All, I have already used my two cents for the weeks, but am forwarding
this on behalf of Stan. Bob
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 17:38:19 -0500
From: Stanley N. Salthe <ssalthe@binghamton.edu>
To: ulan@cbl.umces.edu
Subject: FORWARD Re: [Fis] Post-concluding remarks:Realism/anturealism:
Laws of nature?
Bob -- fis is rejecting my e-mails as spam, so I thoubht I would send this
to you. If you reply, you can send it to fis. Thanks!
STAN
I will react below to Bob's staement:
>On Thu, 26 Oct 2006, Guy A Hoelzer wrote:
>
>> I doubt we disagree in substance here, but I would take issue with
the
>> statement that "there are no laws for biology in the same sense
as the
>> laws of physics", because I think the laws of physics apply in
all
>> realms. In other words, the laws of physics are not limited to
physics
>> in an exclusionary way, because all other disciplines exist within
the
>> bounds of physics. Therefore, the laws of physics are also laws of
>> biology to me. After picking this nit, I would agree that there are
no
>> additional, proprietary laws of this sort within biology that do not
>> extend to non-biological physical systems.
>
>Hi Guy!
>
>No disagreement whatsoever. I was trying to be brief. The laws of physics
>continue to hold for biotic systems, they just lose their capability to
>*determine" the results. To summarize Elsasser's arguments in three
words
>-- combinatorics overwhelm law. By which is meant that for any lawful
>constraint there usually is a multitude of possible configurations that
>satisfy that constraint. There being no discrimination among the multitude
>as regards the law in question, something else must do the discriminating.
SS: Concerning configurations, looking at the specification hierarchy:
{physical dynamics {material connections {biological organization}}}, we
must conclude that physical degrees of freedom must become increasingly
frozen out as we ascend the hierarchy. However, new degrees of freedom
open up at each level. These new degrees of freedom cannot be confined by
physical laws, but could be said to become subject to new 'laws of matter',
perhaps such as the purported 'laws of biology' cited by Richard (see
below). In addition, the effects of historicity become increasingly
important as we ascend the hierarchy, and here is where I meet Bob's
perspective. I represent this as an increase in the effects of contingency
as we ascend the hierarchy.
Now, taking up Richard's posting:
>1. Cope's Law�"Structurally ordained biases of speciation away from a
>lower size limit occupied by founding members of the clade, rather
>than adaptive anagenesis towards organismal benefits of large
>size" (Gould, 2002), which is to say that a clade's body size will
>increase naturally with increasing speciation activity.
SS: This has been shown not to be specifically a biological rule. If
something begins small and changes size, there will be a tendency,
willy-nilly, to get bigger.
>2. Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium�a stochastic "law" (model) that
>predicts the distribution of alleles p and q in a population:
>
>p^2 + 2pq + q^2 = 1.
SS: This again is not peculiarly biological. This 'law' merely sates
that if something has no forces acting to change it, it will not change!
>3. Haeckel's Biogenetic Law (now largely defunct)�this "law"
captured
>what was understood to be "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny."
Some
>biologists still subscribe to this law, giving extended life to ORP.
>Personally, I think the "developmental plasticity" (homoplasy)
folks
>are still trying to bring back Haeckel's Law to some degree in order
>to refute Gould's "deep homology."
SS: This rule IS more interesting, and is best interpreted, I think,
as a law of matter. That is, any developments will have to be built atop
already developed configurations, and cannot transcend them, but only
refine them. This used to be called 'epigenesis' (developing upon).
STAN
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Received on Fri Oct 27 02:12:08 2006
