nietzsche went further to conclude that the distance between man and man is greater than the distance between man and animal. Meaning: it is left to men of insight to grasp the significance of insight in man.

(*Reductive science insists mind [which would include the ground for human behavior] is only matter [a byproduct of our material bodies]. Thus, mind can only reflect the dictates of matter. As I will explain shortly, this view of the mind/matter relationship is scientifically insupportable.) (6/27/10)

The Fairytale Aspect of Science
“Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program.” ~Karl Popper

It is perhaps human nature to see fate in circumstance where only luck is required to explain the situation. However, it is easier to appreciate luck as chance when we look at parts in isolation, and not as parts to wholes.

The dynamic of any debate is greatly improved by the narrowness of its scope. For example, the advantageous nature of stable particles in creating a stable Universe need not make the leap to anything else: i.e., the advantage of life over non-life, the advantage of intelligent life over simpler life, etc... Yet as scales of chance move up the cosmological ladder, they become more and more unlikely to the human imagination. Yes, the Universe is hostile once you get outside the shell of Earth’s delicate atmosphere, but this dire state does not strengthen the claim nothing is fine-tuned about the Universe. It only magnifies the improbability we should be here at all without something on the order of an extraordinary accomodation being made. (In this instance, the Earth’s magnetic field shields us from the Sun’s destructive solar flares.) Given the fragmented nature of science’s debate against design, it suffers from a lack of imagination is seeing how the riches of Creation, when viewed in philosophical totality apart from simple matters of chemistry and chance, are inconceivable in a vacuum.

Reductivists insist there is a link between random gene mutation and advantageous evolution of species as they adapt to their environment. Chance provides the mutation, and luck matches the mutation to the environment. It stands to reason a vast majority of mutations, being random, produce nothing beneficial. Such mutations can be made analogous to, let’s say, cancer, although it is unclear how anything like cancer would function in Natural Selection as a mechanism, since the disease affords little advantage to its victims. Still, for mutations to yield benefits there would need to be a lot of them.

Evolutionarily speaking, the emphasis needs to be on traits rather than mutations. For example, as water dries up, chance provides the trait where a creature can breath on land. If the emphasis is on mutation, a species may die off before chance allows a land-breathing mutation to occur. In this light, a gene mutation seems much more complicated than a trait, as a mutation can be anything. A trait, however, appearing at a higher scale of objectification, is easily compared to a talent or a tendency of an organism in seizing its moment in a changing environment. Given life on this planet is only a few billion years old, there does not seem to be enough time for haphazard chance to be lucky so often and so reliably, especially given the vital organism in each case must wait on random chance to provide it with the talent before it can take advantage of the talent. Interestingly, the vitality, will, and resourcefulness of the organism is secondary, as only random mutation can be the prime mover.

Beyond this curious inversion of will and opportunity, we have an inversion of mathematical odds. If we were to liken Evolution, as an end-in-itself, to gambling, then the odds would be consistently stacked in favor of the players over the house. Even though this flies in the face of most gamblers’ experience, science is convinced of its necessity.

Evolution has been compared to blind drivers converging on an intersection, where only one driver need slip through the carnage for Evolution to thrive. The difficulty with this analogy (as with so many analogies in theoretical science) is the story-like nature of its presentation. A blind driver is only a one-dimensional point, and the complexity of what is occurring chemically, biologically, and environmentally is reduced to a two-dimensional grid, with an arrow pointing in one direction by virtue of the conclusion (life) already being known. It is made to appear as though it were a simple game, where surviving one intersection is the goal. We need not concern ourselves with other intersections ahead requiring similar displays of luck. Likewise, we need not think about whether or not the driver has other handicaps, as in being impotent, or where and how he comes by his gasoline, etc… The determined evolutionist tells us tarrying on such conditionals are beside the point, as we project intention backward in time when looking at a string of just-so circumstances that lead to something. This is indeed a human tendency, but no amount of reasoning to dull the bright distinction of what is rather than what is not really convinces anyone luck alone is the kingmaker. If we see luck only in terms of fate-driven events, then the driver’s survival is lucky. However, it is rarely the case where everything comes down to a single act of luckiness. Such streamlining is the ploy of storytelling. (See my entry on The Future Does Not Need Us.)

Where there is not direct observation, science must put things into a larger context: in other words, a narrative. All stories, even those in the form of theories, must be linear and move from a logical beginning to a logical end. When I call science a mythology, it is to this aspect of its formulation I refer. This is not to say science is made up, only that when we move from empirical demonstrations to conjecture, science becomes less scientific by degrees. (7/01/10)