[MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?)

[pholden at davtv.com]

Hi Case:

Looks to me like all of the below is a good argument for intelligent design.
(Just so you know I'm not completely ignorant, I'm familiar with Mandelbrot sets.)

> [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.




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