Aristotle on the Origin of Life

[rrobs]

I was making a joke.

I did get the joke. Even here, I couldn't imagine anyone really thinking that. Then again out of 7 billion people in this world, someone is bound to think that, but I was pretty sure it wasn't you. I should have acknowledge the joke. I just went straight into a mini diatribe. Read more, write less maybe.

 

[rrobs]

And yet, eohippus was not a horse. But it was the ancestor of modern horses.

The same with mesohippus and the others.

They are considered horses. I'm pretty sure I remember the Greek word "mesohippus" actually means "middle horse."

 

[rrobs]

But we *do* have a massive amount of evidence for say, the shift from autralopithecenes and homo in the fossil record. This happened over the course of a couple of million years, which is about the time line expected for such change. And this is far from the only example. We similar shifts in cervids, in bovines, in carnivores, etc.

Have they come to a definite conclusion on the shift from autralopithecenes and homo? Last thing I knew was that the jury was still out on that matter. But I don't keep up on that stuff. I spend my time researching the scriptures with the same precision used by science. Somebody just had to show me how to do that. But I digress.

 

[gnostic]

I wonder if another two thousand years of research will lead to a conclusion that makes our current theory of evolution just as ridiculous.

The theory of Evolution has changed since Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace independently developed the Natural Selection mechanism, from the mid to late 19th century.

The decades that followed Darwin’s and Wallace’s death, led to biologists correcting the few errors they have made, refining Natural Selection, with better knowledge of genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry.

Evolution has also expanded beyond Natural Selection, to include newer mechanisms, such as -

• Mutation
• Genetic Drift
• Gene Flow
• Genetic Hitchhiking

These new mechanisms don’t make Natural Selection obsolete or don’t refute Natural Selection; no, these are just alternative mechanisms that covered areas, not covered by Natural Selection.

Science allowed for multiple mechanisms in a single theory.

For instance, in mechanical engineering, they have designed different engines for production/manufacturing, for different vehicles/crafts/vessels, eg engines -

• for automobile/cars of all types and sizes,
• for larger vehicles trucks,
• for rail transport, like trains and trams,
• jet engines for planes of all types and size,
• rocket engines for space travels or unmanned crafts, different types engines for different types of vessels that travel over water and under.

There are engines that are propel by steam, by petrol, diesel and gases engines, by electricity (eg hybrid engines, solar-powered vehicles, while most train and trams used electricity supplied through overhead cables or electric-conductive rails, etc), by nuclear power reactors, and so on.

These different types of engines, don’t necessarily make other engines obsolete.

Just as engineering can have multiple types of engineering, a single scientific theory can have multiple mechanisms, and the theory of Evolution is such type a theory, that incorporated multiple mechanisms, without making the original mechanism obsolete, as first explained by Darwin and Wallace.

Natural Selection is still the main and very valid mechanism for explaining biodiversity, where/when changed environments force species to adapt or go extinct.

Aristotle is mainly a philosopher, he mostly think, but he doesn’t really do any testing of what he is thinking about. Aristotle don’t do much beyond cursory observation, so Aristotle isn’t a scientist.

I think a better scientist in the classical period was the late 3rd century Archimedes from Syracuse.

Archimedes not only better in science than Aristotle, he was also a mathematician, inventor and engineer. Archimedes was also at astronomer, and was one of the earlier follower of Aristarchus’ heliocentric planetary model (Aristarchus proposed that all (known) planets, including Earth, orbited around the sun, as opposed to the more popular geocentric model, in which the sun orbited and planets orbited around stationary Earth).

People tends to remember Aristotle than Archimedes, because Aristotle left more writings behind, but I preferred Archimedes over Plato and Aristotle.

Anyway, Aristotle got a lot of things wrong about nature, and many of his models are outdated, and wrong.

Darwin’s Natural Selection got better with newer knowledge about biology and newer technology and techniques, eg DNA testing and the genome project.

And lastly, Evolution isn’t about the origin of life, it is about biodiversity of populations of life over time, through one of evolutionary mechanisms (eg Mutation, Genetic Drift, Natural Selection, etc).

The research on the origin of life, is currently undergoing testing with the hypothesis Abiogenesis.

Abiogenesis and Evolution are two different fields of studies.

 

[Skwim]

According to Aristotle, "Life in the first instance, is formed by the inherent energy of the primary elements such as: Earth, Water, Air and Fire which molds and organizes inert matter into living things."Some examples of this idea are fireflies developed from the morning dew, bedbugs and lice developed from the slime of wells and mice along with some higher animals came from moist soil. Aristotle also felt that humans first appeared on Earth in the form of a worm." Age of Life on Earth - The Physics Factbook

I wonder if another two thousand years of research will lead to a conclusion that makes our current theory of evolution just as ridiculous. Can't say for sure, but if history is any guide, I'd say the chances are most excellent that such will be the case.

Aristotle conceives of God as an unmoved mover, the primary cause responsible for the shapeliness of motion in the natural order, and as divine nous, the perfect actuality of thought thinking itself, which, as the epitome of substance, exercises its influence on natural beings as their final cause. These two aspects of God reflect the two defining aspects of Classical Greek Philosophy: the experience of the intelligibility of the natural order and the search for the first principle(s) responsible for its intelligibility, on the one hand, and the experience of nous both as the capacity to behold nature’s intelligibility and as the source of order in the human soul, soul itself being a source of shapely motion in the natural order. source

I wonder if another two thousand years of reflection will lead to a conclusion that makes the current Christian idea of god just as ridiculous. Can't say for sure, but if history is any guide, I'd say the chances are most excellent that such will be the case.

.

 

[blü 2]

According to Aristotle, "Life in the first instance, is formed by the inherent energy of the primary elements such as: Earth, Water, Air and Fire which molds and organizes inert matter into living things."Some examples of this idea are fireflies developed from the morning dew, bedbugs and lice developed from the slime of wells and mice along with some higher animals came from moist soil. Aristotle also felt that humans first appeared on Earth in the form of a worm." Age of Life on Earth - The Physics Factbook

I wonder if another two thousand years of research will lead to a conclusion that makes our current theory of evolution just as ridiculous. Can't say for sure, but if history is any guide, I'd say the chances are most excellent that such will be the case.

At least he had an hypothesis supported by argument to account for how they came into being.

The question arose early in Greek philosophical enquiry, right back to Thales, early 6th century BCE ─ what is the physical world and where does it come from? The question still hasn't gone away ─ you no doubt read about the behavior of anti-hydrogen being in very strong parallel with the behavior of hydrogen ─ a datum that incidentally deepens the mystery as to how come the Big Bang produced more matter than antimatter, that's to say, how come the material world is here at all.

And as you also know, the bible says the world and life on earth exist by magic, but doesn't tell us how magic works. Aristotle, being free of magic, is way way ahead of that.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

According to Aristotle, "Life in the first instance, is formed by the inherent energy of the primary elements such as: Earth, Water, Air and Fire which molds and organizes inert matter into living things."Some examples of this idea are fireflies developed from the morning dew, bedbugs and lice developed from the slime of wells and mice along with some higher animals came from moist soil. Aristotle also felt that humans first appeared on Earth in the form of a worm." Age of Life on Earth - The Physics Factbook

I wonder if another two thousand years of research will lead to a conclusion that makes our current theory of evolution just as ridiculous. Can't say for sure, but if history is any guide, I'd say the chances are most excellent that such will be the case.

What you are describing is a form of creationism that did not make it passed scientific scrutiny. I imagine we will have a pretty impressive body of evidence in another 2000 years that will have eliminated a bunch of gaps for creationists to hide in.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

At the time, they were just as sure of their methods as we are today.

Yes, Newton is very useful.

Hope you don't mind, but the scriptures would agree with you. According to Genesis everything was created after "it's kind." The word "kind" is the Greek word genos which is of course where we get our word genus. The scriptures further declare that all the various life forms, plant and animal, have "seed in itself." What does a rose seed produce? An Oak tree? No! It produces another rose. Of course there are many species of roses, many having evolved over time, but a rose is a rose is a rose. Ditto with dogs, cats, people, etc.

The upshot; while the scriptures allow for evolution with a genus, it does not speak to one genus coming from some other genus.

The scriptures do not even tell us what you claim. Kind in the Bible is not a description of genus in science even if the word has a similar root. Genesis does not align with what we have learned through study and observation. Among those observations is evidence of times when there were no vascular plants, then vascular plants, but no roses. The same for dogs, cats and people. There is nothing offered in Genesis to explain these observations either.

 

[Heyo]

Given that I will depart this earth at some point, I would like to know more about what happens then, than how humans came to be. I believe those answers are in the scriptures.

Reading scripture is lame. Be a scientist, make an experiment.

 

[Native]

Aristotle's physics was also pretty bad, even from a Newtonian perspective.

Once we started *testing* our ideas and requiring the theories be predictive, the chances for this large of a shift are drastically reduced. So, while Newton was wrong, he was still right enough to be useful.

Interesting. Where was Newton wrong and what of his ideas has been completely discarded from modern science?

 

[Native]

Just in general, we need to be careful about conflating natural philosophy with science. While natural philosophy laid some of the foundations for science, it is not science and it's a bit misleading to compare it to such. The thought processes used in natural philosophy are really not the same as what is used today in the sciences, so while the general point of "what we think now might be wildly wrong in the future" stands, there's some significant methodological differences that shouldn't be overlooked. Natural science is grounded in methodological naturalism and empiricism, standards which make the overturning of bedrock theories like gravity and evolution* very, very unlikely.

Also Newton were a Natural Philosopher and I wouldn´t call his "falling apple idea" as a "bedrock theory" at all as his gravity ideas of "celestial motions" failed on the cosmic scales.

 

[Nimos]

Hope you don't mind, but the scriptures would agree with you. According to Genesis everything was created after "it's kind." The word "kind" is the Greek word genos which is of course where we get our word genus. The scriptures further declare that all the various life forms, plant and animal, have "seed in itself." What does a rose seed produce? An Oak tree? No! It produces another rose. Of course there are many species of roses, many having evolved over time, but a rose is a rose is a rose. Ditto with dogs, cats, people, etc.

The problem is that you mixed kind and species.

If you make a category like:

"Vehicle"

From that you can have "Cars", "Trucks", "Motorcycles".... All which are classified as being descended from "Vehicle", Now cars, trucks and motorcycles, even though they have similar properties, are no longer the same type of "Vehicle", But that doesn't mean that they are no longer part of being a "Vehicle". Now someone, figures out that if they adjust a motorcycle slightly they can create a moped, which is vastly different from a car and a truck, yet its still very similar to a motorcycle, so we throw it in that category. But still it doesn't change that a moped, is still not part of being a Vehicle from which all these came from original, based on how we decided to classify what a vehicle were to begin with.

So you have different kinds of Cars, some are blue, some are green etc. But they are all part of Cars species, and all are descendents from "Vehicles".

What creationists do, is say that we have a Car kind. Truck kind, motorcycle kind and a moped kind.

But these are not all "Vehicles"

So do we have a horse kind and a donkey kind?

Because these can breed with each other and create both a mule kind and a hinny kind. Yet they are different. So is the horse the "first/original" kind or is it the donkey?

A mule is the offspring of a male donkey (jack) and a female horse (mare). Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes. Of the two first generation hybrids between these two species, a mule is easier to obtain than a hinny, which is the offspring of a female donkey (jenny) and a male horse (stallion).

 

[exchemist]

I see what you are saying and it has truth to it.

Did Aristotle consider his ideas science or philosophy? I do believe he was considered both, so we don't really know from which perspective he made his statements.

Is it not possible that our scientific method has limitations that some new method developed in the next 2,000 years will make it look just as quaint as we see Aristotle? Of courser if we are closed minded regarding the possibility, then we shall never see an alternative. Please don't ask me what that alternative might be. It will take 2,000 years to answer that one.

There is also a huge difference between observing gravity and observing evolution. Not having seen an actual mutation from one genus to another, all we can do is create models and make inferences. Gravity is easy enough to see. Don't even need any test tubes or flasks to see gravity at work.

Evolution has been seen occurring in the lab. And every cancer sufferer undergoing chemo is painfully aware of evolution occurring within their own bodies.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I wonder if another two thousand years of research will lead to a conclusion that makes our current theory of evolution just as ridiculous.

It won't.

The theory of evolution is a product of well established science.
It is not comparable to the unscientific ideas people had during pre-science ancient times.

Can't say for sure, but if history is any guide, I'd say the chances are most excellent that such will be the case.

History is not a guide in this case.
As said, the ideas of pre-scientific era's are not comparable in that sense to ideas that were the product of the scientific method. Especially when it concerns well-established scientific fields like biological evolution.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

With a closed mind, science will in fact not change very much. All in all, I don't think that it is very scientific to discount the possibility that our present knowledge may not be the final word on things.

There's a HUGE difference between "not being the final word on things" on the one hand and "completely overthrowing a theory" on the other.

How do we know that two thousand years from now they will be calling our age another Dark Age?

They might. But what is factual today, won't stop being factual tomorrow.

Yes we have seen humans change, dogs change, cats change, but we've yet to see a dog become anything other than another dog.

If we WOULD observe a dog become anything other then a dog, then that will falsify, debunk, refute, disprove evolution theory!

Count on a creationist to demand X as evidence for evolution, while in reality X would actually disprove it instead..............

We infer the possibility from what we consider science, but there is no actual observation of one genus evolving into another genus.

Again, if a genus WOULD evolved into ANOTHER genus, then that will falsify, debunk, refute, disprove evolution theory!

Once again, count on a creationist to demand X as evidence for evolution, while in reality X would actually disprove it instead..............

The scriptures do allow for evolution within a genus (God created all things after it's kind [Greek genos]). We have observed one species arising from another, but they are still the same genus.

The "scriptures" allow for no such thing.

Humans and chimps are both of the "primate kind". They are also both of the "mammal kind" and the "vertebrate kind". But a fundamentalist reading of the iron age myths and legends, do not allow for humans to share ancestors with chimps.

So to say otherwise, is to simply lie about it.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

The scriptures allow for as much change within a genus as you want. The only limitation is that horses have always been horses and will always be horses.

OEPS

Perhaps you should learn the scriptures.

Perhaps you should learn the basics of evolution and biology?
It would prevent you from saying stupid things like "dogs don't turn into non-dogs" as if that is an argument against biological evolution. To repeat: it isn't... if dogs would produce non-dogs, then evolution would be false.

Well, I oversimplified a dog birthing anything other than a dog. Of course there is no single occurrence of a dog giving birth to a horse, but evolution claims that is just what happened over time*

Evolution claims no such thing.
All descendents of dogs will forever be dogs. They might / will speciate into SUBspecies of dog, by they will remain dogs.

Just like dogs are "still" canines, mammals, tetrapods, vertebrates, eukaryotes,...
Evolution is like a branching tree. You don't "jump" branches. The branch you are on, might split into multiple branches, but as you "run back", you'll stay on that same branch.
Dogs and horses find themselves on different branches. So one will never produce the other.

Eukaryotes produce more eukaryotes, like vertebrates
Vertebrates produce more vertebrates, like tetrapods
Tetrapods produce more tetrapods, like mammals
Mammals produce more mammals, like primates
Primates produce more primates, like homo sapiens
Homo sapiens produce more homo sapiens, which might eventually include a subspecies of homo sapiens.

And that subspecies (and those that are produced by it as well), would forever remain on the branch of homo sapiens, primates, mammals, tetrapods, vertebrates, eukaryotes.

If you would have informed yourself even only a little bit, you'ld probably realise all this and you wouldn't make such rudimentary mistakes...

As such, the very nature of the study precludes direct observation

It does not. That humans and chimps share ancestors is a genetic fact. It is a fact that is derived from direct observation and comparision of human and chimp DNA. It's the same tech that allows us to determine kinship between you and your siblings, eventhough nobody witnessed your birth.

Without such direct observation we are left with inference.

Which is not a problem at all.

*BTW, I'm not sure a horse supposedly evolved from a dog. It's just an example that would fit any two genus.

It's an example allright.... An example that shows just how limited and almost non-existing your knowledge and understanding of evolution theory really is.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Interesting. Where was Newton wrong and what of his ideas has been completely discarded from modern science?

I once saw a layman's explanation of how Newton's model of gravity was wrong that didn't get to technical, so I'll share that here...

In Newton's world, gravity was like some kind of "instant" force.

Imagine the solar system. Earth orbits the sun due to the gravitational field of the sun. Now imagine that with a snap of the fingers, you can make the sun disappear instantly.

In Newton's world, the earth would instantly escape the sun's gravity and drift out into space.
While in Einstein's (new and improved) world, the earth would only feel the effect of the sun disappearing after 8-ish minutes, because gravity propagates at the speed of light.

Then there's also relativistic effects that Newton didn't know about.
So his laws of motions work very well when dealing with sub-light speeds and average masses.
However, once we increase mass or speed, then relativistic effects start to have impact. The higher the speed / masses, the more inaccurate Newton's equations become.

Since on a day-to-day practical basis, relativistic effects are negligable for example to calculate the curve of ball thrown with a certain reasonable force, then newtonian physics is more then accurate enough.

It's only once we start to deal with immens speed or gravity that they fall short. Then we need to take Einstein's relativity into the equation.

For example, if you build a GPS satelite using only Newtonian physics, it will be off by several miles.
You have to calibrate the internal clocks of the satelite to accomodate for the relativistic effects that come with orbitting the planet at 40.000 km / h.

 

[cladking]

If we WOULD observe a dog become anything other then a dog, then that will falsify, debunk, refute, disprove evolution theory!

That's a pretty neat trick you have going there; as long as dogs give birth to dogs you are right about everything. How can survival of the fittest not be a thing if dogs come from dogs? And the best thing about it is that this is by definition! If a dog ever births a fit elephant it will just be an elephant shaped dog and further proof of your beliefs.

When you look at reality reductionistically then "little" things like relativistic effects are inconsequential. But taken in it's entirety relativistic effects are the tail wagging the dog. It's like China flapping its wings rather than some mere butterfly. Maybe a conscious butterfly (an individual) is different than a theoretical one. A real butterfly can cause hurricanes, ya know? Maybe if you understood consciousness it wouldn't help in predicting hurricanes but it would completely stand "survival of the fittest" on its ear.

 

[metis]

Have they come to a definite conclusion on the shift from autralopithecenes and homo?

Nothing is ever "definitive" beyond questioning in science, thus the probable connection is based on the best available information, unless something shows up that may indicate that there's a error. As of right now, the picture seems pretty clear though.

But much the same is true when it comes to biblical interpretations, and yet we don't throw the Bible under the bus just because there are so many areas of conjecture.

 

[gnostic]

That's a pretty neat trick you have going there; as long as dogs give birth to dogs you are right about everything. How can survival of the fittest not be a thing if dogs come from dogs? And the best thing about it is that this is by definition! If a dog ever births a fit elephant it will just be an elephant shaped dog and further proof of your beliefs.

Your last sentence, just only demonstrated that you know nothing about Evolution.

No biologists would ever use this impossible scenario of elephant-shaped dog. Only silly creationist would come up with this outrageously comic-typed mutant example, and think this is what biologists teach.

Any more impossible and stupid examples that you like to use...examples that you would find in comic books or fairytale?