Evolution: onward and upward

About 4 billion years ago the Earth is rock, molten lava, obnoxious gases and a vast amount of water.

 The information content of the planet's surface is minimal and there is no biosphere.

Within the blink of a cosmic eye (less than a few hundred million years) the first life forms appear. Even the simplest organism is extraordinarily complex and information rich. Life begins to alter its own environment, even the atmosphere, in a way which promotes more life.
The biosphere has started and its information content begins to grow.

500 million years ago life multiplies in the ocean, diversifying, experimenting, the atmosphere is benign. Vision had been invented in sea creatures so that the world is seen  for the first time in the history of Earth, if not the universe. Coded survival solutions are being carried between species  (horizontal gene transfer), e.g. by viruses, and within species (vertical gene transfer) by descent with modification. Probably much else is happening.

The information content of the biosphere is huge and growing fast.

Today, ecosystems abound in water, on land and even in the air and  information content is astronomically high and still growing fast.

Why is it growing fast? Because humankind is evolving fast and we are incredibly information-rich in a way distinct from any other species, having spanned the world, turning it into a global metropolis in the sense that you can travel by air between any two cities on the planet in a time comparable to that of traversing a city on foot; while knowledge and social interaction is planet-wide at the speed of light.

We are unique in many ways. Our technology has developed to the state where we can, e.g.

• produce food in abundance and, in principle,  distribute it to where it's needed
• heal the sick and prevent diseases
• manage some natural systems to a limited degree (e.g. wildlife reservations)
• undo some of the environmental damage we do
• simulate nature in mathematical models
• record data, process it and distribute it globally as well as around the solar system
• transfer people from one celestial body to another
• copy subsystems within elementary life forms
• probe matter down to quarks, gluons and other subatomic particles
• derive knowledge of the universe billions of years into the past and billions of light years away
• harness the quantum world for electronic devices and computing
• release the power of the atomic nucleus. 

Our imagination, creativity, curiosity, persistence, intelligence, consciousness and tool-making prowess have allowed us to probe into the working of nature, to speculate on its limits and orgins, to exploit it in innumerable ways and travel in our imaginations independently of  space-time. 

At this stage in human history we are confronted with deep questions on what it means to be human and what is sacred as biotechnology has the potential to physically alter our mind-body system in ways unimaginable only a few decades ago.

Which reminds us that there are even more important ways we are distinct from other life forms. Humans have a sense of

• good and  evil
• justice and judgement
• truth
• humility and pride
• pity and mercy
• grace 
• redemption and salvation
• humour, irony and narrative
• aesthetics
• awe and wonder.

We are able to conceive of divine love as the highest ideal and of a monotheistic source of all being from which our reality emanates and to which we can choose to relate to in body, mind and spirit, because we have been imbued with the freedom to do so.

It is fortunate we have these qualities of mind and spirit and the choice of a relationship to our Creator. Otherwise how are we going to cope with the  nature we have discovered and used as well as those layers of mystery which, if science, technology and medicine are not  plunged into some atheistic, neo-pagan or post modern dark age,  may be revealed in future?

Now let me descend from the soap box and invite your comments.

John

Author, 2077 AD

cosmik.jo@gmail.com

The five-fold threat to science

Peer reviewed academic science started and evolved in a Judeo-Christian culture in which there was faith in the infinitely multilayered underlying order of God’s creation. In addition there was a belief that truth was sacred and divine. To lie was to sin.

It has not been a smooth ride. There have been plenty of departures from the ideal paradigm– lies have been told, data fudged, honours fiercely fought. But the scholarly peer review procedure has been recognised by all as the ideal and it has taken us a long way, yielding many blessings, including clean drinking water, plentiful food, miraculous medicine, the Internet and a progressively evolving insight into the workings of nature. These gifts can be considered as the end result of 250,000 years of evolution or as blessings from God or both.

Today, it seems, this process is under threat in five ways:

/1/ A lack of faith in the underlying order of nature

Without this all motivation to discover new laws could cease. If Newton (a devout Christian and mystic)  had not believed in an underlying order there would be no laws of motion, no law of gravity, no optics and possibly no calculus. The lack of belief in cosmic order by some scientists probably is the result of the randomness of  quantum events, leading to a dismissal of material reality as essentially meaningless. But as argued in another posting there is often, perhaps always, a meaning behind a random sequence (e.g. the digits of π).

/2/ Post modernism

All ‘truths’ are imposed by our mind and culture and one reality is as good as another.  This very statement sets itself up as true so it contradicts itself. 

/3/ Model dependent realism

Scientific models are constructed for practical purposes only. The one which works best is adopted but is not any closer to the truth than any other. This might allow applied science to keep going but without the almost theological pursuit of truth for its own sake we will be stuck with our present highly incoherent model of reality.  Stephen Hawking, for example, claims that the literal description of creation given in Genesis is equally true to the Big Bang theory. Take your pick: whatever works for you. (This could be regarded as a subset of /2/)

/4/ Young earth creationism

There is no need to explain anything new. Just say God did it. No need to explore or invent new, more powerful explanations of the world. That’s just how it is. Only use science to invent new technology. This overlaps with /3/ above. (Note to young earthers:  although your interpretation of Genesis chapter 1 is  different from mine I share your faith in the Resurrected Christ, which is immeasurably more fundamental than our conclusions about the material world.)

/5/ Declining belief in the sacred nature of truth

There is an increasing tendency to pander to the media, to the bodies which issue grants and to the latest idea of what is cool. The gentleman scientists of the 18th and 19th century were not subject to these pressures which  can cause some scientists (still, thankfully, a minority) to exaggerate or falsify data to prove or disprove some model or hypothesis. These pressures have always been present but without holding truth sacred there is little to counteract them other than the risk of being found out. 

Let me put my cards on the table. I am a Christian and one who values science as a gift from God. These dangers are mainly associated with atheism, humanism, neo-paganism and, of course, young earth creationism; but I have recently discovered Christians who appear to be adopting the view that the material world is of no relevance to their belief in God or Christ and that anything goes in pure science.

Without a thriving search for scientific truth  there will be no jumps forward in our understanding of the created order, no quantum leaps in our technology (since these depend on the former), no rescuing of people from poverty, no solution to the looming environmental problem, no expansion into the rest of the universe and no global convergence towards a common understanding of the world.

See also

Hold on to the truth


Why the future is unpredictable

Bridging gaps

The doctrine of chance

Our precious planet

Is there meaning behind random events?

John

Author, 2077 AD

cosmik.jo@googlemail.com

Internet and the world economy

Worldwide there are 2 billion internet users and the turnover of e-commerce is $8 trillion p.a., which is three times the entire GDP of the UK.

James Manyika (San Francisco) and Charles Roxburgh (London) of the McKinsey Global Institute studied the economic effects of the Internet on 13 countries, including the G8 and presented their findings in a recent report: Internet matters: the net’s sweeping impact on growth, jobs and employment.

Here are some of the main points reported in the July issue of Prospect magazine.

• The Internet accounts on average for 3.4% of the GDP of a country

• Half of this GDP component arises from buying online and paying for advertising. Much of the rest comes from investments in Internet technology: servers, software and communications.

• Over 1995-2009, i.e. 15 years, the GDP of the 13 countries of course increased; but 10% of this growth was due to the Internet. Over 2005-2009 the Internet component of growth was 21%. So its impact on growth appears to be accelerating. 

• 4,800 small and medium sized enterprises studied reported on average a 10% increase in profitability due to efficiency improvements

• These same companies claimed that 2.6 jobs were created for each one lost to technology-related efficiencies 

The Internet of course raises questions outside the scope of the report.What kinds of jobs have been created? What have been the social effects? Is there an underclass of people with no prospect of  linking into the prosperity engine? Has creative thought been enhanced or diminished? Has the sustained development of an idea and its application been undermined or enhanced? Are games distorting or improving our perceptions of the real world? What has been the effect on democracy? Is there more sectarianism? There are many more questions.

 The Internet has proved powerful and world changing beyond anyone’s dreams but, like the recently unleashed power of atomic physics, quantum mechanics, materials science, biotechnology and genetic engineering, it is morally neutral.

We human beings are faced with the choice of using it for good or evil. Perhaps the first step is to recognise that good and evil exist.

John

Author, 2077 AD

cosmik.jo@googlemail.com