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V. The
Teleological Principle Teleology in physics The study of teleology began in Greece during the sixth century BC. It was based on the minimal principle, which was thought to govern the behavior of physical systems from beginning to end by minimizing a certain quantity. Hero of Alexandria was the first to give a teleological meaning to the idea of the minimal principle in the first century AD. He showed that if light goes from a source to a mirror and from the mirror to a person's eye, the path taken is the shortest and thus takes the least time. Hero asserted that this behavior is teleological because it is determined by the final destination, the eye. Fermat showed that it could be understood if one assumed that it travels from one point to another in the least amount of time. Fermat's principle of least time for reflection was the same as Hero's minimal principle. Concerning refraction, however, Fermat was able to correctly predict its behavior two hundred years before it was proven by experiments. This was the first time that behavior in physics had been correctly predicted based solely on teleological premises. Less
than one hundred years later, building on Fermat's work, the In
the 1700s, matter was believed to be made up of particles. Therefore,
building on the model developed by Euler, the French mathematician
Jean L. Lagrange applied the principle The
principle of least action was applied in a unique way by the Feyman diagram Today, physical scientists think of the principle of least action as the law of the whole. This means that a complete understanding of the behavior of single waves and particles cannot be obtained independent of the whole; it can only be achieved when waves are treated as a web of relationships, i.e., as an interaction of parts forming an inseparable unit. This is, after all, at the core of the definition of universe. (In classical physics the parts are seen as forming the whole; in quantum physics the whole is seen as forming the parts.) Teleology in biochemistry The American biochemist Lawrence J. Henderson was the first to identify the chemical elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and water, carbon dioxide and other key molecules as possessing the unique properties necessary for life. He showed that life would not have been possible if their properties had been different even in the smallest degree. He also pointed out that the chance that these key traits were acquired by accident was so small that it was less than any probability that could be mathematically considered. Here are a few important traits: 1. Carbon is the element whose singular qualities makes it ideally suited to act as the backbone to countless molecules, including the molecules of life;
2. Hydrogen and oxygen combine to from water; 3. Carbon and oxygen form carbon dioxide. Plants need carbon dioxide in photosynthesis, a process by which plants, with the help of light, turn carbon dioxide and water into organic substances. Carbon dioxide also plays a crucial role in the regulation of the temperature of the Earth's surface; 4.
Hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are uniquely suited to participate
in the formation of the molecules of life; 5.
Nitrogen and hydrogen combine to form ammonia, a source of nitrogen
on which living organisms depend; 6. Oxygen in a different form is ozone. A thin layer of ozone surrounds the planet and controls the amount of ultraviolet rays that enter the atmosphere. Later, sulfur and phosphorous were added to the above four elements because they play key roles in the transfer of energy in chemical reactions. Other unique elements are sodium and potassium which help regulate biochemical reactions; iron because it is the main atom in hemoglobin, the molecule that carries oxygen from the lungs to the tissues and carbon dioxide from the tissues to the lungs; and magnesium, the key atom in chlorophyll thought by scientists to be the perfect molecule for photosynthesis because it is receptive to light and has an inert structure that allows it to store energy and transfer it to other molecules.
The behavior of physical, chemical, and biological systems is purposeful. Recent discoveries show that the final goal of biological evolution is the development of human beings.
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of least action to the dynamics of interacting particles. In the
1850s, however, the Irish mathematician Sir William R. Hamilton
and the German mathematician Karl Gustav Jacobi developed a
model that treated the Universe as composed not of particles but
waves. They thought in terms of a small boat being moved up, down,
and around in the ocean and its motion growing out of the collection
of the movements of all waves. They showed that the presence of
one wave at one particular place is not a single event but the result
of waves coming from all over the ocean. They proposed that all
motion and change in matter are ruled by the principle of least
action and that everything that happens at the physical level is
the expression of a basic unity in Nature. When Hamilton and Jacobi
presented their theory they were not given credence. However, discoveries
in subatomic physics more than fifty years later proved that their
model had been correct.
Nobel
laureate John A. Wheeler, his teacher at the time, a quantum
theory of electrodynamics (a
model of the behavior of electric currents and associated magnetic
fields)
in which he showed that rays of light emitted by an electrically
charged particle (radiation)
reacting
to another particle could be explained in terms of the interactions
of all particle that occurred in the past and will occur in the
future. In other words, how a
particle radiates today depends on how all particles radiated yesterday
and will radiate tomorrow.
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