>
>
> Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 12:08:55 -0800
> From: "Daniel" <drdq at m5.sprynet.com>
> Subject: Re: The anthropic principle & Rakesh
>
> Now, the posts on the anthropic principle have referred to the idea of
> creation by design, and I hope you will enjoy an excerpt from one of my
> favorite books, which I heartily recommend for pleasure in thought and
> style, namely "The Seven Mysteries of Life - An Exploration in Science and
> Philosophy" by Guy Murchie.
>
> The issue of course is fundamental to religion and philosophy. And it
> makes me think of a story about Charles Boyle, the fourth Earl of orrery,
> who flourished in southern Ireland early in the eighteenth century - and of
> the theorem that bears his name. Having heard of Kepler's famous discovery
> of the laws of planetary motion and of Newton's recent work on gravitation,
> Lord Orrery had a working model of the solar system built inside his castle.
> It was an extraordinary, dynamic and up-to-date piece of clockwork with
> orbital hoops and a brass sun in the center plus smaller globes
> representing Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn slowly
> revolving around it, even a moon circling the Earth and four little ones
> going around Jupiter.
> But it seems that Lord Orrery had an atheist friend who had an utterly
> materialistic outlook and thought of the universe as just an immense moving
> system of natural machinery that somehow coasts along, blindly but
> automatically maintaining itself without benefit of consciousness, mind or
> intelligence of any kind. So when the friend heard tell of Orrery's new
> and wonderful machine, he lost no time in going to the castle to see it.
> Entering the great hall where the model was in operation, the atheist's eyes
> widened with awe and the first question he asked Lord Orrery was: "Where did
> you get this magnificent thing? Who made it?"
> But Orrery, remembering previous arguments with the atheist about creation,
> surprised him by replying, "Nobody made it. It just happened."
> "How could that be?" retorted the atheist. "Surely these intricate gears
> and wheels couldn't create themselves. Who made them?"
> Lord Orrery stood his ground, insisting that his model of the solar system
> had just happened by itself. Meantime the atheist worked himself into a
> state of hysterical frustration. Then at last, judging the time was ripe,
> Orrery let him have it. "Up to now," he declared, "I was testing you. Now
> I am going to offer you a bargain. I will promise to tell you truly who
> made my little sun and planets down here as soon as you tell me truly Who
> made the infinitely bigger, more wonderful and more beautiful real sun and
> planets up there in the heavens."
> The atheist turned a little pale and, for the first time, began to wonder
> whether the Universe could really have made itself, or possibly be running
> all this time automatically and unguided by the slightes twinge of
> intelligence. And this was the origin of the Orrery Theorem which says:
> "If the model of any natural system requires intelligence for its creation
> and its working, the real natural system requires at least as much
> intellignece for its own creation and working."(611)
>
> Quincy
>
Hey Quincy,
I don't know how much you care to challenge the Orrery Theorem, but a book that does so in a style that may also give you pleasure is "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins. I'll just quote a paragraph from the preface that may pique your curiosity:
A third respect in which our brains seem predisposed to resist Darwinism
stems from our great success as creative designers. Our world is dominated
by feats of engineering and works of art. We are entirely accustomed to the
idea that complex elegence is an indicator of premeditated, crafted design.
This is probably the most powerful reason for the belief, held by the vast
majority of people that have ever lived, in some kind of supernatural diety.
It took a very large leap of the imagination for Darwin and Wallace to see
that, contrary to all intuition, there is another way and, once you have
understood it, a far more plausible way, for complex 'design' to arise out of
primeval simplicity. A leap of imagination so large that, to this day, many
people seem still unwilling to make it. It is the main purpose of this book
to help the reader to make this leap.
PS: I loved the book, but I'm almost embarrassed to mention Dawkins' name again, because he's known primarily on this list as a major endorser (along with Noam Chomsky and Barbara Ehrenreich) of the here generally reviled Sokol-Brincmont book. I'm trying to overcome my ignorant disdain of postie analysis by reading right now (per Doug's recommendation) MF's "Discipline & Punish"--and I'm trying to get my own arguments together before I try to explain my reservations with certain currents of ID politics, black nationalism etc. (Angela and Rakesh have already begun to do a good job with that anyway). I don't want to be easily lumped with the Tomasky/Alterman/Gitlin crowd who, to paraphrase Rakesh, simply seek to muzzle all those annoying women, sissies and coloreds (I hope I didn't butcher your reply to The Nation's Alterman article too thoroughly, and btw, welcome back).
Cheers,
Ingrid
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