When Napoleon’s army invaded Egypt in 1798, a large number of animal mummies were brought back to France. These represented many species, including cats, jackals, dogs, crocodiles, snakes, sacred ibis, and other birds, as well as human mummies. George Cuvier analyzed the samples and concluded that no detectable anatomical changes had occurred over the time […]
Sexual selection tries to explain sexual dimorphism and more. According to the theory, certain conspicuous physical traits, such as pronounced coloration, increased size, or striking adornments have “evolved” through sexual selection. The selecting sex often displays similar but subdued ornaments, indicating a sort of sexual selection leak from the selected to the selecting if the […]
Drift in biology is “evolution by randomness”. The ‘drift’ idea was championed by Motoo Kimura as “The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution”. Kimura was motivated by JBS Haldane’s dilemma: too much polymorphism exists for “natural selection” to be able to pick and chose “beneficial” genes due to gene colocation in the genome and to the […]
Second Law of Thermodynamics shows that a spontaneous process cannot also revert spontaneously. This is because spontaneous processes always increase the system’s entropy. A uniform gas in a chamber will accumulate in a corner only with external intervention and spontaneous chemical reactions can only revert if external work energy is applied. Current models of entropy […]
‘Divergence of character’ (character displacement or sympatric speciation) postulates: “during the incessant struggle of all species to increase in numbers, the more diversified these descendants become, the better will be their chance of succeeding in the battle of life. Thus the small differences distinguishing varieties of the same species, will steadily tend to increase till […]
Design is order imposed on parts of a system. The system is designed even if the order created is minimal (e.g. smearing paint on cave walls) and even if it contains random subsystems. ‘Design’ is inferred only for those parts of the system that reveal the order imposed by the designer. For cave art, we […]
Materialism “regards matter and its motions as constituting the universe, and all phenomena, including those of mind, as due to material agencies, while matter is: “the physical substance in general, as distinct from mind and spirit; (in physics) that which occupies space and possesses rest mass, especially as distinct from energy”. Materialism extended by physicalism […]
‘Information’, ‘data’ and ‘media’ are distinct concepts. Media is the mechanical support for data and can be any material including DNA and RNA in biology. Data is the symbols that carry information and are stored and transmitted on the media. ACGT nucleotides forming strands of DNA are biologic data. Information is an entity that answers […]
What separates humans from other organisms, and by how much? Dexterity (opposable thumb), Lifespan, Sociability, Speech, Bipedalism, Hairlessness, Body Size, and Diet, all separate humans from others, but none is more important and more off the chart than our Intelligence. And from these gifts, humans developed even more abilities; some natural like thick fur on […]
Call it automaton, golem, automatic pilot, robot or artificial intelligence (AI), the idea that the inert can turn into the living is not new. And if God can make this happen, why can’t the human? While everything is possible in fiction of course, even some of the actual human creations have been advanced enough for […]
Natural Selection described as “the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype” or alternatively as “survival of the best adapted”. It is also supposed to be a “blind, mindless, and purposeless environmental process” that hypothetically turns random genetic mutations into superior new features enhancing descendants’ survivability. Accumulation of these features supposedly […]
For a long time, and way before the discovery of its structure, DNA has been considered “essence of life”, the molecule that defines every organism including humans and that links ancestors with descendants over generations. Associations between DNA and heredity as well as between DNA and various hereditary traits have only enforced this view. Genetic […]
Let’s analyze a typical reference to Evolution in a scientifically oriented article. This random passage from Wikipedia refers to Diatoms: Heterokont chloroplasts appear to derive from those of red algae, rather than directly from prokaryotes as occurred in plants. This suggests they had a more recent origin than many other algae. However, fossil evidence is […]
What should be the default view on Free Will? We talk about Free Will because we feel it in us and in the actions of all other. Even those attempting to disprove Free Will prove instead its existence by trying to persuade us, when lack of Free Will would make this effort futile. We can […]
Gradualism is the cornerstone of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution because without it, he could not justify the idea that one organism changes into another. ‘Gradualism’ equals ‘Continuity’ but also presupposes a significant change, not just variations around a static mean (regression to the mean) . In math, a function is gradual if continuous. A continuous […]
Does Life violate Entropy (gradual decline into disorder)? “No”, say the supporters of Darwinism, “non-equilibrium open systems weakly driven by external energy sources can see localized drops in entropy”. We’re told that “Snowflakes, sand dunes and turbulent vortices all … are strikingly patterned structures that emerge in many-particle systems driven by some dissipative process.” Of […]
Too often it’s assumed that thing “arise”. As in: “The universe arose in the Big Bang” “Galaxies and planetary systems arose from cosmic dust” “Life arises from non life” “Species arise from other species” “Human intelligence arises from animals” “Consciousness arises” “AI machines will arise” It’s better to say “we have no idea” than assume […]
You toss a coin and it always comes up Heads. Does that mean the coin is loaded? What does any other sequence of Heads and Tails tell us? When can we be certain that an outcome is random? In fact, we can never tell from the results whether an outcome is random or not […]
We all have Beliefs, whether we admit or not, whether we are part of any established Religion, whether we call our Beliefs Philosophy, the Cult of Science, or anything else. Our experiences are unique, so we often disagree with each other, even when we are part of the same Belief System. Of course none of […]
Evolution is defined as (a) “Changes in gene frequencies in populations” or (b) “The process through which the characteristics of organisms change over successive generations, by means of genetic variation and natural selection” or (c) “Evolution is Common Descent”. However, (a) is too broad as every newborn changes the gene frequency in a population, (b) […]
Like all religions, atheism has a strong Belief System, transcending the Observable, about the origin and organization of the universe – the primary matters concerning any Religion. It is not the first, the last, or the only Religion that rejects God. The main difference between atheists and agnostics is that agnostics have an incomplete (“don’t […]
Archimedes said “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth”. Does Human Knowledge have “a place to stand on”? We have our senses and we have our intelligence. We are handy and have developed all sorts of helping tools. We have mathematics (including logic and statistics), scientific laws, laws […]
Science = Observation + Assumptions, Facts Selection, Extrapolations, Interpretations… Assumptions, Facts Selection, Extrapolations, Interpretations… = Sum of Axiomatic Beliefs Sum of Axiomatic Beliefs = Religion …therefore, Science = Observation + Religion How do we know anything? There are three accepted methods to acquire primary knowledge: Philosophical based on Reason, Scientific, based on Observation plus […]
Knowledge and Intelligence The human knowledge frontier grows every day as new discoveries are captured in our various databases. A common image often shown is the ever increasing (exponential) body of human knowledge. The curve is neat and suggests a forever accelerating growth of our knowledge. However, those not keen to the distinction between knowledge […]