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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In Search of a Unified Theory of Life

Albert Einstein, Ambrose Bierce, biology, Carl Woese, complementarity, Darwin's Black Box, dualism, dualisms, Erwin Schrödinger, Essays on Life Itself, function, gravitation, Inertia, Irreducible Complexity, Isaac Newton, language, Life Itself, Mass, Michael Behe, molecular biologists, natural selection, phenotype, Philosophy of Science, physics, randomness, René Descartes, Robert Rosen, science of purpose, scientific atheism, scientific reasoning, scientism, structure, structure-function relationships, The Devil's Dictionary, What Is Life?
It can be said that Erwin Schrödinger anticipated what Michael Behe formally articulated as irreducible complexity. Source
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Eavesdropping in the Platonic Academy 

algorithms, Andreas Wagner, Aristotle, biology, C.H. Waddington, Casey Luskin, creationists, demiurge, Denis Noble, DNA, Erwin Schrödinger, Evolution, evolutionary biology, Günter Bechly, Hans Driesch, Harvard University, Intelligent Design, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Lars Löfgren, Michael Levin, microbes, Philosophy of Science, Plato, Plato's Revenge, Platonism, René Descartes, René Thom, Richard Sternberg, Robert Rosen, sequoia trees, Summer Seminar on Intelligent Design, theoretical biology, Tufts University, University of Zurich, vitalism
I can relate to the paleontologist Günter Bechly, who, after hearing Sternberg lay out his thesis, lay awake unable to sleep as he considered the implications. Source
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My Briar Patch: Notes of a Country Doctor 

Biologic Revolution, Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox, briar patch, cancer, Daniel Witt, Francis Crick, geocentrism, heliocentrism, Intelligent Design, Jacques Monod, James Watson, John Searle, mechanistic consensus, Medicine, painting, piano, planets, René Descartes, science of purpose, scientific atheism, Stuart Kauffman, telos, The Song of the South, The Undying Soul, UC Berkeley, University of California at San Francisco
It took me about twenty years after medical school to break free of the intellectual "comfort" afforded by the mechanistic consensus. 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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To Understand Nature’s Intentionality, We Must Go Back to the Future

"God of the gaps", Aristotle, body, causation, Christianity, DNA, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Jonathan Wells, Michael Behe, mind, Nicolaus Copernicus, Pierre-Simon Laplace, proteins, René Descartes, ribosomes, science of purpose, scientism, soul, Stephen Meyer, subject-object metaphysics, Thomas Aquinas, William Dembski
It required the truly inimitable intellect of Aquinas to Christianize and modernize what Aristotle had said 1,600 years before him. Source
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Five Reasons Why AI Programs Are Not “Human”

adrenaline, algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, Blake Lemoine, Boundaries of Humanity Project, computer science, Culture & Ethics, DNA, emotions, engineers, Feelings, free will, Google, human cells, imagination, Isaac Asimov, LaMDA, Language Model for Dialogue Applications, life, Love, machines, materialists, Neuroscience & Mind, René Descartes, self-awareness, sentience, software, soul, Stanford University, Three Laws of Robotics, toaster, Washington Post, William Hurlbut
A Google engineer, Blake Lemoine, mistakenly designated one AI program "sentient." Source
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