Life on Mars? The real lesson from Lowell

Excellent post, Witt handed that to you on a platter. When I first read Witt's piece I thought the same thing, I couldn't believe he was using Percival Lowell's observations and conjectures. Kudos on finding Lowell's book, the quotes could have been written by Dembski himself.

Delta Pi Gamma (Scientia et Fermentum)

I'm still baffled as to what exactly Mr. Witt's article is meant to demonstrate. So he shows us that sometimes people who are scientists say things which are inaccurate. ... all right, and what has he gained by pointing this out?

The wonderful irony is of the argumentation, is that Witt doesn't realize Lowell's arguments were disproved by the scientific community that doubted him, and that the lines were figments of his imagination and desire to see design.

Why do I hear Dembski singing 'The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one ...'?

Andrea Bottaro wrote:

"Finally, Lowell knew he could not formulate a convincing argument for design without tackling the fundamental issue underlying design of any kind, that is, its purpose."

This misses the point. "Purpose" is what makes human activity "artificial" and "not purely natural". Otherwise why is human activity any less "natural" than all other physical processes. Humans are just as much a part of nature as wind, rain, storms and all other so-called "purely physical processes" that might be responsible for discernable channels on Mars. The key difference is that humans act with purpose, calculation and goal-driven considerations. Other physical processes do not. Or at least we don't think that they do.

Deep down the real issue is whether the channels are comprable to the watch found in the forest. That watch is recognized as intelligently designed not because of its complexity (other things in the forest are also complex, yet we would not even give them a second thought) but due to the fact that we can compare it to other human made products. Lowell thought he was looking at a pattern that reminded him of human made irrigation systems on Earth. He turned out to be wrong about the partuculars that rendered it so.

None of this has any significance to the issue of whether life was designed. We certainly cannot claim that in looking at a living organism we recognize the handiwork of an agent or designer whose work pattern is familiar to us. No one has seen this before or somewhere else. So the question reduces to whether the sheer complexity dictates that it must be designed. It is asking the question regarding the trees and leaves in the forest, instead of the watch. The channels on Mars, on the other hand, ask the question regarding the watch. Big difference.

Our conclusion from the entire experiment is that the canals of Mars may in some cases be, as Mr. Green suggested, the boundaries of tones or shadings, but that in the majority of cases they are simply the integration by the eye of minute details too small to be separately and distinctly defined. It would not therefore be in the least correct to say that the numerous observers who have drawn canals on Mars during the last twenty-five years have draw what they did not see. On the contrary they have drawn, and drawn truthfully, that which they saw; yet, fior all that, the canals which they have draw have no more objective existence than those which our Greenwish boys imagined they saw on the drawings submitted to them. It seems a thousand pities that all those magnificent theories of human habitation, canal construction, planetary crystallisation, and the like are based upon lnes which our experiments to compel us to declare non-existent; but with the planet Mars still left, and the imagination unimpaired, there remains hope that a new theory no less attractive may yet be developed, and on a basis more solid than "mere seeming".

Do I recall correctly that someone within the past 20 years wrote a paper suggesting that what Lowell had mapped were the blood vessels in his own eye, reflected in the telescope? In short, he made great arguments for artificiality for patterns that are entirely natural . . .

Does anybody else recollect that one?

This doesn't strike me as a very good argument. Had Lowell reported seeing buildings on Mars, no one would be questioning that the reports supported a claim of intentional design. The characteristics that Lowell reported were not that definitive, but they were still strong indications of intentional design, and those who believed that features such as parallel lines and seasonal color changes were visible generally accepted the claim that Schiaparelli's "canali" really were canals, signs of a Martian civilization, and they weren't irrational to do so.

The problem was not that Lowell and others inferred intentional design from the reported observations, but that the observations were just plain wrong, a severe case of selective perception and observer bias, helped along by flaws in their instruments. Significantly, we do not find anything in the biological world like Lowell's "perfectly regular results, that is, results in which irregularity is not also discernible" -- quite the opposite. Lowell's claims were falsifiable -- his canals disappeared under more accurate (as well as more honest) observation. Had Lowell admitted that Martian topography was in fact quite irregular but then insisted that the very complexity of that topography was itself evidence of civilization, then he would have been making an IDiotic argument.

Lowell maintained that Venus sported a network of massive, mostly radial spokes--more canali--emanating from a central hub. The spokes he saw remained a puzzle until quite recently, when a retired optometrist named Sherman Schultz, from Saint Paul, Minnesota, wrote a letter in response to an article on the spokes by William Sheehan and Thomas Dobbins in the July 2002 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine. Schultz pointed out that the optical setup Lowell preferred for viewing the Venutian surface was similar to the gizmo used to examine the interior of patients' eyes. After seeking a couple of second opinions, the article's authors established that what Lowell seemed to see on Venus was instead the network of shadows cast on Lowell's own retina by his own ocular blood vessels. When you compare Lowell's diagram of the spokes with a diagram of the eye, the two match up, canal for blood vessel. And when you combine the unfortunate fact that Lowell suffered from hypertension--which often shows up in the vessels of the eyeballs--with his will to believe, it's no surprise that he had Venus as well as Mars teeming with intelligent, technologically capable inhabitants.

Do I recall correctly that someone within the past 20 years wrote a paper suggesting that what Lowell had mapped were the blood vessels in his own eye, reflected in the telescope? In short, he made great arguments for artificiality for patterns that are entirely natural ...

Lowell's large refracting telescope, set at 144X magnification and with an aperture narrowed down that far, they figured, had a focal ratio of at least f/120. In simple terms, this meant that the setup was the equivalent of placing a card with a pinhole in front of Lowell's eye and shining a bright light through it. The discerning readers concluded that the telescope was actually mimicking an ophthalmoscope, an instrument used to examine the interior of the eye

Fascinating!

I have to disagree with one statement though, "Now, Lowell's argument was clearly more far-fetched than most of those of modern ID advocates,...."

Lowell wasn't making an argument for supernatural explanation. He proposed a biological origin of the 'canals'. More important, Lowell's hypothesis was testable. One could, and presumably will someday, visit Mars and see if Martian features do provide evidence of intelligent design.

Lowell's descriptions of Mars were scientific, albeit flawed; descriptions of 'intelligent design' of the bacterial flaggellum are non-scientific, invoking a supernatural agent.

I'm interested in the line about evolutionists up to and following Darwin believing in spontaneous generation. To my knowledge the only 2 individuals who postulated spontaneous generation as an essential feature of what they called "evolution" were Lamarck and Charles Bonnet (whose evolutionary scheme included angels, archangels, and the whole heavenly host all the way up to the Grand Old Designer himself!). For Lamarck, the whole purpose of "evolution" was to avoid that sticky problem of "extinction" that got his chief rival, Cuvier into such hot water with the French religious authority and had nothing to do with promoting a naturalistic world view.I have extensively read Darwin and I can't remember him saying anything about spontaneous generation beyond the "small warm pond" but he also wrote about "the creator breathing life into one or a few forms" as well. Which significant evolutionary biologists in the last 150 years has postulated spontaneous generation? And anyway what does evolution have to do with origin of life?

And looking back through the prodigious vista of the past, I find no record of the commencement of life, and therefore I am devoid of any means of forming a definite conclusion as to the conditions of its appearance. Belief, in the scientific sense of the word, is a serious matter, and needs strong foundations. To say, therefore, in the admitted absence of evidence, that I have any belief as to the mode in which the existing forms of life have originated, would be using words in a wrong sense. But expectation is permissible where belief is not; and if it were given me to look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time to the still more remote period when the earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions, which it can no more see again than a man can recall his infancy, I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm from not living matter. I should expect to see it appear under [257] forms of great simplicity, endowed, like existing fungi, with the power of determining the formation of new protoplasm from such matters as ammonium carbonates, oxalates and tartrates, alkaline and earthy phosphates, and water, without the aid of light. That is the expectation to which analogical reasoning leads me; but I beg you once more to recollect that I have no right to call my opinion anything but an act of philosophical faith. (From Biogenesis and Abiogenesis)

Maybe his commentary is a pre-emptive attempt to frame any future discussion on Lowell.

As soon I saw Lowell referenced in this context, the first thing that popped into my head was that his case is a classic example of an "argument from design" failing catastrophically. Witt may have noticed this himself and realized that if he didn't say something about Lowell--and fast--that comparisons to Lowell's discredited Mars canals would become a standard talking point against ID.

Witt is not a logical thinker, but give him some credit as a rhetorician. It's a serious lapse if nobody on our side thought of bringing Lowell into the discussion, equating ID with "Lowell's fallacy" and so on. Has anyone? Comparisons to Lowell are more pertinent than comparisons to Paley, since Lowell was claiming to do science, not theology, and clearly demonstrated the inadequacy of ID-like arguments.

Simple crossings of two lines will of course be common in proportion to the sum of an arithmetical progression; but that any three lines should contrive to cross at the same point would be a coincidence whose improbability only a mathematician can properly appreciate, so very great is it.

I have to disagree with one statement though, "Now, Lowell's argument was clearly more far-fetched than most of those of modern ID advocates,...." Lowell wasn't making an argument for supernatural explanation. He proposed a biological origin of the 'canals'. More important, Lowell's hypothesis was testable. One could, and presumably will someday, visit Mars and see if Martian features do provide evidence of intelligent design.

— GT(N)T

While the parallelisms pointed out here are fascinating, and I affirm that the I.D. reasoning is fallacious, we should perhaps ask whether Lowell was wrong because his canals didn't exist, not because he reasoned poorly about them. If they did exist and did have all the features that he ascribed to them, would not intelligence be a strong explanatory contender? For planetary-scale geological features are not, presumably, subject to natural selection and so cannot evolve the kinds of complexity that I.D. supporters fallaciously insist can be only be explained by intelligent design. I am not a geologist, but it seems to me that a planetary network of great-circle following, perfectly straight, nodally connected channels having beds graded so as to convey water from point to point, if it did exist, might be a devil of a thing to explain by nonintelligent causes. Civil engineering would certainly be an explanatory contender, wouldn't it?

I am open to instruction on this point, but at the moment the distinction between evolvable systems subject to selection and large-scale geological features strikes me as important. Was Lowell's reasoning really so bad? Or only his data?

Regards,

Larry

I don't know the subsequent history here. Did Lowell ever reconsider his position as the quality of observations improved and the canals vanished? Yes, we can see that Lowell combined a desire to see what wasn't there, with data inadequate to make this obvious. The part about these nonexistent canals being of uniform width, which even Lowell could have calculated weren't within the resolving power of his telescope, is especially projective.

But the real test, at least in my mind, is whether Lowell was subsequently capable of changing his position in the light of superior (and conflicting) data. If he changed his mind, then his canals can be dismissed as the sort of wishful thinking anyone might do when there's no way to know better. If he did NOT change his mind, then we have a much better approximation of creationist thought.

Comment #86542 Posted by Larry Gilman on March 15, 2006 10:51 AM (e) While the parallelisms pointed out here are fascinating, and I affirm that the I.D. reasoning is fallacious, we should perhaps ask whether Lowell was wrong because his canals didn't exist, not because he reasoned poorly about them. If they did exist and did have all the features that he ascribed to them, would not intelligence be a strong explanatory contender? For planetary-scale geological features are not, presumably, subject to natural selection and so cannot evolve the kinds of complexity that I.D. supporters fallaciously insist can be only be explained by intelligent design. I am not a geologist, but it seems to me that a planetary network of great-circle following, perfectly straight, nodally connected channels having beds graded so as to convey water from point to point, if it did exist, might be a devil of a thing to explain by nonintelligent causes. Civil engineering would certainly be an explanatory contender, wouldn't it?

Lowell died in 1916 before it was proven that the canals were figments of his own perception. He continued to believe in his Martian worldview.

"Planets and Perception" by William Sheehan is an excellent study of the canal issue.

For design to be a fruitful scientific concept, scientists have to be sure that they can reliably determine whether something is designed. Johannes Kepler thought the craters on the moon were intelligently designed by moon dwellers. We now know that the craters were formed by blind natural forces. It is this fear of falsely attributing something to design only to have it overturned later that has prevented design from entering the natural sciences. With precise methods for discriminating intelligently from unintelligently caused objects, it is now possible to formulate a theory of intelligent design that successfully avoids Kepler's mistake and reliably locates design in biological systems.

— Dembski

Andrea wrote:

"I am not sure what you mean...... both Lowell and the ID advocates have to come up with suitable explanations of why purpose is detectable in the objects they perceive as designed."

I do not agree, and I don't think the ID folks are ready to concede, that "design" MUST be predicated on "purpose". Atheistic evolutionists can accept that the evolution of life is "designed" by the forces of nature, so long as the "random" mutations aspect of evolution keep the process purposeless. The key difference between them and the ID proponents is not in the "design" aspect but in the "intelligent" aspect of the process that led to the present life forms. "Intelligent design theory" should be more precisely labeled "purposeful design theory".

Lowell was not arguing just complexity, his point was that he saw "recognizable complexity". He claimed to recognize the complexity he saw on Mars as typical of human endeavors, such as when building irrigation systems.

I suppose the one thing Lovell may have been right about was that liquid water is necessary in order for life to exist, even on planets in the habitable zone around our star.

It will be interesting to see what is found on Europa, which although being well outside the habitable zone could have liquid water due to tidal heating. Did I hear on the news recently that one of the larger satellites of Saturn seems to have signs of liquid water as well ? Another candidate for possible life maybe.(I can't remember the satellite's name)

One of the recent "Sky at night " programmes about Mars suggests that the surface long ago may have been acidic. Thinking that there must be Calcium Carbonate (they were wondering where all the Carbon was. On the Earth a lot of Carbon in the Carbon cycle is contained in Calcium Carbonate or limestone) on the surface of Mars they instead found Calcium Sulphate, which meant that there must have been sulphuric acid there at one time. I think the more we find out about mars the less it seems to resemble the Earth, and certainly Lovell's perception of the planet.

I think the discovery of even microbial life elsewhere in the solar system, whether on Mars or Europa, will be a major breakthrough, and it will be interesting to see the reaction of young Earth creationists/Iders if and when it ever happens.

Carol Clouser wrote: I do not agree, and I don't think the ID folks are ready to concede, that "design" MUST be predicated on "purpose". Atheistic evolutionists can accept that the evolution of life is "designed" by the forces of nature, so long as the "random" mutations aspect of evolution keep the process purposeless. The key difference between them and the ID proponents is not in the "design" aspect but in the "intelligent" aspect of the process that led to the present life forms. "Intelligent design theory" should be more precisely labeled "purposeful design theory".

Brilliant piece of exposed unintentional irony.

Comment #86479 Posted by Carol Clouser on March 15, 2006 01:54 AM (e)

Why do I hear Dembski singing 'The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one ...'?

I do not agree, and I don't think the ID folks are ready to concede, that "design" MUST be predicated on "purpose".

"Intelligent design theory" should be more precisely labeled "purposeful design theory".

Atheistic evolutionists can accept that the evolution of life is "designed" by the forces of nature, so long as the "random" mutations aspect of evolution keep the process purposeless.

— Carol

To the best of my knowledge, the current wealth of images showing the "face on Mars" at Cydonia to be an utterly ordinary rock have not deterred Tom van Flandern, who instead now claims that the surrounding ordinary rocks are ALSO artificial. Perhaps this is an illustration of what Kuhn was talking about - that when evidence becomes available overwhelmingly refuting a staked-out position, those married to such a position rarely admit any error at all. Instead, their mistakes fail to spread, and die with them.

I'd like to add to the points made by Larry Gilman, Popper's Ghost and others - Lowell's main problem was with his mistaken observations. If the observations were accurate then, since straight lines don't often appear in Nature, his inference of design is at least reasonable even if it turned out to be wrong. If, e.g., the MRO spots a Shell gas station on Mars then I suspect we'd assume design as well.

Where Lowell differs from the ID-ers is that he recognized that, in essence, since straight lines don't appear in Nature a plethora of them at least suggests intentional design as a possibility. I'd imagine that aliens observing the Earth might imply intelligent life based, e.g., on the visibility of the US-Canada border from space. What ID-ers have done is a weird contortion of this perfectly reasonable interpretation; they claim that structures that do appear in Nature must have been designed because, well.... really, because such structures "don't appear in Nature." Shell gas stations don't appear in Nature and so the observation of such a station implies design. However, precisely because structures such as eyes, cilia, etc do appear in Nature they cannot be used to infer design.

I'm defining Nature to exclude man-made things.

Surely Witt's surname, either with one or two "t's" at the end hardly fits in with the piffle Dr. Bottaro quotes from the screeds of that rather typical representative of the Disco center for(anti)Science and Culture.

Carol Clouser Wrote:

" I don't think the ID folks are ready to concede, that "design" MUST be predicated on "purpose". Wrong Carol,here is a direct quote from Bill Dembski
. Rather, intelligent design's strength consists in starting with nature, exploring nature's limitations, and therewith determining where design and PURPOSE fit in the scheme of nature" "The cornerstone of the scientific method is the postulate that nature is objective. In other words, the systematic denial that 'true' knowledge can be got at by interpreting phenomena in terms of final causes--that is to say, of 'PURPOSE'."Whence the removal of PURPOSE and therewith design from nature?
You also said ""Intelligent design theory" should be more precisely labeled "purposeful design theory".
Then what would ,you, postulate is the actual purpose behind the design? To glorify God perhaps "Psalm 19:1"
Intelligent Design should be more precisely labeled Increasingly Disingenuous.

Re "I'd imagine that aliens observing the Earth might imply intelligent life based, e.g., on the visibility of the US-Canada border from space. "

Say what? When did political borders become visible when they aren't following rivers or something like that?

This reminds me of Carl Sagan's line in Cosmos about the Lowell episode. Paraphrasing, "There is no doubt that the Mars canals of Percival Lowell were of intelligent origin. The only question is which side of the telescope the intelligence was on."

Atheistic evolutionists can accept that the evolution of life is "designed" by the forces of nature, so long as the "random" mutations aspect of evolution keep the process purposeless.

The randomness of genetic mutation is not a condition for scientific acceptance of evolution; it simply describes observed phenomena. If you prefer to call it "apparently random" in order to make room for a god, that's fine - but not scientific.

Lowell was not arguing just complexity, his point was that he saw "recognizable complexity".

Discoveries by Edwin Hubble and Arno Penzias among others put an end to this view, returning us to an older position consistent with the Judeo-Christian view that the universe had a beginning.

[I]n my opinion the basic issue here is that Lowell, like the IDists, argued from insufficient evidence, and summarily dismissed contrary evidence that didn't fit his model. He really saw what looked to him like channels and interpreted them as such, and since he could not have better direct evidence, he bolstered his conclusion with the specious arguments discussed above. Similarly, ID advocates really think they see teleologically-built machines inside cells, interpret them as such, dismiss contrary arguments, and in the absence of better evidence for design bolster their conclusions with claims very similar to Lowell's.

— Andrea Bottaro

Henry J,

Different land uses on either side of the border make some parts of it visible from low Earth orbit. Form that one could speculate that it is man made. I once saw a photograph but can lo longer remember where. Here's a link;

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/headline_universe/andyletter.html

Of course, by the time the aliens got that close they would have seen other evidence but the point remains the same.

I'd imagine that aliens observing the Earth might imply intelligent life based, e.g., on the visibility of the US-Canada border from space.

Say what? When did political borders become visible when they aren't following rivers or something like that?

Ah, Ethel's making an even simpler point, about different land uses on opposite sides of the border.

Certainly there are going to be places where, for example, on one side of the border you have a pristine forest, but on the other you have a clearcut, or grazing land, or a subdivision. And enough of these differential uses should start to make a dotted line, even if most of the disparate uses are themselves rather local and discontinuous.

Ah. Yeah, a sharp different in land usage could well be visible from way up, and might (or might not) correspond to a political border.

It's worth quoting Carl Sagan here: "The canals on Mars were indisputably proof of intelligent life. The only question was: which side of the telescope was the intelligence on?"

Fast Eddie (Comment #86598 above) would certainly agree with you, Scott!

Quotemined from Dembski in comment 86556: "For design to be a fruitful scientific concept, scientists have to be sure that they can reliably determine whether something is designed."

I am a little confused here.

Is Witt actually arguing that because science has previously shown apparent design is not actually design, then this supports ID because it shows scientists are fallible? Is he also arguing that every time science takes what he calls a step back, that this step back supports creationism???

Or am I just reading this wrong?

Discoveries by Edwin Hubble and Arno Penzias among others put an end to this view, returning us to an older position consistent with the Judeo-Christian view that the universe had a beginning.

Um, why is this just the Judeo-Christian view? It's not. It's also the Muslim, Hindu, Rastafarian, Roman, Greek, Mithric, Australian Aboriginal, etc etc view.

As long as "we" are quoting Carl Sagan, a nod in the direction of Paul Simon's "The Boxer" may also be appropriate:

Still a man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.

(The original, of course, has "hears" and "hear" where I have substituted "sees" and "see," but the principle remains.)

Mark Perakh wrote:

"the early rabbinical commentaries on the Torah, reflected in several tractates in the Talmud, a view is held that before creating our universe, the Creator created many other universes which he destroyed one by one until he became satisfied with his creation."

The matter is not as simple as all that. You are quoting a piece of AGADA or MIDRASH, catagories of learning that frequently are not meant to be taken literally but homelitically and parablitically. It is also not clear that this AGADA refers to the creation of "universes", a loaded word in this context. A perfectly correct translation of OLAMOT is "worlds". What exactly that refers to is anyone's guess but it need not be universes.

The vast majority of rabbinic interpretation of Genesis considers the word BARA (created), as opposed to VAYA-AS (made) or VAYATZER (formed), as implying creation ex nihilo, a true beginning. So much so, that Maimonides, who was generally very supportive of Aristotelian philosophy, was forced to reject Aristotle's antiquity of the universe due to BARA. Although, in his MORAH NEVOCHIM, Guide of the perplexed, he conceeds that if the antiquity of the universe can be proven, he will re-interpret Genesis. The singular major exception to this view of BARA is the view of Ibn Ezra.

I do find it intriguing, although it proves very little, that for thousands of years philosophers found it very satisfying to support the eternal universe and for many decades that was the prevailing view in the scientific community, yet the dominant view in Judaism all along was that the Bible asserts a true beginning to the universe. And the religious view turned out to be correct, at least it seems so today.

Jonboy and J. Biggs,

The ID folks ASSERT "intelligent design" on the basis of, they claim, the evidence, such as IC. They then SPECULATE as to purpose and what that might consist of. But they will be first to admit, I think, that there is no evidence for proposed or claimed particular purposes, just conjecture. Lowell, on the other hand, recognized human activity in the channels and claimed to know the purposes on the basis of the evidence. That's why these cannot be compared.

Oy! So why exactly do we care what some rabbis in Babylon thought about the eternity of the world?

Even Medieval scholastics who came down on the side of the creation of the world usually recognized that creation was a matter of revelation and could not be proven by reason--that was the position of Aquinas, for example. I personally think Kant was right. Reason can neither establish the eternity of the world or it's creation in time. But I would add that revelation is also worthless as a source of answers. It may well be that there are other alternatives besides creation or eternity that we're just not up to wrapping our semi-simian brains around.

The cosmological notion of the Big Bang hardly solved the issue, for over and beyond the obvious consideration that it is just another scientific theory and therefore subject to overturn, most versions of the Big Bang don't rule out the possibility that it was just a vicissitude in a much longer history.

The ID folks ASSERT "intelligent design" on the basis of, they claim, the evidence, such as IC. They then SPECULATE as to purpose and what that might consist of. But they will be first to admit, I think, that there is no evidence for proposed or claimed particular purposes, just conjecture. Lowell, on the other hand, recognized human activity in the channels and claimed to know the purposes on the basis of the evidence. That's why these cannot be compared.

In my opinion, both Lowell's and the ID advocates' design inferences are based on clearly insufficient evidence (even assuming that all Lowell's astronomical observations were genuine), speciously bolstered by very similar arguments about probability, analogy, intuition and made-up "purpose", and by discounting alternative non design-based explanations.

IDers do the same thing Lowell did with the canals: squint and then say, "that sure looks designed."

If he did NOT change his mind, then we have a much better approximation of creationist thought.

To me it does seem more far fetched to postulate Martians fighting the encroaching desert with huge irrigation systems, than to conjure purpose for biological system like the flagellum or the complement cascade as ID advocates do.

As I said, though, this is simply because ID advocates can usually play the simple trick of conflating function and purpose,

But that's not what Lowell did; he did not squint at the canals, because there are no canals.

The ID folks ASSERT "intelligent design" on the basis of, they claim, the evidence, such as IC. They then SPECULATE as to purpose and what that might consist of. But they will be first to admit, I think, that there is no evidence for proposed or claimed particular purposes, just conjecture. Lowell, on the other hand, recognized human activity in the channels and claimed to know the purposes on the basis of the evidence. That's why these cannot be compared.

Professor Behe summarized the argument as follows: We infer design when we see parts that appear to be arranged for a purpose. The strength of the inference is quantitative; the more parts that are arranged, the more intricately they interact, the stronger is our confidence in design. The appearance of design in aspects of biology is overwhelming. Since nothing other than an intelligent cause has been demonstrated to be able to yield such a strong appearance of design, Darwinian claims notwithstanding, the conclusion that the design seen in life is real design is rationally justified.

Unless you can provide notarized proof he didn't squint, you're outta here. -ds

Is this a creationist using a regular's name again? I don't recall Popper's Ghost being so rude.

Is this a creationist using a regular's name again? I don't recall Popper's Ghost being so rude.

P.S. It's bizarre that you would see a creationist in my comments. What I am arguing is that the IDiots are far far worse than Lowell. Witt wants to give ID a gloss of scientific respectability by likening it to past scientific disputes, but it won't wash. Man-made canals are familiar to us, and finding canals elsewhere leads to a reasonable suspicion that they are the creations of culture. But what of biological mechanisms? Are man-made biological mechanisms familiar to us? Is there any basis for saying that biological mechanisms are intentionally designed by analogy to other biological mechanisms that are known to be intentionally designed? No, of course not; the "design inference" is IDiotic through and through. Lowell's inference (and it wasn't just Lowell) was not idiotic, regardless of how delusional he was about seeing canals where there were none, or whether they were a result of his squinting.

I know I'm a lurker here most of the time, but... um...

Isn't Steve S's comment ("Unless you can provide notarized proof he didn't squint, you're outta here. -ds") sarcastic and mocking of the original "DS" (I'm assuming DaveScot) here? Let's have a sense of humor here, I think. We don't need to start a civil war.

Just my effort at being a peacemaker.

Just my effort at being a peacemaker

Ahh, yes, Lowell's channels-on-Mars theory could be a nice analog to ID, and perhaps a way to successfully frame the discussion. ID is indeed a Lowell type of false design identification.

Another new nice framing is presented on http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/03/heres_a_way_to_frame_the_confl.php : "Raskin replied: "Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible." "

Several commenters loved that, and are speculating about t-shirt and bumpersticker designs. :-)

I also noticed that Witt argues against the principle of mediocrity, and one of the arguments is that "moving from non-life to life is anything but simple, and that the demarcation between the two involves a quantum and discontinuous leap".

This isn't what his references says, but he doesn't mention that.

His first link references the book "Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe" which for some reason concludes complex life is uncommon, but also that "life in the form of microbes or their equivalents is very common in the universe" (pp xviii in the excerpt).

Even his second link which is a DI note refers to these ideas, but doesn't follow up on the apparent conflict with DI usual preachings...

Ghost of Paley: Utter nonsense. It's not "quite the contrary"; the quoted statement is quite correct, and you haven't countered it. Behe's "purposeful arrangement" does not assert any specific purpose --- it refers to appearance of intent, not appearance of an intent. Paley's argument would be unchanged by replacing the watch with a similar piece of machinery of unknown purpose. As Judge Jones notes (my emphasis noted): Professor Behe summarized the argument as follows: We infer design when we see parts that appear to be arranged for a purpose. The strength of the inference is quantitative; the more parts that are arranged, the more intricately they interact, the stronger is our confidence in design. The appearance of design in aspects of biology is overwhelming. Since nothing other than an intelligent cause has been demonstrated to be able to yield such a strong appearance of design, Darwinian claims notwithstanding, the conclusion that the design seen in life is real design is rationally justified. It's all about "arrangement" and intricacy of interaction, not about detecting a purpose and then arguing from that to design.

I said that intelligent design is perceived as the purposeful arrangement of parts, yes. So when we not only see different parts, but we also see that they are ordered to perform some function, yes, that is how we perceived design. [and] We can, from our inductive understanding of whenever we see something that has a large number of parts, which interacts to fulfill some function, when we see a purposeful arrangement of parts, we have always found that to be design.

Sorry, I meant Popper's Ghost, not Ghost of Paley in the main quote above.

"the dominant view in Judaism all along was that the Bible asserts a true beginning to the universe. And the religious view turned out to be correct, at least it seems so today."

That is completely uninformed and wrong.

There has been a philosopical/theological idea of 'a first cause'. Newer cosmology theories uses other mechanisms, starting from the random quantum fluctuation cosmology, I believe, through Hawking et al 'no boundary' proposals, multiverse/endless inflation scenarios, string brane cosmologies, Carroll et al symmetrical time scenario and doubtless many others. The later ideas embeds big bang in infinite time universes/multiverses without any 'first cause'.

It turns out that when physicists come up with physical explanations for cosmology, a 'first cause', or (signs of) gods, isn't usable as part of a theory of cosmology.

So there are no creationist "origins" or "true beginning" here. It's all empty and useless statements.

I am not even sure who you are arguing against here: I didn't say it was "about detecting a purpose and then arguing from that to design"

Not just the parts, but a purpose (function) for their arrangement.

Lowell was not arguing just complexity, his point was that he saw "recognizable complexity".

Andrea,

There is some confusion of terminology going on here. The statement you quote from Behe meant to assert "deliberate design", meaning "intentional", but not necessarily purposeful. Certainly Behe makes no claim for evidence-based knowledge of particular purpose, only speculation. Lowell, on the other hand, recognized the "watch in the forest" so to speak and claimed to identify its purpose and derive a powerful inference for design therefrom.

Popper,

It seems that you and I see eye to eye on quite a few issues. Only you express the arguments far better than I do.

Torbjorn,

All the theories you mention are fine and well and I am quite familiar with them. I even worked many years ago as a physics grad students with one of the key developers of the Quantum Fluctuation Theory (Edward Tryon). But alas all of these are not supported by direct observation. The evidence and data does clearly establish, however, that there occured the big bang which increasingly looks like a true beginning for the space-time and mass-energy of the only universe we have evidence for its existence.

"Lowell didn't argue complexity at all, he argued "perfectly regular results, that is, results in which irregularity is not also discernible". Regularity is information-theoretical simplicity."

That's an interesting observation. I wonder that would have happened if Behe and Dembski had been better at science and made the right assumption from the start? It is relatively easy to get that part right.

They could have had some correct applications by measurements on manmade designs, like the rival multiple design theory (MDT) toy theory comparisons. They could have gotten one or two real peer-reviewed papers out on neutral subjects like their theory foundations and applications on technological designs. In biology they would only get results that support evolution, of course. Perhaps they simply choose to reverse their measures to avoid that and still get money out of DI?

They and their followers aren't scientists; they will never change that now. Mostly because they would loose too much face in front of the followers.

Re "I'd imagine that aliens observing the Earth might imply intelligent life based, e.g., on the visibility of the US-Canada border from space. " Say what? When did political borders become visible when they aren't following rivers or something like that? (comment about land use also in here)

"But alas all of these are not supported by direct observation."

The point is that they don't need to be to make you wrong, or to make a 'first cause' wrong. These explanations exist and contradicts the religious view, contrary to what you said. Furthermore it has turned out with our improved knowledge that a 'first cause' isn't usable as part of a theory of cosmology because it doesn't work as a physics principle. Instead, various other mechanisms have been invented.

So a 'first cause' is not, and will never again become, part of a cosmology. You compound your error here by saying that bigbang "increasingly" looks like a 'true beginning', which again is uninformed and wrong. Bigbang is increasingly confirmed, that is true, but not as a 'true beginning'. As I said, it's nowadays imbedded in infinite time universes/multiverses by various mechanisms, when you look at cosmology.

None of these cosmologies are taken completely out of air (like gods or ID), but are compatible with known physics, and many of them have falsifiable parts. It's very hard to predict if and when we will know more and start to falsify them. (Only one can be correct. :-) But we know already that a 'first cause' is a dead concept.

Larsson comments:
"Bigbang is increasingly confirmed, that is true, but not as a 'true beginning'. As I said, it's nowadays imbedded in infinite time universes/multiverses by various mechanisms, when you look at cosmology. None of these cosmologies are taken completely out of air (like gods or ID), but are compatible with known physics, and many of them have falsifiable parts. It's very hard to predict if and when we will know more and start to falsify them. (Only one can be correct. :-)."
The scientific method requires that a theory be subjected to experiment, and rejected when it predicts contrarily to observations. No one, as of this writing, has arrived at a reliable means of detecting radiant energy from outer space that originates at a temperature below 4 K. As a result, the postulated "infinite time universes/multiverses" are as impossible to prove or disprove by observation, as is Galileo's First Cause.

Unfortunately for materialists, the entire structure of dialectical materialism is as arguably pulled out of thin air as are "infinite universes/multiverses", and "gods and ID". In fact, Hegel's very first prediction, made from his Theory of Paradigms, "proved" that the planet Uranus could not exist...which prediction Hegel published a month before Uranus was discovered by Herschel, using a telescope.

The simple fact is that religion (including dialectical materialism, which is simply religion in drag) seeks to explain events that happen once and are not repeated. Honest religion calls these events "miracles", and religion-in-drag calls these events accidents when unimportant to its argument, or gives them a pseudo-scientific name when used to advance an argument. Genuine science has to withhold judgment on things that it cannot prove, as the only truthful answer one can make to an unanswerable question is that no answer can be had.

Science is about things that can be proven, repeatably, to be true. It is absolutely true that biological change has taken place through human selection (both by selective breeding of crop and livestock species, and more recently, by genetic engineering methods). To argue that other selective processes can not have operated is to ascribe to the human species a unique talent for breeding organisms to fit a desired result...without proof. To believe that the God of Abraham could create all the existing plant and animal species in 48 hours but could not modify, tweak, or redesign species by evolutionary means, is to place a prior restraint of human beliefs upon an unrestrainable and admittedly infinite being.

The faith that underlies all scientific study is the belief that things which are repeatably demonstrable by experiment can be assumed to be true.

Percival Lowell's work was not science. By his own admission, the lines he observed on Mars were not always in the same places. By his own admission, photographs of Mars failed to reveal the lines he observed. By way of explanation, Lowell argued that the image of Mars in the telescope tended to be blurry and shimmer, and that he could see and draw the lines even though a camera revealed nothing of the kind. Much like the alleged "Mars rock" that allegedly found its way onto an Antarctic glacier, allegedly proving that it had an internal pore structure similar to terrestrial rocks that were colonized by bacteria, allegedly proving thereby that Mars harbored bacterial life forms, Lowell's lines began with a desired pattern and fleshed it in with supposition to arrive at the appearance of a scientific theory. Likewise, many of the arguments advanced by ID backers are not scientific in the sense of being demonstrable by experiment...as are the arguments of evangelical atheists who seek to convert people to atheism by arguing that evolution is a complete theory that requres no further improvement.

I know this is a bit off topic but since we're talking about Mars (which has experienced many impact events like the moon and as we now know the Earth also) and also astronomy I thought the folks here might like to know the latest creationist thinking on cratering:

I always thought that heavy cratering gave the appearance of age, and in fact lunar craters can be used as a chronometer but I think this article is just laughable. How on Earth can cratering theory be biblically-based ? I wonder what Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker would make of this.Maybe a subject for a separate topic perhaps ?I suppose if it had been left to the creationists all craters would still be volcanic in origin.

At least the article is a little less ridicules than Henry Morris's theory that impact craters were the result of a battle between the archangel Gabriel and Satin !

They are even arguing among themselves on this one.

Unfortunately for materialists, the entire structure of dialectical materialism is as arguably pulled out of thin air as are "infinite universes/multiverses", and "gods and ID". In fact, Hegel's very first prediction

The simple fact is that religion (including dialectical materialism, which is simply religion in drag) seeks to explain events that happen once and are not repeated.

dialectical materialism

The ID folks ASSERT "intelligent design" on the basis of, they claim, the evidence, such as IC. They then SPECULATE as to purpose and what that might consist of.

by which he generally intends an identifiable (which doesn't mean certain or definitive, but it's not just a post-hoc speculation) function, especially for biological systems

For instance, my interpretation is that if Behe did not know about flagella and their normal function, and observed a mutant, immotile flagellum with all its components but incapable of propelling a bacterium, he might well say he suspects design, but wouldn't claim to have made a definitive design inference based on his "inductive argument".

Much like the alleged "Mars rock" that allegedly found its way onto an Antarctic glacier

the arguments of evangelical atheists who seek to convert people to atheism by arguing that evolution is a complete theory that requres no further improvement.

Science is about things that can be proven, repeatably, to be true.

It is readily apparent to the Court that the only attribute of design that biological systems appear to share with human artifacts is their complex appearance, i.e. if it looks complex or designed, it must have been designed. (23:73 (Behe)). This inference to design based upon the appearance of a "purposeful arrangement of parts" is a completely subjective proposition, determined in the eye of each beholder and his/her viewpoint concerning the complexity of a system. Although both Professors Behe and Minnich assert that there is a quantitative aspect to the inference, on cross-examination they admitted that there is no quantitative criteria for determining the degree of complexity or number of parts that bespeak design, rather than a natural process. (23:50 (Behe); 38:59 (Minnich)). As Plaintiffs aptly submit to the Court, throughout the entire trial only one piece of evidence generated by Defendants addressed the strength of the ID inference: the argument is less plausible to those for whom God's existence is in question, and is much less plausible for those who deny God's existence. (P-718 at 705). Accordingly, the purported positive argument for ID does not satisfy the ground rules of science which require testable hypotheses based upon natural explanations. (3:101-03 (Miller)). ID is reliant upon forces acting outside of the natural world, forces that we cannot see, replicate, control or test, which have produced changes in this world. While we take no position on whether such forces exist, they are simply not testable by scientific means and therefore cannot qualify as part of the scientific process or as a scientific theory. (3:101-02 (Miller)).

No, he does not, and I have given the quotes and reasoning that show what he does intend. Your "agreement to disagree" is just refusal to accept a clear rebuttal --- it's bad faith.

The simple fact is that religion...seeks to explaininvent events that happen once and are not repeated, in order to dazzle the credulous.

— Bob Schubring

Gregory Chaitin has shown that complexity is an inherent property of mathematics.

— Popper's Ghost

Maybe I'm missing your point... but I thought Lowell's reasoning was pretty good, if you actually think there are canals on Mars.

No, he does not, and I have given the quotes and reasoning that show what he does intend. Your "agreement to disagree" is just refusal to accept a clear rebuttal --- it's bad faith.

A single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function of the system, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. (Behe, DBB)

Examining the entrails of Creationism disguised as Incredulous Deductions all over again makes Judge Jones' summary all the more impressive. He manages to disentangle the religiously motivated obscurantism and produce a readable and extremely lucid judgment that even a plumber could understand.
For that he earns my highest respect. I value lucidity, eloquence and economy of language above all. Why say something with a thousand words when the same thing can be expressed with just a few.

But equally it makes Behe's nonsense use of language to promote his (purely) subjective religious views coupled with the sophistry of his argument to generate hundreds of pages of circular reasoning and then foisted as a grand hoax, as "peer reviewed" "verifiable facts" on the great unwashed PROOF INDEED THAT PEOPLE WANT TO BE MISLED.

He admitted on the stand, to his credit, that science fiction was not science, it would seem he was one of the few people in the court who did quite grasp the irony that his own work was science fiction.

Now here is my main point.

When an artist creates a work, and each viewer/reader/consumer receives a message/concept, it simply amplifies the creators world view.
Great Art has this rather delicious property, as some may know, the receiver sees themselves or their OWN thoughts amplified and reflected, their own world view in other words, with all that entails, joy... or perhaps even disgust, the Ah Ha! moment.

The case of each person subjectively reading into the (human) creation their own worldview says nothing about the creation (except it's creators genius), but indeed, says something about the readers horizons and cultural background....that which he cannot see, simply because it is over his horizon.
Where Behe and his fellow travelers fail is not their interpretation but the simple fact that they give up trying to go beyond their own horizons and are useless in terms of furthering knowledge.
Behe once he had found to his own satisfaction that the g-word had created the flagellum out of thin air, decided that was as far as he had to go, and no further investigation was necessary.
Now I am going to credit Behe with a little disingenuous here, it would seem reasonable that he did a rudimentary search of the literature to make sure he was not going to be discredited overnight.
Behe makes up a suitably expedient story to support his worldview and goes to press thus committing the very unchristian sins of pride, avarice and idolatry.
Judge Jones did not have to make those sort of subjective religious judgments however "breath taking inanity" I suspect was the thing that got up the noses most of all at the DI... a delicious irony.

Lenny on Bob the drive by "dialectical materialism" guy kind of reminds me of the the MD who posted a rant on tautology and used the word no less than 13 times in 3 paragraphs. Hilarious.

bah replace disingenuous with disingenuousness

Flint wrote:

"Behe sees purpose because biological forms DO something. They were arranged that way on purpose, in order to do whatever it is they do. We can tell the flagellum is designed because it serves a motility purpose....Behe "knows" life forms were designed because by observation they DO something useful for the organism. If Behe couldn't identify any purpose, he couldn't identify design."

If that were Behe's argument, why all the talk about complexity eminating from his mouth? That argument is strikingly similar to Paley's very old "watch in the forest" argument. So what is new in Behe's offering?

The key point you and Andrea are missing is that Behe's argument is NOT Paley's argument. Nor is it Lowell's.

D'oh Speaking of lucidity :(
it would seem he (Behe) was one of the few people in the court who did NOT quite grasp the irony that his own work was science fiction.

No wonder Jones took weeks to 'get it right' I wonder if he has a proof reader.

eminating

Ah Carol as soon as Behe started talking about the statues on Easter Island and how they looked designed he invoked Paley's (And the Creationist's) day dream.
He added the rather obvious negative deduction argument which is no different to saying that time is negative and we proceed through it backwards.

If that were Behe's argument, why all the talk about complexity eminating from his mouth?

That argument is strikingly similar to Paley's very old "watch in the forest" argument. So what is new in Behe's offering?

The key point you and Andrea are missing is that Behe's argument is NOT Paley's argument.

Nor is it Lowell's.

Flint,

I notice that you have not addressed the question: Why bother with all that aggravation pertaining to complexity when purpose quite adequately leads to the design inference?

I think your blind faith in the bankruptcy of any view based on a creator is leading you to seriously under-estimate the intellectual potency of the authors of the ID position. They are not imbeciles and idiots (no pun intended). Behe's point is entirely based on complexity. He sees a functioning entity composed of many parts that could not function in the absence of any of those parts. Random and accidental processes, he reasons, are highly unlikely to have put these parts together into a functioning whole. So it must have been put together deliberately. That is the key word - deliberate, intentional.

Yes, Behe does resort to function and refers to it as "purpose". But he really means to say "deliberate" as opposed to "accident".

Paley and Lowell, on the other hand, made primarily "recognizable purpose" arguments, not based on complexity. As a matter of fact, Popper is right in that Lowell actually saw simplicity in the channels on Mars, yet still concluded design.

You do yourself and the side you purport to speak for a disservice by understimating and misunderstanding your opponent.

So Carol you are saying that a valid conclusion is
So it must have been put together deliberately?

By what?
Where was the deliberate assembly done, some sort of factory?
Using what process?
What is the bill of materials ?
Who was the customer?
Who made the order?
Where is the prototype(s)?
Where are the plans?
Who supplied the raw materials?

What about the peer reviewed papers that explain it using the ToE.

Do you not see that Behe's supposition and deliberate ignoring of counter evidence fails basic common sense and honesty? And that it is purely subjective.