Hi

[peacewithoutgod]

Baruch, it really doesn't matter what ideas you do or do not have a problem with, when it is bottom-up dichotomy which all scientific evidence supports regarding how life evolved on this earth. Keep on fantasizing all you want that there's any top-down life forms which were not created in a human lab, because fantasy and not evidence is likely all you'll ever have in support of that idea.

Peacewithoutgod .... Yes, humans are social ... otherwise this conversation web site wouldn't exist ;-)  But wolfish behavior does describe the alpha males of our society ... it is just that most people are domesticated dogs, not wolves ;-)  But we aren't alone, we are leaves on a great tree indeed.

I don't see the need to have bottom up and top down as contradictory ... I think that is a false dichotomy ... but most here would agree with you.  I agree that most analogies for G-d are poor ... whether as judge, dad or engineer.  We can only imagine things in human terms.  I have yet to see my messy apartment self-clean ... so I will hold off on accepting spontaneous creation of order ;-)

[Solitary]

Peacewithoutgod .... Yes, humans are social ... otherwise this conversation web site wouldn't exist ;-)  But wolfish behavior does describe the alpha males of our society ... it is just that most people are domesticated dogs, not wolves ;-)  But we aren't alone, we are leaves on a great tree indeed.

I don't see the need to have bottom up and top down as contradictory ... I think that is a false dichotomy ... but most here would agree with you.  I agree that most analogies for G-d are poor ... whether as judge, dad or engineer.  We can only imagine things in human terms.  I have yet to see my messy apartment self-clean ... so I will hold off on accepting spontaneous creation of order ;-)

I bet if you keep looking at the disorder in your apartment, you will find a place where it is in order and shows a pattern. Try it!

[Baruch]

Solitary ... I think you are thinking of the "stationary point" theorem from math.  Just because one thing stays put, doesn't mean it is orderly ... it just hasn't been moved yet ;-)

Peacewithoutgod ... we will have to respectfully disagree.  Microevolution for example is demonstrated definitively ... but macro-evolution is not, unless you are aware of some human experiment lasting millions of years ;-)  However I do find macroevolution to be persuasive.  Whether or not evolutionary change serves any purpose or not, is certainly unclear.  Aristotle of course believed that the ends drew forth the development ... that the oak tree as the acorn's way of making more acorns.  I find the notion that humans are superior ... to be chauvinistic.  A shark has moved just as many years up the tree of life as we have, since herds of trilobites roamed ;-)

So is a living thing more orderly?  It would seem that life temporarily cheats entropy, at the cost of causing greater net entropy (pollution etc).  Eventually only the outcome of the jar of fly larvae can be the result.  Lots of dead flies.  In the end, you pay the piper.  Unless of course one agrees with Teilhard de Chardin ... but that is basically Aristotelian, that life in the universe is evolving to a super being, a Kuisatz Haderach.

[peacewithoutgod]

I bet if you keep looking at the disorder in your apartment, you will find a place where it is in order and shows a pattern. Try it!

In my house it would be unlikely, but anything's possible. It would be an example of order from the bottom up.

[Solitary]

Solitary ... I think you are thinking of the "stationary point" theorem from math.  Just because one thing stays put, doesn't mean it is orderly ... it just hasn't been moved yet ;-)

Peacewithoutgod ... we will have to respectfully disagree.  Microevolution for example is demonstrated definitively ... but macro-evolution is not, unless you are aware of some human experiment lasting millions of years ;-)  However I do find macroevolution to be persuasive.  Whether or not evolutionary change serves any purpose or not, is certainly unclear.  Aristotle of course believed that the ends drew forth the development ... that the oak tree as the acorn's way of making more acorns.  I find the notion that humans are superior ... to be chauvinistic.  A shark has moved just as many years up the tree of life as we have, since herds of trilobites roamed ;-)

So is a living thing more orderly?  It would seem that life temporarily cheats entropy, at the cost of causing greater net entropy (pollution etc).  Eventually only the outcome of the jar of fly larvae can be the result.  Lots of dead flies.  In the end, you pay the piper.  Unless of course one agrees withttp://www.physicsplanet.com/articles/chaos-theory-simplified

Chaos theory is an interesting idea. The term implies disorder or lack of rules or randomness. As we commonly think of chaos, we might think of the behavior of a mob after a huge football win or loss. But this would not be true.

Chaos theory as a name comes from the fact that the systems the theory describes (non-linear systems) would seem to be disordered or random or at least unpredictable. Chaos theory tries to find some underlying order in what appears to be random events or data.

The weird scientist in the movie “Jurassic Park” was a chaos theorist. He spoke about the flapping of butterfly wings in Brazil and studying whether they would or could cause a tornado in Kansas. While this may seem a little out there, the term “butterfly effect” is widely used. Chaos theory does look for underlying unifying patterns in systems.

Essentially, the theory looks at something called sensitive dependence on initial conditions. This means that even a very minute change in the initial conditions of a system can have dramatic effects on that system over time. Weather is a system that is studied widely so as to be better able to predict what conditions will be like.

Edward Lorenz was an early pioneer of the theory. He was working on weather predictions in 1961 and was using a computer to help with the calculations. As an aside, the advent of the computer with its ability to do virtually simultaneous large scale calculations was invaluable to the promotion of the theory.

Lorenz had initiated a sequence of data based on twelve variables in his attempt to predict weather. He wanted to see the sequence again, so re-entered the data. To save time, he began the new simulation in the middle of the old, using a printout from the prior calculations.

The weather patterns the computer predicted from the new simulation was very different from what had been initially predicted. Working backward, Lorenz discovered that he had entered the data only out to the third decimal point, whereas in the initial simulation, he had used the same data out to the fifth decimal point. These differences are really very, very small and, according to the thinking of the day, should have had only a tiny impact, if any, on the resultant predictions.

Scientists of the day had focused their thinking on linear systems, where the whole is essentially the sum of the parts. However, there had been a number of instances where linear functions did not explain the behavior of the system, such as with Lorenz. Non-linear systems are much harder to describe since the mathematical equations cannot be added together to produce new systems as with linear systems.

This phenomenon has been observed in such diverse areas as fluid dynamics, the motion of planets, economic cycles, general relativity, and in broad psycho-social systems. However, it has only been since the middle of the 20th century that mathematical techniques have been developed to deal with them.

To put this in more simple terms, consider a football team. Each individual player has a certain set of quantifiable skills at their position, skills which can be given a score. Summing the scores of all persons on a team, then comparing one team with the scores from another team should give a clear sense of the difference and thus predict the winner of a game between them. This is the linear way of looking at a team, only as the sum of its parts.

However, there are many other sets of variables that come into play such as “team chemistry”, whether the game is played at home or away, experience playing with one another, the mood or attitude of an individual player or players, and on and on. These can and do lead to results that are different from those predicted by linear thinking. As a great many people have observed over the years “this is why they play the game!”

We know from chaos theory that even very minute changes can produce widely different outcomes. Chaos theory also suggests that, if you can understand all of the variables affecting a system, the underlying pattern will eventually emerge and it will be easier to predict outcomes. This seems like a huge undertaking, even in football. But in physics…

Quantum chaos as a field of study grew out of quantum mechanics. At the time that many of the theories driving quantum mechanics were formulated, set aside were the facts that certain systems exhibited chaos (randomness) in their classical limits.

In other words, where Quantum mechanics would predict that a given system is a sum of its parts and thus should behave as X or Y, these results did not obtain. Some of these areas include level repulsion in the spectrum, ionization rates of atoms, enhanced stationary wave intensities in space, and so on. Using the mathematics developed as the result of chaos theory (fractals being an example), physicists are expanding their inquiry into chaotic systems.

Other areas utilizing chaos theory principles to extend and better understand the systems they deal with include psychology, sociology, biology, economics and so on. This most interesting concept has even been applied to the movement of traffic on roads.
You may ask yourself what exactly is biophysics? Biophysics is a combination of physical science and cell and molecular biology. It is really an interdisciplinary field that includes concepts from biology, genetics, physiology, medicine, chemistry engineering, mathematics and physics.

The true definition of biophysics can be hard to pin down, as the field is made up of scientists who come from different backgrounds, different focuses, and different views of what biophysics actually is. The main emphasis of biophysics is to gain an understanding of how biological systems work.

The understanding of how the biological systems work is actually gained by applying principles of both physics and chemistry and adding mathematical analysis along with computer modeling. It is quite complex.

Biophysics is actually a molecular science. The properties of molecules including smaller molecules of fatty acids and sugars to larger molecules like proteins, starches and even DNA.

The molecules mentioned above are actually the building blocks. When combined they make up cells, tissues and even whole organisms. They form complex structures that have dimension of 10 to 100 to 1000 to 10,000 nm and even larger.

When proteins combine with ribonucleic acids they form ribosomes. Ribosomes are like small machines that produce proteins. When proteins combine with lipids, they can form into cell membranes. Proteins and DNA form the double helix strand that carries all of the genetic code for an organism.

The structures of biological molecules and the structures that they build into are what Biophysics is concentrating on. The study involves incorporating new ways of looking at the structures and new ways of viewing them. The belief is that, if we can understand how these structures look, then we might move closer to solving some of the worldââ,¬â,,¢s problems.

Some of the specific questions that biophysics answer deal with are how cell membranes work; how muscles use ATP hydrolysis, a chemical energy source and change it into mechanical force as well as movement; or how does the DNA molecule replicate itself for cell division.

One part of Biophysics is Bioenergetics, which looks at the chemical conversion of food into biological energy. This is necessary for us to have life, and the reaction takes place inside of cells. Understanding how this reaction takes place can give scientists good insights into better food sources and better nutrition.

Cell biophysics includes looking at cells and their structure, including their membranes. The study includes understanding how certain chemicals can interact with cell membranes, chemical such as fusion peptides like HIV; serum proteins like albumin; toxic proteins and peptides like Nisin Alzheimerââ,¬â,,¢s protein; along with the impact of antibiotics and drugs. Understanding how different cells like endothelial or epithelial or blood cells act toward these different chemicals can help researchers develop better treatments and drugs.

Another area of study that fits under Biophysics is electrophysiology. Electrophysiology is the study of the behavior of the heart with regard to electrical behavior. The electrical movements are recorded from within the heart, allowing cardiologists to better understand what is going on in the heart when a patient is having palpitations, or other heart related problems.

Biophysics also includes the study of muscles and contractility. This study looks to the principles of mechanics and applied them to bones and muscles. For instance, calculating the strength of a certain bone or muscle or the way the muscle creates movement.

Supramolecular assembly is another area that fits under Biophysics. This is a creating a molecular compound that has certain characteristics. The result of weak chemical reactions including dipole-to-dipole interactions, ionic interactions and hydrogen bonds can create a particular assembly that can help certain kinds of drugs to better permeate into the membrane and help patients.

Photobiophysics which focuses on photosynthesis and bioluminescence is also under the biophysicsââ,¬â,,¢ umbrella. Photosynthesis is the process in which mainly plants use sunlight to make sugar, which then converts into ATP. Bioluminescence is the study of the light that is produced by a chemical reaction within an organism. This found primarily within marine organisms. Imaging and spectroscopy are also widely used in biophysics in order to gain a true understanding of the molecular makeup of what is being studied.
h Teilhard de Chardin ... but that is basically Aristotelian, that life in the universe is evolving to a super being, a Kuisatz Haderach.

[peacewithoutgod]

Solitary, you have the right to an opinion as much as anybody here, but the idea of "micro" and "macro" evolution is in itself an invention of people who despise science (Ken Ham, for one). "Microevolution" has not been proven, evolution has in many different ways, most strongly through genetic studies. Evolution has been proven only to have happened, as it continues to happen, and it happens when changing habitat conditions encourage the survival of life forms which bear incremental deviations from the genetic norm. That's a proven fact, while your doctrine that limiting factors exist over changes which can be observed in our lifetimes is an unfounded wish. I don't have to have been "there" to see how clearly your linguistic perversions are no more than that.

Have a nice day, and don't do anything your great ancestor amoeba wouldn't do!

[Baruch]

Solitary ... summarizing every confirmed and speculative idea out of Scientific American ... isn't something I will have time to address.  Quantum mechanics as currently known is probabilistic, but that isn't the same as chaotic.  The equations of quantum mechanics are deterministic ... the things being measured are probabilistic ... what percentage of hydrogen atoms are transitioning from n=2 to n=1 in a mole of ionized hydrogen for example.  But the spectra produced by that transition is deterministic (if we are talking about the mean value).  The line width does vary, due to multiple factors, but the minimal line width is deterministic.  See spectroscopy for details.  Chaotic phenomena arise out of classical physics, whenever conditions are right ... the solution goes from insensitive to initial conditions (the variance converges over time) to sensitive to initial conditions (the variance diverges over time).  It is the macro conditions of the physics, not the micro conditions, that drive the turbulence (aka chaos).

The idea that with the Uncertainty Principle, that anything can happen, though mostly with very small probability ... is a misunderstanding.  The actual math is that not all observables (aka quantum wave operators) commute.  Energy commutes vs energy, and time commutes vs time, but energy vs time does not commute, and this indirectly imposes limits on simultaneous observables.  This phenomena also arises more generally in mechanics and electronics ... where control of one variable interferes with the control of a different but related variable.  It is non-contradition that prevents doing two things at the same time.  The surprise was that potential contradictions occur in circumstances different than anticipated.

[Deidre32]

Welcome to the site :)

[Spockrates]

...it still isn't a pidgeon.

LOL! Love your sense of humor. :)