veracity of evolution

@odenskrigare,

odenskrigare;86130 wrote:

it's still pretty much the same

But you did not answer the questions Oden, cmaon entertain me my friend,

what does it mean when something is dead that was once alive? What is dead? What is missing that makes it dead in your definition of death?

I am curious to know if evolution plays any part in the difference between life and what you define as death?

1 Reply

@Pathfinder,

Pathfinder;86183 wrote:

I am curious to know if evolution plays any part in the difference between life and what you define as death?

Nothing to do with it. Biological death is reducible to a cellular phenomenon.

By the way, and forgive my take on this, but I have to say I haven't the foggiest idea why you're bothering to go down this line. It's not interesting and not relevant.

1 Reply

@odenskrigare,

On non-local hidden variables:

An experimental test of non-local realism : Abstract : Nature

1 Reply

@gregulus,

gregulus;86199 wrote:

On non-local hidden variables:

An experimental test of non-local realism : Abstract : Nature

Yes, I had read a bit about this. I found a thread here, that discusses the experiment and the results:

Has Zeilinger disproven DeBroglie-Bohm?

As always, lots of thoughts, interpretations, etc.

Thanks for the link.

Rich

0 Replies

@Aedes,

Aedes;86187 wrote:

Nothing to do with it. Biological death is reducible to a cellular phenomenon.

By the way, and forgive my take on this, but I have to say I haven't the foggiest idea why you're bothering to go down this line. It's not interesting and not relevant.

Excuse me for not understanding your question Aedes.

How is the junction between life and death not relevant to evolution?

If we are talking about the veracity of life and how it evolves, we are discussing the development at its core levels are we not.

And at its core level we are talking about its conception at one extreme and its demise at the other.

With regard to the evolution of an organism, is it not at the stage of conception that these mutations are being altered?

Therefore it the conception of an organism that comes into focus when discussing evolution. How a species can have offspring that becomes suddenly mutated from its parental strand or tree if you will.

This speaks directly to the way that life is formed and what life actually is.

So I am asking if a persons belief in evolution does anything to alter what they believe about death.

Many here refuse to define what life is and where it actually comes from at the actuial stage of conception, that first spark of life. So I am asking them what they think the death of an organism is and if that definition has been altered by their acceptance of evolution.

I understand you are a moderator and can guide the line of discussion , but you will pardon me, I hope, for being a little disoriented when you declare what is interesting for the rest of us and what is not. If noone else responds to the particular post, than noone else finds the line of thought interesting either, but I think that should be left up to those of us in the discussion and not to one member of the discussion to decide what is interesting for everyone.

2 Replies

@Pathfinder,

Pathfinder;86230 wrote:

How is the junction between life and death not relevant to evolution?

Well, I can think of things relating to death of an organism that an evolutionary biologist might be interested in. Such as what killed living things, or how did they become fossilized. In other words, these are relatively concrete biological questions.

But the distinction between life versus death, despite the fact that it can be described better than defined, seems to be a fairly trivial question in the context of evolution. A cell is dead when it no longer can maintain its metabolism and homeostasis, and this is true whether or not this or that enzyme was different 20 million years ago.

Pathfinder;86230 wrote:

With regard to the evolution of an organism, is it not at the stage of conception that these mutations are being altered?

Not necessarily. They just have to enter the germline somewhere to be transmissible.

Pathfinder;86230 wrote:

So I am asking if a persons belief in evolution does anything to alter what they believe about death.

I still don't get it. Evolution is a biological science and not a belief system.

2 Replies

@Pathfinder,

Pathfinder;86230 wrote:

Many here refuse to define what life is and where it actually comes from at the actuial stage of conception, that first spark of life. .

This is what I was told in school when I was fourteen. A living organism breed/multiply, eat, grow (I think) and of course, die. There are speculations about that first piece of life, but a wellknown theory is that some sort of lightning struck a pond and which created amino-acids, and life was made possible. I think at least... Feel free to correct me. And if you want, you could always call that lightning "God".

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@odenskrigare,

not a pond ... the vast, all-encompassing ocean of primitive Earth

but you have the general idea right

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@odenskrigare,

Also it may have been underwater vents that supplied energy via heat transfer not necessairily lightning.

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@Aedes,

Aedes;86274 wrote:

I still don't get it. Evolution is a biological science and not a belief system.

Hi,

I am a bit more egalitarian about it. I always think of evolution as open to any field of thought. Philosophers have been talking about evolution since its dawn. The I Ching (Yi Jing) is translated as the Book of Changes which dates back thousands of years ago. And it very much does talk about the evolving human condition, but from a different perspective. One, that I personally find more interesting and inclusive. It is a matter of taste.

But, however one thinks of evolution, I think one should be conscious of their own perspective versus other perspectives, and how it may be just a belief. Helps keep everything honest.

Rich

---------- Post added 08-28-2009 at 12:20 PM ----------

Lily;86275 wrote:

This is what I was told in school when I was fourteen. A living organism breed/multiply, eat, grow (I think) and of course, die. There are speculations about that first piece of life, but a wellknown theory is that some sort of lightning struck a pond and which created amino-acids, and life was made possible. I think at least... Feel free to correct me. And if you want, you could always call that lightning "God".

It may have happened that way Lily. But my position is that no one observed what happened millions upon millions of years ago. No one really knows though it is possible to imagine a scenario, which is called a hypothesis, and then do experiments to prove it. And if the experiments don't turn out as expected, then just keep changing the hypothesis until it approximates.

This is what I call building up a belief system. It has nothing to do with the past. I cannot tell you what the earth was like yesterday, much less millions of years in the past. It has to do what one wants to believe happened in the past and create a link between the belief and the experiment thereby somewhat proving the belief. What it a continuous modification of the beliefs until it is confirmed by some experiment.

Evolutionary science is quite interesting to behold. I think it is a marvelous story.

Rich

3 Replies

@richrf,

richrf;86288 wrote:

But, however one thinks of evolution, I think one should be conscious of their own perspective versus other perspectives, and how it may be just a belief. Helps keep everything honest.

Rich

That seems disingenious. The reason people "believe" evolution is not due to some personal conclusions about it but have looked at the mountain of evidence amassed within the 150 years since it's postulation and have concluded it to be true. You make it sound as if other beliefs on the biodiversity of life on the earth have equal support/evidence to back them.

1 Reply

@odenskrigare,

oops sorry no rich

Evolution 101: What are the Practical Applications of Evolution?

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@Berner,

Berner;86291 wrote:

That seems disingenious. The reason people "believe" evolution is not due to some personal conclusions about it but have looked at the mountain of evidence amassed within the 150 years since it's postulation and have concluded it to be true. You make it sound as if other beliefs on the biodiversity of life on the earth have equal support/evidence to back them.

Well, if one had millions upon millions of dollars funding for experimentation, I am sure almost any belief can be experimentally supported. It is a matter of massaging the belief, the experiments, and the subjective interpretation of the experimental results until the desired results are obtained. It is a very fun hobby, if one can find the necessary funding for it. I highly recommend it as a life vocation.

Rich

---------- Post added 08-28-2009 at 12:40 PM ----------

odenskrigare;86292 wrote:

oops sorry no rich

Evolution 101: What are the Practical Applications of Evolution?

Whether or not there are practical applications is of no matter. We all seem to be evolving no matter what. I think that is about as practical as it gets. The world of Daoism and the world of Heraclitus is no different today than it seems to have been thousands of years ago. All is in flux.

Personally, for practical applications, I like jump rope.

Rich

1 Reply

@richrf,

richrf;86298 wrote:

Well, if one had millions upon millions of dollars funding for experimentation, I am sure almost any belief can be experimentally supported

yeah cuz clearly Darwin had millions of dollars when he was living in a closet on the HMS Beagle

(hurr durr)

richrf;86298 wrote:

The world of Daoism and the world of Heraclitus is no different today than it seems to have been thousands of years ago

richrf;86298 wrote:

All is in flux

you just contradicted yourself

also, how does "all is in flux" account for
[INDENT]Applied evolution is also a potent force in my own field, biomedical research. When investigating new genes, the selection of bacteria is used as a tool to help characterize and understand them. New drugs are discovered through an evolutionary process, in which millions of chemical compounds are sent through a rigorous selective process to see which molecule has the best properties with the least number of side effects. And all results are verified first in non-human animal models, on the evolutionary assumption that mice, rats, and other animals share our biochemical properties because of common ancestry.

The application of evolution even jumps beyond biology. In computer science, genetic algorithms, that is, a programming technique that allows the program to consider a range of possible alternatives and then evaluate them all based on their relative fitness to the problem at hand, is becoming more and more relevant. Evolutionary computing has been used to solve problems in mathematics, molecular biology, robotics, chemistry, and astrophysics.[/INDENT]how could genetic programming have emerged from something as vague as all is in flux

richrf;86298 wrote:

Personally, for practical applications, I like jump rope.

yes but jump rope doesn't cure disease

1 Reply

@odenskrigare,

odenskrigare;86302 wrote:

yes but jump rope doesn't cure disease

Nope, but it prevents it. In ancient China, the best physicians were those who prevented disease. My kind of guys and gals.

Rich

0 Replies

@odenskrigare,

exercise prevents certain diseases, mainly cardiovascular diseases

there is no amount of jump roping that will stave off measles mumps or rubella

vaccines have to prevent them

1 Reply

@richrf,

richrf;86288 wrote:

I always think of evolution as open to any field of thought.

Yes, any field of thought can think about evolution, just as they can think about any science from nuclear physics to biochemistry to optics to electrophysiology.

But then again, it will take a lot for you to convince us that the science of evolution has been advanced by anything other than scientific data collection. And frankly I'm not sure how meaningful philosophical discussions about evolution are when the discussion is fraught with misunderstandings about evolutionary theory -- like the unfortunate perception that evolutionary biology hasn't advanced a tad since the Beagle docked.

richrf;86298 wrote:

The world of Daoism and the world of Heraclitus is no different today than it seems to have been thousands of years ago.

Heraclitus and Pythagoras were in opposition to one another, and Plato was dismissive of Heraclitus. Which of these people was right about the physical nature of the world? None of them -- they weren't even looking at it.

I'm a true lover of Daoist literature and poetic imagery, but I do not believe for the briefest moment that Daoism is some sort of presage of evolutionary biology.

richrf;86298 wrote:

Philosophers have been talking about evolution since its dawn.

No, they have been talking about metaphysical change. They have not been talking about biological evolution.

1 Reply

@richrf,

richrf;86288 wrote:

But my position is that no one observed what happened millions upon millions of years ago. No one really knows though it is possible to imagine a scenario, which is called a hypothesis, and then do experiments to prove it. And if the experiments don't turn out as expected, then just keep changing the hypothesis until it approximates.

But it may not even approximate. The experiments may show that the hypothesis is totally false, and then the scientists (maybe with some initial reluctance) will have to abandon it, however fond of it they may have been. A few individual scientists may cling to a discredited theory for personal (e.g. religious or ideological) reasons, but the scientific community as a whole will move on. This has happened often in the history of science. There were times when most scientists were satisfied with the idea of a geocentric universe, or strict Newtonian determinism, or the ether, or Lamarckian evolution. Even Einstein disbelieved in quantum indeterminacy, but experiments proved him wrong, despite his prestige.

richrf;86288 wrote:

This is what I call building up a belief system. It has nothing to do with the past. I cannot tell you what the earth was like yesterday, much less millions of years in the past.

I cannot quite work out why you attach so little weight to strong circumstantial evidence. Isn't that how detectives solve crimes where there were no witnesses?

richrf;86288 wrote:

What it a continuous modification of the beliefs until it is confirmed by some experiment.

I can't see anything wrong with that, provided that the beliefs are open to future modification. What reasonable alternative is there?

0 Replies

@Aedes,

Aedes;86309 wrote:

I'm a true lover of Daoist literature and poetic imagery, but I do not believe for the briefest moment that Daoism is some sort of presage of evolutionary biology

it's like claiming that the avatars of Rama are the same as evolution

0 Replies

@odenskrigare,

odenskrigare;86307 wrote:

exercise prevents certain diseases, mainly cardiovascular diseases

Exercise (movement0 is essential to good health. For example, I may be exposed to exactly the same flu viruses as someone else, but I will not get sick and someone else will. It is because I have a healthy body.

But we all have our beliefs, and that is fine with me.

Rich

---------- Post added 08-28-2009 at 02:09 PM ----------

ACB;86310 wrote:

I can't see anything wrong with that, provided that the beliefs are open to future modification. What reasonable alternative is there?

Yes, I agree. That is what I do in my life.

Rich

---------- Post added 08-28-2009 at 02:09 PM ----------

Aedes;86309 wrote:

Heraclitus and Pythagoras were in opposition to one another, and Plato was dismissive of Heraclitus. Which of these people was right about the physical nature of the world? None of them -- they weren't even looking at it.

My vote is for Heraclitus and the Daoists.

Rich

4 Replies

veracity of evolution

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