Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 113

Interview with historian Richard Weikart: Is evolution racist?

By J. R. Miller and Leroy Hill in connection with Weikart’s new book, Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism.

From the Publisher:

To hear some tell it, Adolf Hitler was a Christian creationist who rejected Darwinian evolution. Award-winning historian Richard Weikart shows otherwise. According to Weikart, Darwinian evolution crucially influenced Hitler and the Nazis, and the Nazis zealously propagated evolutionary theory during the Third Reich. Inspired by arguments from both Darwin and early Darwinists, the Nazis viewed the “Nordic race” as superior to other races and set about advancing human evolution by ridding the world of “inferior” races and individuals. As Weikart also shows, these ideas circulate today among white nationalists and neo-Nazis, who routinely use Darwinian theory in their propaganda to advance a racist agenda. Darwinian Racism is careful history. It is also a wake-up call.

You can register for a webinar with Weikart, February 3, with John West as host here.

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Is “Many Worlds” an atheist war on quantum mechanics?

Conducted, according to lawyer and editor Ian Huyett, by — among others — Hugh Everett III (1930-1982), founder of the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics:

A dyed-in the-wool nihilist, Everett is known for ordering that his ashes be dumped into a trashcan when he died—a practice that Everett’s daughter later copied upon committing suicide. Everett brought this same dedication to bear in his scientific career. Today, Everett’s disciples praise him for bringing an atheistic scorn of the immaterial back to quantum mechanics.

As a graduate student in the 1950s, Everett was alarmed to discover that traditional quantum mechanics did not line up with his materialist commitments. He was repulsed by the fact that the human mind seemed to be given a special role—a conclusion that Everett thought smacked of the supernatural. There seemed to be “a magic process in which something quite drastic occurred, while in all other times systems were assumed to obey perfectly natural continuous laws.”[4] In Jonathan Allday’s words, Everett firmly believed that such a “‘magic process’… should not be considered in quantum physics.”

Everett therefore devised the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics—perhaps the most widely-known interpretation in contemporary popular culture. The purpose of the interpretation was, in essence, to create a consistent model of quantum mechanics that would preserve Thomas Huxley’s materialistic dismissal of the mind. Everett’s model continues to be extremely influential.

David Deutsch, a militantly atheistic contemporary physicist, regards himself as a sort of apostle of Hugh Everett. “Everett was before his time,” says Deutsch. Before Everett, “things were regarded as progress which are not explanatory, and the vacuum was filled by mysticism and religion and every kind of rubbish. Everett is important because he stood out against it.”[5] Deutsch’s words of praise are important: Everett’s greatest achievement is not the elegance of his mathematical model, but that the fact that his model pushed back against “religion,” which is of course false.

The physicist Stephen M. Barr—a rare theist among physicists—admits that the Many Worlds Interpretation successfully reconciles the math of quantum mechanics with materialism. Yet the interpretation, Barr says, is “awfully heavy baggage for materialism to carry.” In the words of Bryce DeWitt, a proponent of the interpretation, Many Worlds means that there are literally “10^100 slightly imperfect copies of oneself all constantly splitting into further copies, which ultimately become unrecognizable.” This, Dewitt concedes, “is not easy to reconcile with common sense. Here is schizophrenia with a vengeance.”

Ian Huyett, “The Atheist War Against Quantum Mechanics” at Staseos – Bold Christianity (Updated November 28, 2021)

It’s an undemonstrable thesis, actually. It makes so much more sense to just believe in God. Or, as Eugene Wigner, also quoted, put it, “while many philosophical ideas ‘may be logically consistent with present quantum mechanics… materialism is not.’”

Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

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At Mind Matters News: Science paper: Could octopuses be aliens from outer space?

It’s the octopus’s intelligence that causes such usual theses to float in the science literature:

A 2018 science paper that suggests that they might be is receiving new attention. The basic thesis is that the Cambrian Explosion, which produced most of the basic animal life forms we see today, was the outcome of extraterrestrial viruses carried on a meteor that crashed onto Earth 540 million years ago. The underlying theory is panspermia, a hypothesis espoused by Francis Crick, that some viruses and bacteria travel on the tails of comets or meteors and may take root on planets:

These comets could have introduced Earth to novel life-forms that evolved on other planets, including viruses, durable microorganisms like unearthly tardigrades or, as the new study suggests, even fertilized animal eggs from other worlds.

Brandon Spektor, “No, Octopuses Don’t Come From Outer Space” at Live Science (May 17, 2018)

Tardigrades (water bears) do survivfe space conditions so an extraterrestrial origin cannot be ruled out in principle. But octopuses? Bear with us.

Now, a group of 33 scientists from respected institutions around the world have suggested these bizarre creatures descend from organic alien material. Their research, published in the journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, ties the “remarkable” rise of octopuses and their cephalopod cousins to the theory of panspermia.

Katherine Highnett, “Are Octopuses From Outer Space? Study Suggests Cephalopod Eggs Traveled to Earth on a Comet” at Newsweek (May 17, 2018)

The underlying issue is that octopuses are very strange and very smart (more on that in a moment):

News, “Science paper: Could octopuses be aliens from outer space?” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: There is no simple way of accounting for how smart the eight-armed invertebrate is. So, even if we dismiss an extraterrestrial origin, we still face a mystery.

You may also wish to read: Octopuses get emotional about pain, research suggests. The smartest of invertebrates, the octopus, once again prompts us to rethink what we believe to be the origin of intelligence. The brainy cephalopods behaved about the same as lab rats under similar conditions, raising both neuroscience and ethical issues.

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Did glaciers cause a billion-year gap in information about the development of life?

Scientists have argued for tectonic activity or, alternatively, glaciation to explain the Great Unconformity. A Dartmouth research team favors glaciation:

This giant lapse in Earth’s memory exceeds one billion years in some places, resulting in 550 million-year-old rocks sitting atop ancient layers that date back 1.7 billion years, with no trace of the many lost epochs in between…

Now, a team led by Kalin McDannell, a postdoctoral researcher in earth sciences at Dartmouth College, has presented new evidence that glaciers were the main force that carved out this mysterious gap in time.

The researchers discovered a strong “cooling signal” at four very different geological locations across North America, suggesting that continental-scale glaciation may be “the only foreseeable process that can account for both the formation and preservation of the Great Unconformity,” according to a study published Tuesday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Becky Feirrera, “A Billion Years of Time Are Mysteriously Missing. Scientists Think They Know Why.” at VICE

Of course, the gap ended roughly at the same time that identifiable complex life began, roughly 550 million years ago. What was going on in the meantime is anyone’s guess.

The paper is open access.

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L&FP, 49: Debating the validity (and objectivity) of infinity

Steve Patterson, among many points of objection, is doubtful on the modern concept of infinity (or more strictly the transfinite):

The foundations of modern mathematics are flawed. A logical contradiction is nestled at the very core, and it’s been there for a century.

Of all the controversial ideas I hold, this is the most radical. I disagree with nearly all professional mathematicians, and I think they’ve made an elementary error that most children would discover.

It’s about infinity. I’ve written about infinity here, here, and here, and each article points to the same conclusion:

There are no infinite sets.

Not only do infinite sets not exist, but the very concept is logically contradictory – no different than “square circles”.

Infinite sets are quite literally enshrined into the modern foundations of math – with what’s called “The Axiom of Infinity”. It simply states that, “At least one infinite set exists.” Specifically, the set of natural numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on).

Let’s sample one of his arguments, from later down in the same post:

First, we need to define our terms. “Infinite” or “infinity” has many definitions, some better than others. I will focus on two definitions: the standard one, and then a superior one.

The standard definition of “infinite” means “never-ending”, “limitless”, or “without boundaries.”

The superior definition of “infinite” means “without inherent limitation.” These two definitions often get mushed together, and it results in conceptual confusion.

The difference between these two definitions is metaphysical, as I will explain. Take the question:

“How many positive integers are there?”

The standard response is, “There is an infinite amount” – implying that there is an “actually-infinite” amount. That somehow, you can put “all the positive integers” into a set, and the amount of elements you’ll end up with is “infinity”.

In fact, mathematicians have a term for the actual size of the set of positive integers. They call it “Aleph-null.” According to modern set theory, originally conceived by Georg Cantor, Aleph-null is the smallest size of infinity. Mathematicians think there are different actual sizes of infinite sets.

This is nonsense and a confusion about the metaphysical status of numbers, which I’ll get into later. A superior response to the question, “How many positive integers are there?” is to say:

“There is no inherent limitation to the size of set you can create with positive integers.”

That doesn’t mean there’s an actually-infinite set out there in the world. It means there’s no limit to the size of the set’s construction.

Now, there are a few holes in this reasoning (hang on, we are going somewhere good!) that tie back to a key question, what is Mathematics? Not, what does the word mean but: what is the substance, the essence of the discipline and what it studies.

The best answer I have found, building on what was said by a distinguished professor long ago now, in an aside in my Uni’s good old N2 course, M100: [the study of] the logic of structure and quantity.

What is being missed here, is that there is a structure being laid down by going, 0,1,2 . . . k, k+1,k+2 . . . n, n+1 . . . and that it has an associated, countable scale or quantity. one, that we can label aleph null then study as a quantity in its own right. Related, we can use ordinality as a structure to develop ordinal and even transfinite numbers.

Where, we can also conceive of an extension to the number line with a value H beyond any n in the natural counting numbers, N. Then, use our favourite catapult 1/x to associate h = 1/H, number closer to 0 than 1/n for any number n we can actually complete counting to. H is a transfinite hyperreal, h is a tamed infinitesimal as was envisioned by Archimedes and co., later by Newton, Leibniz and Euler et al. It took Robinson to tame such. The hyperreals are set R*.

(NB: Notice, I am here further defining n, where n+1 is obviously also finite and BOUNDS n by succeeding it. That is how n is finite, it is a whole number value that mileposts the reals line R and is bounded by onward integers. The infinite, by contrast is any quantity that cannot be bounded by at least one definite, finite value. That is the proper sense of infinite as meaning beyond bounds or limitless. The limit in question, being itself finite. There is thus no conceptual barrier here to greater and greater transfinite numbers, ordinal or cardinal. Also, the catapulting between h and H via 1/x unifies the extended number line R*. The basic number line quantities are a unified whole and can be assigned to definite collections, i.e. sets. Namely, N,Z,Q,R,R*. Notice, I have skipped C, which is a two dimensional vector domain created from the reals and a second axis rotated by 90 degrees, the so-called imaginary numbers, in fact vectors of rotation.)

In short, there is room for transfinite numbers of scale — notice, scale, order of magnitude — aleph-null and beyond.

Back to Patterson:

Mathematicians use phrases like:

“The set of all positive even integers.”

They claim the size of that set is infinite – specifically, it is “Aleph-null”, which is the smallest infinity. Infinite sets with larger cardinalities are called “Aleph-one”, “Aleph-two”, and so on. There are, according to mathematicians, an infinite amount of sizes of infinite sets. This was the ground-breaking work of Georg Cantor, on top of which modern mathematics is built.

Now, instead of referencing “the set of all positive even integers”, imagine we’re talking about “the set of all positive odd integers.”

The cardinality, as you might intuitively think, is the same. Aleph-null.

What about the question:

“What is the cardinality of the set of all even and odd integers together?” In other words, what is Aleph-null plus Aleph-null?

The answer: Aleph-null. The cardinalities are the same.

If this strikes you as logically contradictory, that’s because it is, but mathematicians have believed this for over a century.

This means they accept the following idea: a whole can be the same size as its constituent parts, because “Aleph-null” is the same size as “Aleph-null plus Aleph-null.”

Nope, and it is not because there is an elementary error:

They justify this by saying, “Regular finite logic doesn’t apply when talking about infinite things!”

The real issue is of course the implications of there being no finite bound:

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 . . .

0, 2,4,6 . . . = 2×0, 2×1, 2×2, 2×3, . . . 2xn, . . .

1,3,5 . . . = 2×0 +1, 2×1 +1, 2×2+1 . . . 2xn+1 . . .

k, k+1,k+2 . . . = k +0, k+1, . . . –> k-k+0, k+1-k, k+2 -k . . .

That is, once there is no finite bound involved, N can be transformed into a great many sets that have the same scale, a quantity that can be labelled aleph null and specified as the size of N. That is, a scale such that a set can be without limit put into 1:1 correspondence with N. Logic of structure and quantity at work again, which we duly need to study.

So, the Mathematicians are quite correct, once there is not a finite bound, sets similar to the above, though seemingly smaller than N have the same scale as N. Strange, but not incoherent. We just need to accept a paradigm shift.

As usual.

This becomes even more interesting as Patterson unveils his underlying concepts:

In order to understand the refutation of Cantor’s Diagonal Argument, we have to understand the metaphysics of mathematics – what numbers are, and their relationship to our minds.

In a nutshell: numbers are concepts. They do not exist separate from our minds, nor do they exist separate of our conception of them.

Numbers (15, 2501, 56, etc.) are symbols used to represent concepts – concepts dealing with amount, magnitude, and quantity. Those numbers are just like letters and words. When we construct a sentence out of letters, we’re arranging some visual medium in such a way that evokes concepts in the minds of the reader.

The same is true in mathematics. The symbols of “+” and “-“ do not reference objective entities in the world. They are simply shorthand – a visual symbol – for a logical relation between our concepts.

See the key contrast? Namely, “numbers are concepts. They do not exist separate from our minds, nor do they exist separate of our conception of them.” and again, “The symbols of “+” and “-“ do not reference objective entities in the world.”

That is, Objective is here used to denote tangible and external to mind, what is not like that is thus deemed not objective, it is subjective; a human invention. The abstract, in his thought, is inherently subjective, don’t even mention Plato’s silly world of forms. This framing, however, is an error. One, reflective of the baneful effects of scientism and relativism.

Instead, start afresh from a basic observation: we are finite, fallible [= error prone], morally struggling, too often ill-willed and even stubborn. So, our first person perceptions, awareness, sense of location and orientation in the world, beliefs, opinions, reasoning claims, knowledge claims etc fall under this concern. So, we need warranting filters that can improve the reliability of such experiences, without falling into hyperskepticism. Which, more effectively defines objectivity:

In philosophy, objectivity is the concept of truth independent from individual subjectivity (bias caused by one’s perception, emotions, or imagination). A proposition is considered to have objective truth when its truth conditions are met without bias caused by a sentient subject.

Yeah, that’s Wikipedia testifying against known interest. We may as well acknowledge when they get something that may easily have been ideologically loaded right.

Hence, too, the centrality of warranting filters in establishing objectivity. The objective is generally knowable because it has been adequately filtered from the error proneness involved in our first person experience subjectivity.

Notice, truth is accurate description of entities or states of affairs etc. Nothing in that, requires that we have concrete, tangible external objects such as a coconut tree. Abstracta such as numbers can be objective and manifest their presence in something as simple as clustering fingers into a three and a two then joining them as a five, illustrating how || + ||| –> |||||. That is an inherent pattern that holds in any possible world. Even, the seemingly silly world of forms has a germ of truth in it, abstracta eternally contemplated by an utterly wise necessary being; building on a point from Augustine.

Where, many abstracta can be expressed in words or other symbols and so are communicable. Warrant regarding abstracta at the core of Mathematics is like that. For example, consider von Neumann’s construction:

{} –> 0
{0} –> 1
{0,1} –> 2
. . .
{0,1.2 . . .} –> w, omega, first transfinite ordinal.

Of course, w is not a finite bound.

So, when we see from Patterson,

There is no “largest possible [natural, counting] number.” That’s not how numbers work. Any number N that you conceive of, I can always think of N+1. Does that mean that N+1 exists prior to its conception? Certainly not.

See how the underlying radically relativist constructiv-ISM was brought in? Long since, w as a definable ordinal number was brought in, and bounds any n in N that can be exceeded by an equally finite n+1. So, there is no definable last finite, f so f+1 = w. That is we have a fuzzy border zone for N, but we can identify what it takes to be a member and what would not be a member, N is a valid though transfinite set. And all of this is objective.

We therefore see that objectivity is a pivotal quantity and how warranting filters help us achieve it. This is not to denigrate our first person experience, but it allows us to address a key limitation, error proneness.

Bonus, we have a clearer vision of the transfinite and of Mathematics. END

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At Evolution News: Darwin and the ghost of Epicurus

British philosopher Neil Thomas, author of Taking Leave of Darwin (2021), offers some thoughts in this first of a series:

Strange as it might at first appear, Darwinism, when viewed from a philosophical perspective, might more accurately be understood as a late sub-branch of ancient speculative thought than as science in the more rigorous, modern sense of that term. Indeed, some classically educated contemporaries of Darwin saw in his ideas little but a 19th-century rehash of thoughts that they had once studied in ancient Greek and Latin authors in their university days. “I cannot understand why you scientific people make such a fuss about Darwin. Why, it’s all in Lucretius,” harrumphed Victorian educator and poet Matthew Arnold to a biology professor in his circle.1

For the ancient Greek writer Epicurus and his later Roman follower, Lucretius, the entire mystery of the world’s awe-inducing complexity was to be sought in different shapes and objects generated at random by the chance interaction of elements.

Neil Thomas, “Charles Darwin and the ghost of Epicurus” at Evolution News and Science Today (January 25, 2022)

One way of looking at it: Darwinism enabled thinkers to retain the thought of Epicurus and Lucretius when, in general, the thinkers themselves were forgotten.

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More examples of human-made “evolution,” which are changing the way evolution is seen

A very large dataset is offering a different picture:

Wild populations must continuously adapt to environmental changes or risk extinction. For more than fifty years, scientists have described instances of “rapid evolution” in specific populations as their traits (phenotypes) change in response to varying stressors. For example, Spanish clover has developed a tolerance for copper from the mine tailings in which it grows, and the horn size of Alberta bighorn sheep has decreased due to trophy hunting. But until now it hasn’t been possible to reach any overarching conclusions about how different factors (such as harvesting, climate change, invasive species, or pollution) shape this rapid (now called “contemporary”) evolution.

Building on earlier work, a McGill University-led team has created a massive new dataset of close to 7,000 examples of changing traits in various populations around the world, from house sparrows and gray wolves to freshwater snails and Canadian goldenrod. The dataset is 80% larger than any that existed in the past and documents trait changes that are a mixture of evolution and immediate (plastic) responses to the environment.

“We have come a long way from the old view of evolution as a slow process to the point where we are now realizing that everything is evolving all around us all the time,” says Andrew Hendry, a Professor of Biology at the Redpath Museum of McGill and the co-senior author on the paper recently published in Molecular Ecology.

McGill University, “Uncovering the underlying patterns in contemporary evolution” at ScienceDaily (January 19, 2022)

This is valuable information but that which changed quickly before can probably change just as quickly back. Whether we end up with evolution in the traditional sense of an irreversible trajectory is going to take a while to sort out.

The paper is closed access.

You may also wish to read: Are humans changing evolution? Like tuskless elephants… In a human-dominated world, things happen faster, for better or worse. Should we still call it “evolution” if we did it?

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Science vs academia in less than two minutes

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An exotic exoplanet we might want to view up close through a telescope but not visit

exoplanet concept/Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

It seems to be a hot Jupiter:

WASP-189b is a planet outside our own solar system, located 322 light years from Earth. Extensive observations with the CHEOPS space telescope in 2020 revealed among other things that the planet is 20 times closer to its host star than Earth is to the Sun and has a daytime temperature of 3200 degrees Celsius. More recent investigations with the HARPS spectrograph at the La Silla Observatory in Chile now for the first time allowed the researchers to take a closer look at the atmosphere of this Jupiter-like planet.

“We measured the light coming from the planet’s host star and passing through the planet’s atmosphere. The gasses in its atmosphere absorb some of the starlight, similar to Ozone absorbing some of the sunlight in Earth’s atmosphere, and thereby leave their characteristic ‘fingerprint.” With the help of HARPS, we were able to identify the corresponding substances,” lead author of the study and doctoral student at Lund University, Bibiana Prinoth, explains. According to the researchers, the gasses that left their fingerprints in the atmosphere of WASP-189b included iron, chromium, vanadium, magnesium and manganese.

One particularly interesting substance the team found is a gas containing titanium: titanium oxide. While titanium oxide is very scarce on Earth, it could play an important role in the atmosphere of WASP-189b—similar to that of ozone in Earth’s atmosphere. “Titanium oxide absorbs short wave radiation, such as ultraviolet radiation. Its detection could therefore indicate a layer in the atmosphere of WASP-189b that interacts with the stellar irradiation similarly to how the Ozone layer does on Earth,” study co-author Kevin Heng, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Bern and a member of the NCCR PlanetS, explains.

University of Bern, “Extreme exoplanet has a complex and exotic atmosphere” at Phys.org (January 28, 2022)

The bright side of studying planets we’ll never be able to visit is that, in some cases, there wouldn’t be much point. It’s fascinating from a distance.

The paper is closed access.

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At Mind Matters News: Neuroscience mystery: How do tiny brains enable complex behavior?

Casey Luskin interviewed Eric Cassell on the remarkable navigational powers of many animal life forms, as set out in his recent book, Animal Algorithms: Evolution and the Mysterious Origin of Ingenious Instincts (2021). He argues that an algorithm model is best suited to understanding the insect mind — and that of many animals:

Casey Luskin: This is one of the most incredible things you talked about in your book, how these tiny brains of an ant, or the worm C. elegans, which has only, I think you said, 302 neurons. How can a mind that small be programmed, and not just programmed with behaviors, but you talk about how these small brains are programmed to learn new behaviors? And (the worm can) also then have a memory so it can remember what it learned. (18:22)

Eric Cassell: Well, that’s kind of the big question. And it doesn’t just apply to C. elegans but many other animals as well. In this case, they’ve been able to map the entire brain, because it’s such a small number of neurons and the neurons are relatively large. But we have no idea how the programming of the behavior actually goes on.

Just to expand that analogy, the, other kinds of insects that are discussed in the book — honeybees in particular and ants — they also have relatively small brains. Now, in their case, they’re approximately a million neurons, which is still a really, really small brain compared to mammals for example. But they also have really sophisticated behaviors. (18:54)

News, “Neuroscience mystery: How do tiny brains enable complex behavior?” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: Eric Cassell notes that insects with brains of only a million neurons exhibit principles found only in the most advanced manmade navigation systems. How?

There must be something going on that genes, as such, don’t account for.

You may also wish to read: A navigator asks animals: How do you find your way? The results are amazing. Many life forms do math they know nothing about. The question Eric Cassell: asks is, how, exactly, is so much information packed into simple brain with so few neurons?

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