Re: Definition of Randomness (Wilkins quote mining project)

On Dec 8, 10:27 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 7, 5:18 pm, j...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (John S. Wilkins) wrote:

Burkhard <b.scha...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Third, I would consider it highly unlikely that Darwin, or any other
of his contemporaneous materialists, would consider "random" or
"chance" the way you describe them, as true randomness.

The Golden Rule: Text without context is error.


"I HAVE hitherto sometimes spoken as if the variations—so common and
multiform in organic beings under domestication, and in a lesser degree
in those in a state of nature—had been due to chance. This, of course,
is a wholly incorrect expression, but it serves to acknowledge plainly
our ignorance of the cause of each particular variation." Chapter V
Origin, 1st ed

Context: The quote is from the first edition "Origin" (written to
Christians) when the jury of scientific opinion was still out,
transmutation acceptance was hanging in the balance at this initial
stage. This is the first explanation for Darwin's **admitted**
equivocation.

Read the quote: it does NOT repudiate "chance." The quote admits that
he has credited chance then he contradicts himself and says he doesn't
know how variation occurs. *How* variation occurs (ignorance) is not a
repudiation of "chance" (unsupervised-non-directed quality of material
agency). It is an egregious bait and switch. "Chance" is left intact.

No contradiction, no a bait and switch and most certainly no
equivocation, quite on the contrary, an explicit explanation of what
he means by chance. The only "problem" arises because you take your
own, totally ahistorical notion of chance as "ontological" or "true"
randomness" as given, impose it on Darwin and of course the text than
stops making sense or looks duplicitous or complicated

Darwin's problem is not Creationism, which he probably did not take
serious enough as scientific alternative to discuss, but his fellow
scientists, and in particular the models of Newton and possibly
Laplace. The alternatives he faces are not chance or creation, but
chance or an equally materialistic, causal and deterministic
account.

So you are right to insist ion context, but you misidentify the
relevant context Darwin was in. At a time when the theory of
probability was just developing, and a strict Newtonian deterministic
ideal of science was prevalent, to say as he did that variations are
due to chance would have been in danger of being considered as
unscientific by his contemporaries. An "acceptable" scientific
explanation would have required to give a mechanistic (in the sense
of particle mechanics) account of why a specific variation occurs.
Laplace demon as the "uberscientists", the Victorian ideal, would give
you the precise trajectory of the particle that causes a mutation, and
then give the full life history of the affected individual. He
obviously can't do this, and we now know of course why this is indeed
not feasible - the billiard ball model is just not right to explain
mutations of DNA on a molecular level. So he makes it painfully
clear,just in case some idiot accuses him of using chance as a causal
mechanism, that he does NOT consider chance as an alternative for a
"proper", deterministic Newtonian explanation, but just as a shorthand
for our IGNORANCE as to the precise deterministic and CAUSAL forces
that work on specific individuals or species.

he maintains this position consistently through all the quotes and all
his material.
Only with the emergence of quantum mechanics are we tempted to think
of "true randomness" or chance in nature as a valid scientific model.
For Darwin, this would have been a totally alien concept.
You simply impose your ahistoric definition of chance as "true
chance",and your irrelevant (for Darwin) dichotomy between your
definition of chance and a teleological model to create equivocation
and confusion were there aren't any.

.

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