On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 03:36:26PM -0400, Roger Clough wrote: > > > Alfred Russell Wallace developed a theory of evolution about the same > time as Darwin, but his model allowed for Aristotle"end causation", > meaning goal-directed change. > > To the Darwinian materialists of the time, this smacked of the > hand of God controlling evolution, so Wallace's theory > was generally ignored. > > But goal-directed change is another term for the 2nd Law > of Thermodynamics, which holds that energy tends to flow downhill. > This means goal-directed or "end-caused" action, > so that it makes no sense to say that evolution is > merely the product of efficient causes, but -- if I may say so- > is also guided by a larger hand, that of God or entropy. >
Nobody in their right mind would think of the 2nd law as being "goal directed" (teleos). The second law is about increasing disorder - surely the opposite of any goal directed process. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
