[MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?)

[Case]

[Platt]
I agree. Some things we just don't know due to our limitations. But, it does
look like there's a pattern or design to the way the world works. Otherwise
mathematics, which if nothing else is orderly, would be useless in
describing some of the processes.

[Case]
Ok I have brought this up a few times and it gets ignored but hope springs
eternal so I will try again. That quote I provided to your previous post
hinted at this but a critically important idea is the notion of self
similarity across scale. I know, but stay with me. This one is fun. The way
Strevens put it you have all this buzz of activity going on but then you
step back and things become simple. Definite shapes and patterns appear from
the chaos below. But set forward into the buzz into a single plant growing
in the ecosystem. Analyzed as a system in itself it too is relatively simple
of orderly.

Much depends on the level of resolution you select to look at things. What
scale are you interested in? You want to see the universe as whole? Step
back and it's a point. Want more detail zoom in. There are galaxies and
stars. Step closer and there are molecules and atoms. Galaxies, solar
systems, molecules and atoms, discounting a few technicalities they are
different in scale but similar in structure. This principle is beginning to
look universal. We see it with incredible variety on this planet. 

Take a stalk of broccoli and cut off a smaller stalk. If you hold the small
one close to you and move the larger one away they will look identical. They
exhibit similarity across scale. This same pattern exists in rivers and
lightning, blood vessels and nerves, roots and branches, highways and
computer networks. 

It shows up on this forum every day. If you took the MoQ and carved it up,
as Pirsig recommends, into slips in trays. You would find for example that
certain quotes from Lila are cited over and over again while others are
rarely mentioned. If you arranged all of "hot stove" related posts for
example into their own set of slips then looked at each post to see what
other ideas they referred to, you would find common patterns and could begin
to organize the "hot stove" posts according to the sets of ideas that repeat
within them. Once those are identified you would find common themes within
themes. The structure of MoQ.org exhibits self similarity across scale. 

Pirsig talked about how he had this book organizing itself in his trays of
slips through the process of random access. What he described was this
process of self similarity across scale emerging from his trays, roots and
branches and twigs of thought. Putting like things together and allowing
paths of common divergence to form into new structures.

He described this process well but then dismissed it as though it was
absurd. How can the same structure manifest itself in two, three, four and
five dimensions? Pirgogine talks about it in terms of dissipative
structures. As energies flow into final entropic disorder they amble through
various transformations from nuclear, to light, to electromagnetic,
chemical, kinetic... The branching structure is the most efficient in terms
of space and surface area for the transformation and exchange of energy.
Still this does not account for its occurrence in a set of ideas like the
hot stove posts. Unless you see consider ideas to have properties that are
in some ways similar to energy and fluids. Hmm...

I think this is a profound insight. It can be formally described
mathematically. It can be readily seen all around you. You can feel it
directly in the flow of blood and inhalation of breath. It is not a question
of lines and levels as Pirsig and Wilbur would have it. It is a questions of
scale and resolution.

So in answer to your question of why, I am not sure but the fact that it
occurs looks pretty certain and the fact that it is universal also stands
out. There is indeed a very detailed set of mathematical principles that
describe this. From Cantor Dust, to Serpinski's triangle, to Koch's Curve,
to Julia Sets and Mandelbrot there is an evolutionary trend in mathematical
thought that describes precisely how order emerges from disorder. 

Whether this answers the "why?" or not I suppose depends on how you see the
what and how. But until you actually start to take a good look at these
ideas for yourself you are going to continue to be mystified. You will keep
saying things like "Oops" and muttering about the vagaries of chance
producing life and you will continue to generate heat without producing much
light.