Registered: Dec 2004
Posts: 6

I just got into an argument with someone who claims Wolfram's book supports "intelligent design" theory.

I don't think so.

Intelligent design (ID) is the claim that empirical evidence points to the conclusion that life on earth was deliberately designed by an intelligent agent. The Intelligent Design movement is an organized campaign to promote ID arguments in the public sphere, primarily in the United States. The hub of the movement is the Center for Science and Culture, a subsidiary of the Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank. The phrase "Intelligent Design," was coined by legal scholar Phillip E. Johnson in his 1991 book Darwin on Trial.

Is there anyway to email Wolfram and find out what he thinks of ID?

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Registered: Dec 2004
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In a sense I think that Wolfram is saying that atheism is a faith based system predicated on the notion that the universe is not only knowable, but known. Wolfram says that there are an infinite number of aspects of the universe that are not knowable at all. All systems, and we are systems, try to infer the nature of another system by trying to adapt the system inputs to their own format. As humans, we would do the same, and thus miss anything that we could not process with our perceptive abilities. This means we would most certainly miss, even if we had some notion of, any higher order being.

I do not think that Wolfram makes this point directly, but only indirectly. He is a scientist with a completely new way of thinking about the universe, and I doubt he would go out on a limb and give his critics any tool that they might use to dismiss him. That probably means he will not answer, but it does not mean that he doesn't provide a supporting framework for answering "maybe so" to a concept of intelligent design in his writings. In any case, one cannot come to the conclusion that he would preclude the possibility.

Norm thinks that I am a proponent of ONE theory of ID, and proceeds to smear that theory and claim I advocate that this is what every child be taught in place of evolution. I am certainly NOT in favor of that. I remember the poster that my biology professor had in his office of Einstein, saying "God does not play dice with the universe", and I think that expression better describes my position than Norm has presented it. Of course schools should teach science based on evidence and evolution has a great deal of evidence. It certainly has more evidence than other ways of explaining how we came to be. It does describe, but it does not define or answer "why". I simply disagree with Norm that every person should be required to believe that there was no intelligent design. I disagree that kids should be told there is no intelligent design, and there is no God. I do not believe that science rules out God at all. Why should science teachers be commanded to say "God is" or "God isn't?" Can't they just say that intelligent design is a possibility?

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Registered: Mar 2004
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Wolfram has not made any such indirect statements about atheism, or anything for that matter. I think, heart, that those statements are instead your own.

In note 849e of NKS, titled "Clairity and modesty" Wolfram explains:


There is a common style of understated scientific writing to which I was once a devoted subscriber. But at some point I discovered that more significant results are usually incomprehensible if presented in this style. For unless one has a realistic understanding of how important something is, it is very difficult to place or absorb it. And so in writing this book I have chosen to explain straightforwardly the importance I believe my various results have. Perhaps I might avoid some criticism by a greater display of modesty, but the cost would be a drastic reduction in clarity.



normdoering, you are correct that NKS does not endorse ID in any way. ID, from my understanding, jumps to the conclusion that there is no other way to account for biological complexity other than a supreme being or extraterrestrials.

Now, I hope thats a naive view on my part. I don't understand how a scientist could have such a view. Maybe we should send them all NKS for christmas.

Jesse Nochella

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Registered: Dec 2004
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Originally posted by heart
In a sense I think that Wolfram is saying that atheism is a faith based system predicated on the notion that the universe is not only knowable, but known.

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I'm very interested in religious philosophy and this is a timely subject, given Anthony Flew's recent acceptence of deism based on the teleological argument (the cornerstone of ID). What I know of ID stems from an article in Wired a few issues ago, as well as some very informal skimmings of a few related books (Darwin's Black Box, etc.).

Both Wolfram and ID critize the process of natural selection as unacceptable for producing the complexity we see in nature. But they part ways in answering it. ID argues this complexity is the sign of design, and look to a higher intelligence in accounting for it. Wolfram takes the opposite approach and suggests its the product of unintelligent design or an automata.

However its important to distinguish between the specifics of Intelligent Design (capital I & D) and the general concept of intelligent design. While Wolfram certainly is at odds with the former, he is open to the latter:

"From the point of view of traditional thinking about intelligence in the universe it might seem like an extremely bizarre possibility that perhaps intelligence could exist at a very small scale, and in effect have spread throughout the universe, building as an artifact everything we see. But at least with a broad interpretation of intelligence this is at some level exactly what the Principle of Computational Equivalence suggests has actually happened. For it implies that even at the smallest scales the laws of physics will show the same computational sophistication that we normally associate with intelligence. So in some sense this supports the theological notion that there might be a kind of intelligence that permeates our universe."
-- NKS, 1191, emphasis mine

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Registered: Jan 2004
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Intelligent Design implies top-down architecture while NKS focuses on different bottom-up architectures that display emergent behavior as in the case of cellular automata. The human brain is an example of a structure with both top-down and bottom-up architectures, so it is not surprising that the concept of Intelligent Design appears independently in so many cultures.

Construction of intelligence does not imply intelligent construction. Intelligent Design just moves the mystery into a new box. Now we need to know about the nature of the intelligence doing the design, we’ve just replaced cosmology with divine psychology.

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Originally posted by J. William Clark
I'm very interested in religious philosophy and this is a timely subject, given Anthony Flew's recent acceptence of deism based on the teleological argument (the cornerstone of ID).

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Originally posted by normdoering
You've been lied to. Anthony Flew has done no such thing.

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Registered: Aug 2003
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On Wolfram's own opinions, you can consult the book, specifically two footnotes on page 861 and 1185. "What I do in this book goes significantly further than traditional science in getting rid of notions of purpose from investigations of nature."

Wolfram presents himself as providing explanations for complexity that he regards as rather lacking in previous science. Since he is providing such explanations he is helping the argument that science can explain complex phenomena, obviously. Since he is insisting they are needed, he is implicitly criticizing previous explanations of complexity that were not aware of his own arguments.

Please note that explanation of complexity is a distinct subject, and not to be confused with all of science, or all of biology (it occurs outside biology, too), let alone all of religion (to which it is tangential, intersecting only in some other people's past arguments).

Also please note that reducing the role of natural selection in explaining complexity is not a reduction in the role of natural selection in explaining other things (optimized simplicities e.g.), because complexity is a single distinct phenomena and not the universe. Nor is natural selection, evolution - it is one mechanism within evolutionary theory.

Wolfram wants to trace complexity (specifically) to algorithmic processes that operate even in the absence of natural selection, accounting thereby for its existence e.g. in patterns of fracture or turbulent flow, where there is no question of millions of years of natural selection. The same thing can happen in biology.

In Darwinian terms, it would operate at the "descent with variation" stage, and natural selection might then operate on the (already complicated) results. But natural selection would not have caused the complexity. That would already be there for prior, essentially computational reasons.

Natural selection might then optimize over the space of results, though if the evidence from abstract constraint systems in chapter 7 is indicative (see 342 and following), it might have only limit success in complicated cases. Iterative improvement schemes work well in simple cases and with smooth, continuous fitness terrain. It then explains not complexity, but optimality or successfully satisfying constraints.

Wolfram's argument can explain things like the pattern of innovation and simplification in the Cambrian explosion - an underlying computational "motor" generates variation without needing natural selection time scales to operate, then natural selection winnows the results. Evidence for it can also be seen in populated parameter spaces of biological variation, without any clear selective value (e.g. leaf shapes or shell pigmentation patterns). There we see variety without it needing to have any purpose. That is part of why he sees it as an improvement over continual (sometimes frankly hand-waving) appeals to natural selection alone, as to a supposedly all powerful force.

That is meant to cover what Wolfram actually says both directly on the topic and within the related evolutionary debate (where biologists argue with one another regularly over the role and weight of natural selection compared to other forces - Gould and Dawkins, for example). I will add some comments of my own on the whole ID subject. I worked with Wolfram on the book and specifically on philosophy related questions. But the following are my own opinions, not his.

First there is the intellectual non-respectability of literalism. Nothing can make that work or even help it, it is hopelessly wrong. Being wrong isn't illegal, error is where people start, but this is something we just know is false, and there is no reason to teach things we know are false. To the extent that some pushing ID are just trying to make room for literalism, it is intellectually hopeless.

The more limited claims of ID (rather than literalism) are a philosophic rather than scientific argument, suitable for college philosophy classes not grade school science, that is wrong in interesting ways. (By the standards of philosophy, anyway - anything that reveals something through its refutation meets that standard). In the sense that what it takes as evidence of x is not evidence for x. There are plenty of suitable lessons there about imagined contraries and actual logical entailment, and the like.

There are some points here of philosophical interest more directly related to the NKS way of thinking. For example, noticing the difficulty of distinguishing artifacts due to the complexity potential of entirely natural systems. The correlation "complex" with "artificial" is weak, and in the end unsustainable. We developed the habit of thinking of computation as artificial, but in doing so we have missed an essential NKS point - that nature has been computing all along.

We just discovered the nature of computation recently (I mean in the last 100 years) and did so first in artificial systems designed for it. Now that we know what it is, we can notice it going on around us, in natural systems as well. NKS tells us that universal computation was not invented by Alan Turing, but can occur in a turbulent fluid - it was discovered not invented. After Turing but before NKS, we might have thought only artificial systems would be universal computers, but now we expect to find them everywhere.

I also note that ID people may have noticed weaknesses in arguments of their opponents without it reflecting strengths in their own. As the adage has it, a cat can look at a king. Examples are the difficulty of satisfying complicated (rather than simple) constraints by iterative improvement. Which is evidence for straight algorithmic origins of complexity rather than evolved-to-satisfy constraints origins of complexity (where it happens it is really complexity, rather than optimization, that needs to be explained. In other contexts, optimization may be the real issue and natural selection a main driver).

Then at a purely philosophical level, there is the bare idea of creation of universes. This is distinct from ID; it is, for example, not a claim about evidence. This is an entirely allowable philosophic speculation. The traditional form of the problem asks whether or not the visible universe has an origin in time. Cosmologists, philosophers, and theologians are all welcome to ask what any of a variety of answers to that question might suggest. Perhaps surprisingly, the subject is distinguishable from theism. Either (creation, theism) may be maintained without the other. You can have creation of universes naturally or artificially, artificially by things "less than God". You can also have theism with a static, uncreated, eternal universe (Aristotle did).

Then there is the issue of theism as a philosophical or theological position, distinct from anything having to do with creation, or artificial creation, or design, or claims about evidence. None of which are necessary to that position, though some popular varieties of it may include some of them and dispense with others. It is a venerable topic in theology and philosophy. It isn't science, but anybody is free to have their own opinions about it either way, in the absence of evidence. On its own, it doesn't hurt anybody.

One man's opinions...

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Originally posted by J. William Clark
Citing a statement from 2001 doesn't exactly prove anything about Flew's current position on the matter but I am certainly not going to argue about it. Your welcome to your opinion, atleast until Flew's new forward to the final edition of "God and Philosophy" rolls off the press next month.

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Originally posted by J. William Clark
Citing a statement from 2001 doesn't exactly prove anything about Flew's current position on the matter but I am certainly not going to argue about it.

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Registered: Dec 2004
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Originally posted by normdoering
True, but this does, the Rationalist International Bulletin # 138 (16 December 2004 - http://www.rationalistinternational.net ) I just got in my email:

"I have not changed my views",

Antony Flew informs Rationalist International

By Sanal Edamaruku

Today, 16th December 2004, Professor Antony Flew, British philosopher, well known rationalist, atheist and an Honorary Associate of Rationalist International, telephoned me and informed that the wild rumours about his changed views are baseless. He expressed surprise over the confusion some people have spread and asserted that his position about the belief in god remains unchanged and is the same as it was expressed in his famous speech "Theology and Falsification". "I find no new reason to change my views", Professor Flew said.

Professor Antony Flew discusses the atheism of a rationalist, based on the impossibility to verify or falsify the religious claims about a god, in his short paper "Theology and Falsification", first published in 1950. Since then this paper was reprinted more than forty times in different places, including translations into German, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Welsh, Finnish and Slovak. During the conversation with me, Professor Antony Flew expressed desire to publicise this paper as it represented his views till this moment. "There is no change", Professor Antony Flew asserted. "Some people argue that I changed my views. It is simply not correct."

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Registered: Feb 2004
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Does Wolfram ever respond?

__________________
Rick

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Registered: Mar 2004
Posts: 132

Not that it's for me to respond to, but about Wolfram, Richard.. I hear that he is very focused on Mathematica 6. Responding to this thread probobly won't change the world that much. I think he has his priorities straight.

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Registered: Jun 2004
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Does it really matter what he thinks?

If design is really intelligent, the Designer would probably take care of hiding all the evidences, leaving us in a complete
darkness about his intentions. Our knowledge of design goals would destroy the whole undertaking - we would never accept
the role of puppets in this show. (See "Truman show" for
more details). First indications of human revolt against the Designer can be seen in some works of literature, notably in Kafka's "The Process"

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