1.\u00a0 Biology is epistemically independent of physics:<\/p>\n
Let’s assume that biology is not epistemically independent of physics, i.e. to know any biology we must first know something about physics.\u00a0 However, consider evolution as determined by natural selection and the struggle for survival.\u00a0 We can know about the struggle for survival and natural selection without appealing to physics — just as Darwin did when he created the theory — and hence we can fundamentally understand at least some, if not most, of biology independent of physics.<\/p>\n
2.\u00a0 Physics supervenes on biology:<\/p>\n
Whatever ability we have to comprehend is an evolved skill.\u00a0 Therefore any physical understanding of the world, as an instance of general comprehension,\u00a0 supervenes on the biology of this skill.<\/p>\n
3.\u00a0 Biology is just as fundamental as physics:<\/p>\n
If the principles involved in biology and physics are epistemically independent and each can be said to supervene on\u00a0 the other, then neither has theoretical primordiality.<\/p>\n
Therefore physics is not ontologically basic.<\/p>\n
.<\/p>\n
.<\/p>\n
[This argument was inspired by a discussion over at It’s Only a Theory<\/a> start by Mohan Matthen<\/a>.<\/p>\n And I want it to be known that I HATE SUPERVENIENCE.\u00a0 Basically if you use supervenience regularly then you are a BAD PERSON<\/strong>.\u00a0 The only good argument that uses supervenience is one that reduces the overall usage of the word:\u00a0 it is my hope that the above argument will prevent people from saying that biology supervenes on physics.\u00a0 For every argument in which I thought that using supervenience might prove useful, I found a much, much superior argument that did not make use of the term.\u00a0 I know you always live to regret statements like this, but right now I don’t care.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1.\u00a0 Biology is epistemically independent of physics: Let’s assume that biology is not epistemically independent of physics, i.e. to know any biology we must first know something about physics.\u00a0 However, consider evolution as determined by natural selection and the struggle for survival.\u00a0 We can know about the struggle for survival and natural selection without appealing to physics — just as Darwin did when he created the theory — and hence we can fundamentally understand at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,42,7,25,26,27,34],"tags":[241,289,268,270],"class_list":["post-1679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-argumentation","category-biology","category-epistemology","category-evolution","category-ontology","category-philosophy","category-physics","category-science","tag-biology","tag-epistemology","tag-philosophy","tag-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}