Posted by
Roger Critchlow-2 on
Sep 15, 2009; 2:48am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Emergence-Seminar-British-Emergence-tp3645669p3646868.html
As I read it, the issue isn't whether structures and/or configurations
are/aren't important, the question is whether they operate according
to emergent or resultant rule sets.
The Emergentists were betting heavily on the emergent rule set. They
believed that the variety of chemistry couldn't possibly be the result
of protons and electrons operating according to physics as they knew
it. They were right, it wasn't physics as they knew it, but the
answer turned out to be the result of configurational physics rather
than emergent principles of chemistry. They also bet that the variety
of biology couldn't be the result of chemical molecules operating
according to the chemistry they knew. And they were right again, it
wasn't chemistry as they knew it, but the answer turned out to be the
result of configurational chemistry rather than emergent priniciples
of biology.
Chemistry and biology turn out to be ever more complicated
configurations of protons and electrons, with some neutron ballast,
operating according to the principles of quantum mechanics and
statistical mechanics. It's all physics, same particles, same forces,
same laws, no emergent forces. There are configuration forces, but
they're not emergent forces, they're subtle results of electrons
packing themselves into quantized energy levels in increasingly
complicated configurations of nuclei.
The structure of DNA and the elaboration of molecular biology was the
last straw because it provided a purely physical mechanism for
inheritance.
But you're right to see it as a bit of a conundrum. The Emergentists,
as McLaughlin summarizes them, were substantially correct:
configurations of atoms in molecules are the key to understanding
chemistry, there are all sorts of chemically distinctive things that
happen because of those configurations, none of those chemically
distinctive things are obvious when you play around with protons and
electrons in the physics lab. But it all turned out to be part of the
resultant of quantum mechanics, not emergent in the sense the
Emergentists had painted themselves into, so they were wrong in the
one sense they really cared about.
-- rec --
On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 5:22 PM, Nicholas Thompson
<
[hidden email]> wrote:
> All,
>
> I would like to appeal for some help from The List with the chapter we are
> reading this week in the Emergence Seminar. One of the central assertions
> of the author is that quantum mechanics put the British Emergentists out of
> business by making "configurational" forces seem unlikely. He goes on to
> say that "the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA ... make[s] the
> main doctrines of Britsh emergentism, so far as ...the biological [is]
> concerned, seem enormously implausible." (McLaughlin, 2009, p. 23).
>
> Now here is my problem: everything that I understand about contemporary
> Evo/devo seems to make the structure of biological molecules (DNA, RNA, and
> proteins) central to our understanding of biological development. Thus, to
> me, these discoveries make emergentism (if not the British kind) seem
> dramatically MORE plausible. If all the consequences of the folding and
> unfolding of proteins, etc., do not constitute effects of "configurational
> forces" then what the dickens are they?
>
> Can anybody help me with this paradox????
>
> I have forwarded this comment to the Author and, if he doesn't object, will
> forward any remarks he may have back to you.
>
> Nick
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
> Clark University (
[hidden email])
>
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
>
>
>
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