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Re: [Phys-l] Intelligent designists fight back

On Jan 10, 2008, at 1:12 PM, John Mallinckrodt wrote:

I had an experience along these same lines years ago when I was
trying to model the tidal interaction of the moon and Earth, the
approach to synchronous rotation, and the orbital retreat of the moon
by building both bodies from several pieces that could be distorted
by tidal effects and dissipate energy in the process.

I let the simulation run and run and run and run for what seemed like
"forever"--easily HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of orbits--without much
noticeable effect. I was a little disappointed until I got to
thinking about the fact that the real moon had made TENS OF BILLIONS
of orbits around the real Earth and that even my simulation with one
orbit every few seconds or so would have to run for thousands of
years to duplicate that feat.

John Mallinckrodt
Cal Poly Pomona

On Jan 10, 2008, at 9:52 AM, Rick Tarara wrote:

Let me offer two additional factors that I think make it difficult
for many
(seemingly the majority in the U.S.) to accept evolution and that
make ID an
attractive alternative.

1) We see only the end-product of the evolutionary process. All the
dead-end paths are gone--at least for macro-evolution. Only by
studying
'real' biology and current experiments in species with short
reproductive
cycles might one view direct evidence of the blind alleys. With
only the
very complex end products in evidence to most, the urge to accept
that such
complexity is 'by design' is very strong.

2) (This may actually be a 'fault' of evolution--at least it is
suggested
by Richard Dawkins in "The God Delusion".) Our intrinsic
understanding of
time and space seems limited to our experience and may be limited by
evolutionary imperatives. We can understand a 100 years and can be
pretty
good at conceptualizing one or two orders of magnitude beyond. But
when it
comes to having any real understanding of a million years--we don't
cope
well. A billion years is really not in our genes. As scientists
we 'know'
such time frames exist and can extrapolate well enough to work
within such
frames, but can we really conceptualize and understand? The same
goes for
space. Our world, evolutionarily, is limited by the range of our
sight (on
earth). Again we can deal with a couple orders of magnitude more
than the
few kilometers we can directly observe, but who really can
conceptualize a
light year, much less thousands, millions, or billions of light years.

Really understanding evolution requires some form of understanding
what
hundreds of millions of years means. That is very difficult.


I was also thinking about difficulties in extrapolation while simulating consequences of a disturbance imposed on a four stars system. The initial situation was simple; four identical stars revolving on the same circle. Then one star is moved suddenly into a region where the field is less strong (along the radius of the circle). That destroyed simplicity and motion started to look chaotic. But it was not chaotic because everything was still governed by Newton's laws. There were no randomness in simulation, except due to the finite number of digits used in each calculation. Then my wife asked me to do do something. When I came back, more than ten minutes later, the motion was simple again -- two pairs of stars were created (each pair being a single star). Each pair was revolving along an elliptical (nearly circular orbit). And two elliptical trajectories had essentially the same focal point -- r(min) of one orbit and r(min) of another orbit were occurring at essentially the same time.

It would be impossible to predict something like this (transformation of complexity into simplicity) by watching what was going on on my screen during the first minute or so. And here is another illustration. Is a segment of a trajectory, seen on my screen, part of a straight line or is it part of a very very very long ellipse? I am using the I.P. again. The program was designed by an intelligent designer who used a theory d by Newton. But it simulates a system governed by laws of nature. I was really surprised by the outcome of evolution displayed on my screen.
P.S.
I can reproduce what was observed this morning by running the program again. That would be impossible if randomness was involved.
_______________________________________________________
Ludwik Kowalski, a retired physicist
5 Horizon Road, apt. 2702, Fort Lee, NJ, 07024, USA
Also an amateur journalist at http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/