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"Darwinists don't accept direction in evolution." -- Swenet
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Doug M: [QB] I am only challenging Swenets approach to proving his points. Just because "material science" hasn't answered all the questions in the universe or how life began on earth or anywhere in the universe, then by reductionism, all material science is invalid, primarily because it is "materialist" or "newtonian". Which is ridiculous. (Note, lets not get into the philosophical and ontological arguments about abolutism, wholism and reductionism here. But suffice to say those are all related philosophical doctrines to what we are talking about. I am using these terms a bit more generally). And in that sense, Swenet is falling into the same "absolutist/reductionist" trap as many other modern thinkers. They really believe that a single theory, algorithm, model or formula will cover everything in creation and we have seen time and time again that man does not have nearly enough information or knowledge to be able to compute that...... What I see going on is folks trying to replace one absolute theory of everything with another absolute theory of everything, neither of which actually answers everything. And as such this is one aspect of "western" thinking that I fundamentally disagree with. And this is the aspect of this "anti-materialist" discourse that makes no sense. I don't expect Darwin nor Newton to answer all the questions of the universe, nor even Einstein and Max Planck and the quantum theorists. They each have their own merits within certain areas of the material world but I am not expecting absolute knowledge of everything to ever come from science in any form anytime soon. I would apply the hubris below to both spiritualists and materialists however. [QUOTE] [b]The Hubris of Holism[/b] By Victor Stenger [b]A major contrast between religious or spiritual thinking and science concerns whether or not physical phenomena can simply be reduced to the sum of their parts. Basic physics, as described by the standard model of elementary particles and forces, is fully reductionist. This notion sticks in the craw of those who see themselves as part of a great, integrated whole. In the scientific view, evolution reduces to a series of events that are local in space and time — individual mutations that are passed on to the next generation. In the religious view, every event is part of grand scheme that applies holistically, under divine guidance, to the whole system from bacteria to humans and from billions of years in the past to the present and indefinite future. In the scientific view, physical events also reduce to a series of events local in space and time — collisions between subatomic particles such as electrons and photons. In the view of quantum spiritualists, subatomic events are part of a grand scheme that applies holistically to every particle from an electron in a french fry at McDonald’s to a photon in the cosmic background radiation billions of light-years away and billions of years in the past.[/b] The conventional reductionist picture envisages a series of levels of matter. From elementary particles (or strings, or whatever is the most elementary) we move to the nuclei of atoms, then to the atoms themselves and the molecules that are composed of atoms. While only on the order of a hundred distinguishable atoms exist, the number of molecules is endless — especially the huge structures built around carbon that form the ingredients of life and our fossil fuels, as well as many synthetic materials from plastics to polyesters. The objects of our everyday experience are composed of molecules. Living organisms are an important component at this level, at least to us living organisms. How important they are on a cosmic scale is more dubious. Humans organize themselves into societies, so we can regard social systems — politics, and economics — as a yet higher level of material existence. Beyond that we have on Earth and its complex environment, the solar system, our galaxy, other galaxies, and whatever else is out there such as black holes, the cosmic background radiation, dark matter, dark energy, and other universes. Now it should be obvious that an elementary particle physicist cannot take her equations and produce a derivation of every physical property we observe. She cannot calculate the structure of DNA from “first principles” or predict the stock market (though some have tried). At every level of matter from the smallest bodies to the largest we have specialists developing the principles that apply at that level by applying the time-honored methods of science — observation, model building, and hypothesis testing. These principles are said to “emerge” from the level below. But the fact that we cannot derive everything from particle physics does not mean that the universe still isn’t just a collection of particles. Classical physics was reductionist. While direct proof of the existence of atoms was not found until the twentieth century, Newtonian mechanics was able to describe all of the behavior of macroscopic material systems — gases, liquids, and solids — in terms of the motions of their parts. The emergent principles of thermodynamics, which were introduced to describe macroscopic systems such as steam engines and refrigerators, were eventually derived from the submicroscopic atomic theory of matter. New Age spiritualists and Christian apologists have appropriated quantum mechanics to claim a more holistic picture of nature. However, quantum mechanics and, as mentioned, the standard model of particles and forces, are fully reductionist. The standard model has agreed with all the data gathered at particle accelerators since the 1970s and is only now being seriously tested at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva. Discoveries at the LHC are unlikely to change the general reductionist scheme. In short, reductionism in physics remains consistent with all the data. It isn’t defeated just by the fact that it can’t derive everything that happens. It still works. Holism has no evidentiary support. It doesn’t work. Holism is nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of those who have the hubris to think that they are an important part of some cosmic plan. [/QUOTE] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/the-hubris-of-holism_b_820601.html Speaking of computing: [QUOTE] The best example may be the research area that goes by the name “quantum simulations.” These are systems composed of interacting, composite objects, like clouds of atoms. Physicists manipulate the interactions among these objects so the system resembles an interaction among more fundamental particles. For example, in circuit quantum electrodynamics, researchers use tiny superconducting circuits to simulate atoms, and then study how these artificial atoms interact with photons. Or in a lab in Munich, physicists use a superfluid of ultra-cold atoms to settle the debate over whether Higgs-like particles can exist in two dimensions of space (the answer is yes). These simulations are not only useful to overcome mathematical hurdles in theories we already know. We can also use them to explore consequences of new theories that haven’t been studied before and whose relevance we don’t yet know. [b]This is particularly interesting when it comes to the quantum behavior of space and time itself — an area where we still don’t have a good theory. In a recent experiment, for example, Raymond Laflamme, a physicist at the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and his group used a quantum simulation to study so-called spin networks, structures that, in some theories, constitute the fundamental fabric of space-time. And Gia Dvali, a physicist at the University of Munich, has proposed a way to simulate the information processing of black holes with ultracold atom gases.[/b] ... In addition, physicists have studied hypothetical fundamental particles by observing stand-ins called quasiparticles. These quasiparticles behave like fundamental particles, but they emerge from the collective movement of many other particles. Understanding their properties allows us to learn more about their behavior, and thereby might also to help us find ways of observing the real thing. This line of research raises some big questions. First of all, if we can simulate what we now believe to be fundamental by using composite quasiparticles, then maybe what we currently think of as fundamental — space and time and the 25 particles that make up the Standard Model of particle physics — is made up of an underlying structure, too.[b] Quantum simulations also make us wonder what it means to explain the behavior of a system to begin with. Does observing, measuring, and making a prediction by use of a simplified version of a system amount to an explanation?[/b] But for me, the most interesting aspect of this development is that it ultimately changes how we do physics. With quantum simulations, the mathematical model is of secondary relevance. We currently use the math to identify a suitable system because the math tells us what properties we should look for. But that’s not, strictly speaking, necessary. Maybe, over the course of time, experimentalists will just learn which system maps to which other system, as they have learned which system maps to which math. Perhaps one day, rather than doing calculations, we will just use observations of simplified systems to make predictions. At present, I am sure, most of my colleagues would be appalled by this future vision. But in my mind, building a simplified model of a system in the laboratory is conceptually not so different from what physicists have been doing for centuries: writing down simplified models of physical systems in the language of mathematics. [/QUOTE] https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-end-of-theoretical-physics-as-we-know-it-20180827/ [/QB][/QUOTE]
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