Discussion about scientific issues as they relate to God and Christianity including archaeology, origins of life, the universe, intelligent design, evolution, etc.
Jbuza wrote: The systems would need an outside input of design to contradict the natural tendency.
This may be true, but how do you know it? It is not part of standard thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is a quantitative science. Can you provide any formulas for your assertion? Can you tell us what physical units design is measured in?
Sure units of entropy.
So are you saying that design counters the 2nd law of thermodynamics?
So it is the second law of thermodynamics being nullified?
It is not length of life, but depth of life. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Jbuza wrote: The systems would need an outside input of design to contradict the natural tendency.
This may be true, but how do you know it? It is not part of standard thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is a quantitative science. Can you provide any formulas for your assertion? Can you tell us what physical units design is measured in?
Sure units of entropy.
Great! You answered one question; that's a start. Want to try any of the others? Here's two more: What is the formulaic definition of design? How do you measure the design content of a molecule; e.g., what is the design content of the ammonia molecule, NH3, at 298 deg K, in eu (or cal/deg)?
Jbuza wrote: The systems would need an outside input of design to contradict the natural tendency.
This may be true, but how do you know it? It is not part of standard thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is a quantitative science. Can you provide any formulas for your assertion? Can you tell us what physical units design is measured in?
Sure units of entropy.
So are you saying that design counters the 2nd law of thermodynamics?
So it is the second law of thermodynamics being nullified?
No. But I would suggest that entropy works so that the design will not improve itself. But will tend to more entropy.
I don't know much about the law, but those who say that we receive energy from the sun are missing a vital piece themselves: the sun itself is a form of complexity.
Is mathematics a science?
Carl Friedrich Gauss referred to mathematics as "the Queen of the Sciences".
If one considers science to be strictly about the physical world, then mathematics, or at least pure mathematics, is not a science. An alternative view is that certain scientific fields (such as theoretical physics) are mathematics with axioms that are intended to correspond to reality. In fact, the theoretical physicist, J. M. Ziman, proposed that science is public knowledge and thus includes mathematics. [1]
In any case, mathematics shares much in common with many fields in the physical sciences, notably the exploration of the logical consequences of assumptions. Intuition and experimentation also play a role in the formulation of conjectures in both mathematics and the (other) sciences.
Therefore if you are strictly a reductionist, then mathematics is not a science, but if you are a realist and believe that we discover reality through the use of our deductive reasoning, then mathematics is a science.
Try this simple experiment,
Take a glass of water and disolve several teaspoons of salt in it.
Pop in a string.
Put a coffe filter over it.
Let it sit until the water fully evaporates.
Examine the salt crystals.
The disorderly ions which made up the salt solution has organized itself into orderly salt crystals.
Does this violate the second law of thermodynamics?
It is not length of life, but depth of life. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
aa118816 wrote:Is mathematics a science?
Carl Friedrich Gauss referred to mathematics as "the Queen of the Sciences".
If one considers science to be strictly about the physical world, then mathematics, or at least pure mathematics, is not a science. An alternative view is that certain scientific fields (such as theoretical physics) are mathematics with axioms that are intended to correspond to reality. In fact, the theoretical physicist, J. M. Ziman, proposed that science is public knowledge and thus includes mathematics. [1]
In any case, mathematics shares much in common with many fields in the physical sciences, notably the exploration of the logical consequences of assumptions. Intuition and experimentation also play a role in the formulation of conjectures in both mathematics and the (other) sciences.
Therefore if you are strictly a reductionist, then mathematics is not a science, but if you are a realist and believe that we discover reality through the use of our deductive reasoning, then mathematics is a science.
So are you saying that mathmatics is actually a representation of reality?
It is not length of life, but depth of life. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cool! How come none of them mention design as a measurable property? I've read that but am still at a loss as to how I calculate the design content of the ammonia molecule, NH3, at 298 deg K, in eu (or cal/deg)? Could you please help me with the answer? [Your reference does raise another point - entropy is a state function, yet this seems at odds with your concept of design.]
aa118816 wrote:Is mathematics a science?
If one considers science to be strictly about the physical world, then mathematics, or at least pure mathematics, is not a science.... if you are a realist and believe that we discover reality through the use of our deductive reasoning, then mathematics is a science.
Yes, I believe in narrow definitions to words; the narrower the definition, the more specific information a word contains. Fruit vs apple, e.g. This has nothing to do with philosophy but instead with communicating.
Science is deductive? August, I thought, unless I misunderstand him, has been saying it is inductive. Math is deductive. So why use the same word for both?
Try this simple experiment,
Take a glass of water and disolve several teaspoons of salt in it.
Pop in a string.
Put a coffe filter over it.
Let it sit until the water fully evaporates.
Examine the salt crystals.
The disorderly ions which made up the salt solution has organized itself into orderly salt crystals.
Does this violate the second law of thermodynamics?
No, and I am sure if you wait long enough the crystals will tend to disorder.
Last edited by Jbuza on Thu Feb 23, 2006 3:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Cool! How come none of them mention design as a measurable property? I've read that but am still at a loss as to how I calculate the design content of the ammonia molecule, NH3, at 298 deg K, in eu (or cal/deg)? Could you please help me with the answer? [Your reference does raise another point - entropy is a state function, yet this seems at odds with your concept of design.]
I'm not sure that I can. I am not the one that made the design analogy. Perhaps we could compare amount of complexity between a supposedly older organism and a evolutionarily higher one. Do you really need an equation to understand that a human is more complex than an ameba?
I would think that a measure of the amount of information would be a good measure to compare levels of design. I find some that say entropy is closely related to probability.
Try this simple experiment,
Take a glass of water and disolve several teaspoons of salt in it.
Pop in a string.
Put a coffe filter over it.
Let it sit until the water fully evaporates.
Examine the salt crystals.
The disorderly ions which made up the salt solution has organized itself into orderly salt crystals.
Does this violate the second law of thermodynamics?
No, and I am sure if you wait long enough the crystals will tend to disorder.
Yes but you miss the point, which is that although the evaporation of water does not violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics the result was an organization of salt molecules.
As long as the the entropy of a system as a whole goes up the entropy of a local system can go down.
Take another example the building of a car.
Or the duplication of a yeast cell.
It is not length of life, but depth of life. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you notice, I am not dogmatic and I posted a definition that reaches both sides of the arguments. I have found arguments which forcefully argue both sides of the topic, so I picked the one that explained both sides of the issue.
If you are a realist, then mathematics is discovered and is part of the natural world. Therefore discovering mathematics is a science. If you think that we make up mathematics to explain what we see in the natural world, then mathematics is not a science. I am a realist, as was Einstein as in Paul Davies and many other brilliant scientists, so being a realist allows me to derive that mathematics is a science. You are free to disagree and I do not believe it is an issue of being narrow, it is an issue of whether or not you are a realist or an anti-realist.
