J.C.Sanford: Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome

Hey CTD thanks so much for this post!!
That doesnt even go up but the science continues...to...Somehow I missed Sanford and I am “all over” C/E in Ithaca. PRI and the Arts Center will be putting on the a play version of “Inherit the Wind” next month.Of course I do understand what Sanford is saying, but one must put it into some temporal perspective (He was a prof while I was a student but I did not know him then either). Cornell has an Ag quad that is topographically distinct but contemporary with the Human Ecology school yet different again, from the Arts and Engineering Quads while there-at the difference of North Campus and West cuts across what for Bertrand Russell is %the% difference (different once again from Harvard's retrospective) of psychology and physics (except possible at a "turnning point"). Thus differences of opinions are made on slight alterations of walking grades(all very confusing to those who don’t appreciate the difference of Devonian and Cretaceous fossils!!)In the Amazon review was

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shows in Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome that the "Primary Axiom" is false. The Primary Axiom is the foundational evolutionary premise - that life is merely the result of mutations and natural selection. In addition to showing compelling theoretical evidence that whole genomes can not evolve upward

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Well, in 1988 after returning from Africa, I proposed a change to Euclids axioms in regard to bilateral symmetry but presented it not to botanists but instead to the most mathematically adept mathematician (Simon Levin now at Princeton)then biologically on campus. He felt that that was too “philosophical”. So even if one “thinks” that Sandford really ”has’ something with his term “primary axiom” I would doubt it. The whole process of scaling between creationist and evolutionist views is simply one of degrees of doubt. Making it into a strict difference subject to logic actually requires one to establish axioms themselves. I have done so herehttp://axiompanbiog.com/aboutus.aspxAs for “entropy” and the genome, well, this is more a matter of analysis than it was of some synthetic a priori, so unless he has actually been able to present a concept, there-where only a percept is I see little that would enable me to guess that he could have made harmonious Gould’s and Gladyshev’s hierarchies out of some set of particulars. To get a universal as Gladsyehv had done requires that mathematically inclined people like Levin try to think of language beyond Carnap. My posting on EVC has shown me this is not being done. Chomsky is intellectually in the way and Gould simply thought of Chimp-Human breeding in that’s stead. What is at issue is the difference of classes and propositions.Mine are here:
http://axiompanbiog.com/legals.aspxIt is great that you found *this*. It will give me an angle to laugh at the man rather than the science when I go to watch “Inherit the Wind” across the street from where I am posting this.Edited by Brad McFall, : bad grammer

Well, I have not read the book but I would like to.I go to Church with many former and current profs from Cornell from chemical engineering, natural resources, history and physics for example and know some rather personally. There is a biology teacher as an elder here who studies photosynthesis.Will Provine spends a lot of class time, I understand, discussing the relation of asthetic appeal and hypothesis testing so I would guess that whatever it was that Sanford tried to encompass in that page of "disproof" could at best be the claim that asthetic appeals *may* be used where Will probably still would insist on statistical dissection of the data. There is no doubt that a lot of ecological resarch goes on at Cornell without attempting to involve specific evolutionary questions. When he says that "evolution" may be able to go on without it he may simply be referring to a large part of the research being done in the department of Evolution, Ecology and Systematics goes on without dealing with specifics that say Provine would insist are required. The biologist at my Church simply has a thing for Oxygen and plant photosynthesis and keeps the evolutionary thought out of his work and independent of his worshiping, I would guess from what he said about ID last year at a Church function.It is certainly true that when it comes to trying to discuss NS+mutation as a whole this is really only discussed as "philosophy" and not practical biology as I indicated in my first post in this thread. Indeed a lot of work at Cornell is NOT about evolution as a whole but at specific functions and adaptations and sociobiologically slanted thoughts. Tom Einser had written in the 70s that biologists can not really get at the changes very well and there was little mathematical support for the work when I was there. I suspect things are different at Harvard from what I hear from Will.It may certainly be the case that Sandord "got by without" it, but it is strange that when I tried to buy into it, I was told to pass by because I simply rejected the best biophilosophy around, namely a version of James' Harvardian post-behaviorist influence psychologically. On this I may have some filliation with Sanford's turn from academic difference but I will have to read his work. Nontheless social and psychological causality that may overvalue images for the particulars would not be what I would have in the perception that decides if translation in space and form-making can get by without NS+mutation. I do agree that the biology of Harvardian Mayr and Gould and Wilson should be struck out but I do not seem to have a fast enough ball to send them to a different ball park as of yet.But you are probably correct about evos being "mute" on it. Hearing what DS Wilson said on Darwin Day showed me that sociobiology is at war with organcism to such a degree that any external barrier to thier own walls of discussion will not be recognized simply for the same difference that seperates a pictoral language like Chinese from mine of say, English and only error will be in this place of possible encroachement.Edited by Brad McFall, : No reason given.

My guess is that Sanford probably is just using the word "axiom" as some sort of pure abstract simple and not something that is subject to predication, a kind of particular used in conversation with emphasis on the word "primary" but not possessing the actual mathmatical meaning you are intimately more familiar with.I had explictly attempted to use "Hilbert's programme" in biology and relate incidence axioms themselves to biology.I think he simply must mean that NS+mutation is where all discussion of evolution he disagrees with starts, hence primary and thus for purposes of reference to the practical business of biology, axiomatic or devoid of reference to particulars but not universal.Edited by Brad McFall, : of

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he applied the concept of signal-to-noise ratios (from information theory) to show that the selection pressures are too weak for natural selection to transmit useful information into the genome.

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Respected Cornell geneticist rejects Darwinism in his recent book – Uncommon Descent
There *is* a disagreement among panbiogeographers as to whether "trait information" has to be recieved as being "transmitted" between generations. It appears from this quote that Sanford used "information entropy" rather than Gladyshev entropy and thus he would have given the omnipotence of NS a leg up it might not deserve.So...
if when he said,

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I became convinced that the Axiom could be shown to be wrong to any reasonable and open-minded individual. This realization was exhilarating, but again - frightening. I realized that I had a moral obligation to openly challenge this most sacred of cows.

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I can only balk abit since there-in was a kind of entropy that was probably how he showed it.I can agree with

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Although I had achieved considerable success and notoriety within my own particular specialty (applied genetics), it would mean I would have to be stepping out of the safety of my own little niche. I would have to begin to explore some very big things, including aspects of theoretical genetics which I had always accepted by faith alone. I felt compelled to do all this - but I must confess I fully expected to simply hit a brick wall. To my own amazement, I gradually realized that the seemingly “great and unassailable fortress” which has been built up around the primary axiom is really a house of cards. The Primary Axiom is actually an extremely vulnerable theory - in fact it is essentially indefensible. Its apparent invincibility derives mostly from bluster, smoke, and mirrors. A large part of what keeps the Axiom standing is an almost mystical faith, which the true-believers have in the omnipotence of natural selection. Furthermore, I began to see that this deep-seated faith in natural selection was typically coupled with a degree of ideological commitment - which can only be described as religious. I started to realize (again with trepidation) that I might be offending a lot of people’s religion!

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except the "house" of cards only applies within the academic walls and not to what we can get to on the internet.but in that case I start from a larger perspective of logic than even Russell wanted to do and cut out the necessarily extant academic accordian that permits EITHER a us or british word to rule the day.

It may be (rethorical) I really do want to and will buy the book so as to read for myself. "Cow" may simply indicate the direction up Tower Road away from where he works and away from the mass of Cornell.It may however be that Sanford had become frustrated for the same form I am. There is no doubt that biologists at Cornell did assume NS+selection or evolution even if they did not use evolutionary answers in their published papers. One can show that electric fish swim along electro-magnetic field lines arcs rather than straight ones without discussing how the trait may have come about in supposed geological time, just as it is rare that biologists from Mudd Hall rarely frequent my current stomping ground that is occasioned often by engineers but not geologists even though I can see that building. This "faith", which it is not, of course, came out for me when Amy McCune asked the best population genetically minded profs and grad students what a "gene" was. They could not answer. It was just the thingy they used in calculations. So the question I guess as you notice it is, is the two words "primary axiom" taken by the author as predetermined conclusion or an actually refletive undetermined sign for something in "biology and langauge"?It does look like from the paragraphs I have read that Sanford is using some "tricks" however there is a kind of frustration I mentioned in the paragraph above. I think that tension results from something (it may be peculiar to US biology, I do not know) Wittgenstein pointed out Bertrand Russell. L.W. said, that one can not "state" a senetence but only "show" it. It is possible that Sanford quite honestly uses the words primary axiom to 'show' something he can not state. One may say this even if one did not know if it was true whether or not Sanford actually could or could not absolutely do so.This kind of reading logic and biology is kinda my own, but I can usually judge an author not based on the statements they make but on what else the text "shows" to me, This is not a very objective perspective but it usually works. Much of the initial ID papers were not "showing" me anything I had not already been able to "get out" of texts and Biblically showed me less than I was already getting out of YEC creationism so I could determine those texts had not really advanced much. I do not know what all of Sanfords words would do for me.I can say in general that somewhere Gould commented that Mayr had thought Woodger's attempt to infuse the Boole-Frege movement into biology was OK but then got cold feet because he felt that logical postivism would oust his organacist preference. There is defintely more need for Woodger's use of Russell and Whitehead where being a member of the panbiogeographic guild is going to change the research programme of biologists generally but this does not come all the way to what can defintely be shown technically from what can be stated syllogistically as of yet.It comes down to various abilities or prohibitions towards hierarchical statements that have forms among logical types of Russell, hierarchy of languages of Chomsky, levels of selection of Gould, visual depictions of morphological sequences etc and as to if the showing of them is being prevented or omitted where the statements may not be syllogistically complet(ed) but can be presented, whether hidden by rhetoric or simply a trick played by isolated senses used to access the data.So far I am little inclined to read Sanford's work in this book nook thread as a bit Johnoson like, like using the debate to clear his own mind rather than clarifying confusions in others, but I have my own goat to milk and it is not a venomous snake.

I am trying to figure out if x is a symbol such that x=”primary axiom” subsists.Russell said, “Suppose you take such a proposition as :’There is at least one thing in the world’. That is a proposition that you can express in logical terms. It will mean, if you like, that the propositional function ”x=x’ is a possible one. That is a proposition that you can express in logical terms; but you cannot know from logic whether it is true or false. So far as you do know it, you know it empirically, because there might happen not to be a universem and then it would not be true. It is merely an accident, so to speak, that there is a universe.”(page 240) It is my suspicion and not more than said accident, that, when people like Sanford are writing books like he did, they are trying to express something like x=x^3 but today I am commenting only on the difference of the words; “proposition”, “propositional function”, “class”, “form”, and “variable”+-collection. If one attempts to extend Russell’s use of the terms “traditional doctrine of the syllogism” to Kant’s notion of the three branches of government being like a syllogism then one is close to what the form reifies into no matter the creationist bent. That is all I can chronicle at the present moment.Russell also wrote: (page 233-4) I have done this for the word “track” but from what I have read so far, Sanford did not do this for his words “primary axiom”.The issue came from Russell when he said, “as a matter of fact, the idea of form is more fundamental than the idea of class” and I am still only provisionally agreeing that what goes around comes around while I asserted that molecular facts exists. The web page does.http://axiompanbiog.com/panbioglnks.aspxIt is possible only general ones do, but given the amount of emphasis on hierarchies in post modern times it seems impossible to be able to separate them (so far for me) on paper unless these also exist. Howfar tracks can be replaced by symbols other than lines I have not investigated. That may not be necessary however if more attention was paid to the problem however.

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There is, however, just this to observe, viz., that the form of a proposition is never a constituent of that proposition itself. If you assert that ”Socrates loves Plato’, the form of that proposition is the form of a dual relation, but this is not a constituent of the proposition. If it were you would have to have that constituent related to the other constituents. You will make the form much too substantial if you think of it as really one of the things that have that form, so that the form of a proposition is certainly not a constituent of the proposition itself. Nevertheless it may possibly be a constituent of general statements about propositions that have that form, so I think it is possible that logical propositions might be interpreted as being about forms.

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This explains why we can go further on the web than the CIA keeps kidding in the walls of academia.All quotes from B. Russell’s “Logic and Knowledge” Capricorn Books 1971Edited by Brad McFall, : name

Well,

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a few minutes of thought to the issue can see that entropy's going to outpace natural selection.

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Well, this is why it somewhat matters what kind of entropy one has given to thought. If it was information entropy one might thunk some kinda feedback between NS and entropy as to extinction and this makes it hard to say which is outpacing which. I think the generalized form of this kind of coupled interaction is generally discussed in co-evolution, Lotka-Volterra equations, and as far as I could extract it, it was what Wright meant when he wrote of "supplementary space and time information" as input to population genetics.Even if Entropy is used in Gladyshev's sense one might think some particular relation between entropy and NS such that it would be hard to make the kind of line that Fisher drew during the Synthesis when he likened rather than related fitness and the 2nd law of thermo. It would depend on how all of thermodynamics was materially a part of form-making and translation in space but as Sanford seems to have used the information type his arguement seems more psychological (which may be nontheless not less persuavie to those that have ears to hear...)than material to me. I still have not read the book so I can not say much more, just now.

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at any rate) are always saying the reason we can't see evolution is because it works so slowly. Our genes aren't deteriorating slowly; it can be seen from one generation to the next. It has been seen, and measured. (The rate is

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I must admit that I do not have a clear sense of what this “rate” is or must be(not that I didn’t try to get a job working on it however). Such an intuition seems pregnant in Gould’s writing but I fear that he simply had the time differentiation of any arbitrary variable in mind when assessing its valuation. He seems to have constructed a system of concepts around a general idea that whatever this “rate” is it is not in line with
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Kelvin Thompson’s thought process (unless there IS direct imposition of force which Gould also doubts is to be a centerpiece of the hierarchic expansion of evolutionary theory). Yet to distinguish which comes first the white patch or the patch of white seems like no matter the evolution is it has to deal with this thought process at least phenomenologically.Gould’s ideation (as a foil to compare from) which rejects both Fisher’s and Thompson’s views directly bearing on thermodynamics and fitness or geological time seems to explain to me why Gould’s science is not able to get where I am going with this distinction of entropy. Of course I am not “going” anywhere but it is not the Red Queen viewpoint.That’s the biological part.

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Perhaps I should not have said entropy is going to outpace selection. It would be better to say it is outpacing it. We have more defects than we can count, and they're continually increasing. On the other hand, we see no evolution among humans or any other living things. The race is so lopsided it's no contest.

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Besides what can be either deterministically or logically determined there is “the” extant statistical problem. A topic may be fairly well reflected on but lack the proper statistical test of or for its reality. When one makes the lopsided observation, which is easy enough, this is, (in addition to your narration seems to me), in part because the statistical test to extract selection from other causes has not been made. Look simply at the difference of opinion between Fisher and Wright and it is easy to see how this tension can be increased by more sophisticated statistical approaches to data synthesis. If or when some new stat system is created entropy turns to mud not matter how many years it had been outpacing prior. The work of Bill Shipley has not been applied to Sanford’s vs. Gladyshev’s approach to the same organ under entropy, no matter how formally. analyzed. My preference is with Wright but there may be Brits more interested in Fisher’s approach. Dawkins’ is always going to disagree with me on this point, no matter how much physics is brought into the praxis.The difficulty DOES come down with the word “copy”, while you spelled ,

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due to copying errors

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as Bertrand Russell has referred to something he called “faint copies” .I could get into this in this thread but I DO understand your point. To know whether something is damaged or deteriorated one needs to know the difference of the “utility” vs. “adaptation” of the thing. It is not clear to me that information entropy is able to encompass any permutation of the relation to terms to these concepts while phenomenological thermodynamic entropy may. The adaptation of an object need not have the end of being *possibly* asymptotically fully utililized while the use of the same object indicates a limit otherwise. Information entropy only seems to apply to this difference if there was absolute place and science can indeed be done without that. Otherwise information entropy must be restricted to the form of the communication channel as well.