Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id GAA12679 (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 06:40:04 +0100 From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 00:44:04 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Logic + universal evolution Message-ID: <3B732E54.31548.1291B56@localhost> In-reply-to: <004f01c12159$9db252c0$6a24f4d8@teddace> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 9 Aug 2001, at 22:02, Dace wrote:
> 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.
>
Simple rules can have complex consequences. The apparently
choreographed movements of schools of fish or flocks of birds are
explained by each individual bird's tendency to keep its neighbor
within X and Y distance of itself; the building of beaver dams is
explained by the rule that branches and mud are to be moved
towards the sound of running water. I'm sure that there is a similar
rule or small group of rules, probably connected with pheromonic
chemical marking, that will suffice to explain termite mound
construction.
>
> Ted
>
>
>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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