Dark benediction

Walter M. Miller Jr.

Walter M. Miller Jr. was an American author of science fiction, known for a single book that has become a classic: A Canticle for Leibowitz, possibly one of the best science fiction novels of all time, at least among those in the apocalyptic sub-genre, which describes what might happen after a total nuclear war.

The novel is divided into three parts: In the first, Fiat Homo, the world is just beginning to recover from the disaster. As in the centuries following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Catholic Church takes the responsibility for saving what little remains of classical culture (ours) through the monks of an order founded by one man, Leibowitz, who before the nuclear conflagration was an electrical engineer. In the second part, Fiat Lux, several centuries have gone by, a new civilization has emerged and the world is entering a new Renaissance. In the third, Fiat Voluntas Tua, this civilization has reached its peak, materialism comes back, and history threatens to repeat itself. But this time Miller leaves a possible escape open: the colonization of the galaxy.

The phenomenon of man

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

We know from experience that man has a mind and consciousness. It is also evident that animals seem to have more mental activities the closer they are to us. Thus, mammals have more minds that reptiles, reptiles more than fish, fish more than invertebrates (possibly excluding cephalopods). All animals except sponges have a nervous system, although some have very little: the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has only 300 neurons. Plants do not have a nervous system, but they have some sensitivity and are able to move slowly. And when Antonie van Leeuwenhoek discovered microorganisms in the seventeenth century, no one doubted that these tiny creatures were alive. True, biologists have not yet agreed on whether viruses, even more tiny beings, are alive or not. I have written about this in another post in this blog.

How insect societies arose

Solitary bee (Megachile) and social bee (Apis)

Among the insect order Hymenoptera there are many species that live independently, but there are also many others who live together in societies. Social life has evolved several times, both among ants (all of which are social) and between bees and wasps, many of which live alone. This fact should be explained: why is social life so prevalent among these insects, and how could it have evolved? In other words, did it provide any evolutionary advantage? In which way?

In insect societies, most individuals renounce reproduction and dedicate their lives to care for the queen (the only member of the society who lays eggs) and for their brothers and sisters, while they are larvae. Normally there are at least two separate castes: those who are sexually active (male and female) and those who are not (usually asexual females). The differences between active and neutral females come from the type of food they receive during their larval stage.

Malthus’s mistake

Thomas Robert Malthus

Since the end of the eighteenth century, apocalyptic warnings as regards the unstoppable increase of the world population have followed one another. In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus published An essay on the principle of population, as it affects the future improvement of society, with remarks on the speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other writers. This essay includes the famous quotation:

Assuming then my postulata as granted, I say, that the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second.

Logical fallacies

Stephen Hawking

In the previous article I mentioned that advocates of materialistic scientism often fall in logical fallacies, but usually do not notice, probably because their knowledge of philosophy is not deep enough. Moreover, they often despise philosophy, not realizing that logic (which is a part of philosophy) aims to analyze the way we think, and that, without logic, science loses its supporting base. So, Stephen Hawking wrote at the beginning of his book, The Grand Design:

Philosophy is dead ... Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.

And starting there, he proceeds to make philosophy in a popular science book.

In my discussions with supporters of materialistic scientism, I’ve often had to tell my opponents that they are committing a logical fallacy. Generally they are reluctant to admit it, but when I explain it in detail, they finally do (I guess, because usually the discussion ends there). By this I do not mean to imply that I never fall in logical fallacies, because we are all human, but at least so far, no one has shown me any. Of course, it is possible that I have fallen in them and the person who was debating with me did not notice.

On intelligence

In his book On intelligence Jeff Hawkins writes this:

Francis Crick wrote a book about brains called The astonishing hypothesis. The astonishing hypothesis was simply that the mind is the creation of the cells in the brain. There is nothing else, no magic, no special sauce, only neurons and a dance of information... In calling this a hypothesis, Crick was being politically correct. That the cells in our brain create the mind is a fact, not a hypothesis. We need to understand what these thirty billion cells do and how they do it.

Wonderful! On the one hand, he states that it is a fact, not a hypothesis, that the neurons of the brain create the mind. On the other, he accepts that we don’t know what they do, or how they do it. How does Hawkins know this for a fact, not a hypothesis? By infused knowledge? How was he able to detect that fact? Are there any arguments to support it? He gives none, he just asserts. Is this good science?

Einstein’s mistake

When Einstein formulated in 1915 his theory of general relativity, he soon applied it to the entire universe, deriving the following cosmological equation:

It is curious that this equation is identical to the equation that would result from Newton’s theory of gravitation. There is only one difference: constant k represents, in Newton’s case, the total energy of the universe; in Einstein’s case, its curvature.

Each term of this equation contains a universal constant. Besides k, G is the gravitational constant; L is called the cosmological constant, whose interpretation is not clear. Einstein initially thought he could eliminate this term by making L = 0, which simplifies the equation and makes it analytically solvable. Then he discovered that the solution, in that case, was a universe in constant expansion. Since he believed that the universe had to be stationary, he decided to assign the constant a critical value L = L_c, to make it be so.