Re: Fwd: Nature article on ID

The idea of an evolution toward Whitehead's beauty is a but uncertain
because of his definition of the aesthetic, which I take to maybe or
maybe not have any relationship to our sense of beauty.
Still, it is a large thought and surely not one to be dismissed outright.
I would be more inclined to think of such negative manifestations as
collateral and unfortunate neighbors to something else that is
beneficial, a negative nuance to a usually positive attribute.
Just a speculation. JimA

Iain Strachan wrote:

> Meant to send this to the list not just to Robert. If anyone wants to
> know about the proposed evolutionary origins of depression I'll have
> to look it up. If Alfred North Whitehead's maxim is true, then we
> must assume that depression is part of maximizing overall beauty :-(
>
> Iain
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Iain Strachan <igd.strachan@gmail.com
> <mailto:igd.strachan@gmail.com>>
> Date: May 2, 2005 1:53 PM
> Subject: Re: Nature article on ID
> To: Robert Schneider <rjschn39@bellsouth.net
> <mailto:rjschn39@bellsouth.net>>
>
>
> I believe it was Alfred North Whitehead who wrote that the purpose of
> evolution is to maximize beauty. I was struck immediately by the
> force of
> that statement and believe it to be true (though not the whole truth).
>
>
> I have a problem here. Is Cancer the product of evolution? Is
> depression the product of evolution? I have read a number of books on
> depression (e.g. Lewis Wolpert's "Malignant Sadness", and Paul
> Gilbert's book on Cognitive behaviour therapy), and it is frequently
> argued that depression is in fact an adaptive feature that has
> evolutionary origins. But, since I speak to many people with
> depression, I would not describe it as beautiful at all - it is a
> horrible thing that sucks all the colour and zest out of your life and
> makes you want to lie down and die. It leaves your head full of
> racing anxious thoughts and delusions that you can't escape from. It
> is surely one of the most ugly things there is.
>
> Iain
>
>
>
>
> The
> only things on this earth and in this universe that are ugly were
> created by
> human beings. It's true even of beetles, for which God (as J. B.
> S. Haldane
> once remarked) seems to have "an inordinate fondness."
>
> Bob
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Michael Roberts" < michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk
> <mailto:michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>>
> To: "Iain Strachan" < igd.strachan@gmail.com
> <mailto:igd.strachan@gmail.com>>; "D. F. Siemens, Jr."
> <dfsiemensjr@juno.com <mailto:dfsiemensjr@juno.com>>
> Cc: < jhofmann@exchange.fullerton.edu
> <mailto:jhofmann@exchange.fullerton.edu>>; <asa@calvin.edu
> <mailto:asa@calvin.edu>>
> Sent: Sunday, May 01, 2005 2:17 PM
> Subject: Re: Nature article on ID
>
>> Iain
>> I can hardly slide a razor blade between your evolutionary ID and my
>> evolutionary view which sees God as behind the lot with a certain
> amount
>> of fine-tuning thrown in. I see design in a wider way as did
> James Orr
>> writing in 1890s for whom beauty was part of God's design. This
> afternoon
>> we went for a walk by a wooded reservoir. It is difficult not to
> see God's
>> hand in everything whether the beauty or the inter-locking
> relationships
>> within the evolved sorry created order. Or the sheer wonder of
> the design
>> of our 6 month collie pup, who discovered the joys of running
> along the
>> tops of walls with incredible balance, - she's got Striding Edge
> coming
>> her way in the autumn! (Best mountain ridge in the Lake District)
>> To me the weakness of Behe is that he basically has adopted
>> God-of-the-Gaps and also does not seem to realise that
> biochemistry is an
>> incredibly young science. in the 30s biochemistry had more in
> common with
>> Delia Smith and cookbooks than what we have today.
>> See my chapter in Debating Design ed Ruse and Dembski, or my
> article in
>> PSCF Dec 1999 comparing Buckland i.e. Paley and Behe (see
> www.asa3.org <http://www.asa3.org> and
>> put in my name)
>> The other trouble with ID is that they focus on unexplained
> biochemical
>> processes (and thus I cant comment on them as I do not have the
>> biochemistry) but I cannot see how any of the principles of ID
> especially
>> those of Dembski can be applied to most of science and especially
> geology.
>> Hence my silly but serious question "In what ways are glaciers and
>> moraines designed?" Now apply Dembski's "gates" to a study of
> moraines. I
>> have tried to do it in relationship to work I did on glaciers and
> the Ice
>> Age and it simply got absurd.
>>
>> Michael
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Iain Strachan" < igd.strachan@gmail.com
> <mailto:igd.strachan@gmail.com>>
>> To: "D. F. Siemens, Jr." < dfsiemensjr@juno.com
> <mailto:dfsiemensjr@juno.com>>
>> Cc: < jhofmann@exchange.fullerton.edu
> <mailto:jhofmann@exchange.fullerton.edu>>;
> <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk
> <mailto:michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>>;
>> < asa@calvin.edu <mailto:asa@calvin.edu>>
>> Sent: Sunday, May 01, 2005 10:05 AM
>> Subject: Re: Nature article on ID
>>
>>
>>>> >
>>>> It appears to me that all you attibute to ID is implicit in TE.
>>>
>>> That was precisely the point I was trying to make. TE = ID
>>> Evolutionism. God "shaped" evolution by designing the laws of the
>>> universe so that the result was predestined. (As in the
> discussion of
>>> the Sierpinski gasket).
>>>
>>> Seems I've become a proper heretic now .. but I will say that it is
>>> via the valid objections raised by ID arguments of, e.g. Michael
> Behe,
>>> that I'm able to come to this conclusion. Anyone who has worked in
>>> optimization (my own area was in training of neural networks and
> I've
>>> also dabbled with genetic algorithms ) knows you have to design the
>>> problem representation so it can succeed. In principle, certain
>>> types of neural network can "learn" to reproduce any mathematical
>>> function from empirical data, but if you don't apply sensible
>>> pre-processing to the data (scaling, transforms etc) then the
> neural
>>> net doesn't stand a chance of learning. (Even with much more
> powerful
>>> optimization techniques than Genetic Algorithms, like Quasi-Newton
>>> optimization). By the same token, Genetic Algorithms aren't a
> black
>>> box that will solve any problem you want - to get them to work you
>>> have to design the problem formulation so they have an easy time
>>> solving it because they can't solve difficult problems where
> there are
>>> lots of "cliffs" requiring several simultaneous changes.
>>>
>>> Just how God could have designed a universe where there weren't
> these
>>> "cliffs" in fitness space is quite beyond me, and I suspect
> anyone at
>>> the moment, but to doubt that He could have is surely to doubt his
>>> omniscience.
>>>
>>> Iain.
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
> --
> -----------
> There are 3 types of people in the world.
> Those who can count and those who can't.
> -----------
>
>
> --
> -----------
> There are 3 types of people in the world.
> Those who can count and those who can't.
> -----------
Received on Wed May 4 11:59:44 2005