The Human Question

BD cites the following as a defense against the criticism that IDers use of mechanistic reasoning when doing ID stuff.  According to BD, this article distinguishes two senses of the word 'mechanistic,' which two terms are confused by critics of ID: Polanyi, Michael.  "1960s Life Transcending Physics and Chemistry," in the August 1967 of Chemical and Engineering News.

He uses the archer analogy: Aquinas would like that! (in fact, I think he does use it in the Summa contra gentiles ). He admits that ID cannot prove classical theism: a Hindu or deist may subscribe to ID. May I add that a polytheist may feel right at home with ID: after all, there's no reason why there can't be as many intelligent sources of design as there are species of organism. He never says that scientific creationism is stupid! I think this is a rhetorical move on his part (he's trying to get them onto his bandwagon): uh, let's call it "rhetorical silence." But doesn't Dembski's make some Darwinians wonder whether Demski is secretly a card carrying creationist? If he is silent on this issue, it's not because of a commitment to saying the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth: it's rather a commitment to persuading someone with whom he does not in fact agree when it comes to the issue of descent with modification. The...

Maybe this analogy works, I dunno: for a situation in which energeia and kinesis are interwoven, energeia is related to kinesis as is the act of listening-to-what-another-is-saying is to the hearing of individual sounds... and this is like what Polanyi has to say about higher and lower levels in his chapter on emergence in the Tacit Dimension (new word alert: demention?)

In order to test for their existence, one would have to show that laws describing the behavior of components do not suffice, when combined, to account for the behavior of the whole. As in sub-atomic particles/atom; chemicals/bodily activity. What's really interesting is to consider how one could test in the domain of biochemistry. Careful also to avoid positing a special force alongside of the other forces (vitalism). Instead of vitalism, refer to Polanyi's heirarchical conception of things of levels of being. To dogmatise that there are no emergent properties would require one to say that all particles are conscious. For one would have to claim that what seems to have emerged in fact was already there. Monads, anyone?