Timeline for Does physics explain why the laws and behaviors observed in biology are as they are?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
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| Mar 31, 2021 at 2:24 | history | edited | mmesser314 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 30, 2021 at 15:27 | history | edited | mmesser314 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 29, 2021 at 23:03 | comment | added | prolyx | @Deschele Schilder It is relatively easy to come up with a scientific definition of the state of pain or love. But such a definition is only useful if people agree on it, which, of course, it is unlikely many would, which is why scientists choose different words to describe related phenomena (e.g. the various terms for nervous system phenomena). | |
| Mar 29, 2021 at 19:35 | comment | added | mmesser314 | @DescheleSchilder - I understand what you are saying. But I don't know enough about what explanation will turn out right to agree with even that much. For example, there are obvious differences between alive and dead, even in plants. Before biology was based on chemistry, explanations were religious. Now we find that chemistry can explain it. | |
| Mar 29, 2021 at 16:22 | comment | added | Deschele Schilder | How do you explain the feeling of pain or love? Even if you knew in detail the elementary particles' positions and velocities, then you still wouldn't be able to explain these feelings. | |
| Mar 29, 2021 at 15:13 | comment | added | mmesser314 | @IlmariKaronen - Thank you. I should have been more explicit. | |
| Mar 29, 2021 at 15:13 | comment | added | mmesser314 | @AndrewSteane - I am not implying shallow or lazy. I meant nobody has any explanation of the mind that includes a detailed enough mechanism to make me think they understand how the mind works. Freud made the first attempt to understand the structure of the mind with ideas like id, ego, and superego. But that is no more successful than fluxes and humors were in explaining medicine, or phlogiston in explaining heat. Nobody has explained the mind from first causes. | |
| Mar 29, 2021 at 13:55 | comment | added | Andrew Steane | @IlmariKaronen thanks for this remark which is friendly to all parties. I see what you mean but I also hope my comment will be helpful anyway. | |
| Mar 29, 2021 at 13:33 | comment | added | Ilmari Karonen | @AndrewSteane: I think you may be reading more into mmesser314's answer than intended. The way I read it, they're merely saying that religion-based explanations of mental phenomena such as sensation, emotion and consciousness do not satisfy the standards expected of a scientific explanation (such as falsifiability and the ability to make testable predictions). Which is reasonable enough, as that's not what they're supposed to be in the first place. | |
| Mar 29, 2021 at 12:42 | comment | added | Andrew Steane | Just to say the situation with religion is more complex than I think you may be aware. Shallow or lazy forms of religious commitment are indeed uneasy with science and are intellectually substandard. But the kind of religious commitment that is more carefully thought-through, such as for example that of James Clerk Maxwell or other leading physicists, both understands, respects and celebrates the role of science. This kind of religious commitment relates to science somewhat as do qualities such as honesty, humility and curiosity: they are not science, but they motivate, support and enable it. | |
| Mar 29, 2021 at 5:20 | history | answered | mmesser314 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |