Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Chapter 1. Introduction
Jonathan Bartlett 1
1 Philosophy and Pragmatism, Science and Engineering . . . . . . . . . 1
2 Reintegrating Philosophy into Science and Engineering . . . . . . . . 3
3 The Engineering and Metaphysics 2012 Conference . . . . . . . . . . 4
4 Articles in this Volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Part I Engineering, Philosophy, and Worldview 9
Chapter 2. Reversible Universe: Implications of Affordance-based
Reverse Engineering of Complex Natural Systems
Dominic Halsmer, Michael Gewecke, Rachelle Gewecke, Nate Roman, Tyler Todd, and Jessica Fitzgerald 11
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2 Reverse Engineering Natural Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3 Interpreting Natural Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4 The “Artifact Hermeneutics” of Daniel Dennett . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5 Reverse Engineering and Design Recovery Techniques . . . . . . . . . 21
6 Affordance-based Reverse Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
7 How Affordances Assist in the Reverse Engineering of Natural Systems 25
8 Affordances for Human Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
9 Implications for Worldview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
10 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Chapter 3. The Independence and Proper Roles of Engineering and
Metaphysics in Support of an Integrated Understanding
of God’s Creation
Alexander R. Sich 39
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2 Definitions and Differences of Sciences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
ixx Contents
3 The Role of Abstraction in Distinguishing the Particular Sciences . . 47
4 Metaphysics: The Foundational Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
5 Quo Vadis, Engineering? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
6 A Case Study in the Failure to Properly Distinguish: Intelligent Design 53
Part II Architecture and the Ultimate 63
Chapter 4. Truth, Beauty, and the Reflection of God: John Ruskin’s
Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice
as Palimpsests for Contemporary Architecture
Mark R. Hall 65
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
2 The Seven Lamps of Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3 Ruskin and The Stones of Venice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4 Review of Ruskin’s Reputation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
5 Ruskin’s Relevance to Contemporary Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . 76
6 Architecture as a Palimpsest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
7 Peter Eisenman and The Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe . 82
8 Daniel Libeskind and His Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Part III Software Engineering and Human Agency 97
Chapter 5. Using Turing Oracles in Cognitive Models of ProblemSolving
Jonathan Bartlett 99
1 Broad Views of Cognition and Their Historic Consequences in Cognitive Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
2 A Primer on Computability and Incomputability . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
3 The Halting Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
4 Turing Oracles as Solutions for Incomputable Problems . . . . . . . . 108
5 Partial Solutions to Incomputable Functions Using Additional Axioms 109
6 Towards Defining a Turing Oracle for Modeling Human ProblemSolving on Insight Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
7 Human Solutions to the Halting Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
8 An Oracle for Insight Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
9 Problems and Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
10 Generalizing the Oracle Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
11 Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
12 Final Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118xi
Chapter 6. Calculating Software Complexity Using the Halting
Problem
Jonathan Bartlett 123
1 Complexity Metrics in Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
2 A Brief History of Software Complexity Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
3 Deeper Difficulties in Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
4 The Halting Problem as an Insight Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
5 Using the Halting Problem to Measure Software Complexity . . . . . 126
6 Adding Axioms to Minimize Insight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
7 Using the Metric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
8 Further Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Chapter 7. Algorithmic Specified Complexity
Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, and Robert J. Marks II 131
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
2 Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
3 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
4 Objections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Chapter 8. Complex Specified Information (CSI) Collecting
Eric Holloway 153
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
2 Problem Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
3 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
4 Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
5 Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
6 Results and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
7 Theoretical Objections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
8 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Part IV The Engineering of Life 167
Chapter 9. Developing Insights into the Design of the Simplest SelfReplicator and Its Complexity: Part 1—Developing a
Functional Model for the Simplest Self-Replicator
Arminius Mignea 169
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
2 The Two Phases of Self-Replication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
3 Identifying SSR Capabilities as Specific Functions . . . . . . . . . . . 172
4 Additional SSR Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
5 The Higher Level SSR functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
6 The Type and Nature of SSR Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183xii Contents
7 The SSR and Its Information Catalogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Chapter 10. Developing Insights into the Design of the Simplest SelfReplicator and Its Complexity: Part 2—Evaluating the
Complexity of a Concrete Implementation of an Artificial
SSR
Arminius Mignea 187
1 The Three Closure Requirements as the Basis of an Autonomous SSR 188
2 The Core Approach to Cloning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
3 The Material Basis of the SSR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
4 The Type and Nature of SSR Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
5 Derived Design Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
6 The Most Significant Challenges for the Design and Implementation of
an Artificial SSR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
7 The Emerging Image of the Artificial SSR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
8 A Brief Survey of Attempts to Build Artificial Self-Replicators . . . . 203
9 Simplifying Assumptions for the Design and Construction of an SSR . 208
10 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Chapter 11. Developing Insights into the Design of the Simplest
Self-Replicator and Its Complexity: Part 3—The Metaphysics of an Artificial SSR and the Origin of Life Problem
Arminius Mignea 213
1 The Insights into the Design of the SSR, Its Complexity, and the Origin
of Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
2 From the Physics to the Metaphysics of the SSRs . . . . . . . . . . . 217
About the Authors 221
Editors and Organizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Primary Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Additional Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Index 229