Well remeber the entry about the Templeton Prize Winner John Barrow?
If you missed it here it is:
When Selfish Gene author Richard Dawkins challenged physicist John Barrow on his formulation of the constants of nature at last summer's Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship lectures, Barrow laughed and said, "You have a problem with these ideas, Richard, because you're not really a scientist. You're a biologist."For Barrow, biology is little more than a branch of natural history. "Biologists have a limited, intuitive understanding of complexity. They're stuck with an inherited conflict from the 19th century, and are only interested in outcomes, in what wins out over others," he adds. "But outcomes tell you almost nothing about the laws that govern the universe." For physicists it is the laws of nature themselves that capture and structure the universe--and put brakes on it as well.
It provoked nice juicy reactions from many bloggers/commentators:
I don't quite understand the problem, here. I mean, he's right-- stamp collectors, the lot of 'em...
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I don't really have a larger point to make, here. I just couldn't resist a poke at the biologists. It's been a very long week.
Yeah, and some physicists are little more than glorified numerologists.
Yeah! (I've had a couple of bad days too with my laptop dying)
{corrected, this biologist just lost 2 points on this quiz} RPM razib:
just because most physicists do have a non-trivial potential in applying their skills in the biological sciences, that does not mean that they can pass judgement with any level of credibility from a position outside of that system science.
It's been a while since the revolution happenned. Since then there's only been a handful of physicists who have crossed over.
And then in another post RPM razib writes:
My point is that one might sneer at biology, but it is the hot field of our century, it is arguably the new Queen of Sciences.
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I would hold that physicists are on average smarter than biologists, but, since there are more biologists than physicists there are still more smart biologists above any given cognitive threshold than smart physicists, while in both cases they aren't the most God-believing folk in any case so the dismissal of Dawkins as a unsophisticated biologist was neither here nor there since sophisticates seem to hold the same opinion as the unsophisticates by and large (it doesn't matter which tribe are the kings of the hill, they survey the same general landscape).
Although it seems that not everyone agrees. But these numbers are just quiz-scores ... what fields have generated insight recently?
I have no respect for that Dyson. Too much hokus pocus. When scientists run out of things to study they speculate, and some turn into Dysons: smart guys inventing crazy ideas. And I hate it when they anthropomorphize the universe as if humans are the center of everything. If they reread their science textbooks they would have noticed that every major scientific discovery has argued the reverse.Hubris ...
Exactly! Is this all they (Dyson/John Barrow type cosmologists) have to say? The anthropic principle? Sounds like the pope talking. The Douglas Adams quote that PZ mentions explains it quite nicely:
...imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'
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The greatest advance in biology in the 20th century, the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, was by Watson (zoologist), Crick (physicist) and Wilkins (physicist).
Look, if you are in the biomedical sciences today you're an offspring of all these guys. That's our lineage. Just like some bacteria long ago was the anscestor of all humans. But you don't expect E. Coli to be able to perform PCR experiments.
And then in another post RPM writes:
thaz me, not RPM :)
btw, i do qualify my assertion about "cognitive thresholds" in that capping the GRE math score at 800 probably helps the biologists.
I'm with Razib. He's not me.
To all that have spent all of five minutes studying the anthropic principle before making many false statments about it:
And I hate it when they anthropomorphize the universe as if humans are the center of everything. If they reread their science textbooks they would have noticed that every major scientific discovery has argued the reverse.
Hubris ...
Except the AP doesn't claim that we're at the center of anything, and Brandon Carter said so without mincing any words about this.
If you read the timeline of cosmology... then you'd know that every every major scientific discovery *repeatedly* led scientists straight to the anthropic principle as the best attempt to date for actually explaining the structure of the universe from first principles.
Apparently people think that throwing up their hands at any hope for finding a stability mechanism is more scientific than giving the AP more than about three seconds worth of thought to figure out why the implications for specialness might be true.
The Douglas Adams quote that PZ mentions explains it quite nicely:
...imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'
No, No, it's not even close to being an accurate analogy for the AP.
The puddle example is only given by counter-ideologically motivated people to groups of like-minded individuals as a rebuttal to creationists that are pushing the anthropic principle as evidence for god.
It has little if anything to do with the physics of the anthropic principle. For example, does the analogy fairly represent the diametrically opposing runaway nature of all of the vast array of the the anthropic coincidences?
Because if it isn't "fairly" represented, then it necessarily harbors unfair prejudice against science.
I don't make the rules... nor do I tell people whom to associate themselves with, but that doesn't mean that the lame rationale of fanatics doesn't make a statement about people that get their information from them.
What John Barrow should have said to Dick Dawkins:
'You have a problem with these ideas, Richard, because you're not really a scientist. You're necessarily pre-prejudiced against it, because you're a biologist that's constantly under attack from creationists that abuse the principle as evidence for god's existence.'
There are a lot of people that should be ashamed to call themselves scientists.
RPM Razib,
Sorry guys - it's been a long week. I'll correct things ...
hey, i wuz cool with being confused. RPM is a kool kat.