Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id GAA12595 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 10 Aug 2001 06:04:04 +0100 Message-ID: <004f01c12159$9db252c0$6a24f4d8@teddace> From: "Dace" <edace@earthlink.net> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> References: <20010809112033.AAA14561@camailp.harvard.edu@[205.240.180.110]> Subject: Re: Logic + universal evolution Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 22:02:05 -0700 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Wade,
> >Therefore, do you have access to solid arguments refuting the idea of
> >the evolutionary process yielding the emergence of stable particles
> >(proton,electrons, neutrons) immediately prior to the big bang instant?
>
> I ain't a cosmologist, like I said, but, as far as I know, there is no
> evidence of anything being around to evolve or not before the big bang.
>
> The definition of 'Big Bang' is the start of it all- time, space, and
> everything.
There's no starting point for time. "Start" is a temporal concept. It
implies time. So time itself cannot start. Time has no beginning for the
same reason it can't end. Any "boundary" of time would imply the existence
of something else against which time could be defined. There would thus
have to be something other than time which comes before or after it, and
this cannot be, since "before" and "after" are functions of time.
What began with the big bang was not time but spacetime.
Whether our culture is
> evolving is, IMHO, questionable, in that it seems to manifest itself in
> the same ways (clothing, behaviors, traditions, rituals, xenophobia,
> tribalism, burying practices, gods, etc.), and, while it is cocktail
> party pretty to speak of cultural evolution, I see it more specie
> specific, if it's there at all, and not just a longishly tethered item
> of genetic and environmental interaction, a la Wilson, who, also IMHO,
> would pummel Sheldrake in an instant.
To my knowledge Wilson has never responded to Sheldrake's thesis that
termite mounds are governed by morphic fields, with the termites occupying a
similar role to cells within animal bodies. Wilson has never responded to
this suggestion because he has no alternative. It's just up in the air. He
doesn't like the field explanation, but he can't offer anything better.
Here's a quote from The Social Insects (1971):
"It is all but impossible to conceive how one colony member can oversee more
than a minute fraction of the work or envision in its entirety the plan of
such a finished product. Some of these nests require many worker lifetimes
to complete, and each new addition must somehow be brought into a proper
relaitonship with the previous parts. The existence of such nests leads
inevitably to the conclusion that the workers interact in a very orderly and
predictable manner. But how can the workers communicate so effictively over
such long period time? Also, who has the blueprint of the nest?"
It's just like in the body. There seems to be no reason why everything
works the way it does. We just assume there must be a control mechanism
somewhere in there, which is based on a blueprint of some kind. So where
are the chromosomes of termite mounds? And if termite mounds don't need a
design of some kind buried deep within it, then how can we simply *assume*
that the body requires any such thing? The regular forms of these mounds is
a perplexing question for which there's no answer outside of field theory,
whether the static, mathematical idealism of Goodwin or the evolutionary,
memory-based model of Sheldrake.
Ted
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