Stephen Iacoboni

In my two most recent posts (here and here), in a series discussing the science of purpose, I described the foundational subject-object metaphysics (SOM) of modern science, and how that has unfortunately led to the rise of modern scientism. I pointed out why SOM can never go beyond a derivative/secondary explanation of life. Perhaps the greatest illustration of the failure of SOM is that it necessarily leads to irreducible complexity, as so brilliantly explicated by Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, William Dembski, Stephen Meyer, et al.  But it was also SOM, as originally articulated by Descartes, that led Western civilization to great scientific advancement. Now, we […]

In this series on the science of purpose, I have been discussing the limits of scientism resulting from the inherent limitations of subject-object metaphysics (SOM), which is fundamental to science itself: That is, the analytical framework introduced by René Descartes in the 17th century remains intact in the modern science of today. Descartes famously created the subject-object dualism by dividing experience into the two realms of res extensa and res cogitans. He declared, simply stated, the ultimate separation of mind from external reality. His metaphysics is embodied in his famous statement, “Cogito ergo sum.”  (I think, therefore I am.) The metaphysics of Aquinas accommodated mind, […]

As I have argued here earlier, in sketching the science of purpose, the complexity of life is only comprehensible by the human mind in retrospect. Through reverse engineering, modern science has done an elegant job in revealing the mechanisms of life. But that is certainly far less an accomplishment than designing the whole enterprise from scratch. In philosophical terms, we can understand the mechanics of life only a posteriori. But we do not have the ability to grasp the intentionality of the mind of the creator, which would be required in order to understand life a priori. For these reasons, life is ultimately irreducibly […]

In my most recent post on the science of purpose, I described how the phenomenon of emergence illustrates the irreducible complexity of life. I asked whether the undeniably purposeful behavior of biomolecules was foundational, i.e., intentional, versus accidental, i.e., random. I was building upon previous posts, where I pointed out that scientific atheism is based on the notion that structure randomly generates function, thereby justifying the belief in “life-as-accident.” My conclusion was that function cannot exist without a whole self, so that structure alone can never generate purpose on its own. Tying It Together Now it is time to tie all of these concepts […]

In my two most recent posts on the science of purpose (here and here), I ended each with a claim. These were, respectively, that “biomolecules must act with purpose,” and that “ententional [in Terrence Deacon’s neologism] properties are foundational. They are the genesis of all purpose in life.” Introducing Emergence Here I would like to expand on these two statements and coalesce them under the broader heading of emergence. To do so, first allow me to introduce emergence itself. That term has been redefined or misinterpreted numerous times since it was first described. The originators of the concept were two 19th-century British philosopher-scientists, John Stuart Mill and George Henry Lewes. Even back then, some […]

In sketching here what I have called the science of purpose, I have argued that the best way to topple the materialist paradigm is to reverse the fundamental concepts of structure and function. (See, most recently, “Replacing Chemistry with Purpose.”) The framework of materialism is based on randomness, from which, combined with natural selection, any structure theoretically can arise. In this way of thinking, over billions of years, randomly generated structures accidentally began to perform functions, resulting in life on Earth as we know it. That is, all the seemingly designed function in the biosphere is simply a result of randomly generated structures. The appearance of design […]

In past articles here, I have described the notion of the science of purpose. Purpose is ubiquitously observable in biology, and therefore subject to scientific analysis. The scientific method of analysis is to create a modeling relation between observation and theory. It is time for biology to incorporate purpose into its fundamental framework. The most striking observations in all of nature are the incomprehensibly sophisticated adaptations that organisms display, allowing survival in the wild. Natural selection is an inadequate explanation for what we readily observe. What is needed is a competing or replacement theory explaining those wonders of organismal form and function. The science of purpose is that theory. […]

In my previous post (“A New Look at Natural Selection”), I said that “natural selection” was Charles Darwin’s crowning intellectual achievement, for it created what appeared to be a naturalistic and mechanistic explanation for how organisms evolved. I also noted that evolution itself was already considered to have been well demonstrated in the fossil record by Lamarck and others some fifty years before Darwin.  In the 20th century, natural selection has been almost uniformly adopted by biologists as the explanatory agency for evolution. What appeals to naturalists is that it provides an explanation for the appearance of design in organisms, without an […]

Having introduced in earlier posts the idea of a “science of purpose,” I would like now to reflect upon what most naturalists identify as Darwin’s crowning intellectual achievement: natural selection. It is worthwhile to recall that some fifty years before Darwin, renowned naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck had already proclaimed that organisms change over time, a most radical view indeed. The word evolution would not be used to describe this transformation until about fifty years after Lamarck’s death. Darwin agreed with and fortified Lamarck’s claims with detailed descriptions of the variations among species. The concept that species change over time was by no means newly articulated by Darwin. The question […]