Re: [asa] observational vs. theoretical differences in scenarios; a direct question

Cameron -

1st, I agree that many in the biological sciences still operate with a mechanistic picture of the world. "Classical mechanism is dead but, like Charles Williams' headless emperor, it wades on through the disciplines of biology and psychology" is a sentence from a 1977 article of mine on science and theology, the 1st I ever published. I went on to say, though, "The great progress that has been made in those fields since 1900 should not be minimized, nor can one deny that much about the life and behavior of humans and other animals can be explained in mechanistic terms. & I called attention to Bohr's suggestion that life and mechanism could be considered as complementary descriptions, like wave & particle in QM - in order to analyze an organism as mechanism, you have to kill it.

But of course most physical scientists for two centuries before QM also held a mechanistic view of the world, so that their "overall view of nature, and of natural causes --was wrong." But that doesn't completely invalidate the contributions of Newton, Laplace, Maxwell, &c. Their theories are only approximations to more accurate ones developed in the 20th century but they aren't simply "wrong." Even less can the work of Darwin, who made use of mechanistic ideas of causality in only a qualitative fashion, in contrast to the quantitative formulations of physicists, be considered simply "wrong" because of this. I see no reason why the idea that natural selection is a major & indispensable factor in biological evolution should be seen as invalidated, or even threatened, by quantum mechanics & chaos theory.

It may indeed be true that a "Darwinian" world view, understood either as the world view of the historical Charles Darwin or as that held by some current "Darwinians," is not consistent with modern physics. But that's quite a different matter & in any case does not at all impact my own views.

It would be good if Collins, Ken Miller & other Christian evolutionary scientists would answer your questions for themselves. To the question of how someone might believe that God is to some extent in control of the evolutionary process without appealing to quantum theory, my guess is that many Christian would simply confess ignorance. Or they might simply not have a strictly deterministic view of science. Even with a "mechanistic" view in a loose sense, not everyone accepts a strict "Laplacian" determinism. You can get an A in a good general physics or even an advanced classical mechanics course without having to think about the philosophical implications of the fact that knowledge of the initial positions & momenta of all the particles & all the forces (or energies) in a system determines the state of that system for all time.

In any case, I repeat that quantum mechanics & chaos theory (which you tend to leave out), not Laplacian determinism, appear to be true & there's no reason for theologians not to make use of them in their discussions of divine action. Of course neither of those theories should be accepted "with the certainty of faith," & if it turns out - which is extremely unlikely - that classical determinism is true after all then we'll need to rethink a lot of things.

One thing we wouldn't have to rethink, however, is the question of whether God could be involved in the evolutionary process - even a strictly "Darwinian" one in your sense. God can be understood to concur with evolutionary processes even in a tightly Laplacian world. What QM & chaos theory allow us to do is to understand God's freedom to direct the evolutionary process.

Shalom
George
http://home.roadrunner.com/~scitheologyglm

----- Original Message -----
From: "Cameron Wybrow" <wybrowc@sympatico.ca>
To: "asa" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 9:22 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] observational vs. theoretical differences in scenarios; a direct question

> Fair retort, George. But then follow through on the logical consequence:
>
> Darwin's view of nature was wrong. Not "methodologically correct, but
> metaphysically wrong". Just wrong.
>
> And by "Darwin's view of nature" I don't mean his individual hypotheses and
> speculations about the everyday mechanisms of genetics or geology or this or
> that, many of which we know to be wrong. I mean his overall view of nature,
> and of natural causes -- he was wrong. Physics doesn't work the way he
> thought it did, and he tried to model his biology on the notion of "law" in
> physics at the time.
>
> My point all along has been that *if* we suppose that nature works the way
> Darwin said it does, then his theory of evolution via natural selection is
> incredible, and I cannot imagine why any rational person would accept it.
>
> Let me ask you a speculative but I believe reasonable question, George: If
> Collins and Miller had never heard of quantum theory, if they thought that
> variation and natural selection as Darwin understood them were the only
> available causes for macroevolution, they would believe in Darwin's theory
> just the same, would they not? After all, Collins and Miller never call in
> quantum theory as *evidence* for evolution. They call upon it only for the
> purposes of reconciling Darwinian mechanisms with belief in God as Creator.
> Their arguments for the full capability of Darwinian mechanisms have nothing
> to do with quantum theory, and come straight out of Mayr, Simpson, Hotton,
> or Dawkins, all of whose arguments are rooted in Darwin's 19th-century
> arguments, or they come straight from Darwin himself. Quantum theory has
> been called in *post factum* to interpret theologically a belief in
> Darwinian evolution *already held*, and already believed to be established
> by science without any help from quantum theory.
>
> As far as I know, the following thinkers and scientists accepted Darwinian
> evolution on Darwin's terms, without being influenced by, and in many cases
> without knowing anything about, quantum theory: Huxley, Mayr, Dobzhansky,
> Gaylord Simpson, Nicholas Hotton, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Robert Jastrow,
> Richard Dawkins. I suspect that is true for most theistic evolutionists as
> well, especially if their training was wholly in the life sciences. And I
> am betting that if a revolution in physics occurred tomorrow, and every
> physicist on earth declared that indeterminacy was false, and that nature
> was a closed, mechanistic causal continuum, with no room whatever for God to
> initiate any chain of events after the Big Bang, every living TE would would
> still believe in macroevolution through variation and natural selection.
>
> If I am wrong, name me a few theistic evolutionists who used to find
> Darwinism entirely *incredible*, until they discovered how Darwinism could
> be understood in terms of quantum theory, after which they found it
> *credible*. Surely that is the acid test, not of the truth of theistic
> evolution, but of the world view upon which theistic evolutionists base
> their acceptance of Darwinian mechanisms.
>
> The point is that the main arguments for the truth of Darwinian evolution
> (both regarding the fact of evolution and the mechanisms of evolution) were
> well-established in both the biological and popular mind before the new view
> of nature ushered in by quantum mechanics had any large hold on the popular
> mind, on philosophy, on theology, or even on sciences (such as biology)
> which lay outside of physics. TEs do not accept Darwinian evolution because
> of quantum physics. They accept Darwinian evolution mostly on the strength
> of arguments which originated in the 19th century. And the world-view
> implicit those arguments was mechanistic.
>
> Cameron.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "George Murphy" <GMURPHY10@neo.rr.com>
> To: "Cameron Wybrow" <wybrowc@sympatico.ca>; "asa" <asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 7:09 PM
> Subject: Re: [asa] observational vs. theoretical differences in scenarios; a
> direct question
>
>
>> I.e., "If the universe were different, my view would be correct." In
>> reality, however, we live in the 21st century, not the 19th.
>>
>> Shalom
>> George
>> http://home.roadrunner.com/~scitheologyglm
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Cameron Wybrow" <wybrowc@sympatico.ca>
>> To: "asa" <asa@calvin.edu>
>> Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 6:29 PM
>> Subject: Re: [asa] observational vs. theoretical differences in scenarios;
>> a direct question
>>
>>
>>> David:
>>>
>>> A. Given your definitions, your answer makes sense.
>>>
>>> However, bear in mind that if it weren't for the 20th-century discovery
>>> of "quantum indeterminacy", your position would be dead in the water. It
>>> is quantum indeterminacy which allows you to employ a blurry distinction
>>> between "guided" and "natural" events, and it is the blurring of that
>>> distinction which makes your position possible. If the universe were
>>> wholly Laplacean, you would have to concede my definitions, i.e., that
>>> "guided" is completely distinct from "natural", and also would have to
>>> concede my general point that God's only two options for guiding
>>> evolution are to "intervene" or "front-load".
>> " (no quotes) as the body of the message.
>> ........................
>>
>> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
>> "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
>>
>
>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
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Received on Thu Jul 2 09:49:45 2009