Our March session  was led by Ed Lorch whose career was in a privatised part of the Atomic Energy Commission working in both the UK and the US and he has long been interested  in the phenomenon of EMERGENCE which few of us had ever heard of. Intrigued however many turned up to hear him leading yet again to thoughtful and challenging questions which I think left us looking at the world and the claims of science in new ways.  His notes follow.

Anvil Discussion 28/3/25
Hi everybody
My talk has three sections
The first is a very short explanation of a problem that disturbs me about belief in the existence of Laws of Nature.
We look to describe everything in terms of Cause and Effect but Emergence
which has effects seemingly without any identifiable cause, must then remain a
mystery .
The second part explains what Emergence is and how it differs from everyday
science
The third section is a more digestible illustrated version including video clips
of the examples I have used.

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Last year, you had a lecture on the Anthropic Principle. Regrettably, I was
unable to attend. However, with hindsight this may have been for the better. For as
a former ardent advocate of the anthropic principle, going back to the 1980’s, I
had become disillusioned with how it was being promoted by scientists
themselves.
The 1st Anthropic Principle states: That the Laws of Nature are
astonishingly just perfect for life. But that should be no surprise because if they
weren’t we would not be here to observe them.

But are the Laws of Nature real? Do they exist in a separate realm? Waiting to
be discovered by Man. Or are they Man made concepts?

3 centuries ago Immanuel Kant wrote, We should refrain from seeking explanations based on concepts we ourselves create

I believe the Laws of Nature are concepts we ourselves invent and that when
examining Emergent Phenomena we must take heed of Kant’s comment
viz: Not to look for explanations using the Laws of Nature we ourselves
invent.

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Since the Enlightenment, science has achieved remarkable success in
elucidating Causes and their Effects, thereby establishing those fundamental laws
of nature. This approach is known as Reductionism.

Reductionism breaks everything down into basic parts and gives us knowledge,
technologies and progress as a species. For instance in the extreme, quantum
theory has been incredibly successful and has led to many scientific discoveries
and technologies. You may also have heard how theoretical scientists like Steven
Hawkins, talk about a Theory of Everything which will unite two remarkably productive sciences; Einstein’s Relativity with Quantum physics. One describes the
infinitely great and the other the infinitely small.
But, to achieve this, will require some uncomfortable accommodations by us.
Space itself may have to be shown to be made up of tiny (quantum sized) units. If
so what are these spatial units themselves to be in? Time also will have to
disappear so you wont be bothered with questions such as what came before the
big bang!
And many many more unrealistic things to digest

Leaving us with the question – IS REALITY NOT WHAT IT SEEMS?

Emergence on the other hand is Reality, Life where complex
systems and patterns arise from the interactions of simpler components, resulting
in properties that unlike reductionism, cannot be predicted by analysing the
systems individual parts alone.
This concept is evident in various fields such as biology, physics, and social sciences. For example, in biology, consciousness emerges from neural activity, while in physics, temperature arises from molecular motion. In social sciences, crowd behaviour emerges from individual actions.

In contrast Reductionism struggles to explain how higher-level properties and
behaviours emerge from lower-level interactions because these systems exhibit
behaviours and properties that cannot be reduced to the characteristics of its individual components.
For instance, beehives operate as decentralised systems,
where individual bees follow simple rules, resulting in adaptive decision-making.
Similarly, slime moulds display problem-solving abilities without a central nervous
system, and neural networks (both biological and artificial) exhibit cognition and
learning that cannot be deduced from a examining single neurons.

Traditional reductionism fails in explaining these systems because their
properties emerge from interactions rather than individual elements. Emergent
phenomena arise when simple components combine to form something
significantly more intricate, akin to a form of magic that arises from collaboration
without central control.

Examples of emergent order include economies, market prices and
innovations that arise from the collective actions of buyers and sellers, and fashion
trends shaped by individual choices.
Artificial intelligence is also considered an example of an emergent
phenomenon, where complex behaviours arise from simple rules and interactions
within a system, (such as your phone) without explicit programming.

Jonathon Robinson and David Warden each spoke for 20 mins on “What is the Point of Religion”  With possibly the largest turnout we have had (around 40) this stimulated much questioning and the expression of opinions in what was a thoughtful and mutually respectful session. So different from the Trump Vance bullying of Ukraine’s president we saw later!

Here is Jonathon Robinson’s’s paper and David Warden’s Paper . Also provided by me, John Baxter are some definitions of religion which remains controversial among academics. Continue reading →

Paul Reilly, a retired Consultant Rheumatologist, gave us a fascinating talk covering his medical career from the time of his training to the time of his retirement.

In it he described in a humorous and fascinating way how much things in his Rheumatology field have changed from the nursing and hospital subculture (white and male dominated) to the medications used and the surgical operations  carried out. For the illustrated notes of his lecture click HERE

As a help to preparing for our next meeting I have taken the Amazon summaries of the three books The Dawn of Everything, Sapiens and The World Until Yesterday you may find useful. Also I have copied in the full summary from wikipedia. You can also hear the authors talk on Youtube. Continue reading →

FUTURE MEETINGS
GA Greg Atkins: At our next meeting on 24th May, Don Reed will give a presentation on a recent best-selling book, “The Dawn of Everything – A New History of Humanity” by David Graeber and David Wengrow. This book puts forward some new and revolutionary ideas about human prehistory and evolution, and how modern society compares to prehistoric society; it is available from Amazon. More about that nearer the time, but you may wish to purchase and read this in the meantime. Be warned though that I have found it a difficult read as it is written in a very intense manner!

On June 28th myself and Graham Stride from Wincanton will debate the arguments for and against Assisted Dying. ” the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia.”.

Planned Visit to the Met Office Exeter

I have been in touch with the Met Office in Exeter about arranging a visit to them on July 26th. This will be a day trip and hopefully will involve a talk on Climate Change and a guided tour. If you want to go please let me know now as the Met Office has asked for an estimate of the numbers. We also need people to volunteer their cars, so please also let me know if you can do this. If sufficient people want to go we could also consider hiring a coach or minibus. I intend that we should have lunch in a local pub. It is important that you let me know now if you intend to go, this will not be binding. The cost at the moment is just to contribute to the cost of lunch for your driver.
Blind Copies for ANVIL  circulars
Several people have asked to be blind copied for these circulars. On reflection, I have decided to do this for everyone. If you wish to contact a member and want their email address, please write to me and I will ask their permission.
60 Members
For your information, we now have 60 members on the circulation list, but this is probably an underestimate of our membership as I know of several couples who share an email address. This is much better than I had hoped when myself and John started this venture; only a minority of these are members of the former u3a Science and Philosophy groups (although they are also very welcome). We are obviously fulfilling a need not met in Martock and surrounding area by any other organisation. I am gratified also that we are learning orientated, gender balanced, having almost equal numbers of men and women, and do not have a burdensome bureaucracy. The capacity of The George Function Room is 60, so if we were to get much bigger we will have to consider a move to the Parish Hall. At present though I don’t see this happening as experience shows that not everyone will turn up. Also, the facilities at The George are better quality and better organised than those in the Parish Hall, and a smaller group makes for better discussion.

After seven years meeting five or six times a year in Wincanton,, we decided, Greg Atkins and John Baxter, to base ANVIL as an open discussion group to meet monthly In Martock.

Our first session was on Friday 23rd Feb. 24 and was introduced by John Baxter with a response from David Warden. The subject was HAMAS AND THE GAZA WAR. Some 35 came and all had been sent (and said they had read! John’s introductory paper.

Revised and updated as the situation has changed, this is now attached as:
ISRAEL, HAMAS AND THE GAZA WAR
An attempt to understand this complex conflict and suggest a way ahead for Britain.

Continue reading →

Greg Atkins writes:
We’ll meet again next Friday 26th April 10am to 12pm in The George Function Room, to hear presentations and discuss a seminal event in World War 1, the Sinking of The Lusitania. This occurred on 7th May 1915, when the ship sank off the coast of Ireland after being hit by a single torpedo from a German submarine; it took just 18 min to sink with the loss of 1199 passengers and crew. Although the ship was British (Cunard Line) it had departed from New York and 128 of the dead were Americans. Some have claimed that this event precipitated American entry into the war and eventual German defeat. The details of the sinking and how it occurred have remained, however, shrouded in mystery and speculation since the sinking occurred.

Ian Winkle, who is a retired Senior Lecturer at Glasgow University in Marine Architecture, has some new ideas about the technical aspects of the sinking which he will present. Ed Lorch has a Ph.D. in Physics and worked for many years as a research scientist at Amersham International. He was also founder and Chair of the Tintinhull Local History Association. He will introduce and chair the discussion following Ian’s presentation.

John Baxter reports: In a well attended meeting Ian took us through his meticulous research into how and why the Lusitania sank in only 18 minutes as a result of a single German torpedo. In particular he argued on technical grounds that the armaments stored in the bows of the ship could not, as has been widely reported and asserted by the Germans, have exploded, so causing the ship to sink and making it a legitimate target because of this contraband cargo. Instead, Ian argued that the torpedo had penetrated the hull before exploding and the rapid sinking was the result of a series of preventable errors. So who in the end was responsible for this terrible loss of life? US, Germany, Ship Owners?
Ed Lorch then added to what became a lively discussion with selected extracts from US library of Congress and Wikipedia.  Continue reading →