{"id":215,"date":"2019-11-23T15:50:46","date_gmt":"2019-11-23T19:50:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/nazli-turan\/?p=215"},"modified":"2019-11-23T15:50:46","modified_gmt":"2019-11-23T19:50:46","slug":"scientific-explanations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/nazli-turan\/2019\/11\/23\/scientific-explanations\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientific Explanations"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1><strong>Design explanation: determining the constraints on what can be alive, Arno G. Wouters<\/strong><\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li><u>the most important distinction:<\/u><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cYet, unlike accidental generalities and like causal relations, functional dependencies are in a sense physically necessary: an organism that has the dependent trait cannot be alive (or will be less viable) if it has the alternative trait instead of the needed one. In other words, a functional dependency is a constraint on what can be alive.\u201d pg.75.<\/p>\n<p>I think it is important for the philosophers\u2019 perspective that there are boundary conditions and initial conditions for every physical system depending on their scale in space (dimensions in nm, um etc.) and their presence in time (<em>e.g<\/em>. how much time a spaceship needs to decelerate). Here, the author is making an important attempt to state a <em>constraint<\/em> to be alive by elucidating functional dependencies.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><u>a clarification question\/criticism:<\/u><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cThey (functional dependence relations) are synchronic in the sense that the need must be satisfied at the time that the demand arises.\u201d pg.75.<\/p>\n<p>I understood this statement as the demand (more oxygen in blood system) and supply (lungs) should be available at the same time. However, evolution is nothing like a lightening. It is more like a process and it cannot be understood if we don\u2019t consider the changes happening in the environmental system. For example, fish used gill in water and took the solvated oxygen in water. But, before then, there were not enough oxygen in the atmosphere for a <em>very<\/em> long time. First, oxygen had been released from the oxidized rocks, then oxygen species had resolved in oceans. During this time, there were only little planktons and bacteria. As the level of oxygen increased in oceans, evolution made a progress emerging fish with gills. My point is that the author never mentioned the effects of environment itself directing evolution and causing natural selection. The demand arises not only due to the creator\u2019s needs, but also due to the changes in surrounding and this happens in a long time period.<\/p>\n<h1><strong>Why Ask, \u201cWhy?\u201d? An Inquiry Concerning Scientific Explanation, Wesley C. Salmon<\/strong><\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li><u>the most important distinction:<\/u><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cDevelopments in twentieth\u2010century science should prepare us for the eventuality that some of our scientific explanations will have to be statistical\u2014not merely because our knowledge is incomplete (as Laplace would have maintained), but rather because nature itself is inherently statistical.\u201d pg.6.<\/p>\n<p>I just wanted to say, \u2018thank you!\u2019 for this beautiful sentence. Actually, this sentence is also beating the deterministic view of Laplace and others. For example, statistical thermodynamics, which is the first step before diving into the particle\u2019s world and quantum mechanics, has been empowered by Boltzmann, and he was so alone to defend his ideas and eventually he committed suicide. I\u2019m still having trouble to understand why the acceptation of a statistical world required too much effort in human\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><u>a clarification question\/criticism:<\/u><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cThe transmission of light from one place to another, and the motion of a material particle, are obvious examples of causal processes. The collision of two billiard balls, and the emission or absorption of a photon, are standard examples of causal interactions.\u201d pg.8.<\/p>\n<p>Transmission, emission and absorption are three modes of radiation acting on a surface, so those are basically light-electron interactions, although some say transmission is just a passing wave. I think, the separation of transmission to state it as a causal process is wrong in the sense of radiation. I wouldn\u2019t distinguish causal process and causal interaction, as Hume suggested but I agree with the idea that cause and effect are more analogous to continuous processes which brings interactions into play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Design explanation: determining the constraints on what can be alive, Arno G. Wouters the most important distinction: \u201cYet, unlike accidental generalities and like causal relations, functional dependencies are in a sense physically necessary: an organism that has the dependent trait cannot be alive (or will be less viable) if it has the alternative trait instead [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3115,"featured_media":201,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32685],"tags":[74900],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philosophy-of-science","tag-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/nazli-turan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/nazli-turan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/nazli-turan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/nazli-turan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/nazli-turan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/nazli-turan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/nazli-turan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/nazli-turan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/nazli-turan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/nazli-turan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/nazli-turan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}