Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum The Complexity Far Surpassing All Understanding

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The animal kingdom is so diverse and imaginative. Some species are so bizarre, they would appear out of a science-fiction novel. And they are so varied; they swim, fly, walk, run, everything. Their chemical make-up makes them so, does it not? There are vertebrates and invertrebrates, fish and seagulls. It is amazing to ponder that they were created from the same resources of a molten rock billions of years ago. Scourging Wikepedia, I found a quote by Maurice Maeterlinck: “"Something in the insect seems to be alien to the habits, morals, and psychology of this world, as if it had come from some other planet: more monstrous, more energetic, more insensate, more atrocious, more infernal than our own."

I journeyed into my backyard to take this video of a couple of ants, and saw how divergent they were from some species like, for example, us humans. There are over a million different species of insects, occurring all over the world.

Some animals just sit in trees all day, some hunt in forests, some form highly sensitive units. An ant can “accelerate from zero to 143 miles an hour in 0.13 milliseconds-2,300 times faster than the blink of an eye,” says Mark W. Moffett reporting for the National Geographic. Still, within them is a sense of duty and honor. For they dutifully serve those in charge, and when one is injured offer help. Scouts patrol the entrances, with some primitive predator-detecting technology. Sounds similar to humans, doesn’t it? Maybe millions of years ago, when they diverged, they contained some of the same genes still visible in the higher forms of life salvaged today. They maintain order (through fear?), and security units (ineffective?), just as we do. A wonder it is to contemplate, the complexity of the creation surrounding us.

From the most glorious of sunrises to the most dense of forests, we live in a complex and compelling world. Throughout history, there have been many explanations for the phenomena surrounding the universe. Philosophy, religion, mythology, science, and thought have each done their part, and influenced many others down the line. Some figures have lead the march, some have failed, some have been overly dogmatic and zealots. But still, the human mind knows no bounds and has a complexity far surpassing our understanding. It gives us the discernment to know when to speak, it lets us learn about anatomies of tiny species recently discovered, it lets us recognize permutations of letters and produce eloquent sounds.

All this from nothing?

Now, perhaps that may have been an hyperbole, but from that permutation of words produced emotions in you, the reader. Something positive or negative, stimulating the brain. Would an ant, like the one in that video, recognize what I just said and refute my opinion? Does it even know what is being said? Nonsense, perhaps it uses its feelers to communicate with fellow workers, but it doesn’t distinguish lies from truth, or opinions. We as humans are perhaps the only species that can do so (you are the expert, is there any other that I should know about?).

We are infinitely complex. Some say designed from a Creator. Yet the issue remains; the fact that we can even engage in debate about our creation shows the wonders of the human brain. Perhaps that is my point, and nothing more. We must work together, to help form a brighter future for our world in which we reside. Regardless of opinions of the Evolution vs. Creation debate, we must work together. The debate only makes brighter the fact that we are infinitely intricate and multifarious. But we do share a common ancestry (albeit even if there were a couple separate ‘Eves’ as some scientists say, whether true or false).

“Shantih,” as T.S. Eliot once said; it lies within our grasp ready for us to partake.

Oh, apparently HTML is disabled; my video of some ants was cut off. Well it was just a video I shot w/ my video camera with ultra-close angle film of two struggling ants helping each other in my backyard.

here's the link, if your'e still interested:
http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=13567559

Tim. Interesting film. After indulging in gymnastics for a while one ant seems to simply dissappear at the end. What happened to it?

You quote Maurice Maeterlinck as saying insects seem to come from another planet. In effect they did. The earth was much different when they first appeared to what it is today. To a large extent I agree with your comment:

"Regardless of opinions of the Evolution vs. Creation debate, we must work together".

However in my experience those who believe we were created have less difficulty accepting the destruction of humans who disagree with them than do those who believe we evolved from apes. Creationists believe much more than just that we were created. They believe this creation was done by a God who they have a direct line of communication with and this God commands them to do certain things. It is for this reason I so frequently attack creationists and their ideas.

I do not know what happened to the ant. I was out in my backyard filming them, and I used that from my minutes of tape to download to the net, and apparently some wind blew it off. I thought it was funny, so I kept it, but it shows the ants struggling to survive only to let nature destroy them.

Regarding your explanation: I can see where you're coming from, and have valid points. But it is much different from their point of view, as i can attest as a former Creationist.

I witnessed an ant war once - big red ants fighting a crapload (scientific measure defined by NIST) of tiny black ones. Went on for hours. They were fighting over a spilt milkshake, I think.

As there are several different SCIENTIFIC definitions of randomness, there are multiple scientific definitions of complexity.

Oddly, the definitions of chaos seem to be pretty similar - but the term chaos doesn't at all mean to the scientist what lay people think it means.

Anyway, there *IS* such a thing as complexity, but there are a number of different scientific and mathematical definitions; however, unlike the 2nd law of thermo where there are several definitions which are all equivalent, all of those definitions of complexity are NOT equivalent.

Just in computer science there is computational complexity and algorithmic complexity - completely different things.

There ARE scientists who are looking at this issue - more now than there used to be. Look at the work out of the Santa Fe Institute: http://santafe.edu/

Some books you might find interesting:

"The Quark and the Jaguar," by Murray Gell-Mann (predicted existence of quarks from theory and won nobel prize in physics)
He's associated with SFI (I actually saw him there, but did not meet him).

"Emergence: From chaos to order," by John Holland.
"Hidden Order," by John Holland.


"At Home in the Univserse," by Stuart Kauffman.

"Sync: The emerging Science of Spontaneous Order," by Steven Strogatz.

There are some more technical books I can recommend, but these can help you get started.

There are some articles online you might find interesting:
Here's a Scientific American article by Eric Bonabeau and Guy Theraulaz -
http://www.santafe.edu/~vince/press/SciAm-SwarmSmarts.pdf
(I met Dr. Bonabeau. A colleague is a good friend of his and invited him to speak to the complexity group I started at work. He has another Sci Am article and several in the Harvard Business Review that are worth reading, as well.)

Another thing you might look at is Stuart Kauffman:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman

The main thing is that there are a LOT of REALLY SMART people studying this. They don't have all the answers - and because they don't have all the answers, you get a bunch of idiots - like William Dembski and Michael Behe coming in to try to fill the void - neither of whom has the least intelligent thing to about the subject. To IDers and other creationists, they are considered prominent experts and authorities. To the guys who are doing the real science, they are non-entities - not because they are IDers, but because they haven't contributed anything but noise to the actual scientific conversation.

I'm reading quark and jaguar right now. It's *very* simple, but I highly recommend it.

"To the guys who are doing the real science, they are non-entities - not because they are IDers, but because they haven't contributed anything but noise to the actual scientific conversation."

And does "noise" help or harm the scientific conversation? Think about it, it motivates others, indirectly helping science; am I right?

"Oddly, the definitions of chaos seem to be pretty similar - but the term chaos doesn't at all mean to the scientist what lay people think it means."
But you didn't explain what chaos means. What is it then? Is it the same as randomness?
according to my dictionary: "from Greek khaos “void, abyss,” the original sense in English (source of English gas)." That's curious, to the lay it connototes destruction or some kind of disaster.

I didn't define any of the terms. I'm just telling you some things about the terms. Chaos can produce a kind of randomness, but it's not randomness itself. From the wiki article on chaos theory:

"...chaos theory describes the behavior of certain nonlinear dynamical systems that under specific conditions exhibit dynamics that are sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect)"

Tim: "And does "noise" help or harm the scientific conversation? Think about it, it motivates others, indirectly helping science; am I right?"

- There's no question that noise of the kind mentioned, like any background noise, interferes with the dissemination of useful, coherent information. In the midst of the noise scientists are easily able to identify non-science, alias determined ignorance. To many non-scientists, especially the unanalytical and uneducated, the bilge exuded by some people can sound quite plausible. For that reason it can be a very harmful influence, and most likely to lead to a misunderstanding of science. It certainly has nothing to offer by way of help.

Basically, this is what chaos is about in modern science:

The tiniest difference in the initial conditions of a system can lead to a hugely different large scale scenario at a later time. The system (e.g. the troposphere), functions according to determinstic rules of cause and effect, and yet owing to its complexity, it's unpredictable beyond a very limited timescale. It's "chaotic".

Oddly enough, a simple dripping tap can be a chaotic system:

"The drip intervals could now be seen to occur over a range of 50 milliseconds. The drip interval is now unpredictable. The
system had now progressed from a periodic state to a chaotic state."

http://www.physics.dit.ie/resources/yearbook2004/fisher.pdf

In the scientific community itself, the "contributions" of ID luminaries like William Dembski amount to noise. However, in the sphere of common discourse, their pontifications amount to a sort of anti-knowledge.

They are "informing" voters and policy-makers who cannot distinguish good science from bad science from non-science.

"However in my experience those who believe we were created have less difficulty accepting the destruction of humans who disagree with them than do those who believe we evolved from apes."

I'm not trying to get in a huge debate here, but this comment casts a rather wide scope of blame for religious people. Are today's, say, American Christians to be held liable for the actions of Christians 100, 200, 300 years ago? Should all religious people be painted with the brush of violence because some radicals are violent? If that's the scope, then your comment completely disregards the history of atheistic Communism in the 20th century, and the millions upon millions killed for disagreeing with them.

I'm just sayin'.

bgeorge77, re the comment by TFF:

"However in my experience those who believe we were created have less difficulty accepting the destruction of humans who disagree with them than do those who believe we evolved from apes."

The point is this, with reference to religious fundamentalism in all its forms:

Certainly, there is no denying that our species does not require religion in order to commit such atrocities, and the above remark does not cast aspersions on all people of all religions. We all know that there are many millions of excellent people among them - Christians, Muslims, Jews and the rest. What the remark clearly refers to (I may be wrong, but it seems clear enough to me) is the murders, genocide, and extreme cruelty inflicted upon humanity by devotees of organised religion, specifically in the name of 'God'. Even as we type these words, people are planning to kill for Allah, or because the Christian God is on their side, or because they are God's chosen people.

I will cite two examples of attitudes, common in my experience, of educated, charming nurses in relation to this subject:

One was an Irish Roman Catholic, a vivacious personality, and highly efficient in her work. She had absolutely no doubt that the decades of terrorism perpetrated by the Irish Republican Army was right and just in the 'eyes of God'. The knee-capping, tarring and feathering, shooting of parents in front of their families and so on - all of this, she said, was 'right'.

Another was a young Muslim working in a London hospital. She was a very kind and caring individual. She was small, demure - the kind of person whom you might suspect would never say "boo" to a goose. Salman Rushdie was currently in the news, and I asked her what she would do if she saw him. She replied, with complete calm and solemnity, "I would try to kill him".

More than 3000 people have been beheaded, shot, burned to death and otherwise murdered in this country (Thailand) by separatists. The separatists are Muslim. The victims are not Muslim; they are Buddhist 'infidels', including monks and many school teachers.

Such people have no difficulty in destroying other people - other totally innocent people. Their conscience is clear.

This is not about what religion can do. It's about what it has done, and is doing at this very moment, to the minds of millions of people in the world - in the name of God.

bgeorge77, being religious or non-religious does not define one's moral fibre. But TFF is correct. For many, religion can eliminate conscience.
_________

The topic has drifted, and this has nothing to do with Complexity, but the comments merit response. I suggest that further comments on the theme be posted in a Not-Quite-Science thread.

Rede. We are drifting from the subject but a couple of comments. Tim wrote:

'And does "noise" help or harm the scientific conversation? Think about it, it motivates others, indirectly helping science; am I right?'

Unlike TFF and Rede I tend to agree. I've learned a great deal about the mechanism of evolution through trying to counter individuals' arguments supporting creationism.

By the way Rede, I was the one who posted the atheist/creationist comment but your interpretation is exactly correct.

Bgeorge77, Communism and Nazism have many characteristics of religions. And American Christians are often adamant that they do belong to the same Christian culture as that of 100, 200, 300 years ago. I take your point and mass atheism has a much more recent evolution than does mass religion.

Back to the subject. No amount of complexity or lack of it can be used as evidence of design or otherwise.

Terry: "By the way Rede, I was the one who posted the atheist/creationist comment"

Oops. Apologies.

Tim: "Yet the issue remains; the fact that we can even engage in debate about our creation shows the wonders of the human brain. Perhaps that is my point, and nothing more."

It's a point worth making. The brain is the most complex discrete object known. Recently, I heard that there are more permutations of the neural pathways in a single human brain than there are atoms in the Hubble universe (observable universe). That doesn't tell us much, except that the number is as near infinite as makes no difference. Little wonder then that it can record the sensory inputs of a lifetime, store vast quantities of data, analyse and assimilate that, and perform many other functions, including (I claim) functions as yet unproven and unexplained by reductionist *** science.

It's mysterious. It's wonderful. It's beautiful. But I agree with Terry. The complexity is a product of the laws of physics operating through the process of evolution. It offers no support for Creationism or Intelligent Design. The laws of physics are the truly amazing source of all that exists in this universe. You may well ask, "What is the source of the laws of physics?" ...

*** The study of complexity may open new doors beyond the limits of reductionism.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1299179

(Article provided courtesy of The European Molecular Biology Organization, Nov 2004)

"Emergent properties resist any attempt at being predicted or deduced by explicit calculation or any other means...For instance, the experience of pain can alter human behaviour, but the lower-level chemical reactions in the neurons that are involved in the perception of pain are not the cause of the altered behaviour, as the pain itself has causal efficacy."

"Although biology has always been a science of complex systems, complexity itself has only recently acquired the status of a new concept, partly because of the advent of electronic computing and the possibility of simulating complex systems and biological networks using mathematical models"

"The constituents of a complex system interact in many ways, including negative feedback and feed-forward control, which lead to dynamic features that cannot be predicted satisfactorily by linear mathematical models that disregard cooperativity and non-additive effects."

The last refers to chaos arising in a complex system.