[MD] Intellectual and Social

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, Krimel --


[Ham, quoting Duane Gish, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley 1953]:

"Of all the statements that have been made with respect to theories on the
origin of life, the statement that the Second Law of Thermodynamics poses no
problem for an evolutionary origin of life is the most absurd. The operation
of natural processes on which the Second Law of Thermodynamics is based is
alone sufficient, therefore, to preclude the spontaneous evolutionary origin
of the immense biological order required for the origin of life."

[Krimel]:
> Actually, Pirsig expresses sympathy for this ridiculous idea.
> I suspect that the number of biologists who subscribe to this is
> vanishingly small. And hopeful the subscribers are unemployed.
>
> I find it offensive that you use this Gish fool as an example.
> You cite him as associated with UCLA. I am sure many at UCLA
> are embarrassed that he got a BA there. They probably don't like
> to be reminded. He is in a fact associated with the Institute for
> Creation Research which has long been recognized as a religious
> organization with no scientific credibility whatever.
>
> Statements like the one you offer have never had weight with any
> but the ignorant or the stupid. I have long been willing to credit Pirsig
> with ignorance. You on the other hand...

Since you raise the credibility issue, I did a Google search on Duane Gish. 
Turns out he held key positions at Berkeley, Cornell University Medical 
College, and The Upjohn Company before joining the Institute for Creation 
Research in 1971 where he currently serves as Associate Director and Vice 
President.  Your personal bias against "Creationism" in no way impugns the 
scientific credibility of a Ph.D. biochemist with a distinguished working 
career.  Moreover, inasmuch as genetic mutation is mostly spontaneous, no 
scientifically informed person would call the propensity for creating an 
ordered. intelligently designed universe a "stupid" or "ridiculous idea."

Coincidentally, I had a discussion yesterday with my oldest friend who 
happens to be a retired professor of Biophysics (Wofford College, 
Spartanburg, SC).  Bill is an avowed agnostic and avid reader with whom I 
regularly have phone chats on philosophy.  When he mentioned yesterday that 
the Second Law of Thermodynamics "might support your philosophy", I was 
naturally intrigued.

Bill patiently explained to this lowly biology undergraduate that, left to 
themselves, chemical compounds ultimately break apart into simpler materials 
rather than becoming more complex.  Apparently "work" (a function of energy) 
is required to move a random or chaotic system toward an ordered design. 
While this can increase order for a time, such reversal cannot last forever. 
Processes return to their natural direction - greater disorder, their energy 
transformed into lower levels of availability for further work.  Thus, the 
natural tendency of complex, ordered arrangements and systems is to become 
simpler and more disorderly.

Yet billions of things are assumed to have developed "upward", becoming more 
orderly and complex over eons of time.  Until scientists discover the source 
of this "working force" underlying natural evolution, it remains 
inexplicable by this basic law of science.  (The "support" for Essentialism 
my friend was referring to relates to both the "source" and "design" of 
biological evolution.)

I personally have no problem accepting the "intelligent design" of the 
empirical universe.  Actually, the design represents the value of its 
"source" (Essence) to an intelligent observer.  You mention that "Pirsig 
expresses sympathy for this ridiculous idea."  Perhaps it's because he 
understands experience as "the cutting edge of reality," as I do.  Except 
that I take analogy concept literally.  We experience only what we are wired 
to make value represent.  As value-sensible beings with a modicum of 
intelligence, we have an affinity for intelligent design and our "cut" to to 
construct the objects and events of our experience to embody (objectivize) 
these attributes.

Of course, to espouse such a cosmogeny one must be willing to view the 
experiential world as anthropocentric, which (despite the author's various 
euphemistic analogies) is abhorrent to the MoQers.  And, since the Quality 
thesis rules out a sensible agent, experience itself is relegated to 
"patterns" presumably created by DQ rather than the cognizant individual. 
So the Pirsigians are left with an existential cosmology that denies a 
source of intelligence, value, experience, or morality other than an alleged 
extracorporeal level of Quality.  How sad!

Essentially speaking,
Ham