From: Ian Glendinning (ian@psybertron.org)
Date: Sun Oct 17 2004 - 00:26:26 BST
If Platt really did say
The only thing "scientifically sound" about randomness is its open
admission of ignorance. Randomness means, "We have no idea why this
event occurred."
I say ..
It's an admission of imperfect knowledge. Randomness can equally mean we
understand this process / reason / cause so well that we know we are unable
to predicted exactly which event will occur when and where.
Ian
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Steven Heyman" <markheyman@infoproconsulting.com>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 16, 2004 7:49 PM
Subject: Re: MD On Faith - Improbability ?
> Hi Platt, Jim, Scott...
>
>
> On 16 Oct 2004 at 9:10, Platt Holden wrote:
> > [Scott:] So why
> > call evolution "solely by chance and natural selection" scientific?
> > Why isn't it called dogma?
> >
> > msh says:
> > Because the concept of randomness is mathematically and
> > scientifically sound, and nature is chock full of observable random
> > events, from galactic collisions to comet and lightning strikes to
> > the toss of dice to the dance of quarks. So, unless we're shackled
> > with a strict determinism (in which case any study of scientific
> > cause and effect becomes meaningless), randomness is scientifically
> > viable, and the idea of a non-human planner is not. I think.
>
> platt:
> The only thing "scientifically sound" about randomness is its open
> admission of ignorance. Randomness means, "We have no idea why this
> event occurred."
>
> msh says:
> The discussion seems to be experiencing a severe "platteral" shift.
> The question I was addressing is whether or not Darwin's idea of
> random mutation knocks the scientific pins from beneath the theory
> of evolution. I think it doesn't because there's no shortage of
> random events undergoing scientific scrutiny. It may be that random
> events occur for reasons we don't understand, or for no reason at
> all. This is irrelevant to my point.
>
> Furthermore, and we might want to take this to a different thread, I
> think a lot of the confusion that results from discussions like this
> stems from mixing up two kinds of "why" questions. So, for example,
> someone might ask a scientist why water sometimes freezes. The
> scientist will say "Well, when the ambient temperature of a liquid is
> reduced past a certain point.... blah, blah, blah. But the
> questioner might interrupt her, saying "No, no. I mean for what
> purpose does water freeze." The honest scientist will say, "Uh.
> That's not my department."
>
> BTW, Jim, thanks for the link to the Ramachandran lectures. I'm
> enjoying them immensely, though randomly.
>
> Best to all,
> Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
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>
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> everything." -- Henri Poincare'
>
>
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