Where Thomas Nagel Went Wrong
The philosopher's critique of evolution wasn't shocking. So why is he being raked over the coals?
By Michael Chorost
"Still other scientists have asked how we could measure increases in complexity without being biased by our human-centric perspective. Robert Hazen, working with the Nobel Prize winner Jack Szostak, has proposed a metric he calls "functional information," which measures the number of functions and relationships an organism has relative to its environment. The Harvard astrophysicist Eric Chaisson has proposed measuring a quantity that he calls "energy-rate density": how much energy flows through one gram of a system per second. He argues that when he plots energy-rate density against the emergence of new species, the clear result is an overall increase in complexity over time."
No comments:
Post a Comment