In Biology, Replacing Chance with Purpose Is the New Paradigm

Abraham, Aristotle, biology, Chance and Necessity, Chemistry, Christianity, Darwinism, Evolution, God Hypothesis, Intelligent Design, Jaques Monod, Kansas, laws of nature, Mariusz Tabaczek, materialism, Modern Synthesis, molecular biology, natural processes, naturalism, Neo-Darwinism, Nobel laureates, paradigm, physics, purpose, René Descartes, science of purpose, scientific atheism, scientism, St. Thomas Aquinas, teleology, telos, theistic evolution, Thomistic Aristotelianism, Thomists
In my most recent post in this series on the science of purpose, I concluded that the proper means of understanding our world requires that we include both purpose and necessity as fundamental elements of any comprehensive framework. I noted that the flagship phrase of 20th-century scientific atheism, as articulated by Nobel laureate Jaques Monod in his book Chance and Necessity, acknowledged necessity but explicitly and intentionally eliminated purpose from scientific dialogue.  Now some fifty years later we see that Monod’s paradigm has failed. And that the only possible way of understanding life on earth is to replace chance with purpose. Doing so reverses an epistemological trend stretching back almost 150 years. As such, it is incumbent that we fortify and substantiate the basis for what many would see as a revolutionary new paradigm. That is the goal of this essay. In Read More › Source
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Teleology: Anticipation and Necessity

anticipation, August Weismann, Bible, building blocks, Chance and Necessity, chipmunks, cognition, Design Inference, DNA, electromagnetism, Evolution, Faith & Science, Ferrari, final causality, flowering plants, Ford Mustang, Francis Crick, grizzly bear, immanent power, Intelligent Design, Isaac Newton, James Hutchison Stirling, Jaques Monod, natural selection, natural theology, necessity, nectar, perch, pollinators, representational directedness, rodent, Technology, telos, Thomas Aquinas, Thomism, tuna, Wiliam Dembski, wolf
Imagine a primordial grizzly bear on the northern edge of the forest adjacent to the Arctic. His soma senses the differences of the new environment. Source
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Discerning the Shape of a “New Biology”

Aristotle, Bertrand Russell, biology, Carl Woese, causation, cell, Chance and Necessity, David Hume, dispositionalism, Evolution News, final cause, Intelligent Design, intentionality, Isaac Newton, Jacques Monod, Life Sciences, Michael Behe, organelle, powers ontology, purpose, René Descartes, science of purpose, telos, The Design Inference, Walter Elsasser, William Dembski
Purpose and intentionality permeate and in fact define the living state, in contrast to the inanimate. Source
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Is the Cell a Machine, or More Like a Mind? 

Barbara McClintock, cell, cellular architecture, cellular behavior, cellular cognition, Chance and Necessity, circuitry, cognition, conformation, Daniel Nicholson, DNA, electronic circuitry, function, functional promiscuity, Intelligent Design, intracellular transport, Jacques Monod, Journal of Theoretical Biology, lymphotactin, machine, machine conception of the cell, machine metaphor, membranes, molecular biology, neural circuitry, Neuroscience & Mind, nucleic acids, proteins, self-assembly, Sewall Wright, wiring
At least as we’re accustomed to thinking in our age of AI, the alternative to a machine is a mind. Source
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