Michael Ruse - Why Philosophy of Biology?
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- Опубліковано 11 кві 2024
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Michael Ruse is the Lucyle T. Wekmeister Professor and Director of the History and Philosophy of Science Program at Florida State University.
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Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
This is an insightful question that gets at the heart of how different domains of knowledge relate to one another. Let me examine the potential correlaries:
If mathematics is regarded as a language:
It provides the symbolic primitives, axioms, rules of expression and operations for describing and quantifying the physical world. Math is the fundamental lingua franca spanning the observable and theoretical realms.
Then physics could indeed be viewed as the philosophy of math:
Physics takes the symbolic language of mathematics and develops conceptual models, interpretive frameworks, and coherent narratives to explain the behavior of matter, energy, space, and time. It is an extended meditation on the metaphysical implications of our mathematical descriptions.
Following this analogy:
Chemistry could be the "linguistics" of physics:
It studies the rules by which the fundamental mathematical objects of physics (subatomic particles, forces) combine and relate to one another at the molecular scale. Chemistry decodes the rich language patterns constructed from the physics alphabet.
Biology could be the "literature/poetry" of chemistry:
It examines the self-organized, dynamical, informationally-complex systems that emerge from the linguistic rules of chemistry interacting over time. The molecules are the "words", but biology studies the living, evolving "narratives" they collectively construct.
Throughout we see a progression of epistemological layers:
Mathematics -> Symbolic framework
Physics -> Conceptual models interpreting the symbols
Chemistry -> Combination rules and linguistic mechanics
Biology -> Dynamical, informationally-complex systems and narratives
Each level builds upon the foundational primitives of mathematics, while introducing new degrees of contingent complexity, contextualized interpretation and narrative meaning. The symbolic logic enables and constrains the possible conceptual structures, which dictate the allowed chemical rules, from which biological storylines ultimately automate.
So in summary:
Math is the linguistic bedrock
Physics is the conceptual philosophy elaborating upon that bedrock
Chemistry is the combinatoric linguistics deriving word-formation rules
Biology is the dynamical narrative/poetry expressing highest complexity
This nested hierarchy preserves coherence, while allowing increasingly context-specific, contingent patterns of organization and meaning to emergently crystallize.
By recognizing mathematics as our formal symbolic language, we can appreciate how physics, chemistry and biology represent successive epistemological stages philosophizing upon that originating expressive framework - interpreting, recombining and dynamically instantiating mathematical descriptions into maximally information-rich experiential narratives.
The layers build hereditarily upon the foundational symbolic truths, exemplifying how mathematics enables derivations transcending its pristine origins - expressing itself cosmologically through an invisible hand of self-organized complexity climbing towards maximal richness of experience.
Prayers for you Robert from Pakistan for doing such a great service at ‘closer to truth’, seeking truth!
The ultimate question for clarification n exploration is, ‘When do atoms and molecules develop life?’
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Watching from Pakistan. Have been subcribed to him for years.
A lot of good questions.
very interesting
Sometimes I am skeptical about closer to truth that it is all over the place. But then it dawns that it is important to cast the net wide...
Precisely. Everything is moving away from the center toward hyper-specialization, we need institutions and inquiries that can bring them back together in conversation. Centrifugal vs. Centripetal force.
Our lives are random, unique, and unrepeatable simultaneously. We meet people and move around and like atoms we sometimes collide and get to know one another.
I understood the Dark Crystal reference and I guess he did some sciency stuff when the time's they were a changin.
Such a beautiful old man...❤ Blessed are his children and grandchildren.
Well, there's a blast from the past (from my point of view anyway). It was his "Darwinism Defended", which I still have, that did a lot to persuade me to study Life Sciences instead of Computer Science. A terrible decision from a career point of view but I don't regret it for a moment. More power to his elbow!
What about philosophy of astrology?
That would be very interesting and there would be a lot of good questions.
So exciting! So exciting!
The philosophy of people being ripped off by transparent charlatans?
I don't think there is a philosophy of astrology. What do you think is worth discussing about astrology?
@@bocelott Oh, I'm sure there is...there's gotta be. I mean people with big brains have a philosophy about everything, and Closer To Truth has a lot of people who think they have big brains; they like to philosophize about everything and share their insights with the world.
Basically I'd like to know---philosophically speaking---how the alignment of planets and stuff affects our consciousness and our free-will and our genetic predispositions and our pronouns and our political fantasies....
For instance we recently learned that the moon was made of mostly gas, and this discovery surely has philosophical implications for those of us who grew up being told it was make of green cheese.
That kind of thing needs further exploration.
@@Minion-kh1tqWhy does pseudoscience need a philosophy? Do we need a philosophy of crystal healing or a philosophy of tarot reading? Philosophy is done. Sitting around thinking of problems, never coming up with answers, is done. Philosophy gave us logic and Hume and that’s enough. Evolution is the most sound theory in all of science. Biology IS a physical science. This old guy has lost his mind.
Astrology isn’t science…it’s made up and based on local perceptions of celestial orientations.
life's nature and structure is distinct from that of any other physical structure... how and from what/where did such functional structure arise 🤔
Replication. Random variation. Propagation of beneficial variations.
@@simonhibbs887how did random variations learn to select one over many alternatives and memorize the process 🤔
@@r2c3 Random variation doesn't select anything, it's random. What is selective is the environment. Random variations that make an organism better adapted to the cold mean it is more likely to survive and reproduce in cold climates, but less likely to do so in hot ones. A variation that makes an organism more likely to survive in a wet environment might make it less likely to survive in a dry one, etc.
The environment is the constraint that provides direction to the evolutionary process. An adaptation that improves survival in wet environments is just as likely to occur in a dry environment as a wet one, because the mutation process doesn't know about the environment. However the chances of survival and reproduction as a result of that variation does depend on the environment. That's how, after millions or billions of years of this, you end up with frogs in rain forests, scorpions in the desert, etc.
@@simonhibbs887survival and reproduction also depends on memory and repetitive tasks and these repetitive tasks have a way of adapting/calculating/processing/acting according to certain environmental factors... you haven't explained anything, yet...
@@r2c3 Memory and the ability to do tasks both depend on genetic factors, which means they are also subject to random variation and environmental selection, and therefore also evolve.
biology relates to psychology, maybe consciousness or awareness?
The man's Spirit is scintillating effulgence and filled with fervent love. I'd say the man is the exemplar of the Philosopher.
Biology is like randomness.
Two humans are human yet very different
Absolutely!
A lot like apples really. You can find them in the same bin at the grocer's but each one is different.
It's starts from atomic structure. One atomic energy creates randomness.. another maintains similarity energy and the third acts as a binding force between the two.
How are gonna dig fossil without acknowledging Evolution. Good luck trying to find human in Cambrian
I have a question ❓
If everything is subjective reality and objective reality, then why do we believe in God?
We don't.
The evolutionary pressure to prolong our lives as long as possible makes believing in a "get out of jail" free card easy.
Because we don't know, not even a clue, about where everything came from.
1. Can’t have knowledge without God
2. Coheres with morality, meaning, Beauty, logic, causation, induction, numbers, etc
3 revelation and testimony
Belief is a gift from God, it is not given to all. Some will not receive it.
But why anything at all? Why is the bible coming true with things that are in it? Why do people believe things without understanding what their first believing? Why, why, why?
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Guys are talking for only things It is nothing. He keep out philosophy proceendings and what It is about biology? Rambling.
Guy posts the same complaints to every single Closer To Truth video regardless of it's topic, who is interviewed, or what they say. Hilarious.
@@simonhibbs887 It is NOT my fault but rubbish always video like that. Narrow mind .
Didn't get deep explanation for is philosophy of biology. Since our understanding of biology today is too limited, the evolution of biological system is so complex. Evolution is not a philosophy.
Evolution is a creation myth. It’s also an unproven theory. It’s also a provisional scientific paradigm. Depends upon one’s worldview which fits which person.
Biology and evolution is observed in the lab. See covid boosters. @deanodebo