Re: Analog vs Digital

From: John Wilkins (john_SPAM_at_wilkins.id.au)
Date: 06/24/04 

Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 04:29:26 +0000 (UTC)

<RobertMaas@YahooGroups.Com> wrote:

> > From: john_SPAM@wilkins.id.au (John Wilkins)
> > The bird's wing, though, merely resembles human designed wings - it
> > was not designed to reduce drag or maximise fuel efficiency. Those
> > that did better than others and were hereditable spread to fixation
> > in some ancestral population.
>
> I agree. The *verb* "design" does not apply in this case.
> There was no designing process involved.
>
> > There *is* no design here.
>
> I disagree. The *noun* "design" *does* apply in this case. The result
> of the random process of mutation and selection was a "design" in the
> sense of some pattern that is useful toward functionning of some
> device. The "design" in a bird's wing is part anatomy and part
> biochemistry. The principals of operation of a bird's wing are such and
> such (involving neurotransmitters, muscle cells, tendons, leverage,
> porous bones, feathers to catch air, tipping angle of attack to vary
> drag and lift, overall balance, etc.). What single word, other than
> "design", would you prefer for such principals of operation of a
> naturally-evolved device (more correctly: an artifact of a
> naturally-evolved genome)?

"Anatomy"? "Life-cycle"? Why use a loaded term like "design", other than
because such terms resonate with our inherited tendency to
anthropomorphise nature?

But, to be consistent, I will reject "function" too, as a term that
properly applies only to a transformation in a model that represents a
natural system. I really must submit that piece to a journal...
>
> > Everybody *says* they are "really" talking about some process that is
> > not intentional or forward looking, etc. But the language they use
> > misleads them anyway, when they draw conclusions in ordinary terms.
>
> I agree with you about the use of "design" as a *verb*, as the name of
> a process. NS does not design a bird's wings, or DNA replicase, etc.
> The process by which NS arrives at the design (noun: structure &
> principals of operation) of a bird's wing should not be called design
> (verb).

This verb/noun thing seems to me peripheral. There is no "designing"
action, there is no design. The issue is what final causal claims we
must make about biological systems - that is, are there teleological
aspects?
>
> > I think Gould was mislead this way when he talked about morphometric
> > space and Cambrian diversity.
>
> I think Gould was wrong-thinking about Gaia, but I haven't seen/heard
> any of his talk about morphometric space and Cambrian diversity and I'd
> be curious to see anything online about that to judge for myself if he
> was wrong there too.

I don't have a ref to his article, but Fortey attacked it:

Fortey, R. A. 1996. The Cambrian evolutionary "explosion": Decoupling
cladogenesis from morphological disparity. Biological Journal of the
Linnean Society 57:13-33.
>
> > I think Dawkins is rife with it.
>
> I'm not aware of Dawkins ever being significantly wrong about anything.
> Please give me a few examples of his being rife with it.

My books are in someone else's office right now. I'll try to get back to
you. The "designoid" discussion in River out of Eden <?> is a case in
point. 

-- 
Dr John Wilkins
john_SPAM@wilkins.id.au   http://wilkins.id.au
"Men mark it when they hit, but do not mark it when they miss" 
                                               - Francis Bacon

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