Dr. Ellen Clark, a.k.a. Philosomama, has written a good review of Velasco & Hitchcock’s Evolutionary and Newtonian Forces [no paywall], one of the first papers to appear in the new open access journal Ergo. She points out that although V&H are trying to show how evolutionary forces are well described by analogy to classical causal Newtonian forces, they very nearly prove their opponent’s — the statisticalist — position. However, she comes to their defense. Briefly, […]
Tag: science
An Introduction to the Game Theoretic Semantics view of Scientific Theory
What is a scientific theory? In an abstract sense, a scientific theory is a group of statements about the world. For instance the Special Theory of Relativity has, “The speed of light in a vacuum is invariant,” as a core statement, among others, about the world. This statement is scientific because, in part, it is meant to hold in a ‘law-like’ fashion: it holds across time, space and observer. The Popperian view is that we […]
On Matthen’s Intelligibility Argument
Mohan Matthen’s post Teleology in Big Systems brought up two options explaining how someone — Tom Nagel in Mind and Cosmos — would choose a teleological explanation over a naturalistic one. The first, below, got me thinking: First, he might be saying that though it is physically possible (by a fluke series of mutations, for example) for mentality to have come about, it would be better explained by teleology. (Let’s call this the “intelligibility” argument.) […]
Book Review: The Genial Gene
The Genial Gene: Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness by Joan Roughgarden In The Genial Gene Joan Roughgarden seeks to replace the competitive understanding of evolution, known as sexual selection, with a cooperative one. The first sentence of her book reads, “This book is about whether selfishness and individuality, rather than kindness and cooperation, are basic to biological nature” (p. 1). So what is the argument? Taking this first line, she wants to conclude something about basic biological […]
Working Hard on Special Biological Relativity
I’ve been working hard on Special Biological Relativity and it is taking up most of my blogging energy. However, I do have some fun results: Define Biological Energy as the ability to do work, the ability to change the environment. Then Fitness can be related to Energy because the higher the fitness the greater the ability to change the environment. E ∝ f If we consider an organism that lives in a place with infinite resources […]
Deriving Natural Selection = Fitness × Acceleration
As you can see from my previous post, I now have postulated a direct relation between Natural Selection and Fitness (N.S.=F.×A.). This relation follows from the theory. The short short short version of the theory is this general postulate: one organism’s traits are another’s environment and vice versa. Hence all competition can be viewed as environmental phenomena. This gives Natural Selection as a result of Fitness and an environmental factor, which I refer to as […]
Natural Selection = Fitness × Acceleration
Natural Selection is the force that changes species. Fitness is the resistance to change in the rate of change of the species. Acceleration is change in the rate of change of the species. Natural Selection = Fitness × Acceleration
Rewrite of Evolution
New theory of evolution! Hooray! Patched a bunch of things together to make a nice story. Fixed the little issue about fitness being circular. Expanded natural selection to apply more generally. Causal structure. Epistemological foundations. ooOoOO0Ooooooo. And it’s good fun. I swear. Epistemology, history of physics, evolution… makes me happy. You should really read it. Download here. [pdf, 304kb]
Revision and Hypothesis Introduction
Say we have some theory that we represent with a formula of logic. In part it looks like this: [1] …(∃z) … Pz … This says that at some point in the theory there is some object z that has property P. After much hard work, we discover that the object z with property P can be described as the combination of two more fundamental objects w and v with properties R and S: [2] […]
Hypotheses Natura Non Fingo
Newton famously wrote [1] [2]: I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses… It is enough that gravity does really exist and acts according to the laws I have explained, and that it abundantly serves to account for all the motions of celestial bodies. as a response to those who challenged him to provide causes of gravity. He said, […]