Re: Deduction Re: Origin of Life

[Aiviet Nguyen <aiviet2@yahoo.com>]

Hello Vu~,

    Did I say that everything can be deducted to
Physics ?  At least I never meant that.

    Do you see  how a contruction of a complex goes.
You should have a base first, then fist floor,... The
same thing happens with communication model. At low
level everything is in term of bit and bytes.
Whatsoever you are, revolutionist or creationist, you
message should be built on bits and sent to me. 
Higher level things are always broken into low level
things. Of course at low level, a lot of  high level
information is lost. So deduction is not "Everything
can be explained in terms of ..."

     Deduction according to my experience ( I don't
know wheter it coincides with your professors'
definition) is that a high level concept can be broken
into low level components with additional "glues",
that define the rules to put
the components together ( A perfect analogue to
construction of a brick building or hardware
industry).  These "glues" belong to the higher level.
If you forget about the "glues" whatever you say I can
confirm it in one level and deny it in another level.

   So a complex is not simply sum of its components.
You can divide a man into parts, but the collection of
parts is just a dead body. But without parts,
it is nonsense to speak about a man :-)) The
subjectivists from such an observation tried to deny
the neccessity of parts and lower level constructions.
Science evolved in an expansion way, not by denying
the last achievements.  Without Physics, you won't
have a scientific foundation for Biology. Biology had
to wait centuries for Physics to become an exact
science. Biology is still not part of Physics as
Chemistry is now, however low level imposes very
strong consistency criteria on high level issues. If
in your Bible you say by worshiping your God, people
can survive without foods or can fly like birds, it
can be falsified by science because of consistency. 

    I, as a physicist without  much knowledge from
other disciples, would concentrate on  a very narrow
task: how Physics or science can decide certain high
level issues are inconsistent. There are quite a lot
of things I cannot say a word ( in that case that is
an indication that you are talking about the high
level "glues")

   For instance Bergsson talked about  humours and
origine of life as basics of his phylosophy thesis.
While I cannot say a word about the role of humours, I
definitely can see that his belief that life has no
origine has been falsified by recent developments in
science as you, Toan, TP have already agreed.
  
--- Bui Anh Vu <vabui@students.wisc.edu> wrote: 
> You miss my point. I mean deductivism is a bad
approach. Therefore, I don't  deduct anything to
anything else.
>>
    You tried to do something like the subjectivists.
Deduction does work in all the cases so I throw it
away:-)). I hope you don't thow you money
after knowing that your girl friend cannot be bought
:-))
   Deduction is still very powerful ( I would say most
powerful) tools of mandkind. That can save you a lot
of time and even blood to talk of nonsense issues.

> You were the one  who tried to deduct  everything to
Physics.

   Trying is a nice attempt and very economic. This is
like a quality test, if you fail at low level why
bother talking at high level.
    Imagine a nice deduction, two women quarrel about
moneys, let us deduct the social problem to a math
problem and try to solve it.  Although
the success is not guaranteed 100%, but  in most
cases. At least after solving the issue by math
unsuccessfully you know that they quarrel because of
some high level reason ( you can investigate whether
their husbands are involved:-)))
    I like neat deductions like that. Maybe I waste
more sweat but I can stop blood :-))
 
> If "deduction" doesn't mean "being able to solve all
> the problems," how do  you define it then?

   Done.

> When you say "a certain  biological process is just
a  sum of physical processes," the implication is you
can get all the results working on the physical level
of it.
>>>

   Yes, in many cases a biological process is simply a
sum of physical processes. At least this is a very
well working model in some boudary of your practical
purpose. ( Just look at the high school model of the
circulation system as an example).  After that you can
understand how the process works in purely physical
terms. In general, you have to resort to deduction,
the nondeductble part will become the objective and
the rest will become a physical issues. If you cannot
do that, go to find another relationship at high level
and reformulate the problem.

   I think we have gone to deep into the methods of
deduction. If you are interested we can go further.

Cheers
Aiviet


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