PaulSacramento wrote:
Try this. We've a vast barren plain of dirt. Then the rain falls on it. There is a great element of randomness, tho every sq meter averages out to the same number of cm of rain. More or less, you know.
There being some unevenness to the terrain, and some slope, the water gathers and moves with gravity downslope.
As it goes, it carries particles, (more randomness there), and we see rivulets form.
its all very mathematical. Streamlets will move along, "trial and error" first rushing here, then filling a depression as the main current finds a better way, abandoning earlier routes, cutting and widening the new.
Then there will be a whole drainage formed, with tributaries, tributary capture; braided channels, cut banks, meanders, riffle and run, perhaps cut off oxbows, incised meanders, distributaries, delta, evaporation pan...all very mathematical, all in response to, well, environmental pressures, physical laws.
Obviously it is simpler, but in what fundamental way do you think this is different from the progression in evolution?
The rain falling is random?
That drainage happens is random?
You do realize that the moment to mention any physical LAW, you have made a statement on the universe having laws, right?
You see the issue there right?
If Laws exist then there is SOME sort of "order" or "goal orientedness".
Ok try again.
You do recognize that there is considerable randomness involved, in exactly where each raindrop falls, the composition of each, and so on. The a-sortment of the soil is also random. Shapes and sizes of particles, same.
And yes, I did in fact mention physical laws.
"Law" does not have a capital letter except at the beginning of s sentence. I only mention this because your spelling it that way, I took as if you intend to imply its a creation or God, or that we even know for sure what is or is not a law.
A flow of energy x matter has a great tendency to produce order, as I think you are agreeing. I think you will agree that randomness always enters in at certain levels.
A goal involves intent, does it not? A river does not intend to go to the sea. There is no demonstrable intent in a fish giving rise to a salamander. Going from a large active predatory fish to a tiny weak blind salamander takes some defining to call it progress.
Odd "goal". It sure was not intended by no fish.
It wont matter how random the rain or the assortment of particles, the flow of energy will, combined with various physical laws predictably take the river to the sea. Along the way it will sort and shape sediments, depositing them in predictable ways.
The shapes of the pebbles will be random, where you find them wont be. I hardly think it reasonable to say there was a goal of putting a gravel bar here, and a sandbar there.
How the laws came about, who knows. But how they act can be studied.
Now, the q you didnt approach with your answer, here again:
In what fundamental way is the behaviour of a river, with its elements of random chance and obedience to natural law different from how evolution works?
