john_SPAM{at}wilkins.id.au (John Wilkins) wrote in
news:c7o7jc$2jp9$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org: 

> Perplexed in Peoria  wrote:
> 
>> "John Wilkins"  wrote in message
>> news:c7hmdk$hu9$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...

>> Let us look at John's example of the emergent wetness of water as an
>> example of what I have just expounded.  A reductionist explanation of
>> liquid water might postulate a "fluid mosaic" model, with small
>> domains of crystaline water separated by boundary regions of gaseous
>> water.  The dynamics is that water molecules are continually moving
>> from the crystaline phase to the gas phase and back.  That is, we
>> have a three-level description - molecules, crystaline domains, and
>> the liquid system as a whole.  And, there is just no way to collapse
>> this to a two-level description and throw out the properties -
>> emergent and otherwise - of the middle level.  Similarly, it would be
>> impossible to do a hydrodynamic model of stream flow at the molecular
>> level, because emergent properties of liquid water (viscosity,
>> surface tension, etc.) have been lost.
 
> is the "no way" here a matter of computational limitations, or are you
> claiming that there is no substrate-based explanation of liquidity
> even for God?

James Gleick, in Chaos, relates:

There was a story about the quantum theorist Werner Heisenberg, on his 
deathbed, declaring that he will have two questions for God: why 
relativity, and why turbulence. Heisenberg says, "I really think He may 
have an answer to the first question."


Yours,

Bill Morse
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