Spirits (was RE: [extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.)

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On 11/29/05, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:

 If it was that
> simple, there wouldn't BE a field of science separate
> from physics called biology.

### But biology, good quality biology at least, *is* a subfield of
physics. It describes the behaviors of certain assemblages of atoms.
Now, since these assemblages are rather complicated, many of the
questions and answers are complex ones, too, but always built of, and
reducible to, simple questions about atoms.

Our minds cannot deal for technical reasons with biological problems
expressed in physics terminology, because we can manipulate only small
numbers of questions at the same time. The huge numbers of simple
physical issues you have to handle to answer how a bacterium grows are
still beyond even the power of the biggest machines, but this is a
reflection of our limitations, and not of an underlying chasm between
physics and biology.

Given enough computing power, all science becomes physics.

Rafal