foodchain

Here is a wiki link that I think is good for studying such in context of stuff around it really. Personally, my view is the its a complex system really, such as a polypeptide chain, what happens to it? What’s it made of and why. The system though has a sort of continuum aspect to it though, or more or less your question probably cant be solved just by looking at one piece, as for me I don’t know have the answer. Here is the link, hope it helps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_transport_chain

"Fundamental Flaws in Mark Steiner's Challenge to Naturalism in The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem (2003) Richard Carrier This is a critical rebuttal to Mark Steiner's book The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem (1998). Steiner argues that naturalism appears to be false because nature is fundamentally mathematical. Carrier argues otherwise. Steiner's thesis in a nutshell is this: physics can only be described in the language of mathematics, the language of mathematics exists only as an invention of a mind (human or otherwise), therefore the universe (which is what physics describes) must be the invention of a mind (presumably God's). Though Steiner's approach is too humble to actually argue for God's existence (he seems aware that his conclusion would be compatible with certain other worldviews like atheistic Solipsism), he does seem convinced by his own arguments and evidence that Naturalism cannot be true, whatever else may be. As he puts it, there is a "correspondence...between the human brain and the physical world as a whole. The world, in other words, looks 'user friendly.' This is a challenge to naturalism" (176) because it means "the human species has a special place in the scheme of things" (5). Confusing the Tools of Description with the Things Described But Steiner commits several fundamental blunders that topple his entire thesis from the start. First, his argument is formally invalid. Just because X can only be described with a language it does not follow that X cannot exist or be what it is without a language to describe it. In other words, he confuses the tools of description with the thing described. All languages are obviously the invention of a mind, and they are invented specifically for the task of describing what exists. That a language succeeds very well at that task is indeed due to humans being very clever in perfecting language as a tool of description, but that's all. It is not the result of the universe being 'suspiciously describable.' To make Steiner's argument is like being amazed at what a miracle it is that Earth had Oxygen, just what we needed to breathe—forgetting that we evolved to breathe what was here, not the other way around. Half the life on this planet evolved to breathe what was around before Oxygen came along: Carbon Dioxide. And we would have evolved to breathe that, too, if that remained the only breathable gas around. So there is nothing miraculous about the convergence of Oxygen and Oxygen-breathers. Just so, there is nothing miraculous about the convergence of a describable universe and a tool for describing it. There is certainly no reason to expect, even on Naturalism, that any universe would be somehow undescribable. Defining Mathematics Steiner's error here stems mainly from his failure to properly define "mathematics." He does not acknowledge what many Naturalists see: that math is just a language, no different from any other (like English or German) except in two respects: its component simplicity and lack of ambiguity. This is, in fact, all that distinguishes mathematics from any other language. Component simplicity is a defining attribute because math is a language we created for describing the simplest elements of complex patterns: primarily, quantities and relations. Every "word" in mathematics refers to a very simple pattern (like a number or a function or a simple relationship), unlike English, for example, where most words refer to very complex patterns (like "tree" or "theorem"). Of course, mathematical sentences and paragraphs can be immensely complex, but this does not change the fact that the words are all simple, and that is what makes mathematics what it is, as opposed to English or German. More importantly, the lack of ambiguity defines mathematics as a language because every mathematical word is deliberately defined by humans in an absolutely precise way, leaving no room for optional interpretations or ranges of vagueness. This was what math was invented for: to escape the perils of imprecision and vagueness, which are fundamental to other languages. Thus, while in English "tree" can refer to a plant or a hierarchical list of computer files, and while applying the word "tree" might run into uncertainty when we are looking at something that straddles the properties of a tree and a bush, and so on, in mathematics no such problems arise—because we humans made sure of it. We created a language without ambiguity, and called it mathematics. Some people might restrict the definition of mathematics further, thus distinguishing math from logic, by stating that mathematics is a language dealing solely with quantities, relations, and functions applied thereto, whereas everything that is simple and precise but not a quantity, relation, or function falls into the subject of logic instead. But many mathematicians regard logic as a special subset of mathematics, since anything said in a language of logic can also be described in the language of mathematics. However, in practice, logic is used as a bridge for extending the defining advantages of mathematics (simplicity and precision) to normal language and ordinary human thought. In that respect, logic straddles the spheres of math and ordinary language. Either way, though, mathematics is definable, whether broadly as a language characterized by component simplicity and lack of ambiguity, or narrowed further to quantity, relation, and function. Are Beauty and Convenience Mathematical? Steiner nowhere at any time shows any awareness of the above definition of mathematics or indeed anything even remotely like it. Nor does he allow that mathematicians would call "mathematical" anything and everything definable by the nine or so basic axioms of mathematics (which have in common the features I describe above, which is why my definition is more fundamental). The closest thing to a definition he ever comes to is as follows: Mathematicians today have adopted internal criteria to decide whether to study a structure as mathematical. Two of these are beauty and convenience. The beauty of the theory of a structure is a powerful reason to call it mathematical...[and] mathematicians...introduce concepts into mathematics to make calculations easier or convenient...[so] relying on mathematics in guessing the laws of nature is relying on human standards of beauty and convenience. (7, cf. 63-70) This means "the concept of mathematics" is "anthropocentric," which means mathematics could only be successful in physics if the universe, too, were anthropocentric. But there are serious flaws in his method here. Is everything that is beautiful and convenient mathematical? No. Is an ugly, inconvenient theorem not mathematical? No. No matter how ugly or inconvenient Ptolemy's planetary theory was, it is still universally admitted by all mathematicians to be entirely mathematical. Thus, neither beauty nor convenience are defining attributes of mathematics. Mathematics must be defined by something else, which is obviously what I defined it as above. Therefore, Steiner's claim that "the concept of mathematics itself is species-specific" (6) is false. It is true only insofar as language is species-specific, but Language is not identical to Being—it is merely a tool for describing it. Instead, the defining concepts of mathematics—component simplicity, lack of ambiguity, quantity, relation, function—are not at all species-specific or even specific to mind. All these things can exist physically in nature without any mind to create or sustain them. Thus, that we find a language (in this case, a language for describing quantity, relation, and function with component simplicity and lack of ambiguity) useful has nothing to do with the universe being human-centered or "anthropocentric." It simply means we live in a universe where there are quantities, relations, and functions that are composed of simple and precise components. Naturalism is not only completely compatible with that, but that is generally part of the very meaning of Naturalism: that there is such a universe, and nothing else. The Heuristic of Beauty and Convenience But isn't it at least the case that scientists have found a successful scientific method in focusing on 'beautiful' and 'convenient' mathematical theories? Not really. Though that has been an effective heuristic for getting at simple and focused problems in comprehensible ways, this is simply the result of human limitations: we have to start small, and solve simple problems first, in the few ways we know how and are best at. But if we were to rely solely on this heuristic, most of the greatest scientific discoveries would never have been made. Far from a "beautiful and convenient" chemistry of four elements, we discovered in the end an incredibly ugly, messy, and inconvenient Periodic Table of over ninety elements and counting (never mind the mind-boggling complexity of the Standard Model of particle physics); far from the "beautiful and convenient" planetary theory of Copernicus, the paths and velocities of the planets are so ugly and inconvenient that we need supercomputers to handle the messy intersection of Newtonian, Keplerian, Einsteinian, Thermodynamic, and Chaotic effects, and even then they are not always entirely accurate in their predictions on astronomical scales of time (like thousands and millions of years). There are other problems in Steiner's approach. How do humans come upon their concept of mathematical beauty? Steiner never addresses this. But what if it is a learned reaction to a successful heuristic? If so, that would mean we learned to define as beautiful that which fit the truths of the universe, and not the other way around, making "beauty" just like "oxygen," something we adapted to, not something arranged for our convenience. Since Steiner does not even discuss the psychological and philosophical literature on aesthetics, much less mathematical aesthetics, he cannot claim that the universe was geared for us any more than that we geared ourselves for it. Likewise, why do we seek convenient notations and solutions to complex problems? Is it because the universe is convenient for us, or is it simply because we work better with simpler tools rather than complex ones? If a 1000-word description of an apple in English can be rewritten in 100 words, without losing a single iota of information content vis-à-vis the apple, then obviously we will see the advantage in this. And the fact that this could be done would have nothing to do with the apple being suspiciously convenient for short descriptions in English. Rather, it would have everything to do with the natural inefficiency of human language and thought—where it takes effort to analyze our descriptions and locate redundant and unnecessary elements, and discover easier, shorter, better ways of saying the same thing. Applying the Heuristic Steiner's book consists mainly of long and highly technical discussions of the fringes of 20th century scientific discovery, mainly the as-yet-unexplained oddities of Quantum Mechanics, but in some cases formal maneuvers made in other fields like Relativity Theory. Regarding all these examples he declares: To explain my data away, one must find a natural, or material, property of mathematics as such, and then show how this property accounts for the success of the mathematical discoveries outline [in this book] (8) I have already done this: "mathematics as such" describes the natural, material properties of quantity, relation, and function. In other words, it describes repeating or repeatable patterns in measurable phenomena, in effect describing structure, behavior, and arrangement, in physical observations. In fact, every example he gives concerns observed patterns in empirical and experimental research and the attempt to describe and thus predict those patterns. When scientists find a different mathematical way of describing a pattern, one that says exactly the same thing but in fewer words, they are not discovering a user-friendly universe, but merely improving their ability to understand what they observe. That aside, Steiner's most compelling cases involve situations where one mathematical approach was introduced into the search for an adequate description of certain repeating patterns in empirical observation, simply because there were certain similarities between the new approach and one previously solved. That is, even though the two mathematical descriptions were not identical, they were judged similar, and they were thus tried, and ultimately turned out successful. Steiner says this means human notions of mathematical 'similarity' must correspond to real features of the universe, so the universe is suspiciously built for human notions. There are at least two problems with using his examples in such a way that Steiner never addresses. First, the heuristic of mathematical similarity does not entail any underlying metaphysics. One can use any method one wants for discovering facts—including picking ideas out of a hat. As long as the result bears out in empirical test, it is acceptable. I do not have to "assume" that there is anything mystically efficacious, anything metaphysically rational, about picking ideas out of a hat. I can still do it, simply because it is easy, and I know I don't have to trust any results until they bear out in tests anyway. The fact is, even such a totally random method will produce successes. And only the successes would get published and thus heard of. Steiner would then come along, see that all the scientific discoveries in print came from picking ideas randomly from a hat, and wrongly conclude that there is some mystical power inherent in hats to produce knowledge of the universe. He might say the universe had to be Hatrocentric to explain this phenomenon. But he would be wrong. He would have forgotten to consider the hundreds of hatpicked ideas that fell by the wayside. Thus, even if it is the case that scientists have been using a heuristic that was contrary to the metaphysical assumptions of Naturalism, it would neither follow that they were acting irrationally (since they need not assume their heuristic has a metaphysical basis—we do what is easy and engages us, what we know how to do well, because we're human) nor that the universe was somehow metaphysically linked with that heuristic (since even a totally random method will score hits, and only successes will likely survive in the historical record). Second, there is still a valid Physicalist reasoning behind the heuristic of mathematical similarity. Since a mathematical description of phenomenon A is a description of a pattern of observed behaviors and effects, when phenomenon B shares a similar pattern of observed behaviors and effects, it is reasonable to expect that its mathematical description will be similar to that of phenomenon A. We do not have to know what the physical basis is for this similarity: we observe a similarity, so we know it's a fact. We are fully within our rights as Naturalists to assume there is a physical basis to such a mathematically-described similarity until we can identify exactly what that basis is. Consider it this way: if some underlying physical fact is the cause of phenomenon A, and some other underlying physical fact is the cause of phenomenon B, and phenomena A and B are behaving similarly or have similar external physical features, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the underlying physical facts in both cases also bear certain similar patterns (similar arrangements, similar geometries, similar sequences, etc.), and thus any description of one pattern will have something in common with a description of the other pattern. It is thus still consistent with Physicalism to try out aspects of the mathematical description of phenomenon A on phenomenon B. It might not work out, but the odds of our hitting on something are certainly going to be greater than chance—and as we see it, this is precisely because Physicalism is true. And any heuristic that hits better than chance is reasonable to pursue, especially when we have none better. Example 1: Maxwell's Anticipation of EM Radiation I will show how this works on one of Steiner's most prized examples: Maxwell's prediction of electromagnetic radiation. This is how Steiner argues the case: Maxwell noted that the experimentally confirmed laws of Faraday, Coulomb, and Ampère, when put in differential form, contradicted the conservation of electrical charge. By tinkering with Ampère's law, adding to it the "displacement current," Maxwell got the laws to be consistent with, indeed to imply, charge conservation. With no other warrant than this (Ampère's law stood up well experimentally; on the other hand, there was "very little experimental evidence" for the reality of a "displacement current"), Maxwell made the indicated changes. Ignoring the empirical basis....This made electromagnetic radiation a mathematical possibility. [As a result] Hertz exclaimed that the mathematical formulas are "wiser than we are." (77) To dismiss Steiner's entire thesis, Naturalists need only answer one question: Why did Maxwell's mathematical tactic work in anticipating physical facts? The answer involves the combination of two facts: the reasonable assumptions that follow from the worldview of Naturalism (especially Physicalism), and the nature of mathematics as a human tool for describing observed patterns in the physical world. The Assumptions of Naturalism: It is reasonable to expect on Naturalism that things don't pop in and out of existence uncaused...that is, that matter, energy, things like that, are conserved. You don't get something from nothing. Thus, it is reasonable on Naturalism to expect that 'charge', like matter and energy, must be conserved. Since the descriptions of various charge-related phenomena extant in Maxwell's day did not allow conservation of charge, obviously any Naturalist should have suspected there was something wrong with those descriptions. That this hunch turned out correct was in fact a vindication of Naturalist assumptions, not a challenge to them. The Function of Math as Description: The basic assumption driving Maxwell's tactic (that charge must be conserved) followed directly from Naturalism. Then he got to work on the descriptions he suspected were flawed. To that end, the 'mathematical' things Maxwell did, from Steiner's own account, were merely two: to put certain laws describing the behaviors of charge "in differential form," and then to add a variable to the equations that corrected the conservation error ("displacement current). The first act is logically necessary on Naturalism: differential equations describe continuities, and Naturalists of the time were well aware that nature works in continuous, not broken, processes (the discovery of Quantum Mechanics changed this, but only after enormous empirical evidence was accumulated), so Maxwell's first mathematical act was totally explicable on Naturalism. He had to make the descriptions conform to the physical facts before he could do anything else with them. The second act is a logically sound hypothetical step: if charge isn't being conserved, then it must be going somewhere. Maxwell rightly picked the simplest imaginable solution first (e.g. that it all went one place, rather than several), which due to human limitations is always the best place to start an investigation, and which statistically is the most likely (simple patterns and behaviors happen far more often then complex ones—since Maxwell's day, again, the discoveries of Chaos Theory have changed that assumption, but again only after vast amounts of empirical evidence confirmed and thus justified the change in our assumptions). That Maxwell's moves anticipated EM radiation was therefore a natural conclusion from entirely Naturalist assumptions. Charge was going somewhere, which we knew because the descriptions of charge behavior that we had, which were empirically well-grounded, left out and thus entailed the disappearance (or spontaneous appearance) of charge, which begged for an explanation. Maxwell hypothesized such an explanation by making some simple and obvious changes to the descriptions that accounted for this discrepancy—changes to the way the pattern of behavior was described that allowed inclusion of another element to that pattern. The changes he made were the simplest ones he could make that didn't invalidate but instead preserved the predictive success of the existing descriptions, while also bringing them into line with conservation laws. And the changes he made were still, in fact, hypothetical. They could have turned out wrong, and many tinkerings with these equations, by him and others, no doubt preceded this success and failed. But on Naturalism, his final guess was a smart one, and one likely to succeed. So we should not be amazed that it did. There was even more background to this account that confirmed the Naturalistic assumptions driving Maxwell that Steiner includes but unreasonably dismisses (77-78). Steiner also argues absurd things like "differential equations have many solutions, and there is no reason to believe...that we can produce something just because it solves an equation" (79). Steiner is wrong. Of the solutions to equations that successfully describe physical phenomena Naturalists can rest assured at least one of them must correspond to the truth, to the actual underlying physical facts, and that other results, which are not solutions, will not. Thus, even on Naturalism it is a reasonable heuristic to test only the few solutions available to accurate descriptions, since any other notions would not accord with observation and thus would have to be false. So when Steiner claims: Maxwell's reasoning was Pythagorean [i.e. not Naturalistic, because] once he had a mathematical structure which described many different phenomena of electricity and magnetism, the mathematical structure itself, rather than anything underlying it, defined the analogy between the different phenomena. (79) He is twice wrong. First, the existence of charge defined the analogy between the different phenomena, not the mathematical descriptions of charge's behavior. Since they all described behaviors involving charge, it was a reasonable Naturalistic assumption that all the behaviors were physically related, and therefore could be described with one description rather than several. And so long as that one description made all the same predictions of the behavior of charge, it would be semantically identical, i.e. describe exactly the same thing, because that is the way humans made mathematics—nothing about the universe makes a three-sentence description of an apple reducible to one sentence. Only the way humans invented language makes that so. The apple remains the same no matter what. Second, the "mathematical structure" of the equations involved corresponded to the physical structure of the observed behavior of charge. Thus, any manipulation of the description entailed physical differences in the thing described. So if the thing described must conserve charge, and the description of that thing does not conserve charge, it is reasonable to refine the description to resolve the discrepancy. No other description is likely to come close to the physical facts, whereas we know at least one such description must do so. By making our revisions to the description as few and as simple as possible, we would import only one hypothetical solution to the discrepancy (in this case, Maxwell's "displacement current"). That is fully in accord with Naturalist assumptions, and is logically always the first place to start looking. Thus, everything Maxwell did mathematically has a corresponding physical significance. And he surely knew that. It had that significance even if Maxwell did not yet know what physical facts underlie the physical difference between the two descriptions (the one that described a world without conservation of charge, and the one that described it with conservation of charge). It was a valid, Naturalistic hypothesis all the same, leading to fruitful inquiry. Example 2: Matrix Mechanics And all this should alert us in the fringe cases Steiner uses, too, such as his repeated discussions of the efficacy of applying matrix mathematics to quantum phenomena. For the same things follow: (1) The mathematical models are adopted because they successfully describe observed physical phenomena, not because the universe is magically 'beautiful' and 'convenient'; (2) the features and elements of those descriptions that are redundant and unnecessary are not likely to correspond to physical facts but are probably the product of the human inefficiency of our tools of description, and since, also, no physical facts support their retention, it is Naturalistically plausible to revise the descriptions (i.e. the equations) so as to eliminate what has no empirical support or plausible physical basis, and thus to make our descriptions convenient for us; and finally, (3) when the phenomena show patterns of observed behavior that match other patterns of behavior (real or imagined, such as when quantum phenomena show patterns of behavior matching patterns described by matrices) it is Naturalistically reasonable to employ the same description, suitably modified to fit the generic description to the particular cases, because (a) they both make the same predictions, but the old description was flawed by human inefficiency while the new description is more convenient for us, yet either way the universe remains the same; and (b) the same observed pattern in each case is likely due to the same pattern of underlying structure. That is, it is improbable that a totally different internal structure would produce an identical external structure—not impossible, but it is a reasonable heuristic to test first what is physically probable. Just as Maxwell did. This is especially justified when the descriptions we have we know must be wrong, because they exclude something we otherwise know is going on (like the conservation of charge). And, last but not least, we might even be wrong. Matrix mathematics might be a convenient way for us to predict quantum phenomena and yet be incorrect descriptions after all, just like the erroneous equations Maxwell faced that didn't conserve charge as they ought. We may be awaiting a new Maxwell to find a better description that is more complete and more successful in inspiring inquiry into the physical facts that underlie the observations, which so far we have not found—possibly because we have distracted ourselves with mathematically convenient but not entirely correct representations, but more likely because we lack the tools to observe the facts we need, like a miraculous 'microscope' that could see quantum particles in all their physical structure. It is likely we will never have such means and so will never be in a position to really know what is going on at that level, but human limitations are not limitations on nature. Just because we can never go into a cave does not mean that cave is empty. Another Worry Most of Steiner's examples fall to one or more of the above observations and are thus to be rejected. Some examples used by Steiner are also suspicious. For example, he claims (by citing Peirce as his authority) that there is no physical explanation for the applicability of inverse square laws to physical phenomena, but he rests this on the undefended and unexplained rejection of obvious geometrical explanations (36). Since geometry is certainly the reason for inverse square phenomena, it seems most disturbing that he doesn't even try to refute this, but assumes the reader will ignorantly accept his assertions to the contrary. This put me on guard: how many other of his examples are scientifically incorrect? Why is he citing a single scientist from forty years ago as his sole authority? One wonders what, say, Hawking would say about the matter today—or, indeed, what your average college textbook says. As a result of this tendency, I was left uncomfortable trusting many of his claims. For example, he often asserts that certain scientists (like Einstein) used no physical reasoning in their choice to apply a particular mathematical solution to a problem, and he bases this on the fact that the relevant published papers state no such reasoning. But they don't have to—indeed, the principle of parsimony generally requires that one not include unproven assumptions in a scientific paper. What a brief and empirically rigorous paper says does not tell us what was in the mind of the actual scientist during his process of hypothesis abduction—and I find it highly suspicious that a man like Einstein would disregard physical reasoning in advancing an idea, a man who was so committed to physical reasoning that he refused for the longest time to accept many of the claims of Quantum Theory of his day because they lacked such reasoning. The only way to check Steiner's claims, then, is to redo all his research—to discover what Einstein actually was thinking at the time, from all his notes and papers and memoires—and any writer who puts you in such a suspicious state of mind is hard to trust generally. Covert God of the Gaps Argumentation In the end, when we wipe away every argument in Steiner's book that is based on the false assumptions outlined earlier, his book stands with only one formally valid but still incorrect argument left: scientists have not been able as yet to provide a physical explanation of certain observations in areas like Quantum Mechanics and Particle Physics, therefore there is probably no such explanation, ergo Naturalism (or at least Physicalism) is false. He pushes for the falsity of Naturalism generally by arguing that the only explanation left is anthropocentric: the universe simply behaves according to complex mathematical rules that have no physical basis and therefore it must have a super-mental basis anticipating the human species. He does not even seem aware of Platonic Naturalists like Paul Davies who see no incompatibility between non-physical entities and Naturalism. Davies would add a middle solution, I imagine: that though the complex mathematical behaviors of the universe may not be based in anything physical, they are not based in anything uniquely intelligent or mental either, but are simply brute facts of the nature of the universe, which we humans have evolved an adept skill at spying out and describing. As a Physicalist, I disagree with this idea, but if one wants to take on Naturalism, one has to be able to refute all forms of Naturalism, not just Physicalism. But Physicalism is not actually in danger from Steiner's only valid argument. Why? Because it is met with another valid argument that carries greater weight: scientists have consistently found physical explanations for every phenomenon they have been able to thoroughly examine, constantly and without exception, for millions of physical facts and attributes of our universe, and have not found such explanations only where they have not been able to thoroughly examine the facts (and as it happens, though still hypothetical, Superstring theory now offers a complete physical basis for the success of matrix mechanics, something Steiner seems to think is impossible). Therefore, that scientists have yet to explain such facts has much more probably to do with their inability to "get to" those facts than with those facts somehow being fundamentally different than all the millions and billions of other facts scientists have gotten to in the past three thousand years. In other words, the trend of history is entirely against Steiner, and offers no support whatever for his conclusion. There is not a single instance on record of any fact that has been thoroughly examined by scientists that turned out to have no identifiable physical origin. That is why almost all of Steiner's examples are on the fringes of science, not the settled facts of science: he can only find his "failures" where scientists have been unable to make the needed observations to resolve the matter. And as a matter of fact, scientists all remain committed to finding physical causes of the very observations Steiner uses as his examples. No physicist has thrown up his hands and said "Hey! We're wasting our time! There is no physical basis to these effects, it's just a mathematical fact of the universe!" Indeed, all physicists would find such an approach, entailed by Steiner's argument, to be quite absurd, even antiscientific. You can say "I can't get into that cave, so there must be nothing in it" if you want to, but you would be betraying the very principles of science if you did. And going against all the evidence and precedent of history as well: scientists have always found things in the caves they've gotten into. Why lose confidence in their tactics now? Conclusion The bottom line: any universe composed of conserved and discrete objects arranged into patterns in a multidimensional space will always be describable by mathematics. We invented mathematics just for that purpose: to describe such things. But are patterns of conserved and discrete objects in a multidimensional space at all anthropocentric? Do they anticipate or assume in any way the eventual arrival of Homo sapiens? No. And that is the ruinous end of Steiner's thesis. The mathematization of nature does not require or even imply anything anthropocentric about the universe and thus offers no challenge at all to Naturalism." http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/steiner.html Not to mention just that article, here is another one about inference in particular, I think anyone interested in this subject should read this link actually. http://www.designinference.com/desinf.htm Not to mention that physics in this case attempting to use the human organism lack the understanding of that organism to apply such. The reason symmetry and beauty appear to us may have more to do with evolution then anything else. Its a marker of fitness or health really for reproduction, many studies have been done to find this out. Not to mention the function of the brain organ for instance, pinkerton probably has more to say on this with truth to it then anything the physics people are talking about. That’s the trouble, its like a bunch of people all looking a single parts of a puzzle with different directions really. I dont know if we would have evolved to use CO2 though, or if evolution would have at all had the same outcome in the absence of oxygen, thats purely speculative really.

I think I get where the people are going with this which makes sense to me as much as my ability or anything’s ability to reach entanglement if I have my definitions correct, I mean how could we even make a decision really and that the universe or nature/reality has to have some form of a truth to it right? I mean I doubt for the geology of the earth to be what it is if all the iron for instance was removed from it near its beginning. Not to mention what does a donkey or anything for that matter have to do with what this is talking about. My fear is simply just that, we skip experiment and rely purely on math. I know that people in general do not posses an absolute understanding of everything yet and such is a time slowed to little more then a vibration really of an event but I think it would be nothing but a travesty to rely purely on math simply because math can make so much possible, you could probably create an entire physical universe completely different from this one in which planets come together in the shape of a square for instance and make it work, but what about the reality of the one we live in. I can see entropy in my boiling post of noodles in that the path of the energy for instance somewhat is in pattern based on other variables or forces or matter and I still go back to the idea of it all is we don’t know and in many regards I think that drives people crazy and they look for shortcuts. If reality is far more "bizarre" then we can understand it, which I would agree with, such is form, but realism to me is making sure we stick with understanding it, and not solving intensely complicated math problems instead. For instance, what does this have to say about the ability of a human to even recognize a pattern? I mean it exists naturally right? What’s the explanation, and when you get a hypothesis how to you move it to theory, and after that how to you predict, to simply use math alone in my opinion would in the end just lead us to fallacy if we remove the need to experiment or apply.

Does this mean less on experiment and maybe more on just math and theory? or Theory based on math? Or physics based on just math?

Purely hypothetical. If you had a body, a planet sized one with a planetary orbit like in our solar system for instance, and you had two of them, with identical orbits, such as one is just polar of the other in the orbit(if that’s possible?) and they both had the same mass and velocity for instance in the orbit, when to composition of such have any impact on the gravity they might posses, such as if one was made of carbon or one was made of oxygen for example. Now baring density from this, just balls of matter of those two types, with exact mass and velocity, would they hold a different degree of gravity, such as more or less gravity?

This is directed to people in general that posted in this thread as there happen to be many. Personally, I hate how segregated they make the fields really. For instance, I could be reading on a subject in biology, this will take me to reading up on it in chemistry, and also physics, and then somehow I am reading on some subject in geology because of it. Personally it just annoys the heck out of me. I personally view myself as someone that wants to be a theorist and an experimenter or someone that takes theory and attempts it in an applied fashion. I would like to study cell populations of prokaryotes as much as I would like to study nebula formation to really wanting to study sub atomic particles. I really cant decide on a major, and I know for the sake of being human that segregation of majors exist for a real purpose, in that so much knowledge exists in a certain field, entomology for example, that is takes a real solid focus on just it to grasp such really. I just cant fully decide on one. I mean looking at life at a chemical/molecular basis is drastically exciting, such as in the realm of environmental chemistry, the understanding of rna for example, or simply making a periodic table of elements to describe the evolution of life, such as an appearance of a certain protein for example, I mean such would be a grand prize to me to be able to do research on in the real world, then again I could say that about understanding fully why the sea floor spreading process functions fully. When it comes to studying something, I really cannot make up my mind. I know overall that currently in the world environmental awareness and conservation to me seems paramount anymore, and to go outside of my own selfish desires to study and learn about everything, that’s where I should try to help evolve knowledge really. The university I plan to end up at and am about a year away from has a masters in environmental studies and such, so in the meantime I think for being able to basically be able to study nature/reality in general I will probably choose physics or applied physics really. I think in a general sense it does not preclude me as much as other fields would, and its more extreme in the use of observations or being exacting in relation to the use of the scientific method, which I think would only aid in attempting to describe the natural world in total, such as a forest for example, from a QM perspective even to large scale collections of matter and energy interactions. Its still open though, as in a year I will start doing calc/physics stuff, if I cant hack it I am sure I will end up in biology/ecology, but then again I do find so much of it interesting and I find math relaxing, so I hope it will help. Thanks to people that posted in this thread, I am still confused but I am farther along then when I started it. If anyone wants to give some advice, such as people already working in such, that would be great also.

Right, but if gravity is so strong, in the idea of a singularity and light not being able to obtain an escpae velocity to accelerate or simply move away from a black hole, I don’t understand how you could have movement. As for the event horizon, then such is a membrane of sorts I guess to a black hole, or an intial field that increase with strength away from the singularity? I mean everything a black hole conumes, can anything ever leave it, what about a black hole in some binary system with another star, or how could that be from a nova even, I mean would not the nebula be distorted in facts of producing bodies such as a star? Or was the star actually drawn into the black holes gravity? Plus, when a black hole forms, typically the idea is from a massive body right, like a red giant going super nova I think. Though the collection of stars or types I am sure is much more broad. I mean at what point does the black hole form, and how could the super nova take place really. If such to me then, a black hole might exist within the red giant for a period of time possibly, as some implosion rather then explosion, or the core of the star maybe. I mean photons in the star as it was going nova would be pulled towards the black hole right? If the black hole came about during a certain point in the process of collapse or during a super nova of a massive star. Though I know that matter cannot occupy the same space at the same time right? So how does the composition of a black hole work, I cant see matter existing in a black hole, or for that matter much anything really. To me a see some sort of gradient really of spacetime, or that I doubt you could get matter such as a carbon atom to reach c. Could a black hole produce c on its own in terms of gravitation pull towards the singularity? What point in space around a black hole does an event horizon exist even? The only way I can think of judging such would be some pole of matter, very very long actually that would arrange based on forces, or arrange molecularly based on forces at play, some million mile stick to check oil for instance. As more on my thread, I just think if the original singularity existed right, that gave way to the big bang if such was a singularity at first, and you could have movement that differentation might have been occurring in that for instance, and where would all the energy from even friction go, it could not escape. Would it collapse into something, or would the energy eventually cause some sort of meltdown if a certain tolerance was broken or achieved.

Is there any actual way to observe any of this? Or to observe the edges of the universe, whatever they may be? I cant fathom the universe having some perfect geometry, such as being a perfect circle, I mean I think of it more or less looking sort of like a nebula really. I think that such a place could provide new insight about nature/reality. When I think of it, I get caught up in the whole idea of space curvature, or basically some medium in which what we know of physical phenomena acts in, sort of self supported I guess, though I don’t know why I would say that:D So my thoughts are that the light simply curves back inwards eventually, maybe at some point there is a photon based areas like sea floor spreading or something. Don’t take me to serious, as I don’t really have no clue and such is why I placed this thread in speculations. Though I could see how the universe could be reduced to terms you find on Atari games, I just don’t understand how that could be really. As for expanding the universe as they went along, well, I think with time then and the speed of light for instance the universe would have to be of a certain size based on the probability of the first appearance of light then and such would then be spherical? The shape of the universe that is.

Ok, if not even light can escape a black hole, then can any movement exist in a black hole? I mean if light cant escape a black hole and itself is crushed into an infinitely small point, would it be possible that such could become matter? For that matter, would it even be possible for a black hole to exist as matter? I don’t see how any bond strength could survive such, or for that matter how the strong force could persist. WTF are black holes!

What happens to photons that never interact with matter, where do they go. I mean at the very edge of our universe, what happens to the photons emitted in the direction of nothing? Does spacetime curve so extreme as to not allow this? Do photons only emit in directions that spacetime allows? I mean if energy is being emitted to never interact with anything, does that mean the universe is losing information?

That guy is kind of scary. What if you drew a hexagon around the earth, what wild situations would that generate:D

So a tensor is a snapshot then, or can only view physical phenomena in the form of a snapshot in regards to time? How small of an increment of time is that? So for instance you took a series of these based on something in motion, say light hitting a rotating object, say a sphere of h20, would it be possible to describe such in tensor notation then? Basically I have somewhat of an idea. Basically when instruments are used to identify a piece of material, say carbon in some molecule, its able to do such in the form of a constant overall right? So if you could hook some apparatus up overall to discern this in the form of a tensor equation on some read out, would it be possible to study such then over a period of time. Such as the tensor equation is based in real time application and refreshes every hundredth of a second for example, and be able to form an equation that would register any sort of change.

Well, what is terrorism exactly in regards to specific people or places and why? I mean after 9/11 America or Americans were in a state of shock as a result of trauma, which of course would easily lead to anything being possibly terrorist via fear. Its not that such a feeling is wrong in my opinion, but to combat such has never really had any objective roots to it. The only place or people on earth currently that the U.S can claim is terrorist, in direct consequence to the health of the nation is AQ and the Taliban. The U.S really does not have this when it comes to Iraq, sure such has come about from occupation, but the forces the U.S combats in Iraq happen to be amorphous in all reality. IS Iraq really acceptable in relation to the "war on terror", my opinion from the start was no, it was not, and still is. Personally, the concept is vague, abstract, and mostly derives itself from the same. I fear terrorists, I fear terrorism, but to simply say terrorism is whatever hardly suites me in regards to agreeing with armed conflict. I can say the terrorists are doing x so we should be doing y because of z, but its all rather shallow and packaged in wording basically suited for such. The problem is again who are the terrorists, and why, which feeds into the y on our part, which is proportional to z really. I think Iraq is a perfect example of where the WOT went wrong, and how the vague and abstract terminology along with the fear 9-11 planted in the public was able to sell the need for that war. In all reality, going from just terrorism alone, Iran had more going for it to be invaded by the U.S for reasons of combating terrorism then Iraq ever had. Not to mention simply now that the entire middle east is in a grand state of turmoil over the whole issue, and what can we do about it? Not a whole lot because we are tied up in Iraq, combating what? That’s right, terrorists and wmds that were going to blow up America if we did not act. It basically equates into the war on terrorism being anything really, as long as you word it right.

Yes, I don’t have a high level of understanding in regards to tensor stuff so please bear with me. In regards to tensors can time be applied in varying degrees successfully, such as in the billionth of a second to maybe an hour? What I mean is basically can you use time in a sort of fashion to dissect actions/reactions for example in tensor terms? When I think about it such seems very rigid, or how could it adequately describe the motion in the ocean for at least one minute of time, or how each wave on a shore might look exactly for the period of ten minutes or some other increment of time. Such as basically taking matter and energy, along with the various physical functions used to describe them currently into tensor along with time to explain in more real time sense a particular action again for example. Also I was thinking that if you start to take time into such small increments that it might sort of disintegrate or time no longer being applicable to physical reality, such as cutting a second down in time I imagine can be done sort of infinitely, but of course you cant reach infinity so that time would still be occurring, just at a pass maybe, or is there some inverse of C or something really in regards to time and action. I think this still applies to the topic just not sure really. My math skills are not to a level to be able to digest simply seeing an equation about such either, so you will have to use words, and thank you in advance for whomever posts or even reads this:D

I was reading up on pie and it sounded good to eat, no that was a bad joke. Ok, I was reading on pi and I was wondering if the reason people cant get an exact number, or something other then irrational is due to the shape of the circle. Such as a circle, or its circumference lacks a point, or is sort of always in a curve regardless of position in regards to circumference.

political parties typically use issues to gain voters, such as the past democrat and republican parties are not the same as they are today and so on. Personally I pencil in independent for the most part, but even in that you get into the brutal reality of partisan politics, or what I like to refer to as the planet of the apes in general. Anymore I will vote for someone that says no to war in Iraq and is pro green technology/standards really. Is not so much for supporting either the consumer or the industry in a bias, or more on equilibrium there. Taxes are a touchy issue to most people for a varying degree of reasons, but I don’t support abolishing such, even while I pay them. For the most part I end up supporting democrats in most voting for president type situations being no other party can break the two evils system. Its mostly corrupted by the politics and partisan nature of it all, most politicians that try to bridge this gap end up dying typically, such as Christopher Shays® is a good republican but works with democrats to much, just like democrats that work with republicans, they get sort of disowned, and really should make a third party system more real, but even that is heavy with failure due to how voting has patterned out really. Plus the American voter is to enthralled in the partisan nature of it all anymore to realize the level of hypocrisy and corruption that exists anymore in the system and wont vote to change this. In reality I think government in general went wrong when people stopped caring that we live in a democracy, the voting base is typically small overall compared to the populous, and typically most people that vote don’t vote to the full extent of knowledge possible anymore for a particular person, I mean just look at bush jr.'s last election run, all he did was talk about terrorism and dying in every city and then said vote for me or this nightmare I just manufactured will come true, that and I will cut taxes, and boom he won on that, he was probably more successful at using the terror supplied by the terrorists then they were actually, that’s not really objective politics really, but then again that word is like acid to a politician really, they just want to hear about there team winning, and that’s what generates politics anymore. I mean the republican party capitalized by selling the ability for the church to have a higher role in government, and now look, we have the democrats doing it, to win votes really, not do anything objective, simply gain power. I mean just look at who is running for the dems, that guy from Chicago that might as well be a priest, and what’s his stance on Iraq, it’s a smokescreen that really says nothing save the war is really now just a battle for one city, but yes its going all peachy over there, the wars now just for one city really. Then Hillary, she has the name, some fame from her position, but what else is she saying really? They watch each other really in some partisan sniper mode just waiting to capitalize, and it’s the same with bush, I mean support the troops, he uses that the same way Hitler would really. I just come to face it that our political structure in America is nothing more then a partisan pornography movie anymore, and that’s all its going to be I think on a more permanent basis, which on itself is not ever going to work simply because change would have never occurred in the first place if everyone was happy with some platform but don’t let the politicians figure that one out, I mean after all its just a democracy right? What’s really needed is a strong push by a third party to break this up, to ground the politics back on earth rather then up in the clouds. I mean in the past eight years America has just gone to shambles domestically and internationally, and what do we have to show for it, a low approval rating with no body really doing anything save saying I will do better, but nothing much past that save the same rants on the old issues with not much in regards to something better. On the republican side you have some gold plated Jesus the ceo aka the warlord and destroyer of the environment to vote for. As for dems, well they really are just a pathetic lump of pond scum anymore that will say anything to win a vote really, and then turn around to not do much anything because the platform does not have to deal with banning assault rifles(like that would help) or finding some new reason to tax you even more, heck both parties practically hand America to Mexico anymore because they don’t want to look un pc. it’s a horrid reality but who is going to change it if not the voters?

The paint is needed to protect the aircraft from the elements. I am sure that some kind of material could be developed that would suffice for the need to have the protective coat though, but then again the properties of that material then would probably be desired for a lot of reasons besides reducing weight of an aircraft. If you look on a typical automobile on where the paint has been chipped off the surface below typically rusts. Electronegativty or oxidation, I forget which term is to be used to describe such more accurately.

Hypothetical situation. All activity is automated, what does the population do now? What money do they have to buy automated products? The system is sort of dependent on itself, a ceo might be a person who possibly worked his or her way into position, but take away all his or her employees and what’s left? I agree with many that both sides have the ability to get abused, and moreover that government intrusion is hardly perfect, but the reasons unions exist in the first place is because of abuse really. This is why we have to have a minimum wage also. I mean its not needed per say as engines on an aircraft might be in a particular instance, but its needed simply so a human being stands the chance to survive. Historically poverty leads to crime, and in other places it leads to kingdoms being sacked, riots, war, and all kinds of things most people probably would not choose to put themselves in. You have industry and consumer, but the money is sort of circulatory, industry will die if not one has any money to pay for goods or services, and supply and demand would fail. This is why places with high poverty typically reflect such. Now some may say oh well, but really they only say that from a certain position in life, which is not really reflective of humanity as a whole unit. Regardless of what someone would like to say, we don’t live in some free for all system, I cannot go out and simply take something from someone without repercussions. If we want to standardize life for all, then really it should work for all right? Else unless someone can prove to me that you can have liberty without equality, not to mention simply having a human habitat that is anywhere near healthy. Simply blaming competition as implied by capitalism as a means to simply abandon all of this in the name of survival is the same situation the people are faced by in the sense of automation, now yes progress is good, but is simply just the automation aspect alone the only thing to qualify as progress? It’s a complex issue, but I think in context of history that as much as individual freedom is desired, allowing the society as a whole to go to crud never really implies any real or lasting progress.

I have an intense interest in the natural sciences, which I guess is a good thing being I want to end up in graduate school for environmental studies. My problem comes from selecting a major based on other interests I hold. Personally I think that I agree with the views being presented, that molecular biology is closer to being able to link such up with biology while biochem looks really just to study chemistry still, which is fine. So basically it would be safe to say that molecular biology is an extension pretty much of biology on studying the reality of life while biochemistry is still more just about the various reactions present in life, or a huge extension of carbon or organic chemistry? Its starting to get close to crunch time for me in regards to declaring a major, so I am basically looking for help by people that have already been there. Thanks to all that posted also.

I have no idea what math is typically the norm in chemistry. In regards to matrices, I dont know really, possibly for a complex or something maybe.

I think if such people had the technology to leave mars for earth moving stone would be hardly the only thing you could try to gauge for the existence of such. That being said evolution is a not a nice little math algorithm that makes perfect sense in every aspect. Such as how long did it take for the first single celled organism to appear to how long it took for multi celled organisms, to the emergence mammals. You actually kind of have to get down and dirty with it is all, like most anything its a high degree of rigor to it really. I think the highest temperatures for something to live in naturally on the planet as occurred completely away from anything human wise is sea vent communities, where some things live in temperatures deadly to anything else known to be living, then again life in those places does not use the sun and so much else is different ecologically speaking. As for the sun being that much hotter then, I really cant say with any confidence from what I know that such could be true.

If you simply leave out say something like a piece of bread you will eventually get mold on it. As for growing it in a certain medium that you can use later for studies, such is commonplace in many different aspects, or you could find such information readily all over the net. I actually managed to have some mold grow on the battery of a small led that was in the pocket of my pants after a cycle of washing and drying, basically anything can have some degree of mold grow on it really, typically organic things will support this easily.

What kind of math overall do you use as a chemist? What would you say would be more important to learn in regards to math as a chemist, for instance, linear algebra or calculus? Thanks in advance.

Is there any difference in regards to molecular biology and biochemistry? Could a person basically view them as the same field really overall.

would you say the same about evolution, or gravity for instance? I mean we don’t exactly know what causes either of them fully, or at some 100% level, so what does it mean really? On that though, both have a rather large basis of support in terms of science, which leads me to believe they are real, or true, simply because I don’t know what else you would say really.