Hmmm, this mixing in of replies doesn't really help much, we've gone through bold and italics, I guess my replies here will have to be in blue.
This quoting makes constructing replies hazardous, hope I don't mangle things too much!
TEEHEE. No I find your understanding of TD mystical nonsense. You have mystified a materialist concept - that is a misunderstanding.
What is heat? What for that matter, is matter? Is there any definition that can be produced that doesn't rely on a relational description? There is no misunderstanding, these 'things' can only be described in terms of relationships to other 'things', usually mathematically. There is no material basis for our science, only relational descriptions of things we observe. Energy is an abstract (read, mystical) concept that is useful in describing the relationships we see in nature, and that concept is based in thermodynamics, itself an abstract concept that describes how the thing we name as 'heat' behaves. We can't say what heat, or energy is, beyond a description of behaviour.
No response to this, does this mean you find this description acceptable?
I understand the point, though I disagree that your implied dichotomy between "no material basis" and "only relationships" is either fair or pragmatic. It also undermines your own thesis that energy is 'structured'. This structure would have to be "ONLY" a description.
It is only a description. Description, which includes relationships, is the only means we have of thinking or talking about our universe. That is not only both fair and pragmatic, it is the reality of our situation. The fact that we can describe nature using a structural description is the result of nature (or what we observe) behaving in an ordered and structured manner.
There are no laws to obey. That is a metaphorical devise that makes a material necessity into an anthropomorphised story. Things act according to the necessity of nature - they do not obey laws in the sense that they might have a choice to break the law. I have no trouble with the idea of DNA or that is codes for the structure of the organism, and re-combines to make the next generation. But the evolution does not happen to DNA, as such. Evolution is the result of change - it is not a cause in any sense. You speak as if energy is a directing force, when it is nothing more than the means of change and growth and death.
Hmmm. You say in the first sentence there are no laws to obey, then in the third say things act according to the necessity of nature, which is just another way of saying there are inviolate laws.
No, Laws are human conceits which are verified and modified. At its best, science is capable of changing those laws. For nature no regard to these laws in necessary.
Correct, there is no intention in what nature does. When describing something that nature does, which doesn't vary, it is acceptable to use the word law. If you feel strongly about this, take it up with the scientific community, as I'm taking my lead from there in my use of the word law. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_science the first sentence in particular. 'The laws of science are various established scientific laws, or physical laws as they are sometimes called, that are considered universal and invariable facts of the physical world'.
Ok, I get your semantics, law isn't really the right word (anthropomorphical as you say), but whatever words you play with the result is the same, things in our universe behave in set patterns in relation to each other. That's how we have science, and the concept of energy. Wherever evolution happens to 'take place', in DNA or as you say, being simply the result of change, is irrelevent. All the materials involved in evolution 'follow the necessity of nature', a necessity wholly describable in terms of energy interactions, or how 'Thing1' relates to 'Thing2' if the word energy is so unpalatable. Evolution itself is simply a 'mystical' concept coined to describe the overall pattern we see. We are just describing what nature does from our point of view, and energy as a description encompasses our description of evolution, as well as many other things.
FIne, then we agree to a point
Great!
Please try - I stand by my words. Energy is nothing but a potential by one way of looking, and particles by another. There is no form to these particles that is determined by any structural force. heat is amorphous, light is in motion, it can be directed but as a laser and this structure can contain information but it is not IN the energy, but in the way the energy is transmitted.
No need to try, I did the search before typing the sentence. Literally thousands of scientific papers discussing 'energy structure' in one way or another.
As I thought, you are not going to back up your words but make a vague reference to 1000s of non existent papers. Fortean Times does not count. Please cite one of these "1000s" of papers.
Here's a few, there are many more. Note the use of the phrase 'energy structure' in all of these. Couldn't find any Fortean Times articles...
Probing the energy structure of positronium with a 203 GHz Fabry-Perot Cavity - http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/199/1/012002
Very interesting but this has nothing to do with what you were saying at the top of the thread.
Exciton Energy Structure in Wurtzite GaN - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... S/abstract
Very interesting but this has nothing to do with what you were saying at the top of the thread.
Indeed, but you did ask me to supply you with links to documents based on your assertion that the term 'energy structure' was nonsense. Had you not asked me to justify this self-evident term, we'd still be on topic.
Energy structure and magnetization effect of semiconductor quantum rings - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_ ... er=1032126
How do you think any of this realtes to "The True Nature of Evolution".
It doesn't, but you did ask me to supply you with links to documents based on your assertion that the term 'energy structure' was nonsense. Had you not asked me to justify this self-evident term, we'd still be on topic.
Energy-structure correlation in metalloporphyrins and the control
of oxygen binding by hemoglobin - http://www.pnas.org/content/74/5/1789.full.pdf
Any one can do a "energy Structure" search on a science library portal, without any understanding of the contents of what he finds. This is the new Internet faith based world we live in.
What has ANY of this to do with Evolution?.
The term energy structure is terminology from my original post regarding the true nature of evolution. You asked me to supply you with links to documents based on your assertion that the term 'energy structure' was nonsense. Had you not asked me to justify this self-evident term, we'd still be on topic.
It's fine to say energy is just another way of looking at things, as a description, in the same way that particles is. We perceive form but the structure is entirely in the relationship of one thing to another. When I use the term 'energy structure' this is what I'm referring to, an informational construct that describes the relationship between phenomenon. I'm not saying the structure is in the energy, energy is an abstract concept that means pretty much the same thing as information. If it's easier for you to think of it in those terms, replace my use of the word 'energy' with 'information', the meaning of what I'm trying to say won't change (though the sentence structure may need a bit of a tidy
) This is exactly what you're saying when you say the information is not IN the energy, but in the way the energy is transmitted (itself a misnomer, given energy's abstract status, we don't really know what is being transmitted, and can only encode it as information meaningful to us). No it is not. Natural radio waves are chaotic.
Natural radio waves are not chaotic, chaotic is a human conceit. Nature's necessity. Of course I know what you mean, but it has nothing to do with what I said in the above paragraph. Also, could you please let me know how 'unnatural' radio waves differ from natural ones? That's right, they are structured differently (different frequency, to avoid interference with natural processes). That structure is how radio waves carry information.
You are just shooting yourself in the foot with the post-modernist stuff. If chaos is a human conceit, so is radio waves, nature, structure and everything you think. That would mean that you basically have nothing to say. But the fact is that radio waves that humans generate "contain" music and so on. And they are distinct from 'natural ones'. If you don't get this then it is pointless going on.
Haha, this 'post-modernist' stuff is simply a mirror I'm holding up to you, regarding your objections to my use of the word 'law' and 'energy structure'. My actual understanding is that the *word* chaos is a human conceit, but it is applied to real and observable phenomenon. The same is true of radio waves, nature, structure and everything we think. Humans are capable of generating radio waves that do *not* contain music, and are indistinguishable from those occuring naturally. What does this say for your distinction? A radio wave, natural or man made, is still a mathematically describable structure, that structure can be interpreted as information or energy, take your pick. Even apparently random waves contain patterns that we would (erroneously) recognise as structure. The static you hear on a radio between channels is your radio trying to interpret 'natural' waves into our human interpretation of sound. While there is no meaning for us, there is still sound we can hear. The distinction is in our interpretation, but radio waves are radio waves.
radio energy is nothing more than the means. nature does not structure its energy.
Do you know what the electromagnetic spectrum is? The periodic table? Human descriptions of repeated structures observed in nature. Nature is structured. No structure, no science (and probably no life). Are you still flogging the idea that I'm ascribing intent to what nature does?
NO but I am still curious as to what the fuck you mean by "The True Nature of Evolution". I can't wait for you to try to bring any of this together.
See my original post. Better still, read my blog.
Lasers, infra-red can alos be used to contain information, but you are simply mistaken to assert that energy in its natural form is relevant to what you are saying or is "structured".
They cannot be used to 'contain information', the information is in their structure, or, more precisely, how we interpret that structure. They can be restructured, by altering frequency or through pulsing. Also, can you please say what you mean when you refer to 'energy in its natural form'? Are you asserting the difference between 'man made' and 'natural'? That is certainly not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the measurable properties of observable things (human constructed or naturally occuring, the constituents are still made up from the periodic table and electromagnetic spectrum), and how those properties change through interactions. Such interactions have been shown to be structured, the chaos emerges simply because there are so many going on. The underlying particle interactions are still structured. Energy is very relevant to what I'm saying, as the interactions are only describable in terms of energy (which to be clear, is another human conceit used to describe nature. Necessary, with the describer (me) being human and all...).
What you call 'transmitted' I call 'related'. A particle is describable as a number of properties, this collective information and how it relates to other particles, is what I refer to as energy structure.
Gibberish
Charge. Frequency. Wavelength. Amplitude. Color. Spin. Mass. Energy.
All this information, and more, defines (from our point of view) the structure of the particle possessing these properties. Nature of course has no names for these things, nevertheless, the fact that we can differentiate what we see in nature, according to these properties, means that the energy in nature is structured.
No it means we are applying a structure so as to understand it. But I'm not arguing about any of this. As you say above the structure is in the human conceit. None of this means that energy is "structured" it means that there are consequences to the magnitude and presence of energy that effect matter. But it really is time to bring this back to the headlining promise
No. The structure is not in the human conceit. The *interpretation* of the structure is the human conceit. Saying there are consequences to the magnitude and presence of energy that effect matter is simply another way of saying that nature has structure.
What are you talking about?
Maybe my above statement will make it more clear. We don't know what anything is 'made of', we perceive interactions between things, and this information is what I mean by energy structure. What is fire? What is a proton? What is a neutrino? These are just names we give to re-occuring phenomenon only describable in terms of how they interact with other things. We see many things in our universe, with many different ways of interacting. Energy structure is the name I, and it seems, many other scientists, give to the relational information of a particular phenomenon.
My use of the word energy structure seemed to be objectionable to you, forcing a further off-topic explanation. Is what I'm saying above clear? You didn't comment so I'm not sure...
How is any of this relevant to Evolution?.
The fact that you ask tangential questions about terminology, then use my answer to say I'm straying off topic, is coming across as quite dishonest. You asked me for links, you asked me for definitions, both relating to terms I use *in my original post* to discuss evolution. I supplied them, you did not refute them, instead asking how they relate to evolution, the answer to which lies in their use in my original post.
You are confusing matter and energy. Please make your points more clearly!
Energy is an abstract concept used to describe the relationship between things. Matter is a particular phenomenon we observe, describable in terms of the abstract energy concept. In other words, matter is just a word for another relationship we see repeatedly in nature, that we can only describe in terms of how it interacts with other things. If this is wrong perhaps you could enlighten me?
Ok with this? I asked you to enlighten me otherwise, and you haven't?
I am aware of your point of view - you have made it several times. However this does not relate to your earlier confusion of matter and energy, which you seem to have deleted. ANd NO I am not going to trawl back over previous posts!.
Wow. You are resorting to saying I deleted stuff? All my original posts are intact, they would show up as edited if I had changed them in any way. My addressing your statement that I confused matter and energy is right above what you just wrote, with a request to correct me if I'm wrong. You didn't answer it in your post after I asked, choosing to do so now. It is also intact in all my other posts, as well as my initial definitions. You don't need to trawl through previous posts, my statements about evolution are all in my first post, my other posts deal with explaining terminology to you, providing links to justify terminology to you, or defending myself against baseless accusations of stupidity and now dishonesty from you. Just a suggestion, but if you consistently close your quote or color tags in your posts, information becomes more readable and less prone to error. I've been doing this to make sure nothing is lost.
No it does not. In order to transform matter to energy requires an atomic explosion which is thankfully VERY rare on earth and plays no part in evolution. You seem to have forgotten what c2 means. It is a very big number which makes the energy from the transformation very destructive.
Transforming matter to energy is a process that happens at every moment in every star.
But as yet we have not witnessed any biological activity on any star as yet. Are you trying to make a point. PLease SEE THE HEADING OF THE THREAD.
Hmmm. I'm clearly not talking about biological activity on a star. You implied I was talking about atomic bombs having an effect on evolution, completely missing the fact that stars convert mass to energy, VERY relevant to evolution.
I am going to invite you to consider how asinine this statement is. The fact that stars convert mass to energy is relevant to the fac that I got up out of bed this morning, or that Obama is President of the USA. KNowing that stars convert matter to energy does not However help us in this discussion. As for your assertion that I implied that atomic bombs were relevant to evolution, this was simply your own inference. The point is that no atomic reactions take place in evolution, just like an atomic reaction helps us understand Obama's presidency, though it would not have happened if the sun did not shine.
Knowing that stars convert matter to energy is very relevent to the discussion, as that output is directly linked to our evolution. Beyond the fact that it supplies the energy required to drive the whole process, you can see the evidence in how our species have adapted to the day and night cycle. I did not infer that atomic bombs were relevent to evolution, I inferred that e=mc2 was (or excuse me, the consequences of e=mc2). You misunderstood this to mean nuclear bombs, I corrected you by mentioning stellar processes.
I'll say it again, I've made no statement about atomic explosions taking place in evolution. What I have said is that the entire process of evolution is dependent upon energy obtained through atomic fusion in our sun. The processes in our sun depend upon the energy evolution of our galaxy and so on. Tracing back the energy involved in evolution ultimately takes us further and further out from earth (most of the material on earth having its origin in distant and forgotten supernovae), leading to the inevitable conclusion that evolution on earth is dependent on all these processes (which are of course, still ongoing).
I won't mention Obama, as in your next post you'll ask me what Obama has to do with evolution.
I inform you of this fact, and you choose to interpret it to mean I'm talking about life on stars. Please do not attempt to paint me as diverting the thread, I am simply answering your questions. I repeat my question, which you have not answered. Are you saying the sun's output has nothing to do with evolution?
Well yes. For the same reason it has nothing to do with Obama. The sun's output might be important to everything , but because it is ubiquitous it explains nothing
You say it's important but explains nothing. The explanation rests in why it's important. As you've made the statement that the sun's output is important 'to everything' then you understand that the energy reaching earth from our sun is what drives the evolutionary process.
Moreover, are you saying that the properties of matter and energy have nothing to do with evolution?
no I am not. BUt I am saying that you cannot understand evolution from primary properties, you need to get down to cases. You can't use the chemical composition of paint to tell us why the Mona Lisa is regarded as the greatest painting on earth..
The clumsy equivalent you see in the mushroom cloud doesn't yield a fraction of the efficiency. Are you telling me the energy output of the sun (dictated by e=mc2, and yes, i'm well aware of what the c2 means) plays no part in evolution? Also, it is not the size of this number that makes atomic explosions destructive. It is the relative value of the liberated energy with regards to the environment the explosion takes place in. Can't remember the number but our sun is the equivalent of something like billions of single megaton explosions going on every second, and yet the sun still shines (in fact, those explosions are necessary for it to shine). It is not just a destructive process, you are looking at it in human scales, it is also a creative process. In the end though, it's just a relational process, energy doing its thing.
You are rambling. This thread is apparently supposed to be about "Evolution".
You asked a question, I answered. I repeat my question. Are you saying that the sun's output has nothing to do with evolution? Are you saying the properties of matter and energy have nothing to do with evolution?
see above
Going back to e=mc2, this equation says there is a relationship (law) defining the upper bound of potential you can get from 'breaking down' matter, expressible as a number (i.e. meaningful only in relation to other numbers) that we call energy.
Once again you are confusing matter and energy. If you make this mistake you are simply throwing away 100 years of physics - the very physics upon which the rest of your (ahem!) Ideas rely.
See my above answer to this.
What has any of this to do with the "TRUE NATURE OF EVOLUTION"?
See my original post. My take on the true nature of evolution. Repeating and summarising. Evolution is ultimately dictated by energy interactions.
Dictate implies a dictator.
Only if you're playing word games and avoiding the argument.
More precisely, you can describe any life form as an energy structure being transformed through interactions with other energy structures.
only if you want to reduce it to meaningless drivel.
If that's your opinion I can't argue, you are entitled to it. I feel I have justified everything I've said, and answered every question. I haven't resorted to insults or accusations.
Once you do this, the distinction between life and non-life disappears, and you can talk instead of evolving energy structures, or more precisely, persistent energy structures.
Nothing to do with energy structure
Well, I was thinking of energy structure when I wrote it
Thus, energy dictates evolution but evolution as a principle also applies to energy.
Dictate implies a dictator.
Only if you're using word play to avoid the content of the argument.
The true nature of evolution, in my opinion. Instead of debating this, you decided to divert into the semantics of describing matter and energy, intent in nature and the definition of law in the context of science. All interesting sidelines, but totally off-topic. Now that I've expanded on what I originally said, for your benefit, you now accuse me of going off topic. I've answered the questions you posed, in defence of my original statements relating to evolution.
And so --what is all this about energy?
Exactly what I said. That the process we refer to as evolution is ultimately describable as energy interactions.
Tell me about the energy interaction that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. You will have to tell me what you mean by energy intereactions.
Which extinction theory do you wish me to describe, there are more than one? Assuming you mean the Yucatan meteorite...
Firstly, for those killed in the initial blast. Their bodies (an energy structure) could not maintain their structure in the face of the huge kinetic and heat energy generated by the blast. Some were atomised, others burnt or broken. The result was the same, their energy structure was compromised and did not persist through the blast. The energy interaction here is the heat and kinetic energy, interacting with the bodily processes of the animals involved (chemical energy, electrical energy, bonding energy). Note that the real survivors in terms of 'energy evolution', the atoms and to a lesser extent the molecules, were relatively unscathed by the blast, they maintained their structure.
For those killed by the blocking out of the sun due to the dust thrown up by the explosion. This goes back to my statement about the sun's output and how important it is to evolution. With less energy reaching the surface, the life that depends on it begins to die, starting with the plants and working its way up. In terms of energy structure, life forms requiring less energy to maintain (either because they are structurally smaller, or because of a difference in how they obtain their food) would be selected for. Cold, the lack of ambient heat energy, is also a factor, with heat being an energy requirement of most cold-blooded life. Reduced oxygen (separated out as a by-product of the energy processes in plants and particularly important for larger animals) and poisonous air (determined by the energy structure of a life forms breathing apparatus) were all factors. Barring luck, the life that survived all this was the life that had the right energy structure to do so. These structures are what you would call traits. The life that did survive persisted it's structure with variation through reproduction. This includes some of the smaller dinosaurs, that went on to become birds.
Every single process here, that determined whether a particular animal lived or died, is an energy interaction. In this case, death or survival is determined completely by the energy interactions a particular life form (energy structure) encountered, and how well that structure survived the interaction, i.e. what relevent survival traits the animal possessed. Those that did survive possessed their own particular variation of the energy structure we call DNA and passed it on (i.e. the DNA structure persisted, with some variation). The DNA of the dead was lost, i.e. it did not persist. This covers natural selection, which is the agent of change that drives evolution.
Not only that, but the concept really applies to everything, not just life, when you remember that all things are describable as energy. Thinking of a thing as a collection of information that changes over time (as you can with DNA, or a particle, or anything), things that can maintain the same or similar properties, in light of interactions with other things, are the survivors. Things that break down are the losers.
Protons have extremely long half lives, from our point of view. Nevertheless, thermodynamics dictates that eventually they will all break down. They don't break down now (well, statistically, some do) because of the relationship these particles have with the other particles. But this relationship is constantly evolving. Eventually all the protons will be replaced by other forms (of energy). DNA works along the same principles, discrete changes in our genome turning one thing into another over time and generations. We call this process evolution. One form of energy, or information, becoming another, as a consequence of interactions with other forms of energy, or information. All dictated by nature's necessity, the energy 'laws'.
All of this is in context of the thread, unlike the other stuff debated above, and yet you have no comment?
What do you think you have said? This is contentless..
Hmmmm.
Yes you have mislabelled matter and energy - this make sit much easier for you - but simply makes everything you say a nonsense.
It doesn't make it sit any easier for me at all. While I think energy works as a description of all phenomenon in the universe, it also represents the barrier beyond which it seems we cannot go, at least with our brains in their currently evolved state, and perhaps never. Non-relational ideas, such as free-will, god, or what came before our universe, are all brick walls into which energy (as the basis for our science) run into. I find this quite upsetting. I'm fully willing to accept that everything I say may be nonsense, but that is due to the uncertainty of the ideas we're talking about, none of these subjects are fully understood, by anyone, and may never be. Nevertheless, give me a description that encompasses all the stuff that we observe, and is more concise than the idea of energy. Until you can do this, it is simply illogical to state that I'm talking nonsense.
The point here is that you have nothing to say about evolution. You can use this idea to explain whatever you want but this will not bring you closer to evolution. Let me suggest you look at Karl Popper in "Conjectures and Refutations" where he states that a theory that can be used to explain everything , explains nothing. His two examples are Freudian psychology and Marxism. If you spend a moment you will figure out that this applies to everything you have said.
THe sun shines and nothing would be the way it was if that were not so - I say big deal.
And here you miss my point. My theory regarding energy does not explain anything, not by a long stretch. The text I wrote in the paragraph above yours highlights this. Energy simply represents the limit of relational thinking, which can explain everything in our universe (the processes involved, including evolution) but represents a barrier to thinking beyond the universe and matters of the why and how (e.g. the origin of the universe). The standard model of physics attempts 'to explain everything' but in reality it only explains behaviour that we observe and provides no absolute explanation. Abstracting to energy perversely makes this problem concrete, in that you can see no real basis to our knowledge of the world, other than relational description. If you understood what I was saying you would realise that what I'm describing is the problem, not the solution.
I'll read the paper you mention, and take a moment.
'THe sun shines and nothing would be the way it was if that were not so - I say big deal.'
Then what are you arguing about, and why are you so angry, to the point of accusing me of deleting what I've written? I've been honest and forthright in all my posts, including the possibility that what I say may be wrong. Nevertheless, my words are strong, I don't need to resort to trickery to win an argument, even if winning the argument was my desire, so please do not accuse me of it, anyone looking back over the thread will see you are wrong to accuse me.
Finally if by your closing statement you're saying that 'the sun shining' is the basis of my arguments then you have *really* missed the point. I can't do anything about that, other than vary my explanation.