Part 1 of Proportionality
Things are beginning to become more complicated. Not only in general concerning perceived phenomena are most things proportionate and of appropriate magnitude – temperature, humidity, weather, specific gravities of substances and so on – but scientific laws, like Newton’s, likewise are those which are just right for us; are proportionate locally and of appropriate magnitude. And these scientific laws like Newton’s are those which lie behind even those exceptions to the general rule of phenomena being proportionate – hurricanes, earthquakes, plagues etc. The laws of nature which govern hurricanes for instance are those which govern all weather.
Layers upon layers of proportionality then. Local and specific appropriate magnitudes. An interdependence, an interweaving, an interaction, an interconnection, interspersion, of proportionalities and of appropriate magnitudes – an acute and chronic fine balance of proportionalities in a three dimensional weave of the fabric of local existence; of human and terrestrial life and existence, and their continuity.
This complexity is not wholly graspable in its particulars I do indeed believe. Just as figures like light years as miles and billions of dollars, lots of zeros, just go off our radar for grasping how much they mean or really are; so too this interweave and this pile and texture is just over the top for our computational minds; only the principle of the idea behind such a number or behind such a stash of money is available to us to be envisaged, imagined, felt emotionally.
The old and trite butterfly at the equator sneezing and a polar bear at the Arctic catching a cold is peanuts, small change, compared to this universal setup of complex interspersed, interwoven etc local (and possibly intergalactic?) proportionality and appropriate magnitudes.
Once this has been established, now we can look into the circular argument made earlier, and so give some light perhaps on how this circularlity affects what else I have said in this essay.
Indeed it is perfectly true that say, Normal Temperature and Pressure (NTP) is normal; is proportionate and of appropriate magnitude; otherwise it would not be NTP!! But the actual measurements of say x bars and y degrees are in figures which represent conditions which are just right for life on earth. Life on earth as it now is would not have, could not have occurred if NTP had been radically something other than x bars and y degrees.
Those who object to this reasoning would say perhaps that had NTP been radically different either no life would have or could have appeared on earth; or else a radically different life on earth would have appeared. This is all speculation; there is no way of establishing this at all. At best comparisons can be made with planets etc which have radically different to earth NTPs but these are and remain only hazards of comparisons. Have we as a race and species not seen many many of our most dyed in the wool assumptions about the outer planets and their satellites blown up in smoke entirely recently; by way of the actuality of space probes going there and seeing the things for themselves? The fact remains that NTP here on earth is as it is at x bars and y degrees.
Now the arguments are circular no doubt about that; NTP is NTP because NTP is NTP; x bars is xbars and y degrees is y degrees because they are such. They just are such – we may possibly go no further in the last instance as to why they are such – we are in the realms of metaphysics and so in the realms of specualtion.
Now it is just the same case of circularity of argument for a theory (not really a theory) which nearly everyone accepts as being indubitably the case and actual and true – its axiom on which its whole collossal structure rests is circular and is not a theory but in fact a loose hypothesis – this is the axiom: ‘survival of the fittest’.
One answers the question why does x survive by saying ‘x is the fittest’. When asked why x is the fittest one can only reply ‘because x has survived.’ A circular argument, no worse, nor no better than those put forward by what I am advocating; and possibly not worse than advocates of Intelligent Design suggest? Why has x survived? Because God made it to survive. How do we know God has made it to survive? Because it has survived.
Take your choice – the one is as good as the other – but no – this is not true – the arguments from proportionality and from appropriate magnitudes and so one small step from Intelligent Design have an advantage of greater explanatory power than has the axiom taken from the theory of evolution. Evolution is a theory of biology and is applied to life and to life forms only. It says nothing about rock and mineral formations; about light and heat and gravity and electromagnetism and about interplanetary, interstellar, intergalactic, and beyond, what happens thereabouts and why and how.
Moreover the hypothesis of proportionality and of appropriate magnitudes is able to be extrapolated so as to accommodate conditions in other stellar localities than ours; and has potential to be applicable at all magnitudes; and regardless whether life is present or is not, and regardless whether life forms as our life- forms are can be postulated, or perhaps some other kinds of life-forms.
Thus given that proportionality and appropriate magnitudes might be applied universally and with as much argumentary power as ‘survival of the fittest’ is argued; but yet with an almost absolute and universal explanatory power; plus with it leaving open a probable window for God as the Intelligent Designer to wave to us out of; the concepts of proportionality and of appropriate magnitudes seem to me to be unjustly regarded and much underestimated and should be considered and approved more readily than they are at present.
Scientists feel that to approve such ideas as being science is demeaning to them because it represents for them ‘a bending of the rules’ because it is seen as being unscientific. Yet so much has been built up upon and around the edifice of the mantra, ‘survival of the fittest’, and which claims to itself regardless great integrity and great acclaim – and is held to be good science.
I leave you here with I hope food for thought.
You can also find this article at our metanomalies blog: http://metanomalies.com/proportionality/