Reinhard Eichelbeck - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Uploads
Papers by Reinhard Eichelbeck
We do not live in Darwin's world, 2023
Evolution as a process developing the earth from a dead block of stone to this living, thriving p... more Evolution as a process developing the earth from a dead block of stone to this living, thriving planet through the work of living beings, microbes, plants and animals is a fact that cannot be denied regarding the findings and knowledge of modern science.
But it is also evident, if you take a deeper look into the details, that a constructive process of such magnitude could not be accomplished by destructive principles like Darwin’s “war of nature” and “battle of life”. The pivotal element, the secret of success of nature, was and is cooperation – on all levels of being.
Darwin’s hypothesis (as he himself called it) starts from a wrong basic assumption, describes a process of species change that is inconsistent with logic and to date still unproven, even if it is always claimed to be. And the Neo-Darwinian view that has replaced Darwin’s original concept is a totally watered-down surrogate of the origin, a deceptive package so to say, be-cause it has dismissed the basic assumptions of the author.
And also, it becomes clear for an attentive observer, that the vast variety of beauty, ecological brightness, ingenious inventions and sustainable systems of nature cannot be explained just by random mutations, natural selection, chance and need.
There must be assumed an overwhelming creative intelligence behind every component of the universe, from subatomic particles to gigantic galaxy clusters. This was not only advocated by philosophers or theologians but also by prestigious natural scientists like Max Planck and Al-bert Einstein, the latter admitting that he was a supporter of pantheism, meaning that every-thing is out of God and within God as an aspect of the divine.
That this view inevitably arises from logical consideration will also be examined in this paper as well as the consequences that arise hereby for our evolutionary contribution to the process of life on earth.
“What is life? Scientific Approaches and Philosophical Positions“ (Dürr/Popp/Schommers eds.), World Scientific. , 2002
This paper is part of the book “What is life? Scientific Approaches and Philosophical Positions“ ... more This paper is part of the book “What is life? Scientific Approaches and Philosophical Positions“ (Dürr/Popp/Schommers eds.), World Scientific 2002.
Contents:
All the Colors of a Rainbow in a Worm or: What is Life? (R Eichelbeck)
Life — A Problem Inherent in the Research Context (F-T Gottwald)
Truth and Knowledge (W Schommers)
The Formative Powers of Developing Organisms (L V Beloussov)
Communication — Basis of Life (L von Klitzing)
On the Essence of Life — A Physical but Nonreductionistic Examination (H-J Fischbeck)
Biophoton and the Quantum Vision of Life (R P Bajpai)
Quantum Mechanics, Computability Theory and Life (J Swain)
and other papers
“All the Colors of a Rainbow in a Worm or: What is Life?” contemplates, in order to approach an answer to this question, some properties of living beings. At the Open University, Milton Keynes, the English biochemist Mae-Wan Ho developed a special method to observe small organisms – microbes, water-fleas, and larvae of flies for instance – in very exceptional colours with the help of a polarization microscope. The luminosity of these colours fades when they die so they obviously are a manifestation of and a criterion for the liveliness of an organism. “Life, that is: all the colours of a rainbow in a worm”, Ho stated in 1995. “I think, this definition is as good as anyone else.
Another property of the living is something the Swiss biologist Adolf Portman named “self-portrayal”: the ability to ingest substance and transform it to a specific body shape that is based on a common aesthetical agreement, which manifests itself in the use of a special geometric proportion that we call the “Golden Section” and several harmonic mathematical patterns as quadrangular, octagonal, pentagonal, hexagonal and the like. This “morphogenesis” is not explainable solely on the level of genetic activity and therefore an additional ordering force or principle has to be assumed.
In the 1920s Alexander Gurwitsch and Hans Driesch introduced the concept of “morphogenetic fields” to characterize this “architectural authority”, which is responsible for the building of living forms. Because it’s neither energetic nor material but informative, it cannot be proven by physical or chemical measurement. Nevertheless some evidence is provided by experiments, which have shown aberrations and transformations of animal and plant embryos by application of weak magnetic or static electrical fields. Anyway, the question of morphogenesis is not conclusively explained yet.
The paper also presents a critical approach to the Darwinian concept of evolution, stating that it starts from a wrong prerequisite, proposes a method of species chance that doesn’t work and above all ignores the basic factor of evolution, namely cooperation, which is much more important that Darwin’s “war of nature” and “battle of life”. And it points out that those principles, that have obviously increased the most during the evolution from microbes to man are: first of all intelligence and consciousness – in other words the ability to process information, on the hardware and software sides. Beyond that: beauty, or rather – because this term is a matter of subjective taste – aesthetic complexity, as well of features as of behaviour. Then emotionality, the ability to feel and express feelings and, last not least, technological complexity of features in the service of autonomy and the emancipation from environmental constraints.
And all these are qualities of the living – and certainly not minor ones, because they mark the most remarkable trends in evolution – which show that life is not only interested in survival mechanisms and reproductive maximization. And with this it also becomes clear that by quantitative and mechanistic terms, with power and substance, through physics and chemistry alone, life cannot even be described, and much less be explained. That is because it is in its most essential qualities meta-physical, meta-chemical, meta-material, meta-energetic and meta-mechanistic.
... Wenn wir das tun und ganz aufmerk-sam sind, dann beginnen wir, die Merkmale des Dharma in ebe... more ... Wenn wir das tun und ganz aufmerk-sam sind, dann beginnen wir, die Merkmale des Dharma in eben dem Leben zu ... Gewöhnlich erscheint uns alles, was wir erleben, beständig – auch unsere Persön-lichkeit, unsere Umwelt, unsere Gefühle und die Gedanken in unse-rem ...
What is Life?
What is life? The probably most brilliant answer to this question was given by the German philoso... more What is life? The probably most brilliant answer to this question was given by the German philosopher Friedrich Engels: "Life", he said, "is the state of being of proteins." And whoever wants to spare himself further reflections may safely settle down on this certainly not exhaustive, but at least irrefutable, explanation. Whoever wants to know and express more about life than this kind of truism, has to expect a task compared to which the twelve labours of Heracles seem trivial. So what is life? At present a comprehensive and generally accepted definition of this term, sparkling in so many of its various facets and aspects, is not to be found. We can just circle around it questioning, trying to describe its different facetswith no hope however of fully reaching and understanding it. An approximation for the moment could possibly be the statement that life is the quality and feature, or better yet the sum of all those qualities and features that make an organism alive. After that we can start an enumeration, which, though it may never come to an end or bring us to a definite answer, still may give us the feeling, that we have a goal. At the Open University, Milton Keynes, the English biochemist Mae-Wan Ho in cooperation with her students developed a special method to observe small organismsmicrobes, water-fleas, and larvae of flies for instancein very exceptional colours with the help of a polarization microscope. But the tiny little beings show these brilliant colours only as long as they are alive. Being dead, they lose light and colour. The luminosity of its colours obviously is a manifestation of and a criterion for the liveliness of an organism.
Drafts by Reinhard Eichelbeck
An inquiry into logical inconsistencies in the wording of some physical concepts, hypotheses and ... more An inquiry into logical inconsistencies in the wording of some physical concepts, hypotheses and theories By Reinhard Eichelbeck This paper considers only the linguistic aspect, since mathematical formulas and equations have their own rules. The various concepts are scrutinized in regard to their agreement with the laws of logic, practical experience and observable facts. Their descriptions are derived from various publicly available sourcesbooks, films, articles, internet [Wikipedia et al.]that reflect the common views of the scientific community and its implementation in the mass media. English is not my mother tongue, so please bear with me if my wording may partly be somewhat unusual.
We do not live in Darwin's world, 2023
Evolution as a process developing the earth from a dead block of stone to this living, thriving p... more Evolution as a process developing the earth from a dead block of stone to this living, thriving planet through the work of living beings, microbes, plants and animals is a fact that cannot be denied regarding the findings and knowledge of modern science.
But it is also evident, if you take a deeper look into the details, that a constructive process of such magnitude could not be accomplished by destructive principles like Darwin’s “war of nature” and “battle of life”. The pivotal element, the secret of success of nature, was and is cooperation – on all levels of being.
Darwin’s hypothesis (as he himself called it) starts from a wrong basic assumption, describes a process of species change that is inconsistent with logic and to date still unproven, even if it is always claimed to be. And the Neo-Darwinian view that has replaced Darwin’s original concept is a totally watered-down surrogate of the origin, a deceptive package so to say, be-cause it has dismissed the basic assumptions of the author.
And also, it becomes clear for an attentive observer, that the vast variety of beauty, ecological brightness, ingenious inventions and sustainable systems of nature cannot be explained just by random mutations, natural selection, chance and need.
There must be assumed an overwhelming creative intelligence behind every component of the universe, from subatomic particles to gigantic galaxy clusters. This was not only advocated by philosophers or theologians but also by prestigious natural scientists like Max Planck and Al-bert Einstein, the latter admitting that he was a supporter of pantheism, meaning that every-thing is out of God and within God as an aspect of the divine.
That this view inevitably arises from logical consideration will also be examined in this paper as well as the consequences that arise hereby for our evolutionary contribution to the process of life on earth.
“What is life? Scientific Approaches and Philosophical Positions“ (Dürr/Popp/Schommers eds.), World Scientific. , 2002
This paper is part of the book “What is life? Scientific Approaches and Philosophical Positions“ ... more This paper is part of the book “What is life? Scientific Approaches and Philosophical Positions“ (Dürr/Popp/Schommers eds.), World Scientific 2002.
Contents:
All the Colors of a Rainbow in a Worm or: What is Life? (R Eichelbeck)
Life — A Problem Inherent in the Research Context (F-T Gottwald)
Truth and Knowledge (W Schommers)
The Formative Powers of Developing Organisms (L V Beloussov)
Communication — Basis of Life (L von Klitzing)
On the Essence of Life — A Physical but Nonreductionistic Examination (H-J Fischbeck)
Biophoton and the Quantum Vision of Life (R P Bajpai)
Quantum Mechanics, Computability Theory and Life (J Swain)
and other papers
“All the Colors of a Rainbow in a Worm or: What is Life?” contemplates, in order to approach an answer to this question, some properties of living beings. At the Open University, Milton Keynes, the English biochemist Mae-Wan Ho developed a special method to observe small organisms – microbes, water-fleas, and larvae of flies for instance – in very exceptional colours with the help of a polarization microscope. The luminosity of these colours fades when they die so they obviously are a manifestation of and a criterion for the liveliness of an organism. “Life, that is: all the colours of a rainbow in a worm”, Ho stated in 1995. “I think, this definition is as good as anyone else.
Another property of the living is something the Swiss biologist Adolf Portman named “self-portrayal”: the ability to ingest substance and transform it to a specific body shape that is based on a common aesthetical agreement, which manifests itself in the use of a special geometric proportion that we call the “Golden Section” and several harmonic mathematical patterns as quadrangular, octagonal, pentagonal, hexagonal and the like. This “morphogenesis” is not explainable solely on the level of genetic activity and therefore an additional ordering force or principle has to be assumed.
In the 1920s Alexander Gurwitsch and Hans Driesch introduced the concept of “morphogenetic fields” to characterize this “architectural authority”, which is responsible for the building of living forms. Because it’s neither energetic nor material but informative, it cannot be proven by physical or chemical measurement. Nevertheless some evidence is provided by experiments, which have shown aberrations and transformations of animal and plant embryos by application of weak magnetic or static electrical fields. Anyway, the question of morphogenesis is not conclusively explained yet.
The paper also presents a critical approach to the Darwinian concept of evolution, stating that it starts from a wrong prerequisite, proposes a method of species chance that doesn’t work and above all ignores the basic factor of evolution, namely cooperation, which is much more important that Darwin’s “war of nature” and “battle of life”. And it points out that those principles, that have obviously increased the most during the evolution from microbes to man are: first of all intelligence and consciousness – in other words the ability to process information, on the hardware and software sides. Beyond that: beauty, or rather – because this term is a matter of subjective taste – aesthetic complexity, as well of features as of behaviour. Then emotionality, the ability to feel and express feelings and, last not least, technological complexity of features in the service of autonomy and the emancipation from environmental constraints.
And all these are qualities of the living – and certainly not minor ones, because they mark the most remarkable trends in evolution – which show that life is not only interested in survival mechanisms and reproductive maximization. And with this it also becomes clear that by quantitative and mechanistic terms, with power and substance, through physics and chemistry alone, life cannot even be described, and much less be explained. That is because it is in its most essential qualities meta-physical, meta-chemical, meta-material, meta-energetic and meta-mechanistic.
... Wenn wir das tun und ganz aufmerk-sam sind, dann beginnen wir, die Merkmale des Dharma in ebe... more ... Wenn wir das tun und ganz aufmerk-sam sind, dann beginnen wir, die Merkmale des Dharma in eben dem Leben zu ... Gewöhnlich erscheint uns alles, was wir erleben, beständig – auch unsere Persön-lichkeit, unsere Umwelt, unsere Gefühle und die Gedanken in unse-rem ...
What is Life?
What is life? The probably most brilliant answer to this question was given by the German philoso... more What is life? The probably most brilliant answer to this question was given by the German philosopher Friedrich Engels: "Life", he said, "is the state of being of proteins." And whoever wants to spare himself further reflections may safely settle down on this certainly not exhaustive, but at least irrefutable, explanation. Whoever wants to know and express more about life than this kind of truism, has to expect a task compared to which the twelve labours of Heracles seem trivial. So what is life? At present a comprehensive and generally accepted definition of this term, sparkling in so many of its various facets and aspects, is not to be found. We can just circle around it questioning, trying to describe its different facetswith no hope however of fully reaching and understanding it. An approximation for the moment could possibly be the statement that life is the quality and feature, or better yet the sum of all those qualities and features that make an organism alive. After that we can start an enumeration, which, though it may never come to an end or bring us to a definite answer, still may give us the feeling, that we have a goal. At the Open University, Milton Keynes, the English biochemist Mae-Wan Ho in cooperation with her students developed a special method to observe small organismsmicrobes, water-fleas, and larvae of flies for instancein very exceptional colours with the help of a polarization microscope. But the tiny little beings show these brilliant colours only as long as they are alive. Being dead, they lose light and colour. The luminosity of its colours obviously is a manifestation of and a criterion for the liveliness of an organism.
An inquiry into logical inconsistencies in the wording of some physical concepts, hypotheses and ... more An inquiry into logical inconsistencies in the wording of some physical concepts, hypotheses and theories By Reinhard Eichelbeck This paper considers only the linguistic aspect, since mathematical formulas and equations have their own rules. The various concepts are scrutinized in regard to their agreement with the laws of logic, practical experience and observable facts. Their descriptions are derived from various publicly available sourcesbooks, films, articles, internet [Wikipedia et al.]that reflect the common views of the scientific community and its implementation in the mass media. English is not my mother tongue, so please bear with me if my wording may partly be somewhat unusual.