Scientific rationalism and its relation with reductionism and
physicalism
Abstract
There are mainly two area of research that are considered to
resist naturalistic approaches; biology and mind studies. In
biology there are two interconnected approaches which claim that
the naturalistic approach has failed; Irreducible Complexity and
Intelligent Design. The Mind-Body problem, as well, is said to
resist the naturalistic viewpoint. I will show that these ideas
are just based on the gaps in our scientific approaches that are
based on the naturalistic viewpoints. By the light of Gödel
Incompleteness Theorems, in this paper I will show that
scientific rationalism is mainly based on the gaps that we find
in every step of scientific progress; that is to say finding
gaps in our scientific explanation is itself a part of its
rationality. The notion of the scientific progress also has been
defined. In this way we will see that these notions, scientific
progress and scientific rationalism, and finally physicalism are
going to be defined in a complex system that each one of them is
woven to the others. At the end of this article I will show that
thinking about the outside world, independent of realistic or
idealistic approach to it is woven to naturalistic viewpoint;
that is to say we have not any choice other than naturalistic
viewpoints.
Introduction
By the light of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems (GIT) we know
that any formal or symbolic system that is complex at least to
the extent of arithmetic is incomplete; this means that we can
find some true sentences that we cannot prove. This means that
our systems are always open to new and newer changes and
modifications. It is not important that these systems are
symbolic or not. If they are symbolic or they can be formalized
in some ways in a symbolic system then they obey GIT and if not,
and they are not symbolized or it seems that they cannot be, at
least very soon then we cannot be sure about their completeness.
Thus either our systems are open or they are so simple that they
cannot inform anything valuable. Henceforth, the system of ideas
or beliefs that they cannot be disaffirmed by some methods
either are so simple like Propositional Logic that they cannot
tell us anything about the world, or they are denying GIT. In
what comes in the following I will use this matter to show that
scientific rationalism is not based on saying true sentences
about the world, but it is to find open discussions and to
formalize the scientific knowledge in a way that it is open to
the new modifications. Then I will show that Reductionism and
Physicalism have this property.
GIT shows us that there are some true sentences which we cannot
prove. However, which one of theses sentences are true that they
cannot be proved. Maybe when we are using formal systems it is
easier to say by the light of semantic rules of the system,
though it is not possible always. However, when we are using
informal or semi-formal systems the choice is not based on any
well-defined algorithm. The only choice that we have, in my
point of view, is to suppose that our system is open to new and
newer changes. By the light of “NFL’ theorem as has been
described by Olle Haggstrom[1]
(2007) I infer that Feyerabend is right that there are no
defined and exact scientific method, albeit not as strong as it
seems now. I will show the limitation of this acceptance in this
paper. Then it is very likely that by accepting some
propositions as true-but-not-provable ones we enter a
contradiction in our system. The most important result that I
have inferred from GIT and I will use it in this paper is that:
“GIT says that we cannot be sure about the coherency of our
formal systems if they are complicated at least to the extent of
arithmetic, but it does not entail that we cannot be sure about
the coherency of a subsection of the system.” Subsequently we
can check every limited subsystem of a symbolic system to find
if it is internally coherent or not. In this way by the light of
GIT I infer that every complicated system is an open system.
Hence it has so many unknown outcomes that we are not aware of,
but there is no reason to inform us that it is impossible to
discover them. Every proof to show this impossibility is being
shaped in an incomplete system; this proof is never complete.
Therefore always we can find some logical gaps in this proof.
Then we cannot fix our endeavors on these kinds of proofs.
Regarding the matter that whether GIT is applicable to
non-formal system or not refer to an article of Jonathan P.
Seldin that is suggested to be a new research line[2],
but as he has permitted himself to suppose that it is applicable
at least to philosophy of science in the other article that I
have referred to in this essay, I permit myself to apply it for
philosophy. At the end of the essay I will present my ideas why
I think it is applicable to any non-formal system too.
1-
How the society works?
By the light of Kuhn in his famous work, “The Structure of
Scientific Revolution”, we know that scientific discoveries
are social activities; hereupon we should know the methods that
the society works on individual to know what are the roots of
scientific truths.
1-1
Society as a Field.
We can think about society as a field that acts on the
individuals as particles. One may ask about the role of the
individuals. The same individual has a role when we are
evaluating the other individual as a particle; this is the same
approach that we have in physical science. In this way the field
that an individual is feeling is coming from other individuals[3].
1-2
Human language learning.
Understanding the way that we learn language, I give an example
of using the names for colors.
Understanding the situation about the colors, suppose the
experiment which I have represented below. There are two
persons; Jack and Jimmy. We have equipped them with two glasses
which have been made by the newest technology. The glasses
change the colors of things around us randomly. For example in
one of the glasses all the red colors are changed to blue and in
the other theses are converted to green, and so on. In the
picture below you can see the situation:
The middle pictures that are labeled by some meaningless names
are some carts which we have put in front of them. They are
watching via the modern glasses which change the colors. For
example the red cart is being shown as green for Jack and blue
for Jimmy, and so on. Now we have labeled them by new names, for
example “Alpo”. We are seeing the Alpo cart as red, Jack as
green and Jimmy as blue; but pay attention that when we are
doing the experiment we do not know Jack and Jimmy’s
perceptions. Now I want to ask a question; have we any problem
regarding the colors by the new names? For example if we give
them a new hand of carts and ask them to set them as the sample,
will we see any contradictions between their sets? Now if they
save the new names in their mind and use them to refer to the
colors, will they have any problem? Obviously not. If you ask
them to give you a Rimi cart both of them will give you a cart
that you see as green, Jack sees as blue and Jimmy sees as red.
In the Rutledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy under the title of
Functionalism we read
Suppose that baby Matthew has an operation performed on his
retina at birth which switches the ‘red’ and ‘green’ messages
from his retina to his visual cortex: the central physiological
state produced in Matthew by red things is thus the state
normally produced by green things in other people, and vice
versa.
Then we encounter a very important question; what kind of
internal state he will have if he is being affected by the red
color? In every critique of functionalism we can see this
matter. It seems that qualia is like the Achilles’ heel for
Functionalism, physicalism, reductionism, and
other ideas of these kinds. I will pay attention to the matter
in the end of the article. However it seems that it cannot make
any difficulties for people. Also in the Rutledge Encyclopedia
we find a comparison between Normal people and Matthew’s case,
but we can coherently suppose that the mentioned glasses are
internalized in our eyes when we born. There is really no such
thing as normal or abnormal. It is highly possible that our eyes
are working in this way because from the Evolutionary point of
view we do not need more than a social language to make a good
relation then it is very unlikely to have a common perception of
colors, however it is not important. Our society makes a good
base for us to have relations. In this way, I think, a holistic
viewpoint to understanding and translation is not important at
all. We do not make any relation on the basis of internal
similarities. Then the society is a bridge from our internal
differences to our external relative agreements. In this way
society has corporealised the outside world in a social network.
By the light of these realities I want to say that the society
that we are living in helps us to make the notions
“Intersubjective”; that is not important whether we have
internal differences or not. If we can have a language that is
strong enough to have a relation with others then we understand
each other. In this way common sense is the minimum sphere which
all the individuals in the society are agreeing about. For
example, waiting behind the stoplight when it is red, waiting in
the bus station or going to the cinema and park, going to the
shopping center to buy our requirements and so many other
practices are in this domain. Consequently the most important
role of our society is to make “intersubjective” notions
and that we can have good relations based upon them[4].
The stability of our relation depends on the language and the
language is going to change because of these relations.
2-
How the science works?
Suppose we want to teach a new student about the notion of
“Hardness Coefficient” of a spring. We say to him:
Pick up a spring. Hang it on a base. Pick up a small bulk.
Measure its mass by the scale. Convert the outcome to Kg.
Multiply the number by 10. Hang it on the spring. Measure the
expansion of the spring by a ruler. Convert the outcome number
to Meter. Divide the first number by the second. The outcome is
the hardness coefficient of the spring. Now if you do the
experiment for 10 times and take the average you will have the
more exact outcome.
Every scientific notion is established in this way. When you
taught him about the spring you can define the other notions by
using it. In this way you can use abstract physical notions like
“Vector Potential” because it is finally based on
intersubjective notions. Everybody knows what a spring is, or a
ruler, how they work, and so on. So the scientific notions are
based on common sense. Max Tegmark[5]
(2003) compares two different viewpoints; frog and
bird perspectives .The bird perspective in an outside view
which has been gained by mathematician studying, the frog
perspective, on the other hand, is an inside perspective of an
observer living in the world that is being described by the bird
perspective’s mathematical equation. He asks; which one is real?
I think –as the same way that he himself has shown implicitly-
we use frog perspective to shape our bird perspective, and the
bird perspective will convert to frog perspective, and we use it
to shape new bird perspectives. Then the reality is being shaped
by this relation. If we encounter contradictions somewhere in
the frog perspective, our endeavors to overcome it are going to
be done by the bird perspective. No one of them is real alone
and no one of them is complete; GIT.
Kuhn (1962)[6]
compares “the member of a mature scientific community” with “the
typical character of Orwell’s 1984” (P.167) and says that
they are “the victim of a history rewritten by the powers that
be.” Moreover, he says “there are loses as well as gains in
scientific revolutions, and scientists tend to be peculiarly
blind to the former.” He also compares the methodology of
scientific and philosophical education and says “In these fields
[Scientific fields] the student relies mainly on textbooks
until, in his third or fourth years of graduate work, he begins
his own research.” Comparison between “the member of a mature
scientific community” and “the typical character of Orwell’s
1984” is seductive, somehow. He compares the scientific
evolution with Darwin’s idea of evolution and infers “[w]hat
could ‘evolution’, ‘development’, and ‘progress’ mean in the
absence of a specific goal?” How has he inferred this outcome?
By “[t]he belief that natural selection, resulting from mere
competition between organisms for survival… .” (P.172). Daniel
C. Dennett (1995)[7]
says a very guiding sentence about the progression in the
history of evolution: “There aren’t global pathways of
progress, but there is incessant local
improvement.”(p.308). In the eras of scientific revolution, if
there is any, there are some problems which can be solved by the
new ones while the old theories are unable to solve. Kuhn’s
second condition for new paradigm is “…, the new paradigm must
promise to preserve a relatively large part of the concrete
problem-solving ability that has occurred to science through its
predecessors.” (Kuhn, 1962, p.169) This matter is based on
intersubjectivity of scientific notions and it also can be a
criterion for progression. The new paradigm has the power to
solve more problems. Chhanda Gupta (1993)[8]
says
… Objectivity is not intelligible apart from reference to
coherent beliefs held by human enquiries, i.e. apart from
reference to subject. This coherence and common acceptance in
their turn would not be intelligible unless what we commonly
accept is really the case.”
In this way we can see
that the objectivity can be saved, though it is not apart from
our viewpoint. Thus the new theory has survived in the same way
that the survival organism can resist more emergent situations.
If the organisms and the scientific theories are competing for
survival then the organism or the theory that has survived it
can be potentially more progressed, i.e. they can solve more
problems. Another condition to complete this potentiality is to
have memory to save the successes. The both organisms and
scientific theories have this property and according to this
criterion we can say that the survival is more progressed.
Feyerabend (1989)[9]
in the final section of his essay under the title of “Humans as
Sculptors of Reality” says:
My point is that consequences are not grounded in an ‘objective’
nature, but come from a complicated interplay between an unknown
and relatively pliable material and researchers who affect and
are affected and changed by the material which, after all, is
the material from which they have been shaped. …The ‘subjective’
side of knowledge, being inextricably interviewed with its
material manifestation, cannot be just blown away. (p. 406).
That is why I have used the notion of intersubjectivity instead
of objectivity. In this way the society corporealizes the matter
in an intersubjective way of research.
Thus, scientific approach is not reliable because it is exact or
it is the final and the strictest outcome which we can rely on,
but its power is in its “Intersubjective” notions that prepare a
common ground for scientific progression.
As I mentioned above, by the light of GIT we know that we cannot
reach a complete knowledge system. I infer that always we have
some problems in our scientific models and paradigms. The only
thing that we can do is to care about contradictions. We should
save the internal and external coherency. I think that
scientific rationalism is not based on finding some methods to
base our criterions for choosing between paradigms or between
some competitor scientific theories. If we define scientific
rationalism in terms of these matters we will encounter the same
problems which we saw in Kuhn, Feyerabend, Davidson and others.
However, when we see the rationality as a means to find newer
ways to continue the scientific discussions then the problem can
be solved. This does not mean that we can decide to choose one
of the competitor theories by application of the criterion. I
mean that the scientific method always has obeyed and it seems
that it will obey this rule. That is why in contrast to any
philosophical criticism to some very important approaches in
scientific methods scientists are continuing in their own ways.
These methods that science cannot ignore are Reductionism and
Physicalism.
2-1 Theorem of Research (TOR)
Jonathan P. Seldin (2004)[10]
speaks about the relation between Kuhn’s idea about scientific
progression and Godel’s incompleteness theorems:
To say that one theory, say T1, is closer to the truth
than another, say T2, requires a theory, T´, in
which to carry out this reasoning. Since we are dealing with
scientific theories, it is reasonable to suppose that T´
would also be ‘strong enough to be interesting,’ and so it would
be a mistake to assume completeness for it. This would imply
that it would be a mistake to assume that there is a complete
definition of truth, and therefore that it is not always
possible to say that newer theories are closer to the truth than
older ones.
He goes on to say that “Feyerabend then argues that the absence
of a sound and complete description of the scientific method
means that there is no such method.” I agree with Seldin that
Feyerabend’s evidences presented in (Feyerabend, 1975)[11]
simply does not support his thesis that ‘anything goes’ in
science. If from the absence of a complete criterion to
formalize the scientific progression we could infer that there
is nothing like progression in science then we could infer that
our mathematic and logic are incoherent because we cannot prove
that they are coherent. However, we just infer that we cannot
formalize them completely, not more. Feyerabend (1981)[12]
himself has said that
Incommensurability only shows that scientific discourse which
contains detailed and highly sophisticated discussion concerning
the comparative advantages of paradigms obeys laws and
standards that have little in common with the naïve models that
philosopher of science have constructed for that purpose” (p.16)
Perhaps the criterion we were searching for "scientific
progression" and "scientific rationalism" is hidden
in this disability. Scientific method is a method that is based
on “How something can be done?” and not to answer “Why”.
To elucidate further, I quote Ray Kurzweil’s
book “The Age of Spiritual Machines”[13],
where he has used some examples to show that there are some
predictions that are false but we have some other predictions
that are approximately exact:
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are not possible." -Lord
Kelvin, 1895
"The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical
science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly
established that the possibility of their ever being
supplemented by new discoveries is exceedingly remote." -Albert
Abraham Michelson, 1903
"Airplanes have no military value." -Professor Marshal Foch,
1912
"It would appear that we have reached the limits of what is
possible to achieve with computer technology, although one
should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound
pretty silly in five years." -John von Neumann, 1949
"640,000 bytes of memory ought to be enough for anybody." -Bill
Gates, 1981
These predictions have been made by some of the cleverest men of
science. Kurzweil says
But in looking back at the many predictions I've made over the
past twenty years, I will say that I haven't found any that I
find particularly embarrassing (except, maybe, for a few early
business plans)
to defend his predictions.
Even though I think his way of predicting the future of
technology as he has represented at the appendix of his book
“The
Singularity Is Near”[14]
based on exponential growth of world knowledge is excellent and
extraordinary, I think his prediction is more logical than he
himself is thinking. According to these failed predictions can
we infer that there are some predictions that they fail and
maybe sometimes the predictions have won? Is the validity of
Kurzweil’s prediction “[a] computer will defeat the human world
chess champion around 1998, and we'll think less of chess as a
result”, the one which happened with just one year delaying, a
chance? According to GIT and by the light of these cases and so
many other examples that we have seen in the history of science
I infer that we can never say that something is impossible.
Scientific method, I think, is like a maze problem solving. You
should find a way which conveys you, but not from the beginning
to the end, because there is nothing like beginning and
especially end, as I will show at the end of this essay, in
scientific research. You cannot have the presupposition of
impossibility because if you choose this premise then you should
stay and to do nothing. We do not need to prove that there is
way to exit from the vortex like corridors of the maze to begin
our endeavor. However, if we want to stop then we will need a
complete proof. By the light of GIT we know that this complete
proof is impossible. Aside from this matter, searching for some
proofs to show that scientific research is impossible is
reducing the “Science” to “Philosophy”; it is in contrast to the
ones who are trying for, because they usually are against
Reductionism as I will explain later. Then the only choice is to
answer just one question; “How something can be done?”
There are so many examples of this kind: “How can we reduce
chemistry to physics?”, “How can we reduce biology to
physics?”, and also a very controversial one “How can we
reduce sociology to physics?”, “How can we save the idea
of determinism?” I repeat that there is a very deep
epistemological difference between two presuppose;
“Possibility” and “Impossibility”. The former needs
nothing more than the presupposition, but the latter is
preventing our movements. We cannot stay because of the role and
also the rule of evolution. It is inevitable for us to go on.
Every non-developing system will die. We can stay and do not
anything, but we cannot stop the events around us. Every system
that can develop has the more chance to resist the future
catastrophes and it will survive, and every system which does
not do this work will be perished. We are not obliged either to
move or to stay, but if we stay we will die. Thus we can just
see the systems which could choose the best according their own
environment, the other ones are died and we have just seen their
fossils- in the rocks or in our historical memory. That is why I
cannot accept Kuhn’s comparison between “the member of a mature
scientific community” and “the typical character of Orwell’s
1984”. The first is based on intersubjectivity but the
latter is very suspicious to be based on that. I will discuss
about this matter elsewhere.
Hence, I define the scientific rationalism as: “We should
just continue our scientific discussions.” I call this
article as “Theorem of Research” (TOR). It tells us
“Every time you confronted a dead end, search for a way to by
pass it.” By the light of our history I claim that always we
will find some possibilities to bypass the dead ends. Why is it
that history has evolved in this way? I think the reason for
this is because there is nothing to resist against this method;
GIT. In the eras of this bypassing we have progression. The
resistance against relativity theory, for example, was not based
on sectarian division between young and old scientists as Kuhn
says, (Kuhn, 1962, P.166)[15]
It was based upon the “Twin Paradox” in the system. The
acceptance of the theory was not based on substitution of the
aged scientists with young ones, but it was based on some
advancement that the general relativity gained, mainly in 1919.
It is correct that there were other options, such as H. A.
Lorentz, but we should not forget that scientific research is a
continuous activity. Choosing between the competitor theories is
a process that takes time. There were also other evidences in
the later scientific activities which supported Einstein theory;
for example Hubble's observations that they are being explained
nowadays as the expansion of the universe. It is very unlikely
that the other options had the same power to support the new
observations. That is, if, in those eras, scientists were
inclined to accept relativity theory and not other competitors,
that was because they were in the process of physical research
and they recognized that relativity theory had the more chance
to be sustained, though they could not formalize their way of
decision making. Furthermore, if they were wrong, and if one of
the competitor theories or even a new represented theory could
explain the new discovered evidences better than Einstein’s
theory no one says that scientists would not choose the more
powerful theory and they preferred to adhere to Einstein. The
entire happenings in the scientific research are very similar to
what has gone in the process of evolution. As the same way that
Sean Ekins has quoted Gordon Moore in “Computer Applications
in Pharmaceutical Research and Development”[16]
“Failures are not something to be avoided. You want them to
happen as quickly as you can so you can make progress rapidly”.
It is not important which one of the competitor theories will
win the competition. After all of the discussions, if all the
competitor theories have exactly similar powers let the coin
tossing play a role in here. In this situation it is not
important which one of them will be chosen. Maybe as Richard
Feynman says “Science is like sex. Sometimes something useful
comes out, but that is not why we are doing it.” I have quoted
this sentence from Gregory J. Feist “Psychology of science”[17]
This sentence has something very deep about scientific
rationalism, though it is in contrast to its apparent meaning.
This means that the
scientific methodology has useful outcomes, but it has not been
based on this outcome. In my point of view the main motivation
of scientific research is some psychological and cultural motifs
as Kuhn has shown, and as Feist has also discussed in his book.
However, if it cannot entail to some useful outcome the
methodology will fail to be continued. It produces new tools
that will alter the production. In this way it produces comfort
and it also alters the economical structure. Then it changes the
culture of our society. Just suppose that what will be the
economical and also cultural effect of free energy. I think that
the same goes in the history of evolution of kinds. Every
process has happened by physical rules and if we find a trace of
chance we should know that all the options in this situation are
equal. This means that our scientific methodology is rational
because it is in a strong relation with the entire parts of our
society.
The structure of our scientific knowledge is not something like
a dash line; on the contrary, it is something like a cut line.
It has so many gaps. It is not complete and maybe it will never
be completed; GIT. But this is not in contrast to rationalism.
After Gödel era it can be seen as rationality. Maybe we can say
that a methodology is rational if and only if it can speak about
its own gaps and also it is obliged to solve the problems with
these gaps somehow; albeit by saving coherency. We have no
reason to say that these gaps can be filled out completely; GIT.
We have no reason to say that we cannot solve every local
problem; GIT. We have no reason to say that scientific method is
failed; GIT. Even though we cannot formalize the scientific
method because of GIT, we cannot show that there is nothing like
that, as
Feyerabend (1975)
has said. All the rational methods are the ones which are
obliged to find the gaps and fill them out by restoring the
coherency of the system. They are obliged to solve any
contradiction as soon as they have been found. In contrast to
this rational method every method which claims to be complete is
irrational. The scientific rationalism is the idea that we
cannot be sure that we have no gaps in our scientific
explanation, thus we let the research to remain open; TOE.
Scientific research is something like puzzle solving. However,
you have not some erratic pieces. The pieces that should be
gathered in a model themselves belong to the social traditions.
You do not know what the exact entire shape is. You just pick
one; it is not important what the first choice is. You pick the
second; it is not important that what the second choice is. You
just go on and you will find some pieces which are compatible
with each other. Perhaps in the course of your work you will
discover that you should modify something in the middle of this
picture. Some modification maybe deemed to be a revolution, but
it is just a very small change in the picture. Just compare the
below pieces:
We can make two pictures:
These two pictures have been made by the above pieces, but it
seems that the second is a revolution if the normal picture is
the first. And now if we change the eyes too, then we will see a
complete revolution. And then if we change the nose we will see
a further revolution as below:
This change is the same that Kuhn interprets as paradigm
changing. It seems that the two persons from two different
paradigms have no common base to discuss each other, but that is
not right. Kuhn has shown that cultural and psychological
backgrounds are not unrelated to choose between different
paradigms, (Kuhn, 1962). However, the same background can be a
common base to discuss the different paradigms. The above
pictures are being made in the background of the society. There
are so many pieces spread out. These pieces are prepared before
in the other parts of our human society; from the analogical
point of view we can say that they are not spread out garbled in
the society, they are indeed a part of other pictures that exist
in the cultural sphere of any society.
We just pick them from
one place and install them in the other place, but these are the
places which we are living in; the society which is nurturing
and educating us. It is important to remember that the most
important equations in special relativity were discovered by H.
A. Lorenz, who was defending a classical interpretation of them.
Michelson and Morley had done the famous experiment by a
classical background. All of them were carried out in the social
background. I think if we cannot formalize the scientific method
in a complete system that is just because of its complexity;
GIT. However, that does not mean that there is no such thing as
scientific approach.
3-
Reductionism, Physicalism, and Determinism as scientific
rationalism
3-1 Reductionism
I discuss reductionism as the idea that “every phenomenon can be
explained by physical laws”. Anti-physicalistic ideas are mainly
based upon gaps in our physical interpretations. For some
examples you can refer to Chalmers’ “Phenomenal Concepts and
the Explanatory Gap”, or Chalmers’ “Consciousness and its
Place in Nature”[18]
or other works of Chalmers in the endnote, or Behe (Behe, 1996)[19],
and also you can refer to Scott A. Minnich and Stephen C. Meyer
(2004)[20],
and Dembski[21]
(1998, 2002), and his other works in endnote. In what follows I
will examine three anti-reductionist ideas.
3-1-1 Irreducible complexity
The idea of irreducible complexity is a very strong
presupposition. For an example see Michael Behe (1996) and also
Minnish and Meyer (2004). Behe uses a mouse trap as an example
to show that there are some organisms which cannot have
functions without each one of its parts. This approach is flawed
for two reasons. At first, it is not important that a mouse trap
has not its function, unless it is completed. The function is
the sort of things that are important for us and not for the
nature itself then if you put aside the teleological
interpretation it will not be important that the organism has
any function or not, even it is not important that the organism
as a whole is dead or alive. There is a way that dead organisms
can develop to live ones. Minnish and Meyer in their mentioned
essay say that “The data from Y. pestis presented here
seems to indicate that loss of one constituent in the system
leads to the gradual loss of others.” In the previous sentence
they have confessed that “Contrary to popular belief, we have no
detailed account for the evolution of any molecular machine.”
However, they have resulted in their article that “Molecular
machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely,
irreducible complexity.” The second matter is that the meaning
of “Gradual loss of others” in Minnish and Meyer means
that we are thinking about the living cell. Let see how it is
possible to develop a complete living cell by a very short
life-time cells. Suppose the below code.
It is shaped by two different strings, A and B. This is the DNA
code of a living cell. Every box is a sequence of Adenine,
Temin, Cytosine, and Guanine. Suppose
that it is the DNA code of a very unstable form of a living
cell; a DNA-like code[22],
maybe. It will die very soon. Additionally, perhaps it cannot
duplicate itself. After its death the string will be collapsed
from the weakest part that is indicted by a dark line:
Each of these strings can be divided into two strings:
They can make new compounds as below:
And they can shape each one of the below forms:
This schema can show us that it is very natural to think that
life can emerge from non-living
matter by passing trough the middle stages as living-like
organisms; the organisms which could not duplicate themselves
and die very soon. In this way if we accept that the cell
organism is reducible to its DNA and its genetic codes then we
can find that it can go through the same way that Darwin says in
his Origin of species.
By using Darwin’s Famous claim in the sixth chapter of his book:
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which
could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive,
slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But
I can find no such case
Behe wants to show that he has found this kind of organism. I
refer to Dawkins (1986)[23]
for the answer to his claim. According to DNA codes, I say that
it is possible for an organism to improve itself step by step in
DNA code levels because of biochemical causes. The events in
chemical level may be deemed to be an emergent phenomenon in
organism levels. I mean that even if we confront a gap in the
evolution steps in organisms we cannot suddenly infer that
Darwin’s idea is flawed. We do not know so many things about the
biochemical realities in the beginning era of life. For example
we think that the life forms have emerged after composing of
atmosphere. However, it is possible that it can be started
before that. If we pay attention that in those eras the measure
of background radiation resulting from uranium decaying was more
than nowadays; just 3 billions years ago it was 1.75 times the
contemporary measure, then it is very natural to think that the
probability of mutation was much more than nowadays, especially
when we see that these mutations are very easy to occur in
simpler strings of the DNA-like codes. There are so many things
that we do not know. Reductionism is not the solution as the
same way that irreducibility is. I mean if you think that some
complexity is not reducible you are not obliged to do more, but
if you say that you can reduce something to something else then
you are obliged to explain “How”. If an irreductionst is obliged
to do more either –as I will show later, he will fall in
reductionism or they will produce questions which cannot be
answered by science. Such as “Who is the designer and what is
the designer's purpose?” This is the idea of TOR that I
explained above; you should choose the one which enforces you to
do more researches because your system of beliefs is never
complete; because of GIT. I do not accept Millstein’s idea
[marja be kare montasher nashode ba naqle daqiqe ebarat.] that
one can say that we are wasting time. Who can say that what
action is time-wasting and what is not, if we remember that it
took about 1700 years for us to solve Zeno’s paradoxes, or it
took, at least, about 2000 years for us to make an instrument
for flying. Just suppose that if we had believed Lord Kevin’s
foresight we could not make airplane. Science does not ask that
“Is something possible or not?” It also does not hear any person
who says that something is impossible. It just asks a question
“How it is possible to do something?” There is no example in the
history of science that you can find that it has been failed to
find a way to complete its mission.
3-1-2 Intelligent Design
The idea of “intelligent design” is correlated to the idea of
“Irreducible Complexity”. As I will show here the idea of
intelligent design and its famous tool, “design-detection
filter” is based on the strong anti-reductionism and
anti-physicalism presupposition. I will survey Dembski’s idea
mainly in his famous book “The
Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small
Probabilities”.
He has spoken about a “Design-Detection Filter” to search for
the trace of design in nature. As we understand from his text
there are two possible ways for something to be made; chance and
design. This idea is based on his way of design detection. He
has introduced “Specification” as a strong tool to specify the
trace of the designer. By the light of another article of him
“Specification: The Pattern That Signifies Intelligence”[24]
that is based on clarifying this term and its use, we can
understand the strong presupposition. You can find a very
beautiful algorithm for design detection in Robert Camp’s piece
on skeptic website[25].
In the mentioned diagram you see just “Chance” and “Necessity”
and there is no room for laws, physical laws for example. Darwin
did not deny the physical laws in the nature and did not say
that everything in evolution has happened by chance. Besides
this very important connivance of physical laws he has suggested
a formula for evaluating the “specification” as the last pace to
infer the trace of a designer:
K= –log2[M·N·
ϕS(T)·P(T|H)].
However, in this formula we do not have a good criterion to know what ϕS(T) is, that has been identified as “descriptive complexity of T”, where T itself is “description” . However, as I understand his mean mainly via “No Free launch”, T is supposed to be pattern or design. In the article [Specification] he has evaluated this function for the “bacterial flagellum” as “bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller.” He says “ |
