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 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
