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| Sir Frederick... |
 Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 9:46 pm |
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http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19826556.000-perspectives-why-humanity-needs-a-god-of-creativity.html
Perspectives: Why humanity needs a God of creativity
07 May 2008
From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
Stuart Kauffman
Stuart Kauffman's web page at the University of Calgary
http://www.icore.ca/research_biocomplex.htm
WITH economic and communications globalisation, some form of a global civilisation is beginning to emerge, perhaps homogeneous,
perhaps forever diverse. We all face the challenges of global warming. We face peak oil, that year after which we shall never
recover so much oil again - with unknown economic consequences, including hunger and resource wars. And all the while, our diverse
cultures are being crushed together.
One response is a retreat into fundamentalisms, often religious, often hostile. This is hardly surprising, as humanity is still
split between 3 billion who believe in the Abrahamic God (the majority of whom are Muslim, though a powerful minority are
fundamentalist Christians), a billion who, like myself, believe in no supernatural god (though some of these are militant atheists),
and the other traditions such as Buddhism. Clearly there is an urgent need for some new thinking.
That is why I wrote Reinventing the Sacred, though I am well aware that the very possibility and wisdom of such an enterprise is
suspect. For those of faith, it is sacrilegious; those who are not religious remember Galileo recanting before the Inquisition and
the millions killed in the name of God, and want no part of a God or a sacred that demands retreat from the truth of the world.
The process of reinventing the sacred requires a fresh understanding of science that takes into account complexity theory and the
ideas of emergence. It will require a shift from reductionism, the way of thinking that still dominates our scientific world view.
Perhaps the purest and simplest version of reductionism was voiced in the early 19th century by the mathematician Simon Pierre
Laplace. He envisioned a "demon" - an intelligence which, if supplied with all the current positions and velocities of all the
particles in the universe, could, using Newton's laws, compute the entire future and past of the universe.
This world view has two features. One is determinism, abandoned in part when quantum mechanics began to emerge a century or so
later. It is also the "nothing but" view of the universe which, for example, sees a man found guilty of murder as nothing but
particles in motion. As the physicist Steven Weinberg put it, the explanatory arrows all point downwards from societies to people to
organs to cells to biochemistry to chemistry and ultimately to physics.
Now we appear to be at the frontier of a new scientific world view. Many physicists, from Philip Anderson back in the 1970s to, more
recently, Robert Laughlin, are coming to doubt the adequacy of reductionism. I am with them: I do not believe that the evolution of
biosphere, economy and human culture are derivable from or reducible to physics. Physicists cannot deduce, simulate or confirm the
detailed evolution of the biosphere that gave rise to the organised structure and processes that constitute, for example, your
heart. Entities such as hearts, that have causal consequences, are "real" in their own right.
The second transition in our view of science is based on Darwinian pre-adaptations. Were we to ask Darwin what the function of the
heart is, he would say, to pump blood; but the heart also makes heart sounds and these are not the function of the heart, which was
selected, and hence exists, because pumping blood was of selective value. Darwin's idea of a pre-adaptation refers to a property of
an organism - heart sounds, say - that is of no selective value in the present environment, but might become of selective value in
some different environment and therefore be selected. An example is human middle-ear bones, which are derived from three adjacent
jawbones of an early fish. Did a new function come to exist in the biosphere as part of human hearing? Yes. Did that development
have consequences for the evolution of the biosphere? Yes.
Now comes the big question. Could you enumerate ahead of time all possible Darwinian pre-adaptations for all organisms alive now, or
even just for humans? We all seem to think the answer is no. Among the problems is the question of how we would list all possible
selective environments? How would we pre-specify features of organisms that might go on to become pre-adaptations? There seems no
way to do so. We do not seem to be able to pre-specify all of what I will call the "adjacent possible" of the biosphere.
If this is correct, the consequences seem profound. They break the spell cast by Galileo, that everything in the universe is
describable by a natural law. If a natural law is a compact description of the regularities of a process, there seems to be no
natural law sufficient to describe Darwinian pre-adaptations.
Here we cannot do what Newton taught us to do: state the variables, the laws linking the variables, and the initial and boundary
conditions, and from these compute the forward trajectory of the biosphere. We do not know the relevant variables - the middle-ear
bones, lungs or livers - before they arise. We cannot even make probability statements about such pre-adaptations because,
statistically speaking, we do not know the "sample space" of possibilities.
So the unfolding of the universe - biotic, and perhaps abiotic too - appears to be partially beyond natural law. In its place is a
ceaseless creativity, with no supernatural creator. If, as a result of this creativity, we cannot know what will happen, then
reason, the Enlightenment's highest human virtue, is an insufficient guide to living our lives. We must use reason, emotion,
intuition, all that our evolution has brought us. But that means understanding our full humanity: we need Einstein and Shakespeare
in the same room.
“Reason is an insufficient guide to living our lives: put Einstein and Shakespeare in the same room”Shall we use the "God" word? We
do not have to, yet it is still our most powerful invented symbol. Our sense of God has evolved from Yahweh in the desert some 4500
years ago, a jealous, law-giving warrior God, to the God of love that Jesus taught. How many versions have people worshipped in the
past 100,000 years?
Yet what is more awesome: to believe that God created everything in six days, or to believe that the biosphere came into being on
its own, with no creator, and partially lawlessly? I find the latter proposition so stunning, so worthy of awe and respect, that I
am happy to accept this natural creativity in the universe as a reinvention of "God". From it, we can build a sense of the sacred
that encompasses all life and the planet itself. From it, we can change our value system across the globe and try, together, to ease
the fears of religious fundamentalists with a safe, sacred space we can share. And from it we can, if we are wise, find means to
avert wars of civilisations, the ravages of global warming, and the potential disaster of peak oil.
From issue 2655 of New Scientist magazine, 07 May 2008, page 52-53
Profile
Theoretical biologist and complexity theory pioneer Stuart Kauffman originally trained as a doctor. He is now head of the Institute
for Biocomplexity and Informatics, University of Calgary, in Canada. A seminal member of the Santa Fe Institute, he is now an
external professor. The question that currently occupies him is: if selection operates all the time, how do we combine it with
self-organisation? His books include: The Origins of Order, At Home in the Universe, and most recently Reinventing the Sacred (Basic
Books). |
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| turtoni... |
| Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 10:58 pm |
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"Sir Frederick" <mmcneill at (no spam) fuzzysys.com> wrote in message
news:sjbf24pv519pb0ca94jq1862muoagsbgnb at (no spam) 4ax.com...
Quote: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19826556.000-perspectives-why-humanity-needs-a-god-of-creativity.html
Perspectives: Why humanity needs a God of creativity
07 May 2008
From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
Stuart Kauffman
Stuart Kauffman's web page at the University of Calgary
http://www.icore.ca/research_biocomplex.htm
(snip)
Quote: Yet what is more awesome: to believe that God created everything in six
days, or to believe that the biosphere came into > being on its own, with
no creator, and partially lawlessly? I find the latter proposition so
stunning, so worthy of awe and > respect, that I am happy to accept this
natural creativity in the universe as a reinvention of "God". From it, we
can build a > sense of the sacred that encompasses all life and the planet
itself. From it, we can change our value system across the
globe and try, together, to ease the fears of religious fundamentalists
with a safe, sacred space we can share. And from it > we can, if we are
wise, find means to avert wars of civilisations, the ravages of global
warming, and the potential disaster > of peak oil.
Interesting as a presentation on the situation but i think he'd need to
expand upon the "change our value system" and "sacred space" idea's which is
when those idea's are likely to fall to pieces; as much as we might like
them to work.
Probably what will realistically happen is that we will be moved by market
forces into different "value" systems.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr5gdrj6bZQ |
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| Sir Frederick... |
| Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 11:47 pm |
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On Sun, 11 May 2008 23:58:14 -0400, "turtoni" <turtoni at (no spam) fastmail.net> wrote:
Quote:
"Sir Frederick" <mmcneill at (no spam) fuzzysys.com> wrote in message
news:sjbf24pv519pb0ca94jq1862muoagsbgnb at (no spam) 4ax.com...
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19826556.000-perspectives-why-humanity-needs-a-god-of-creativity.html
Perspectives: Why humanity needs a God of creativity
07 May 2008
From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
Stuart Kauffman
Stuart Kauffman's web page at the University of Calgary
http://www.icore.ca/research_biocomplex.htm
(snip)
Yet what is more awesome: to believe that God created everything in six
days, or to believe that the biosphere came into > being on its own, with
no creator, and partially lawlessly? I find the latter proposition so
stunning, so worthy of awe and > respect, that I am happy to accept this
natural creativity in the universe as a reinvention of "God". From it, we
can build a > sense of the sacred that encompasses all life and the planet
itself. From it, we can change our value system across the
globe and try, together, to ease the fears of religious fundamentalists
with a safe, sacred space we can share. And from it > we can, if we are
wise, find means to avert wars of civilisations, the ravages of global
warming, and the potential disaster > of peak oil.
Interesting as a presentation on the situation but i think he'd need to
expand upon the "change our value system" and "sacred space" idea's which is
when those idea's are likely to fall to pieces; as much as we might like
them to work.
Probably what will realistically happen is that we will be moved by market
forces into different "value" systems.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr5gdrj6bZQ
This guy and the Laughlin guy mentioned in the text are among those
I have mentioned here before in pursuit of the putative "organizing principles"
of "holistic" ilk. My ideas of higher dimensions are along
the same way. "Why is there a situation, rather than
nothing?" "Reality" is more weird than your
"Faith No More: Falling To Pieces" video. |
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| turtoni... |
| Posted: Mon May 12, 2008 11:53 pm |
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"tooly" <rdh11 at (no spam) bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:AJQVj.132708$Er2.70833 at (no spam) bignews6.bellsouth.net...
Quote:
"Sir Frederick" <mmcneill at (no spam) fuzzysys.com> wrote in message
news:u4if241bh3jk0kol2ikmti4ul4t5ruevbk at (no spam) 4ax.com...
On Sun, 11 May 2008 23:58:14 -0400, "turtoni" <turtoni at (no spam) fastmail.net
wrote:
"Sir Frederick" <mmcneill at (no spam) fuzzysys.com> wrote in message
news:sjbf24pv519pb0ca94jq1862muoagsbgnb at (no spam) 4ax.com...
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19826556.000-perspectives-why-humanity-needs-a-god-of-creativity.html
Perspectives: Why humanity needs a God of creativity
07 May 2008
From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
Stuart Kauffman
Stuart Kauffman's web page at the University of Calgary
http://www.icore.ca/research_biocomplex.htm
(snip)
Yet what is more awesome: to believe that God created everything in six
days, or to believe that the biosphere came into > being on its own,
with
no creator, and partially lawlessly? I find the latter proposition so
stunning, so worthy of awe and > respect, that I am happy to accept
this
natural creativity in the universe as a reinvention of "God". From it,
we
can build a > sense of the sacred that encompasses all life and the
planet
itself. From it, we can change our value system across the
globe and try, together, to ease the fears of religious fundamentalists
with a safe, sacred space we can share. And from it > we can, if we are
wise, find means to avert wars of civilisations, the ravages of global
warming, and the potential disaster > of peak oil.
Interesting as a presentation on the situation but i think he'd need to
expand upon the "change our value system" and "sacred space" idea's which
is
when those idea's are likely to fall to pieces; as much as we might like
them to work.
Probably what will realistically happen is that we will be moved by
market
forces into different "value" systems.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr5gdrj6bZQ
This guy and the Laughlin guy mentioned in the text are among those
I have mentioned here before in pursuit of the putative "organizing
principles"
of "holistic" ilk. My ideas of higher dimensions are along
the same way. "Why is there a situation, rather than
nothing?" "Reality" is more weird than your
"Faith No More: Falling To Pieces" video.
ha, you guys don't see your own arrogance.
i see all.
Quote: You speak as if you 'know' something, as if your view is from one of
authority. Ah, not your fault. It is our academia, our scientific
'rational' mind, that has inspired an intellect that sees itself as the
crux end-all pinnacle of what we are.
"Why is there a situation, rather than nothing?"
Quote: At least the guy in the article recognizes a problem...though remains
oblivious to it's depth [in this reductionism that leaves the masses empty
and worthless; ha, speaking to peak oil and empty gas tanks, hehe, there
may be more than one kind of tank that is going empty overall]. Can
chemistry save us?
if *you* feel _emtpy_ and _worthless_; then yes, chemistry can "save" you.
Quote: Reinventing the 'sacred', as he calls it...one big problem as I see it.
Authority.
"Probably what will realistically happen is that we will be moved by market
forces into different "value" systems." |
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