>
> "Cary Kittrell" afone.as.arizona.edu> skrev i en meddelelse
> news:gablva$5sj$1@onion.ccit.arizona.edu...

>> In article <48c93406$0$56791$edfadb0f@dtext02.news.tele.dk> "thomas p."
>> yahoo.com> writes:

>>>
>>> "Damien Valentine" gmail.com> skrev i en meddelelse
>>> news:1433408c-2124-479a-9193-6ae270a4f4b2@i76g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
>>> On Sep 11, 12:13 am, "thomas p." yahoo.com> wrote:

>>>>
>>>> He expressed his religious beliefs. The fact that he is also a
>>>> scientist
>>>> does nothing to support the validity of those beliefs.

>>>
>>> I'm not even sure how these beliefs are particularly religious. As
>>> far as I can tell, he's just swapping the vague word "God" for the
>>> technical term "emergence", and hoping that makes everything better
>>> somehow, all by itself.
>>> ______________________________________________________-
>>>
>>> I think the hope is that nobody will notice that it is pseudoscientific
>>> garbage.
>>>
>>>

>>
>>
>> Well, not really. I'm currently halfway through the actual book (Kaffuman
>> is never a page-turner) and the science is not at all questionable. And
>> insofar as the God here being one any Christian would care to claim,
>> Kauffman's "God" makes the god of the Enlightenment Deists look like a
>> tribal idol. Kauffman's god is purely what he sees as the restless,
>> endlessly self-organizing nature of the material universe -- and nothing
>> else. Nothing else.

>
>
> I was not judging Kaufman, whom I have never read. I was commenting on
> Jonathan's post only.

>

>>
>> Kauffman's real target is not the materialist viewpoint at all, but rather
>> the reductionist stance -- the idea that everything can (in principle at
>> least) explained from the bottom up, that one could start with atoms --
>> or with the Big Bang -- and explain tadpoles and ant societies and human
>> brains by working your way upward.
>>
>> Kauffman disagrees -- again, NOT for anything like goddidit, and not as a
>> rejection of the naturalist, materialist position -- but simply out of a
>> conviction that at each new level, there are emergent properties and
>> principles that cannot be derived from the level below. When you get to
>> crystals of chemical compounds, there are principles at work that could
>> not
>> (even in theory) be derived from quantum mechanics. At the level of
>> biochemistry, chemistry no longer suffices to explain everything. Living
>> organisms cannot be adequately described by biochemistry. Brains cannot be
>> explained solely by in terms of cytology. Economic systems cannot be
>> derived from psychology. Convincing you of this point of view is the
>> motivation of "Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and
>> Religion."
>>
>> This is nothing more -- or less -- than a thesis that our traditional
>> scientific goal, pure reductionism, is not sufficient to get us all the
>> way
>> there, that the existence of emergent principles are also required. There
>> is nothing here for the hopeful believer who, on hearing "God" and "noted
>> scientist" in the same book review, would think find anything at all
>> compatible with his religious convictions.
>>
>>
>> -- cary

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>