Alien: it walks (well, swims) among us

Okay, I'm not ashamed to admit it - this thing petrifies me. Moray eels have a second set of protractable jaws in their throat that they use to drag prey in. I'm just waiting for confirmation they have acid blood... For more, see Pharyngula and Neurophilosophy.

The Meaning of Life? Or, Why Definitions Are Important...

Larry Moran points to a new article by Carl Zimmer that's up over at Seed, on the search for definitions of life. A lot of space in it is devoted to Carol Cleland, a philosopher, and Christopher Chyba, an astronomer, who argue that

the search for a definition of life is beyond problematic, and we should simply stop looking for one. The quest could either be impossible or scientifically trivial.

They compare the search for definitions of life to alchemy in the middle ages:

Cleland and Chyba also determined that there was an even bigger problem with the pursuit of a definition of life—one that lies in the nature of definitions themselves. "If you really understand what a definition is," says Chyba, "it's not up to handling the problem... ...scientists who try to define life today make the same mistake that alchemists did in the Middle Ages. Alchemists tried to define substances by their properties, without any understanding of the underlying chemistry. Water, for example, was defined according to its ability to dissolve different solids. This definition led alchemists into confusion. Since ice couldn't dissolve anything, it couldn't be water. Alchemists gave the name "water" to things that we know now are nothing of the sort. They called nitric acid aqua fortis, or strong water, because it could dissolve most metals. Aqua regia, or noble water, was actually a mixture of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid that was powerful enough to dissolve even gold and platinum, the so-called noble metals.

Searching for a better definition of water would have not gotten alchemists out of this mire. A solution only came in the 18th century, as scientists formulated a theory of chemistry. The behavior of water and other substances suddenly makes a lot of sense when you realize that they are all composed of atoms, which are in turn composed of smaller particles. Chemists can now say water is H2O. However, "'Water is H2O' isn't a definition," says Cleland. "It's a discovery."

So what's the remedy? To forget about definitions and build a 'theory' of life, apparently. How will we do that?

For Cleland, the most promising way to build a theory of life is to look for alien life. In 2013, the European Space Agency plans to put a rover back on Mars. Called Exomars, it will drill into the Martian crust to seek out signs of life. NASA has plans of its own on the drawing board, including one possible mission that would bring Martian soil back to Earth for intense study. Meanwhile, other promising habitats for life, such as some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, beckon. Cleland argues that finding alien life would allow us to start figuring out what is truly universal about life, rather than just generalizing from life as we know it. Only when we have more data, she reasons, will we have a basis for comparison. As it stands now, says Cleland, "we have no grist for the theoretical mill."

I agree more data is vital, but to me their trivialising of the need for a definition is entirely the wrong way round. Looking for alien life to gather more information on what life is is all well and good, but it presumes that we will be able to recognise it as life. And how will we do that? Either we will simply look at it and say 'That's life', in which case we already have an implicit definition, or we will have an explicit definition we compare it to to decide whether it is life or not. And this is where their analogy with the discovery of H20 falls down. Alchemists had another 'alien' form of water right in front of them: ice. They couldn't recognise it, however, as their definition of water was faulty - they had defined it as something that could dissolve things. How was progress made? Well, they looked further into the matter and realised everything is composed of atoms - they then applied this knowledge to water as defined by the old definition, realised ice was identical to it and subsumed both substances within a new definition referring to H20.

I submit that science progresses by defining things, examining them, applying this new knowledge to the old definition to make a better definition, and so on, ad infinitum - a 'virtuous circle', if you will. But the vital point is to make any headway, you need to kick start the circle - you need some kind of definition, no matter how bad, to decide what it is you're actually talking about. So to say 'the whole definition project is worthless.' is far from the truth. The definition project is of imperative importance: however, we don't need to have a perfect definition at the first try. Let's not agonise for ages for it. Let's just grab the most reasonable one we have now off the shelf, plug it in to science's 'virtuous circle', and sit back and admire the results.

Cool Atheist Music 2 - Voltaire - God Thinks

This week's cool atheist music comes from Voltaire. No, not the French Enlightenment philosopher, the Cuban acoustic guitar wielding goth scenester. It's pointing out one of the most dangerous things about religion - that you can add 'God says' (or indeed, 'God thinks'), to any statement, and in doing so justify any atrocity you fancy. The video is some random anime, but the sound quality is much better on it than any of the live performances I could find.

If anyone has any ideas for cool atheist music feel free to contribute, and hopefully this series can become a little more regular! For previous posts in this series, see here.

The Truth

This is the truth. Posted mainly because currently UK creationist loons Truth In Science (who incidentally, are great for a laugh if you haven't seen them before) rank higher on google than the truth when I search for it. And not at all because they're offering an iPod. Okay, maybe a little.

Blake's Law

In the comments on his post denying evolution, zenbullets says:

Your arguments are not as rational, I’m afraid you are the fundamentalists of which I speak. There is a page of objections to evolution on Wikipedia as long as the evidence for page, which only proves that there are many opinions on the subject.

I call Blake's Law. (I know technically it's calling someone a fundamentalist atheist, but the problem is this guy claims he's an atheist, and says scientists are the fundamentalists. So I think it counts.) Do I win now?

Deadlines

Just a quick note to say updates may be sketchy over the next few days - I have a 3000 word dissertation to hand in Friday and it's currently a 0 word dissertation. Best go work....

WTF?

Okay, after the last atheist denier of evolution turned out to be a hoax, I'm just hoping that this one is the same. Zenbullets accuses Dawkins of giving atheists a bad name, and states:

Richard Dawkins writes upon this subject in his most recent book, The God Delusion. He correctly points out that the human mind is vulnerable to certain types of memetic viruses, those that play on our fear of death, the unknown, and our arrogance as a species. Religions are the most sophisticated and resilient of these memes. But there is hypocrisy to his message, because while he writes eloquently of atheism, he doesn’t acknowledge that he has his own belief system, one that he clings to as desperately, and espouses as vocally, as any evangelical Christian.

Richard Dawkins has been the loudest prophet of Darwinism the world has ever known. He is Saul level. He has been perhaps the most significant single influence in the current popularity of the Theory of Evolution since Darwin himself. He calls Evolution a science, but this is a common misconception. It is a faith.

Eh? Please tell me this is a joke. And if it's not, direct him to talk origins, pronto.

UPDATE: I've just realised I share a blog roll with this person! Zenbullets is on the Atheist Blogroll. While I realise it is logically possible to be an atheist and not believe in evolution, I feel being a member of the atheist blogroll should preclude being a science denying loon. But maybe that's just me.

UPDATE: He said scientists are fundamentalists! I call Blake's Law and win. Ha.