Are Living Systems Machines?

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@swamidass

Living systems are not more machine like than physics.

@dga471

without actually studying in depth what is meant by that term, it’s dangerous to assume the usage of a term has certain rigid philosophical implications.

@swamidass

There is more though, and you’ve raised this point me me before @rcohlers. It seems in the last 400 years, we have become beset by Idols of the Marketplace (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idola_fori ). Bacon refers to this as the intellectual error of mistaking a word for the thing to which refers the word. He is thinking of Plato’s parable of the cave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave ), where we mistake shadows for the things that cast the shadow.

This quote from is describing the error well. To be clear, we can’t know for sure if it is an accurate description of the moment he describes (I’m told it is not, but who can know for sure?). However, it is an apt description of the pitfall we need to avoid.

The presentation included machine-like cartoons of the flagellar apparatus, but did not say they were cartoon representations. Here I was flabbergasted – I assumed this was a rhetorical stance, but some of these folks actually believe the machine metaphor to be the literal truth. News flash – flagella are not actually little machines (and sperm do not contain little homunculi).
ID: Intelligent Design as Imitatio Dei (report on the 2007 'Wistar Retrospective Symposium')