Re: Human design and natural "design"


"Anthony Cerrato" <tcerrato@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:de8iev$1hqe$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> "Perplexed in Peoria" <jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
> message news:de6dh7$rt5$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > "John Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:de528a$cp7$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > "Perplexed in Peoria" jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:-
>
> Snipped
>
> > What I am saying is that Nature DOES have a theory of
> > Herself (or, as I would prefer to put it, a model of
> > Herself). It is a model in the sense
> > of a model airplane or a model railroad. A
> > smaller-than-life replica of the original, which is
> > nonetheless faithful in many details. What is this
> > small-scale replica of a species which Nature uses to
> > think about what might work? It is a population, a
> > small part of a species. Nature tests
> > ('thinks about') her innovations in a single population
> > before deploying them in the species as a whole.
> >
> > It is a point of view. A 'stretched' point of view to be
> > sure. But I think that it is worth defending at least
> > to find out what the limits of this viewpoint are.
>
> I think I could agree with this viewpoint, at least to the
> extent that it may have heuristic or innovative value, as
> has been discussed previously. In this sense, any benefit
> that accrues
> from assuming such a view is no different than the putative
> educational value or innovative ideas which can obtain from
> using anthropomorphic descriptions to elucidate various
> theories or sciences. I just wonder how much utility the
> "nature = design" concept has for something which, in
> effect, is so general that it encompasses "everything" in
> the universe ...

I'm afraid I have been sloppy in presenting my viewpoint.
To clarify:

I am NOT saying that Nature (i.e. the universe and its laws)
is alive or intelligent. The universe does not have small
faithful models of itself to 'think about', nor does it have
goals and interests to guide its thoughts, nor does it have
any way of deploying something that works in the model into
the universe in its totality.

I am NOT saying that Nature (i.e. Earth's biosphere) is alive and
intelligent. Lovelock said something like that, but I am
not endorsing the Gaia hypothesis here.

What I AM saying is that Nature (i.e. the 'designer' of the
Earth's various species and their adaptations) is a collection
of intelligent agents - one agent per species. Only living
biological organisms that are subject to natural selection
can be the components of such agents.

Although the universe and the biosphere contain lots of
intelligent agents, they are not themselves intelligent.
However, the entity which guides the evolution of Arabidopsis
is intelligent, even though it does not contain a single
intelligent agent. The entity which guides the evolution
of H. sap. is also intelligent. It happens to contain
a lot of intelligent agents (of a completely different sort)
among its components, but that does not make it any smarter
than the Arabidopsis agent.


.

Relevant Pages

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