In insisting that China and India must subscribe to CO2  emissions
targets, the ‘G8’, the richest and most powerful alliance of countries
in the world, acknowledges that while their power over other people
and over material things is great, it is in the category of ‘making
things happen’; i.e. causing outcomes, or bringing about desired
results, which is a limited special case of dynamics within the
dynamical space of nature.

The architecture of ‘making things happen’ does not comprehend
(address, take into account) the dynamical continuum of nature in
which we are included as we ‘make things happen’ and whose sustained
possibility-giving we depend upon for the continuing renewal of
resources and other ‘possibility’ that enables us to do what we do..
Burning fuels whose unintended side-effect is the emission of nitric
and sulphuric toxins and CO2  plays a role in much of our ‘making
things happen’; e.g. without the burning of fossil fuels, the
productive operations of our factories, distribution systems and the
submission-imposing operations of our military would be brought to a
near standstill.

Clearly, our success at ‘making things happen’ is accompanied by
unintended side-effects that condition and transform the resources and
possibilities that characterize the natural living space we are
included in, within which we undertake to make things happen in the
way we want them to.  The wonderful leafy-green and flowery comlex of
ecosystems that undergo cyclic renewal and feed us in the process
(renew our body substance) will not withstand, for example, too much
nuclear war.  If the possibility giving qualities of our living space
are damaged to the extent that human life is no longer supportable and
if this lasts for a couple of hundred years (beyond the lifespan of a
human living openly in nature) then the continuation of the human
population will depend upon fancy footwork that we typically read
about in science fiction rather than in science.   The point here is
not so 'strong' as to argue that man is able to condition the dynamics
of the living space he is included in to the point that he can no
longer do the things he needs to to ensure his continuance, the point
is the far more modest point that man’s dynamics condition the
possibility-giving dynamics of the space he is included in, at the
same time as the possibility-giving dynamics of space are
(inductively) conditioning his dynamics. (Mach's principle of the
relationship between matter and space).

The plain fact of the matter is, that ‘what man does’ in terms of
‘making things happen’ is far from the ‘full story’, but it has been
the ‘full story’ as far as ‘science’ has been concerned.   That is,
‘science’ has been the science of ‘making things happen’ which ‘takes
for granted’ the possibility-giving quality of the natural living
space we are included in.   Meanwhile, ‘what we do’ in our own self-
centre-driven purpose oriented way inherently involves unintended side-
effects since we draw on the resources of our living space to do what
we do, and we discharge effluents into our living space that are
byproducts of ‘what we do’.

Standard science, the science of ‘what things do’ (local object
dynamics) implicitly makes the approximation that the suprasystem that
we are included in, that we draw from and discharge into, is so big
and so resilient and so 'just the way it is', that it is not necessary
for us to address ‘its’ dynamics at the same time as (as inseparable
from) our dynamics.

But we, the general public and even we who are scientists of a modern
day science, are students of 'science' rather than students of the
philosophy of science (the first stage of the two stage rocket of
science, the 'philosophical stage', we have jettisoned).

Kant, for example, philosophized that ‘natural
science’ (Naturwissenschaft) had two aspects to it, one concerning the
conditions for the possibility of experience which would then provide
the base from which the general laws of nature are to be deduced.
Kant argued that irreducible atoms could not be at the bottom of the
dynamical organisation of nature, such dynamics 'bottoming out'
instead in the interaction of  attractive – repulsive forces in
immaterial space.   Kant’s idea is compatible with modern quantum
theory where basic matter is no longer seen as irreducible particles
but as inner-outer resonance with an immaterial ‘spatial-energy’ base
wherein ‘quantum entanglement’ prevails (i.e. space is ultimately
characterized by thinglessness and immaterial relational
connectedness).

Science, as we know it today is the science of local objects and how
they act and interact; i.e. it is science that bypasses inquiry into
“the conditions for the possibility of experience/experiment”,
substituting ‘initial conditions’ in terms of the locations and
motions of objects as if in an absolute rigid and empty euclidian
space frame.   This is the starting point from whence Newton deduced
the general laws of motion in nature, and fine laws of motion they
are, ... for dealing with the actions and interactions of local,
independently existing objects in an absolute fixed and empty
Euclidian space (as with the machinery we construct).  But the natural
space of our living experience is nothing like Euclidian space and its
dynamical organisation is nothing like 'machinery'; i.e. the FULLBLOWN
dynamics of nature are nothing like Newtonian dynamics, and Newton
openly recognized and acknowledged this fact (that nature’s
characteristic tendency is to form/sustain interdepending (mutually
influencing) dynamical balance-seeking harmonies), stating in his
author’s preface to Principia, that the fullblown dynamical
organisation in nature is beyond the scope of his generalised laws of
motion.

Our modern tendency is to start from the generalised laws of science
which are in terms of ‘what things do’ (the actions and interactions
of notional local, independently-existing objects) as if in an
absolute fixed and empty mathematical space, in which case we ignore
the true possibility giving nature of the space we live in, and we
ignore our inclusional dynamical relationship within it.  That is,
what we have come to think of as 'science' drops out the first stage
in the origins of scientific generalisation, the philosophical
understanding of stage-setting from whence the generalised laws of
science come from, and we have come to understand science instead, in
terms of its generalisations without revisiting the simplifications we
have imposed upon the nature of the ‘possibility-giving conditions’ of
the space we are included in.

As Hegel observes, the object of science is to reflect the logical
structure/organisation in nature, using the logical structures of
human language to do so [these two logical structures are not the
same].  The job of philosophy is to grasp this whole process and raise
it to the level of consciousness.  The fact is that we have become
scientific literalists or scientific fundamentalists that take the
writings of science [post our simplifying of the possibility-giving
conditions enabling our experience] ‘literally’ as the God’s truth,
and thus having no need to be, at the same time, a philosopher that
that first must, as Kant says, understand ‘the conditions for the
possibility of experience’; i.e. ‘experience’ is not something that
‘just happens’ as if in a void, for it to transpire it must be
possibilitized by the dynamics of the possibility-giving space it
transpires in.

Are we thankful for the amazing possibility-giving quality of the
space we were born into?  Or, do we take this for granted and just get
on with ‘making stuff happen’, ... constructing our desired future in
material terms, as an individual, a family, a religious group, or a
political membership club-aka-‘nation’?   If we are not ‘thankful’ for
it, then will we care that our behaviour, which is conditioned by the
possibility-giving quality of this space that we share inclusion in,
is at the same time being conditioned by our behaviour?  If we are not
thankful and if we therefore do not care about the fact that our
behaviours condition the possibility-giving quality of space at the
same time as the possibility-giving of space conditions our behaviour,
then we are likely to experience a deterioration of the possibility-
giving quality of space, since the continual renewing and innovating
of the possibility-giving quality of space associates with the
tendency inherent in nature’s dynamic towards dynamical balancing and
mutual cultivating and sustaining of harmonies amongst the dynamical
forms in the unfolding continuum of nature.

Summary:  Science is a method for generalising the dynamical
organisation of nature using the logical structures of language (and
the logical structures elicited in our consciousness by the language
structures).  The natural space we are included in, ‘the space of our
experience’, is a possibility-giving space that enables our
experience.  Meanwhile, the mathematical spaces (e.g. our default
Euclidian space) are nothing like the possibility-giving, continually
innovating, cyclically renewing space of our experience, but we impose
mathematical space to describe the ‘initial conditions’ that make it
easier to generalise the dynamical organisation of nature by way of
scientific laws.  Let’s make no mistake here, we first reduce the
complex, mutually influencing harmonies that give the space of our
experience its ‘possibility-giving’ quality, to a ‘most easy though
not most true’ ...

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p.s. i forgot to mention in my above post that this post was to try
'extract the basic issue/s' in the discussion on ben stein's
'expelled', since ben stein's approach, which grasps a bit wildly at
the problem wriggling in the net, seems to blur the essential issues
somewhat.

ted

On 11 Jul, 13:57, emile <emili...@goodshare.org> wrote:

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Yes, just to try to summarize what I feel is the significance of this and
recent conversations, regarding what it means to transform from a
fundamentalist to an inclusional scientific understanding of evolutionary
process, in terms of how we live and view our human place in the natural
world:

We are not independent survival machines, here to compete to be best in a
struggle for self-preservation, in which our departure from the line of best
fit is mortal sin. We are dynamic inclusions of natural energy flow, here to
live, love and be loved, whose variability and perishability is vital to our
complementary, co-creative evolutionary relationship.

Warmest

Alan

it strikes me that your phraseology ‘independent, competing, survival
machines’ connotes an archetype for the western rational scientific re-
modeling of how the world works.   this archetype applies not only to
the ‘organisms’ in biology, but to the ‘organism’ model of the systems
sciences, to corporations and to sovereign nations.

i say ‘re-modeling’ since, on the one hand, we acknowledge that the
unfolding dynamical continuum of nature includes all things (all sub-
unfoldings or dynamical inclusions), but then we choose to re-render
these continually unifying fluid-dynamics in the positivist rational
terms of local object dynamics wherein we mentally convert the
included-in-the-flow-of-nature dynamical forms to ‘independent,
competing, survival machines’.   that is, we mentally convert the
physical dynamical form from a convection cell complex whose form is
sustained by dynamical balance sustaining energy flows, to a self
standing local object complex; i.e. we mentally convert the
‘sailboater’ that derives his power and steerage from the unfolding
turbulent flow he is included in, to a local center-point-source
driven (‘independent’)  ‘powerboater’ whose drive and direction/
purpose are understood to originate ‘onboard’ from a local independent
self-centre.

there is a clear advantage in the latter ‘positivist local-object-
dynamics-determining worldview’ based on the archetype of
‘independent, competing, survival machines’ in that it allows us to
focus on the (unnatural, mathematical) notion that we can determine
our own future, that we can formulate a plan with goals and objectives
and positivistically, deterministically achieve and fulfill the
plan.   of course, on the other hand, like Robbie Burns’ mouse, we are
forced to acknowledge that, because we are included in the unfolding
dynamics of nature (e.g. changing climate, storms, fires, earthquakes,
floods, droughts/famines), the method of nature decree that “The best-
laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley,

never mind that the unfolding fluid-dynamical continuum of nature in
which we are included is ever-present to trump our positivist-
determinist plans and purpose, ... its ‘damn the torpedos and full
speed ahead’ with the re-rendering of the world dynamic, seeing
ourselves (organisms), our sovereign nations and our corporations in
terms of a positivist-determinist mathematical archetype; i.e.
‘independent, competing, survival machines’.

the ‘scientific-mathematical’ recipe for cooking up this archetype is
as follows;
1.      ignore the fact that, as poincare observes, that “the space
revealed to us by our senses is absolutely different from the space of
geometry” and select the mathematical geometry of absolute fixed and
empty euclidian space.   now we have gotten out of the nonlocal
quality of the flow-continuum of nature that deprives us of any local
‘starting points’, and now we can speak about ‘local, independent
objects’.  this is important to our archetypeal recipe for creating
‘organisms’, ‘sovereign nations’ and ‘corporations’ etc.

2.      now that we have endowed our organism, nation, corporation with
local, independent existence, thanks to mathematical (absolute)
geometry that we can impute to our living space, we are well on our
way to creating our archetype of ‘independent, competing survival
machines’.  but since we have created our organisms, nations and
corporations as local and self-standing (‘independent’), we need to
give them some onboard power and steerage, and we do this by imputing
to their interior, a resident ‘instinct’ or ‘purpose’ and a ‘spiritual
force’.

3.      the imputed internally resident purpose, a goal or destination-
orientation, that we say drives and directs our archetypeal machinery,
keys to ‘survival’ by way of competitive vanquishing of the other
survival machines in the collective, and to proliferating..

4.      the spiritual force is fabricated from ‘common conviction’ as is
the only support for the notional existence of an imaginary line
bounded (closed geometric form with an absolute inside mutually
exclusive of its outside) sovereign nation.  that is, there is no
support for its existence in nature itself, the winds, waters, flora
and fauna [apart from the humans supporting the common conviction]
ignore its existence.  as has been pointed out by d’errico et al, the
sovereign nation (and, more generally, the archetype we are using) is
a secularized theological concept which imputes the residence of
supreme authority in the absolute local interior of the imaginary line
bounded (closed geometric form) local machine (a God-in-the-machine,
given voice by the elected ‘head-of-state’).  when believers in the
existence of the independent sovereign nation wave their flags, they
are filled with spiritual force that derives from common conviction,
to the point that tears may fill their eyes and they may tremble and
commit to bear arms and give their lives in the service of their
sovereign nation, accepting as absolute, the instructions of the
supreme central authority that are spoken through the mortal currently
in charge.

given the currently pervasive use of this mathematics-based recipe for
re-rendering the world dynamic in the archetypeal terms of a
collection of ‘independent, competing, survival machines’ (organisms,
sovereign nations, corporations), it is easy to forget, as einstein
observed;

“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to
reality” ... “space is not Euclidian”, ... “space is a participant in
physical phenomena”

einstein and poincare, both of whom warned of ‘drifting off’ in the
non-reality of absolute mathematical constructs that we commonly re-
render the world dynamic in terms of, supported ernst mach’s principle
wherein our (material) dynamics condition the dynamics of space at the
same time as the dynamics of space condition our dynamics (i.e. even
though the hurricane may be mathematically reduced to a ‘local system/
machine’, the greater reality is that the dynamics of the hurricane
(convection cell) conditions the dynamics of the atmospheric space it
is included in at the same time as the dynamics of atmospheric space
condition the dynamics of the included hurricane/s.

mach’s principle makes it impossible to conceptual the world dynamic
in terms of ‘local independent systems/organisms with local, onboard
(internally-originating) drive and steerage; i.e. mach’s principle
contradicts the archetype of organisms (and/or sovereign nations,
corporations) as “independent, competing survival machines’.

so, now we have ‘two different worlds’ that we can understand
ourselves to be included in, the world of our real, natural in-the-now
experience, and the mathematical archetypeal world of independent,
competing survival machines that orient to survival by vanquishing the
competition and proliferating.

in the mathematical world of locally existing things, we care for what
is ours but not for what is not ours (the notion of ‘what is ours’ or
‘property ownership’ is not a meaningful concept in the natural
world.  thus, a wolf will natural commit to support his offspring
until the offspring can support himself, just as a human father will
implicitly commit to support his son, but in the mathematics-ruled
world of modern western humans, if the court issues a divorce that
decrees that the mother has custody of the son, the father may
terminate his support for the child regardless of the child’s need;
i.e. our mathematical rules can take precedence over natural
experience-in-the-continuing-present based relationships.   if the
mouthpiece for the supreme central authority of the sovereign nation
says to the loyal law-abiding citizen; ‘peaceful ends justify
collateral damage-filled means, so you must set aside your natural
experiential engaging that is balance and harmony-seeking and bomb
these innocent civilians over here in order for our mathematical
theory to run its positivist-determinist course and achieve the
desired results’, then he will likely comply.  that is, in a machine
world,  ‘who you are’ is given by your function relative to the
purpose of the machinery in which you constitute one of the parts.
‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ... ask what you can do for
your country’ --- J.F.Kennedy.

of course, ‘nations’ were not always ‘machines’ and citizens were not
always the embodying cogs of central authority-driven rational,
mechanistic theory.  ‘nations’ as communities of people sharing an
unbounded natural living space, free from notional local independent
object states with absolute insides and supreme central authorities
over ‘internal affairs’ (the building blocks of the archetype of
‘independent, competing survival machines’).  communities of people
could, and still can and do, when they are in the outback relatively
free from the manipulating rules, knobs and levers of central
authority, organise on the basis of real-life experience rather than
having to become cogs that embody a mechanistic theory (as in the
corporation and the stringently centrally controlled sovereign
nation).   for example, the NON-independent, competing, survival
machine mode of organisation evolved by the Iroquois was commented
favourably on by Marx and Engels and also by Thomas Jefferson et al
(the ‘founding fathers of the United States), e.g;
"To Engels, Morgan's description of the Iroquois [in Lewis Henry
Morgan’s Ancient Society and The League of the Haudenosaunee or
Iroquois] was important because "it gives us the opportunity of
studying the ...

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