Philosophy specifies: organisms process information
r norman
I was recently engaged in a study of that eminent French philosopher
of science, Michel Serres. (OK, I was browsing through my son-in-laws
bookshelves). And what he has to say is this:
" [living organisms] can be described as apparatuses which produce
language from noise and information"
and
"... the living organism... Most often conceived of according to the
models we have already considered, the organism has been seen as a
machine ... It is evidently a thermodynamic system... It is a
hypercomplex system, reducible only with difficulty to known models
that we have now mastered. What can we precisely say about this
system? First, that it is an information and thermodynamic system.
Indeed, it receives, stores, exchanges, and gives off both energy and
information -- in all forms, from the light of the sun to the flow of
matter which passes through it (food, oxygen, heat, signals)..."
and
"Formerly, when a given system was analyzed it was a standard -- and
justifiable -- practice to write two distinct accounts of it: the
energy account and the information account.... The two accounts had no
proportion in common; they were not even on the same scale... The same
thing is not true for the organism: its extreme complication, the
great miniaturization of its elements, and their number bring these
two accounts closer and make them comparable. Hence the difference
between a machine and a living organism is that, for the former, the
information account is negligible in relationship to the energy
account, whereas, for the latter, both accounts are on the same
scale."
This from chapter 7, The Origin of Languge: Biology, Information
Theory, & Thermodynamics in "Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy",
Ed. Josue Harari & David Bell, Johns Hopkins U Press 1982. The
Serres original is "Hermes Vol IV: La Distribution: 1977 - Origine du
Langage.
Certainly you must agree that Serres is the very model of lucidity,
clarity, and well reasoned argument epitomizing post-modern French
philosophy of science. How can you argue with someone who
demonstrates the clear and close affinities between science, painting,
and religion?
So you MUST accept the informational nature of the organism! And if
you don't like that example, I can get started on Deleuze and the
notion of emergence!!
Rolf
"r norman" <r_s_norman@_comcast.net> skrev i melding
news:prvj23hirtpptjvd5...@4ax.com...
John Wilkins
You're not helping yourself, you know. I think you are trying to sokal
me.
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."
dkomo
Comment: a computer is a machine, but its information account is not
negligible in relationship to the energy account even though some of the
Intel Pentium IV processors dissipate the same amount of heat as an iron
on the "cotton" setting.
> This from chapter 7, The Origin of Languge: Biology, Information
> Theory, & Thermodynamics in "Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy",
> Ed. Josue Harari & David Bell, Johns Hopkins U Press 1982. The
> Serres original is "Hermes Vol IV: La Distribution: 1977 - Origine du
> Langage.
>
> Certainly you must agree that Serres is the very model of lucidity,
> clarity, and well reasoned argument epitomizing post-modern French
> philosophy of science. How can you argue with someone who
> demonstrates the clear and close affinities between science, painting,
> and religion?
>
> So you MUST accept the informational nature of the organism! And if
> you don't like that example, I can get started on Deleuze and the
> notion of emergence!!
>
In order to round out the notion of information (pseudoinformation?) you
must supply some quotes and references to Derrida and Baudrillard.
r norman
Wilkins) wrote:
>r norman <r_s_norman@_comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> Yes, John W., I am trying to catch your attention.
>>
>> I was recently engaged in a study of that eminent French philosopher
>> of science, Michel Serres. (OK, I was browsing through my son-in-laws
>> bookshelves). And what he has to say is this:
>>
>> " [living organisms] can be described as apparatuses which produce
>> language from noise and information"
<snip the citations of those very few portions of Serres that seemed
even close to sensible>
>> Certainly you must agree that Serres is the very model of lucidity,
>> clarity, and well reasoned argument epitomizing post-modern French
>> philosophy of science. How can you argue with someone who
>> demonstrates the clear and close affinities between science, painting,
>> and religion?
>>
>> So you MUST accept the informational nature of the organism! And if
>> you don't like that example, I can get started on Deleuze and the
>> notion of emergence!!
>
>You're not helping yourself, you know. I think you are trying to sokal
>me.
Your are right, I was really desperate. I had to look up Sokal but
that is exactly what I am trying to do. Still there do seem to be a
few philosophers who take this stuff seriously. Or at least, take it
seriously enough to get publications out of it.
And just because Serres seems off the wall on many things doesn't mean
he is wrong about this one.
r norman
>
>"r norman" <r_s_norman@_comcast.net> skrev i melding
>news:prvj23hirtpptjvd5...@4ax.com...
<snip>
>> ...... And if
>> you don't like that example, I can get started on Deleuze and the
>> notion of emergence!!
>>
>Why not do it anyway?
>
Because the only purpose of doing so would be to bait Wilkins into
producing an explosive response and he seems unwilling to get caught
in .... er, I mean ... play that game.
Deleuze, with Guattari, tries to use concepts of advanced mathematics
and complex system theory to support their arguments which, include
demonstrations that capitalism is a schizophrenic system. See, for
example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze
or http://130.179.92.25/Arnason_DE/Deleuze.html
or http://generation-online.org/p/pdeleuzeguattari.htm
They have very specialized vocabulary with concepts like "desiring
machine", and "rhizomes" and "body without organs" which have very
elaborate technical meanings. If you travel from Marx and Freud
through Lacan and Foucault, you can get into Deleuze
You should also look up Wilkins' reference to Sokal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair
r norman
wrote:
According to physicists who talk about the energetics of information
processing, the heat dissipation of modern CPU's is totally out of
line with the theoretical values involved in twiddling bits. That is
what Serres really means, although he was thinking more in terms of
the original vacuum tube based main frame computers which had enormous
power requirements and very low processing power. In another ten or
twenty years, as transistor size drops to the molecular dimension and
quantum computers might become a reality, the situation may change so
that the energetics of computation become much more of a factor.
My impression is that Serres was sort of referring, in an oblique way,
to what the physicist, Laughlin, calls "the middle way", where
biological machinery (subcellular organelles and macromolecules) are
neither big enough to obey classical and statistical mechanics nor
small enough to be entirely quantum mechanical and so occupy a third
domain of existence. This middle way, (NB, John) is the way towards
emergence!
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/97/1/32.pdf
Still, it was exceptionally difficult to pore through Serres' writing
to find a few scraps of juicy quotes that made some sense. Trying to
do the same with Derrida and Baudrillard would be a fool's errand
which, no doubt, is why you mention them.
Richard Harter
wrote:
I don't know that I must agree to any such thing, but the passages you
quote make sense. Are you doing the dance of the non sequiturs?
eerok
[...]
> If you travel from Marx and Freud through Lacan and
> Foucault, you can get into Deleuze
Though there's an interesting day trip if you turn left at
Camus and spend the afternoon at Roland Barthes.
--
"The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality."
- George Bernard Shaw
Perplexed in Peoria
"r norman" <r_s_norman@_comcast.net> wrote in message news:prvj23hirtpptjvd5...@4ax.com...
> Yes, John W., I am trying to catch your attention.
>
> I was recently engaged in a study of that eminent French philosopher
> of science, Michel Serres. (OK, I was browsing through my son-in-laws
> bookshelves). And what he has to say is this:
>
>
> "Formerly, when a given system was analyzed it was a standard -- and
> justifiable -- practice to write two distinct accounts of it: the
> energy account and the information account.... The two accounts had no
> proportion in common; they were not even on the same scale... The same
> thing is not true for the organism: its extreme complication, the
> great miniaturization of its elements, and their number bring these
> two accounts closer and make them comparable. Hence the difference
> between a machine and a living organism is that, for the former, the
> information account is negligible in relationship to the energy
> account, whereas, for the latter, both accounts are on the same
What is it about French philosophical writing? One is inevitably
and subliminally induced to deconstruct it!
The metaphor of 'accounts' sitting on 'scales' catches my attention.
Should 'account' be read in the sense of the profession of accounting
or in the sense of the the profession of story-telling? And should
'scale' be read to suggest an apothecary balance or marks on a ruler?
Clearly French philosophy has a divine right to rule over biological
story telling.
Translation between languages is always problematic, but it should be
fairly easy for a pair of languages as closely related as French and
English or German and English. And it is easy for subjects like math(s)
or physics or literature. But not for philosophy. Why is philosophical
text so difficult to translate without loss of meaning? Could it be
that it is because this genre contains so little meaning to begin with,
so that even a tiny loss of meaning weighs heavily in proportion?
The Last Conformist
> Yes, John W., I am trying to catch your attention.
>
> I was recently engaged in a study of that eminent French philosopher
> of science, Michel Serres. (OK, I was browsing through my son-in-laws
> bookshelves). And what he has to say is this:
>
> " [living organisms] can be described as apparatuses which produce
> language from noise and information"
Serres is talking about "information" in what sense?
(I get immediately suspicious when someone talks about information in
the context of biology. Blame Dembski.)
r norman
<andr...@gmail.com> wrote:
He is quite non-specific about mathematical details.
Actually, he has a long qualitative section about thermodynamics and
information and described the fact that the early practitioners of
information theory -- Shannon, Wiener, Von Neumann -- were quite aware
of the connection. He also describes the notion of a mathematical or
conceptual model which is independent of time, the pre-thermodynamic
Newtonian universe of machinery where time is reversible, and the
thermodynamic universe where time has an arrow.
r norman
Compared to the rest of the French post-modernists, that indeed is the
very model of lucidity, clarity, and well reasoned argument, as I
pointed out tongue firmly wedged in cheek.
The Last Conformist
> On 21 Apr 2007 09:58:41 -0700, The Last Conformist
>
>
>
> <andre...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On Apr 21, 2:26 pm, r norman <r_s_norman@_comcast.net> wrote:
> >> Yes, John W., I am trying to catch your attention.
>
> >> I was recently engaged in a study of that eminent French philosopher
> >> of science, Michel Serres. (OK, I was browsing through my son-in-laws
> >> bookshelves). And what he has to say is this:
>
> >> " [living organisms] can be described as apparatuses which produce
> >> language from noise and information"
> >[snip]
>
> >Serres is talking about "information" in what sense?
>
> >(I get immediately suspicious when someone talks about information in
> >the context of biology. Blame Dembski.)
>
> He is quite non-specific about mathematical details.
That doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
Perplexed in Peoria
"r norman" <r_s_norman@_comcast.net> wrote in message news:adkk23518hf78pkcr...@4ax.com...
I hope he realizes that those are alternate descriptions of the same
universe.
r norman
Actually not at all. He was correct in this distinction. On the one
hand there are mathematical models or systems of equations or
propositions: take Euclid's postulates from which you can derive
plane geometry. That is a "model" of a three-dimensional space, a
Euclidean space, to be precise, where time does not play any role.
Similarly, you can model physical systems like electronic black boxes
as operators acting on functions. There is a well developed theory of
operators or functions with points in Hilbert space and all that.
Only some operators have the property of "physical realizability"
where the system cannot produce an output before the input begins. If
you want to build an optimized real-time system to certain
specifications to process input data, then you must make sure to use
only physically realizable operators. Exactly why this must be so is
not a settled question, but it must. However if you collect a set of
data and then crunch it through a computer not in real time, then you
are not so constrained and you can do a much better job, for example,
of separating signal from noise by using non-realizable operators. In
short, these mathematical models are invariant of time. Historically,
these mathematical systems have been around for thousands of years,
taking Euclid to be an example.
Second, there are models of physical systems that can be as simple as
a pendulum or as complex as a planetary system or even the whole
universe in Newtonian terms. These are invariant with respect to time
reversal, that is, there is no arrow of time. The system functions
just as well working backwards as forwards. This even happens with
the particles in a gas. All the (purely elastic) collisions that
occur are completely reversible with time. Historically, these
clockwork physical systems have been around for a half millennium or
so, ever since Newtonian mechanics (OK, just under a half millennium,
let's not quibble).
Third, there are models of physical systems that incorporate
dissipative changes, irreversible changes. These include an entropic
term that must proceed (under proper conditions) in one direction of
time. That is the whole "problem of time's arrow". This is a much
more recent phenomenon, dating back less than two centuries. The
actual source of time's arrow in physics is rather far more subtle.
Nothing in Galileo, Newton, or Einstein produces a direction to time.
Even Feynman's QED theory has interpretations of anti-particles as
particles traveling backwards in time. It was only in 1998 that
physicists at CERN found direct experimental evidence of a process
(kaon decay) that violation the reversibility of time, although it was
know since 1964 that charge-parity symmetry was broken and that
therefore there must be a break in time symmetry to compensate.
Finally, as Serres points out, there is the model of physical systems
that incorporating the communication or transmission of information.
The mathematical notion of information dates back only a half century
or so, but the earliest practitioners, Shannon, of course, but with a
great deal of assistance from Wiener and Von Neumann, made clear and
definitive claims connecting Shannon information with negative entropy
in the statistical thermodynamic sense as a measure over a phase space
of alternative internal states of a system.
In these ideas, Serres is quite correct and everyone in the history of
science (even John Wilkins, I imagine) will have to agree. It is what
Serres makes of this development and how he carries it out to connect
science to all sorts of human endeavors that he gets quite lost in
post-modernism that has such an enormous following in continental
Europe.
dkomo
In other words, the universe we humans know is a collection of different
conceptual and perceptual models (post-modernists would call them
"narratives" of reality). I'm quite comfortable with this viewpoint.
Some (like Wilkins) prefer to go further and postulate an objective
universe independent of human observers, with our models serving as
observation windows to that universe. This to me is just another
narrative.
r norman
wrote:
You are mistaking the notion of a model system with a model of a
particular system, specifically the universe we live in.
You can make mathematical models of all sorts of systems. Three
dimensional Euclidean geometry is just one; there are many other
alternative systems. Each of these is a complete system unto
itself, described by specific mathematical rules. Physical models,
also, exist in a variety of models. You can create a model of the
universe where gravity and electromagnetism vary as the inverse cube
of distance instead of the inverse square. That model will in no way
resemble our own universe, but still is a model.
You are thinking only of different "models" of the universe as
successively closer approximations to reality; first a euclidean
geometry, then Newtonian mechanics, then electromagnetism and
classical thermodynamics, then relativity and quantum mechanics and
whatever else there may be. I am talking about a Newtonian clockwork
universe as a complete self-contained system completely separate from
whether or not it replicates any features whatsoever of the universe
we inhabit.. That system has completely reversible time, as does the
universe composed of relativity theory and quantum mechanics.
Mathematics is filled with completely abstract creations that bear
absolutely no relationship with reality. Complex system theory is
filled with completely abstract creations that bear absolutely no
relationship with reality. On the other hand, there are people who
specialize in creating models, mathematical or system theoretic, that
do in fact represent our universe to one degree or another. They tend
to have better success getting money to pay for what they do, but
they do not represent all of modeling.
John Wilkins
> Some (like Wilkins) prefer to go further and postulate an objective
> universe independent of human observers, with our models serving as
> observation windows to that universe. This to me is just another
> narrative.
But it is the ultimately privileged narrative...
Perplexed in Peoria
"r norman" <r_s_norman@_comcast.net> wrote in message news:2k6l23lu377l71hr7...@4ax.com...
And it was my claim that that Newtonian clockwork universe, with completely
reversible time, can be looked at in the way specfified by Boltzman, in
which case it has a 2LOT and irreversible time. Time's Arrow is (painful
as it sounds) in the eye of the beholder.
Perplexed in Peoria
"John Wilkins" <j.wil...@uq.edu.au> wrote in message news:1hwyt5a.1uqohhw1me97ufN%j.wil...@uq.edu.au...
> dkomo <dkom...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > Some (like Wilkins) prefer to go further and postulate an objective
> > universe independent of human observers, with our models serving as
> > observation windows to that universe. This to me is just another
> > narrative.
>
> But it is the ultimately privileged narrative...
Why?
Friar Broccoli
Glad to hear this. I feared I was going to have to ditch
my tag line.
Friar Broccoli
Robert Keith Elias, Quebec, Canada Email: EliasRK (of) gmail * com
Best programmer's & all purpose text editor: http://www.semware.com
--------- I consider ALL arguments in support of my views ---------
r norman
The second law is a probabilistic law. The Newtonian clockwork
universe is absolutely completely reversible.
Consider a closed volume with gas molecules starting with all the
molecules crammed into one corner of the volume, the remaining space
being empty vacuum. Let time expire and you end up with the
molecules distributed quite uniformly in the volume. Now freeze time,
recording the position and velocity of every molecule. (No Heisenberg
here, we are talking Newtonian mechanics). Now keep every particle in
exactly the same location but reverse the sign of every velocity (in
other words, mimic running time backwards, but "real" time is
actually going forwards). You will find that the molecules end up all
crammed back into the corner of the volume. But, you declaim, entropy
says it can't happen! Wrong! Entropy says it has only a very small
probability of happening. You just picked a very particular starting
condition that made it happen. Time is reversible in a Newtonian
system; entropy is reversible in a Newtonian system.
Here is the proper way to interpret the second law. Consider, again,
a situation with all the molecules distributed in one corner. How
many different configurations are there that look quite
indistinguishable, all with the molecules crammed in that corner?
There are a lot; call the number n. Now consider the ensemble of all
of these configurations, all released to run their time course. In
almost every single one of them, the molecules will end up uniformly
distributed. That is, with probability exceptionally close to one
(but not exactly one) the system will move to a uniformly distributed
state. There will be n examples of this uniformly distributed state
each one being the result of each one of the starting conditions.
Now consider the reverse situation. Consider a system with the
molecules uniformly distributed. How many configurations of this
state are there? There are N, a number enormously larger than n. Now
if you use each as a starting condition and run the system
"backwards", with a probably exceptionally close to one (but not
exactly one) the system will stay in a uniformly distributed state.
However there is a tiny number of starting configurations that will
result in the molecules ending up all crammed into a corner. How many
of this special type of configuration are there? There are, in fact,
n. But n is much much smaller than N so the probability of starting
in one of these instead of one of the others is very close to zero.
In other words, the probability of reversing entropy is close to zero
and the probability of it increasing is close to one.
The second law says that, with probability close to one, a system will
move from low entropy to high entropy. It does not say that time is
irreversible, only that the chances of finding a way to do it is close
to zero. But allowing the movie of reality to play out and then
reversing it is specifically a way of finding one of those
exceptionally rare instances when entropy goes backwards.
r norman
wrote:
>On Sun, 22 Apr 2007 00:15:50 GMT, "Perplexed in Peoria"
I should add that if you take my scenario starting with all the
molecules in a corner, let it run until they are uniform and then
start the replay with all the molecules going with negative velocity
you end of with the molecules in a corner only if you do the replay
absolutely accurately. If even one of those molecules moves even the
slightest distance, or gets started with even the tiniest error in
velocity, then you have a completely different situation and it stays
uniform with no decrease in entropy.
John Wilkins
> "John Wilkins" <j.wil...@uq.edu.au> wrote...
> > dkomo <dkom...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Some (like Wilkins) prefer to go further and postulate an objective
> > > universe independent of human observers, with our models serving as
> > > observation windows to that universe. This to me is just another
> > > narrative.
> >
> > But it is the ultimately privileged narrative...
>
> Why?
Some French guys said so. It just *is* OK? Because it is an IBE. Because
without it, nothing makes sense. 42.
Perplexed in Peoria
"r norman" <r_s_norman@_comcast.net> wrote in message news:ctdl23t1eomlvhvoq...@4ax.com...
Yes. And that contradicts what I said ... how?
Perplexed in Peoria
"John Wilkins" <j.wil...@uq.edu.au> wrote in message news:1hwz0oc.be6nq01bderv4N%j.wil...@uq.edu.au...
> Perplexed in Peoria <jimme...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> > "John Wilkins" <j.wil...@uq.edu.au> wrote...
> > > dkomo <dkom...@comcast.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > > In other words, the universe we humans know is a collection of different
> > > > conceptual and perceptual models (post-modernists would call them
> > > > "narratives" of reality). I'm quite comfortable with this viewpoint.
> > > >
> > > > universe independent of human observers, with our models serving as
> > > > observation windows to that universe. This to me is just another
> > > > narrative.
> > >
> > > But it is the ultimately privileged narrative...
> >
> > Why?
>
> Some French guys said so. It just *is* OK? Because it is an IBE. Because
> without it, nothing makes sense. 42.
I had to Google to find out what an IBE is. I've got it narrowed down to
one of these:
Institute of Biological Engineering
Identity-Based Encryption
International Bureau of Education
Indiana Black Expo
Institute of Business Ethics
International Bureau for Epilepsy
Industrial Battery Engineering
Institute of Biblical Education (at Bob Jones University)
Inference to the Best Explanation (in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
I am quite happy with priviliging those narratives which are independent
of human observers and which 'make sense'. But among all such narratives,
how do you pick the one to represent 'objective reality'? I had expected
that John would say something about reduction, but he was too clever to
fall into that trap. If, indeed, you can draw arrows between narratives
indicating "this narrative reduces to that one", and if all those arrows
converge to a single unique narrative, then I will accept that that unique
narrative is privileged.
But what if the arrows form cycles? Or, what if arrows run to several
basis narratives, but those narratives cannot be connected by arrows?
Since we don't yet have a single base-level narrative, I prefer to remain
agnostic regarding its existence. And, since we are not sure we can identify
all the arrows which might exist in a Platonic sense, it seems safest to me
to adopt a democratic, or rather, relativism-oriented stance toward claims
of privilege.
r norman
<jimme...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Perhaps I misinterpreted what you said as implying that the clockwork
universe is irreversible. Modern physics, though, has found an
asymmetry in the direction of time in the kaon decay I mentioned
earlier so there may be some "objective physical reality" to it.
Friar Broccoli
> On Sun, 22 Apr 2007 00:15:50 GMT, "Perplexed in Peoria"
> <jimmene...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>And it was my claim that that Newtonian clockwork universe, with completely
>>reversible time, can be looked at in the way specfified by Boltzman, in
>>which case it has a 2LOT and irreversible time. Time's Arrow is (painful
>>as it sounds) in the eye of the beholder.
> The second law is a probabilistic law. The Newtonian clockwork
> universe is absolutely completely reversible.
> Consider a closed volume with gas molecules starting with all
> the molecules crammed into one corner of the volume, the
> remaining space being empty vacuum. Let time expire and you
> end up with the molecules distributed quite uniformly in the
> volume. Now freeze time, recording the position and velocity
> of every molecule. (No Heisenberg here, we are talking
> Newtonian mechanics). Now keep every particle in exactly the
> same location but reverse the sign of every velocity (in other
> words, mimic running time backwards, but "real" time is
> actually going forwards). You will find that the molecules
> end up all crammed back into the corner of the volume. But,
> you declaim, entropy says it can't happen! Wrong! Entropy
> says it has only a very small probability of happening. You
> just picked a very particular starting condition that made it
> happen. Time is reversible in a Newtonian system; entropy is
> reversible in a Newtonian system.
All this might say (in my opinion) is that a Newtonian system
is not a complete model of reality - no surprise there.
On the probability argument, and with respect to your specific
argument (with all the molecules in the corner) I think this is
completely wrong:
For all the molecules to be in the corner, they are either in
an extremely unstable state with high kinetic energy due to the
repulsive forces between the electron clouds, or the system has
very low kinetic energy - as in it is a block of molecules at
VERY low temperature. (Note that I might_be/probably_am making
several technical errors with respect to energy/force etc.
Please make reasonable allowances for my stupidity.)
If it started out frozen then it cannot be a closed system
because the gas would have gained energy as it spread out, and
could not regain that energy in exactly the same way.
If it started out in the unstable state, it will refuse to
return to anything even remotely similar to the unstable state
because of the collective repulsive forces of the electron
clouds.
(In real life, I will be working outside for several hours)
Cordially;
r norman
wrote:
The classical way of doing this is to put all the molecules into a
balloon in the corner of the room which is otherwise a vacuum. Then
puncture the balloon. That gives you a condition where all the
molecules are crammed into one corner.
The concept is to pose a hypothetical initial condition and see how
the system plays out. The fact that the initial condition is rather
extreme and unlikely is immaterial; it is an initial condition that is
specified, not one that arises naturally.
> (In real life, I will be working outside for several hours)
You have a real life? Lucky you!
Perplexed in Peoria
"r norman" <r_s_norman@_comcast.net> wrote in message news:80im239r4shpludij...@4ax.com...
I said that the clockwork reversible universe, when viewed in the way
Boltzman suggests, is seen to be irreversible. As you point out, that
irreversibility is only a probability thing. It is probable that entropy
will increase, but there do exist some rare system states that lead to a
decrease in entropy.
I also have stated elsewhere that this 'emergence' of a prefered direction
of time in the passage to the thermodynamic limit is an example of spontaneous
symmetry breaking, and hence is a cononical example of an 'emergent property'.
Involving 'hidden epistemology' as do all cases of emergence.
The 'hidden epistemology', in this case, arises because we specify the boundary
conditions - the motions of the atoms constituting the walls containing the
gas molecules - only statistically, even though we are pretending that we
know exactly the motions of each gas molecule. Microscopic unpredictability
leaks into a closed system through its boundary - regardless of the direction
of entropy flow. And once the closed system has soaked up unpredictability
from the surroundings, then an increase in the entropy of system+surroundings
is statistically inevitable.
> Modern physics, though, has found an
> asymmetry in the direction of time in the kaon decay I mentioned
> earlier so there may be some "objective physical reality" to it.
Right. But now you are departing from the Newtonian clockwork universe.
And, as far as we know, kaon decay has nothing to do with the thermodynamic
Time's Arrow. Kaon decay seems to be a different arrow in Time's quiver.
r norman
<jimme...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Now we agree. But you are going to get into hot water with Wilkins
because of your emergence thingie.
Perplexed in Peoria
"r norman" <r_s_norman@_comcast.net> wrote in message news:vlsm23lh8olde08l6...@4ax.com...
Hot air, not hot water.
dkomo
[snip]
>
> Sure - so long as you are talking about the *narratives*. I was joking
> with my initial comment; but it seems to me that we should not accept
> that the world just is what we tell ourselves it is. That really is
> insane. Or religious. At the least it is anthropomorphism.
>
> We may never have a narrative that is adequate to all phenomena (unless
> you want to say that the phenomena are also narrative inventions), but I
> think that it really *is* an IBE that there is an external reality.
The narrative of an external reality violates Occam's razor. It is
superfluous. If there actually were no independent, objective external
reality, it wouldn't make the slightest difference. We'd still have all
our scientific models and theories, and, if it makes us feel better, we
could go on believing in an independent reality. The important thing
is, though, that our models *work*. They allow us to predict, and in
the realm of engineering (even for biology) they allow us to produce
useful products to make our lives better.
I suggest that sanity is simply a collection of narratives that work for
us, and that the large majority of our peers believe in.
dkomo
> On Sun, 22 Apr 2007 00:15:50 GMT, "Perplexed in Peoria"
> <jimme...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>>And it was my claim that that Newtonian clockwork universe, with completely
>>reversible time, can be looked at in the way specfified by Boltzman, in
>>which case it has a 2LOT and irreversible time. Time's Arrow is (painful
>>as it sounds) in the eye of the beholder.
>
>
> The second law is a probabilistic law. The Newtonian clockwork
> universe is absolutely completely reversible.
>
There's nothing special about the Newtonian "clockwork" universe. All
the major equations in physics except maybe the 2LOT are time reversible.
Rolf
"John Wilkins" <j.wil...@uq.edu.au> skrev i melding
news:1hwz0oc.be6nq01bderv4N%j.wil...@uq.edu.au...
> Perplexed in Peoria <jimme...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> > "John Wilkins" <j.wil...@uq.edu.au> wrote...
> > > dkomo <dkom...@comcast.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Some (like Wilkins) prefer to go further and postulate an objective
> > > > universe independent of human observers, with our models serving as
> > > > observation windows to that universe. This to me is just another
> > > > narrative.
> > >
> > > But it is the ultimately privileged narrative...
> >
> > Why?
>
> Some French guys said so. It just *is* OK? Because it is an IBE. Because
> without it, nothing makes sense. 42.
For what it may be worth: I may not be much of a philospher, the only thing
I have going for me is age, with a corresponding amount of time to have
pondered such questions. And the statement above is how I always have viewed
the 'problem', and still do. I am afraid it would take a lot of persuasion
to make me think otherwise.
To me, emergence is two things: In the realm of physics, as suggested by
Laughlin. In the realm of humanity:
consciousness and with it language, philosophy, poetry and so on are
emergent, something that emerges due to a particular arrangement of
molecules. Which takes us back to physics via the emergent 'quality' of
biology...
Is spirit emergent? Does (the concept of) God emerge from spirit?
And while the subject may deserve being studied, I am rather doubtful that
we ever may reach consensus; maybe it is more a question about individual
psyche than about 'objective reality.'
Am I making sense?
Rolf
"dkomo" <dkom...@comcast.net> skrev i melding
news:8Zidnb8kc94V6bbb...@comcast.com...
> John Wilkins wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >
> > Sure - so long as you are talking about the *narratives*. I was joking
> > with my initial comment; but it seems to me that we should not accept
> > that the world just is what we tell ourselves it is. That really is
> > insane. Or religious. At the least it is anthropomorphism.
> >
> > We may never have a narrative that is adequate to all phenomena (unless
> > you want to say that the phenomena are also narrative inventions), but I
> > think that it really *is* an IBE that there is an external reality.
>
> The narrative of an external reality violates Occam's razor. It is
> superfluous. If there actually were no independent, objective external
> reality, it wouldn't make the slightest difference.
And if we are confident that that is the case, we are just engaging in an
aimless waste of time and effort. Next subject, please.
Perplexed in Peoria
"Rolf" <ro...@tele2.no> wrote in message news:591hi3F...@mid.individual.net...
Yes you are. But I am going to surprise John by saying something nice about
his profession, and something partially disagreeing with what you wrote.
It seems to me that consensus on philosophical issues is a bit like adaptation
in the ToE. Achieving it takes generations, and it is never 100% complete.
Still, there is a kind of progress which takes place.
Pursuing the analogy, we can pair the biological 'struggle for existence' with
a philosophical 'struggle for coherence'. Or, if 'coherence' is too strong
a term, then we can follow Nozick and ask only that we achieve 'reflective
equilibrium'.
The nice thing that I want to say about philosophy is that I think that there
really is progress over time. We now think about many things in the 'right' way,
whereas in the past, we mostly thought about them in the 'wrong' way. As you point
out, whether the 'right way' of looking at things is adopted by any individual
depends as much on the individual psyche as upon the force of arguments. But
still, the individual psyche is malleable by the discourse which surrounds it.
As compared to other fields of human progress, philosophy may seem slow and
resistant to reform. But progress does take place over time. It just takes
a lot of effort.
Walter Bushell
j.wil...@uq.edu.au (John Wilkins) wrote:
> dkomo <dkom...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > Some (like Wilkins) prefer to go further and postulate an objective
> > universe independent of human observers, with our models serving as
> > observation windows to that universe. This to me is just another
> > narrative.
>
> But it is the ultimately privileged narrative...
Still the actual existence of an external universe is a faith position.
Friar Broccoli
> On 22 Apr 2007 05:50:41 -0700, Friar Broccoli <Elia...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
You did not address the point I originally intended to make,
which is OK, because I now think it was wrong.
I must, I now believe, be able to point to a specific interaction
which is not reversible. (How likely is that given the perhaps
millions of qualified physicists who have looked at this problem
before me?) The odds of success notwithstanding, here goes
(with two cases) anyway:
During the initial expansion/explosion things will be very messy
indeed, including counter shock waves which will cause molecules
some distance away from the surface of the initial volume to
move temporarily against the outward expansion flow.
Interactions resulting from this and similar reactions will
cause the emission of photons, some of which will then be
absorbed and re-emitted by other molecules/atoms and so forth.
To the best of my knowledge photon interactions of this type,
although reversible in principle, are not predictably
reversible. They are subject to uncertainty. Thus you will
never get all your photons returning all the energy to the right
electron at the right time.
To make matters considerably worse, I don't think that the large
scale electric field set up by the implosion would be the mirror
image of that created by the explosion. During the explosion
any field created would be due to the PAST state of the
compressed particle arrangement.
During the implosion that state would be in the future
resulting in a differently shaped magnetic field, which would
completely screw up all the above mentioned photon reactions, in
a way which would (I believe) make the process completely
non-reversible.
>> (In real life, I will be working outside for several hours)
> You have a real life? Lucky you!
Not so sure. REAL means consistently gaining 20 lbs over winter
so now I'm off on the 5th of many many 60 km bike rides to start
taking it off. In a couple of months, when I start getting into
shape, I go up to 80km a day over more difficult terrain.
r norman
wrote:
>On Apr 22, 9:07 am, r norman <r_s_norman@_comcast.net> wrote:
You are introducing all sorts of phenomena like quantum mechanical
events into the mix. That is most definitely NOT a Newtonian
clockwork universe. In that universe everything is reversible. And,
from what I have read, in virtually all other physical universes
except for kaon decay everything is reversible. You, yourself,
hedge by saying "although reversible in principle, are not predictably
reversible," It is the principle that at issue here, not whether it
can ever be done for any practical system with a reasonably large
number of particles.
I think your introduction of explosion and photons and
electromagnetic fields is really rather off the mark, too. If you
don't like my example, just put salt water on one side of a membrane
and fresh water on the other, then remove the membrane. No explosion.
No bang or photons or whatever. Just simple diffusion. Or dunk a tea
bag into a cup of hot water but don't stir it. Or watch a sugar lump
dissolve. Diffusion is exactly the same process. It is
microscopically reversible but, as a macroscopic process, irreversible
with an entropy increase.
>
>>> (In real life, I will be working outside for several hours)
>
>> You have a real life? Lucky you!
>
>Not so sure. REAL means consistently gaining 20 lbs over winter
>so now I'm off on the 5th of many many 60 km bike rides to start
>taking it off. In a couple of months, when I start getting into
>shape, I go up to 80km a day over more difficult terrain.
>
Eating less also helps. Not that I ever tried!
dkomo
> "dkomo" <dkom...@comcast.net> skrev i melding
> news:8Zidnb8kc94V6bbb...@comcast.com...
>
>>John Wilkins wrote:
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>
>>>Sure - so long as you are talking about the *narratives*. I was joking
>>>with my initial comment; but it seems to me that we should not accept
>>>that the world just is what we tell ourselves it is. That really is
>>>insane. Or religious. At the least it is anthropomorphism.
>>>
>>>We may never have a narrative that is adequate to all phenomena (unless
>>>you want to say that the phenomena are also narrative inventions), but I
>>>think that it really *is* an IBE that there is an external reality.
>>
>>The narrative of an external reality violates Occam's razor. It is
>>superfluous. If there actually were no independent, objective external
>>reality, it wouldn't make the slightest difference.
>
>
> And if we are confident that that is the case, we are just engaging in an
> aimless waste of time and effort. Next subject, please.
>
Golly, engaging in an aimless waste of time and effort is something we
*never* do on talk.origins!
I think parsimony saves time, not wastes it. Jettisoning the
independent reality narrative is parsimonious.
Friar Broccoli
> On 22 Apr 2007 10:38:26 -0700, Friar Broccoli <Elia...@gmail.com>
i am a bit skeptical that diffusion is actually reversible, but
definitely
think I could be wrong, and certainly don't think I could come up
with any plausible obstacles of principle.
> >>> (In real life, I will be working outside for several hours)
>
> >> You have a real life? Lucky you!
>
> >Not so sure. REAL means consistently gaining 20 lbs over winter
> >so now I'm off on the 5th of many many 60 km bike rides to start
> >taking it off. In a couple of months, when I start getting into
> >shape, I go up to 80km a day over more difficult terrain.
>
> Eating less also helps. Not that I ever tried!
My attempts to eat less have convinced me that free
will is a myth.
Walter Bushell
j.wil...@uq.edu.au (John Wilkins) wrote:
> Perplexed in Peoria <jimme...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> > "John Wilkins" <j.wil...@uq.edu.au> wrote...
> > > dkomo <dkom...@comcast.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Some (like Wilkins) prefer to go further and postulate an objective
> > > > universe independent of human observers, with our models serving as
> > > > observation windows to that universe. This to me is just another
> > > > narrative.
> > >
> > > But it is the ultimately privileged narrative...
> >
> > Why?
>
> Some French guys said so. It just *is* OK? Because it is an IBE. Because
> without it, nothing makes sense. 42.
I could argue for Christianity or Islam with the same logic. IOW it's a
faith position. But it's nice to see you admit it.
In fact, from inside a religion nothing makes sense without it is a
sensible as a dictionary.
Walter Bushell
"Perplexed in Peoria" <jimme...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Time's Arrow is (painful
> as it sounds) in the eye of the beholder.
Is that like the sting is in the hand of the beholder?
Or more like beauty is in the eye of the bee holder?
Walter Bushell
"Perplexed in Peoria" <jimme...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Translation between languages is always problematic, but it should be
> fairly easy for a pair of languages as closely related as French and
> English or German and English.
Even the difference between British English and American English makes
translation problematical. Not to mention all the dialects on the
British Isles. Now English as she is spoke, in India can be another
kettle of fish altogether.
John Wilkins
I think scientific realism does conform to Occam's Razor - because it
licenses inferences from one art of a theory to another without needing
further justifications (i.e., if the theory says electrons exist, then
in any other part of the theory, or in any other theory, we can say
electrons exist and are causally influential).
That said, full-blown realism is of course a matter of belief, not of
epistemic warrant. All we need *in science* is some kind of internal
realism - true in T, that sort of thing. But I find full blown realism
solves a further *metaphysical* issue - the stability of things. So it
is parsimonious for me to adopt it.
There is a further justification I find useful - it removes human agency
in acts of knowledge from being the reason for thinking things are true.
If all that "reality" is is the sum of human acts of knowing, then we
need to account for how human acts determine anything, both individually
and intersubjectively. If the claim, however, is that these acts are
interactions with the mind-independent world, then they become
unmysterious. Otherwise we have no way to privilege the narratives of a
"normal scientist" over the "schizophrenic mystic's".
There's no proof of realism, because all proofs presuppose some
grounding and are therefore either question begging in favour or
against. But there's enough reason to think there *is* a world apart
from ideational narratives.
Friar Broccoli
Hmm. Since (at least some) gravitational interactions are
not reversible, are the equations different from the instantiation?
Friar Broccoli
I wish I had constructed these arguments. They're beautiful.
John Wilkins
Friar Broccoli
Come on Wilkins. I've SEEN photos of you. You're definitely
not that hot.
John Wilkins
Someone must exist who thinks so. But I was wishing I had constructed
those arguments.
r norman
Wilkins) wrote:
>There is a further justification I find useful - it removes human agency
>in acts of knowledge from being the reason for thinking things are true.
Shall I refer once again to my French post-modernist pals?
r norman
wrote:
>i am a bit skeptical that diffusion is actually reversible, but
>definitely
>think I could be wrong, and certainly don't think I could come up
>with any plausible obstacles of principle.
Diffusion is a little trickier than a gas expanding into a vacuum.
You have to consider all the molecules of water or whatever the
solvent is. And you have to consider collisions with the walls of the
container so the molecules in the container have to be considered, as
do those in the air above a free surface. So every single particle
that interacts with the diffusing system must be reversed exactly in
order to reverse diffusion.
The real crux of the matter is that "diffusion", the phenomenon, is
truly irreversible even though every single "instance" of diffusion is
theoretically reversible (barring those very few pieces of physics
that might actually include a breaking of time symmetry).
John Wilkins
Richard Harter
wrote:
>r norman <r_s_norman@_comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:06:04 +1000, j.wil...@uq.edu.au (John
>> Wilkins) wrote:
>>
>>
>> >There is a further justification I find useful - it removes human agency
>> >in acts of knowledge from being the reason for thinking things are true.
>>
>> Shall I refer once again to my French post-modernist pals?
>
>Oh, please...
Indeed. I would delight in seeing John defend that, ah, justification.
r norman
John should have stopped one word earlier. There is a difference
between thinking things are true and thinking things are. If I
recall the discussion correctly, it is the "is" in physical reality
that is in question, not in its "truth".
Bill Morse
I hope to God you are assuming infinity. Well OK, I can't hope to God
because I am an agnostic. Or, I can hope to God but I can't believe it will
do any good.
But assuming infinity, doesn't God have to exist in some
universe or other? Wait - forget I ever asked that question. That takes care
of that question, right?
> But I was wishing I had constructed
> those arguments.
Well you did. You may not have originated those arguments, but you did
construct them. Or reconstruct them, which would still require a building
permit :-)
--
Yours, Bill Morse
Nic
Not sure I understand. Couldn't there be a similar amount of ubiquity
of say electrons, in one person's delusional world view?
> That said, full-blown realism is of course a matter of belief, not of
> epistemic warrant. All we need *in science* is some kind of internal
> realism - true in T, that sort of thing. But I find full blown realism
> solves a further *metaphysical* issue - the stability of things. So it
> is parsimonious for me to adopt it.
What stability? A mere 3 or 4 times the age of the Earth ago there
was nothing, now there is all this!
> There is a further justification I find useful - it removes human agency
> in acts of knowledge from being the reason for thinking things are true.
> If all that "reality" is is the sum of human acts of knowing, then we
> need to account for how human acts determine anything, both individually
> and intersubjectively. If the claim, however, is that these acts are
> interactions with the mind-independent world, then they become
> unmysterious. Otherwise we have no way to privilege the narratives of a
> "normal scientist" over the "schizophrenic mystic's".
Doesn't that leave you in the same stance towards the objects of
mathematics as to the objects of physics?
> There's no proof of realism, because all proofs presuppose some
> grounding and are therefore either question begging in favour or
> against. But there's enough reason to think there *is* a world apart
> from ideational narratives.
If what you say is meaningful, you ought to be able to describe what
it would be like for it to be false. I suspect that a series of
incoherent experiences would make you doubt your own sanity before it
made you doubt the existence of a stable, mind-independent, beyond-
your-control, external world. Could you find yourself in a condition
where you'd be better off assuming that it is the world that has gone
mad?
dkomo
I still find it superfluous. The stability of things, the permanence of
physical laws, and their usefulness to build and predict are all based
on empirical observations over the course of centuries. Without this
stability science would have been impossible. However, believing in a
"crisp", concrete reality below all of it is just a leap of faith. I
think modern physics has shown that this kind of reality is a chimera.
> There is a further justification I find useful - it removes human agency
> in acts of knowledge from being the reason for thinking things are true.
> If all that "reality" is is the sum of human acts of knowing, then we
> need to account for how human acts determine anything, both individually
> and intersubjectively.
This reminds me of the theist's claim that a God independent of humanity
provides a firm foundation for morality. If there were no God, then man
would be free to be behave however he wishes, and then morality would be
nothing more than what was trendy in a society at the moment.
Could it be that a realist's faith in "the world out there" is quite
similar to the theist's faith in "a God out there?" in that it provides
a comfortable justification for "truth."
> If the claim, however, is that these acts are
> interactions with the mind-independent world, then they become
> unmysterious. Otherwise we have no way to privilege the narratives of a
> "normal scientist" over the "schizophrenic mystic's".
>
Yet we seem to have no problem distinguishing between the narratives.
We simply see how many other people see the same visions or hear the
same voices as the schizophrenic. Likewise the normal scientist. A
narrative in these cases is privileged or not depending on how many
other people can verify it.
Note that this also applies to religion. A religion is dominant for a
particular society because a large number of people "validate" it. The
validation here is, of course, quite different than it is for science.
> There's no proof of realism, because all proofs presuppose some
> grounding and are therefore either question begging in favour or
> against. But there's enough reason to think there *is* a world apart
> from ideational narratives.
"Reality is a crutch."
dkomo
> On Apr 22, 10:54 am, dkomo <dkomo...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>>r norman wrote:
>>
>>>On Sun, 22 Apr 2007 00:15:50 GMT, "Perplexed in Peoria"
>>><jimmene...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>>>>And it was my claim that that Newtonian clockwork universe, with completely
>>>>reversible time, can be looked at in the way specfified by Boltzman, in
>>>>which case it has a 2LOT and irreversible time. Time's Arrow is (painful
>>>>as it sounds) in the eye of the beholder.
>>
>>>The second law is a probabilistic law. The Newtonian clockwork
>>>universe is absolutely completely reversible.
>>
>>There's nothing special about the Newtonian "clockwork" universe. All
>>the major equations in physics except maybe the 2LOT are time reversible.
>
>
> Hmm. Since (at least some) gravitational interactions are
> not reversible, are the equations different from the instantiation?
>
I'm not sure what you mean by "not reversible." Even in the case of an
apple falling off the table and hitting the ground, you can reverse the
velocity vector it had just before it hit the ground and "run the movie
backwards." Right before the apple reaches the height of the table
again, it will have slowed to zero velocity once more as it moves upward
against gravity.
After the apple hits the ground, however, there's a change in entropy
and the situation is now irreversible. The apple's energy of motion is
dissipated into sound waves, heat and possible change in shape (it could
completely break apart).
"Classical mechanics is based on equations that Newton discovered in the
late 1600s. Electromagnetism is based on equations Maxwell discovered
in the late 1800s. Special relativity is based on equations Einstein
discovered in 1905, and general realtivity is based on equations he
discovered in 1915. What all these equations have in common, and what
is central to the dilemma of time's arrow is their complete symmetric
treatment of past and future. Nowhere in any of these equations is
there anything that distinguishes "forward" time from "backward" time.
Past and future are on an equal footing."
and a few good words regarding QM:
"Quantum mechanics is based on an equation that Erwin Schrodinger
discovered in 1926...Like the classical laws of Newton, Maxwell, and
Einstein, the quantum law of Schrodinger embraces an egalitarian
treatment of time-future and time-past. A movie showing a probability
wave starting like *this* and ending like *that* could be run in reverse
-- showing a proabability wave starting like *that* and ending *this* --
and there would be no way to say that one evolution was right and the
other wrong. Both would be equally valid solutions of Schrodinger's
equation."
Brian Greene, _The Fabric of the Cosmos_, p. 200
Perplexed in Peoria
"dkomo" <dkom...@comcast.net> wrote in message news:Aqudnaq3RolfqLPb...@comcast.com...
Yes. Under normal circumstances, Newton's equations and Einstein's equations
for gravitation are time-reversible. But what happens when your apple falls
into a black hole? I'm not an expert, but something a bit weird happens with
respect to time-reversibility in this case. Time dilation becomes infinite,
or negative, or at right angles to itself, or something equally absurd.
Unless you look at it in the right way. And that apparently takes some subtlety.
carlip...@physics.ucdavis.edu
[...]
> Yes. Under normal circumstances, Newton's equations and Einstein's equations
> for gravitation are time-reversible. But what happens when your apple falls
> into a black hole? I'm not an expert, but something a bit weird happens with
> respect to time-reversibility in this case. Time dilation becomes infinite,
> or negative, or at right angles to itself, or something equally absurd.
> Unless you look at it in the right way. And that apparently takes some subtlety.
Two things to remember:
1. For time-reversibility, you have to reverse *everything*, not just a single
piece of the system.
2. Although the exterior of a black hole is static, the interior is not; it is
a dynamical system, changing with time.
So if you want to look at the time reversal of an apple falling into a black
hole, you have to reverse not just the apple, but the interior dynamics. This
gives you a "white hole," a perfectly good solution of the classical field
equations of general relativity (although one that probably doesn't exist in
our Universe).
Steve Carlip
John Wilkins
There *could* be pink unicorns that you can't see, but that is not a
warranted inference. I took it that this discussion is about warranted
claims vis a vis science.
>
> > That said, full-blown realism is of course a matter of belief, not of
> > epistemic warrant. All we need *in science* is some kind of internal
> > realism - true in T, that sort of thing. But I find full blown realism
> > solves a further *metaphysical* issue - the stability of things. So it
> > is parsimonious for me to adopt it.
>
> What stability? A mere 3 or 4 times the age of the Earth ago there
> was nothing, now there is all this!
Yes, but since breakfast this morning it has been pretty stable. Nothing
in my immediate vicinity has popped into or out of existence.
>
> > There is a further justification I find useful - it removes human agency
> > in acts of knowledge from being the reason for thinking things are true.
> > If all that "reality" is is the sum of human acts of knowing, then we
> > need to account for how human acts determine anything, both individually
> > and intersubjectively. If the claim, however, is that these acts are
> > interactions with the mind-independent world, then they become
> > unmysterious. Otherwise we have no way to privilege the narratives of a
> > "normal scientist" over the "schizophrenic mystic's".
>
> Doesn't that leave you in the same stance towards the objects of
> mathematics as to the objects of physics?
It might. I am not mathematical platonist, and prefer Wigner's
explanation of its success, but one might want to argue that math is
real in the same sense that physics is.
>
> > There's no proof of realism, because all proofs presuppose some
> > grounding and are therefore either question begging in favour or
> > against. But there's enough reason to think there *is* a world apart
> > from ideational narratives.
>
> If what you say is meaningful, you ought to be able to describe what
> it would be like for it to be false. I suspect that a series of
> incoherent experiences would make you doubt your own sanity before it
> made you doubt the existence of a stable, mind-independent, beyond-
> your-control, external world. Could you find yourself in a condition
> where you'd be better off assuming that it is the world that has gone
> mad?
If mind-dependent experience was perfectly coherent and consistent with
my experience of "not-me", then I could not tell. But for all those
schizophrenic experiences I don't talk about these days, I was pretty
sure they were not real, or referencing anything that was real, until
the effects of the drugs wore off.
John Wilkins
> On Tue, 24 Apr 2007 08:56:43 GMT, c...@tiac.net (Richard Harter) wrote:
>
> >On Tue, 24 Apr 2007 05:33:00 +1000, j.wil...@uq.edu.au (John Wilkins)
> >wrote:
> >
> >>r norman <r_s_norman@_comcast.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:06:04 +1000, j.wil...@uq.edu.au (John
> >>> Wilkins) wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> >There is a further justification I find useful - it removes human agency
> >>> >in acts of knowledge from being the reason for thinking things are true.
> >>>
> >>> Shall I refer once again to my French post-modernist pals?
> >>
> >>Oh, please...
> >
> >Indeed. I would delight in seeing John defend that, ah, justification.
> >
>
> John should have stopped one word earlier. There is a difference
> between thinking things are true and thinking things are. If I
> recall the discussion correctly, it is the "is" in physical reality
> that is in question, not in its "truth".
Well, strictly it is a proposition that any particular thing is, and
propositions are true.
John Wilkins
I can accept everything you said except the final sentence. I do not
think physics shows anything of the kind.
>
> > There is a further justification I find useful - it removes human agency
> > in acts of knowledge from being the reason for thinking things are true.
> > If all that "reality" is is the sum of human acts of knowing, then we
> > need to account for how human acts determine anything, both individually
> > and intersubjectively.
>
> This reminds me of the theist's claim that a God independent of humanity
> provides a firm foundation for morality. If there were no God, then man
> would be free to be behave however he wishes, and then morality would be
> nothing more than what was trendy in a society at the moment.
>
> Could it be that a realist's faith in "the world out there" is quite
> similar to the theist's faith in "a God out there?" in that it provides
> a comfortable justification for "truth."
Yes, that is a common claim. In fact one philosopher said to me uon my
declaration of a belief in scientific realism "Why do you want to have a
religion?" I made him buy me another beer until he saw the worth of the
viewpoint.
Strictly I think that the most real objects just *are* those that are
required by the most coherent and consistent theory - in Quine's terms,
to be is to be the value of a bounded variable (in a scientific model
that works). But metaphysically I also think that science has to be
"about" something - what the scholastics would call "first intention".
And since I don't think with the scholastics that *God* is what science
is about in that way, I am happy to think there is a noumenal world.
>
> > If the claim, however, is that these acts are
> > interactions with the mind-independent world, then they become
> > unmysterious. Otherwise we have no way to privilege the narratives of a
> > "normal scientist" over the "schizophrenic mystic's".
> >
>
> Yet we seem to have no problem distinguishing between the narratives.
> We simply see how many other people see the same visions or hear the
> same voices as the schizophrenic. Likewise the normal scientist. A
> narrative in these cases is privileged or not depending on how many
> other people can verify it.
Popper, in (if memory serves) _Objective Knowledge_ has a nice argument
I'll call the Argument from Intersubjective Agreement along these lines.
But there is a problem with it - the fallacy of argumentum ab usum or ab
gentium. The fallacy that fails to note that forty million Frenchmen (or
the "episteme" of you choice) *can* be wrong. Intersubjective agreement
is at best just another item that bolsters one's belief that a given
account (I was *joking* about "narrative" - it ain't *all* stories we
tell ourselves!) is warranted more than others.
>
> Note that this also applies to religion. A religion is dominant for a
> particular society because a large number of people "validate" it. The
> validation here is, of course, quite different than it is for science.
>
> > There's no proof of realism, because all proofs presuppose some
> > grounding and are therefore either question begging in favour or
> > against. But there's enough reason to think there *is* a world apart
> > from ideational narratives.
>
> --dk...@cris.com
>
> "Reality is a crutch."
So throw away the crutch and walk! Oops, sorry, it seems you *do* need
to support yourself in the real world...
Ernest Major
<j.wil...@uq.edu.au> writes
>> I still find it superfluous. The stability of things, the permanence of
>> physical laws, and their usefulness to build and predict are all based
>> on empirical observations over the course of centuries. Without this
>> stability science would have been impossible. However, believing in a
>> "crisp", concrete reality below all of it is just a leap of faith. I
>> think modern physics has shown that this kind of reality is a chimera.
>
>I can accept everything you said except the final sentence. I do not
>think physics shows anything of the kind.
I don't understand the subject sufficiently to be able to tell whether
it is relevant, but you might like to take a look at
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/11/4/14
and the source material at
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7138/abs/nature05677.html
(Subscription required, so I've only seen the abstract.)
You might need a sufficiently trained physicist to explain it to you.
--
alias Ernest Major
John Wilkins
I have and have read the paper. I still do not think it shows that
reality is a chimera.
dkomo
At this point let me ask you a piquant question. As a card carrying
Realist do you believe that dinosaurs *still* exist? Not as fossils,
but as actual tail thumping, teeth gnashing giant reptiles? Do you
believe that the future *already* exists and that there is a desolate
scene of a burnt-to-a-crisp earth and brown dwarf sun out there in your
Reality at this very moment?
This is the picture of Einstein's spacetime in relativity theory. *All*
spacetime events exist and forever continue to exist, from time zero to
plus infinity everywhere across our universe.
The physicist Brian Greene in his _Fabric of the Cosmos_ explictly
states that Einstein's spacetime is *literally* real, and in fact, most
physicists simply take it for granted. I'll provide some quotes and
further commentary tomorrow as I don't have the time right now. Even
Einstein expressed anxiety when he first realized the implications of
spacetime.
Perhaps Steve Carlip, if he's listening in, would care to comment?
"Be careful what you wish for, if you would wish for reality."
r norman
wrote:
I am neither John nor Steve, but I'll still pipe in. Your questions
are really inappropriate. You ask: " do you believe that dinosaurs
*still* exist?" and that " that the future *already* exists". You are
here abusing the English language. Both "still" and "already" require
concepts of time: "still" means "even now, as was formerly" and
"already" means "as early as now".
Of course non-bird dinosaurs do not still exist in the world of
here-and-now, the space-time location we all now occupy. Of course
the future does not already exist in the world of here-and-now. Both
those long-ago events and the yet-to-be events occupy a position in
space-time that none of us can experience and so they really do not
exist as far as we are concerned.
You might as well ask whether I believe that kangaroos and wallabies
are animals native to my own habitat because they are present at
John's. No, I say, they belong to a different region of space and
therefore are not part of my world. Well, the past and the future
belong to a different region of space-time and therefore are not part
of my world.
dkomo
The question is whether spacetime is *reality*. Are the past and future
a part of that reality? Or are only "parts of my world" reality? I
think you are saying yea to the last question. That makes reality
observer dependent.
Personally I don't agonize over any of these questions because "reality"
is IMHO only an abstraction. It's a "meta-narrative."
Friar Broccoli
Would this not also reverse 2LOT? (which is the subject of this
sub-thread.)
r norman
wrote:
MY reality is observer dependent. In space-time, my present is not
your present, my light cone is not your light cone. So the past that
can influence me or the future that I can influence is separate from
yours although overlapping. That is a basic property of relativistic
space-time. It may be that all pasts and futures for all observers
exist in a single space-time continuum, but "my" reality is special
to me.
John Wilkins
"This very moment"? No. But in the four dimensional spacetime continuum,
dinosaurs exist, yes. The problem of the present is a philosophical one,
not a physics one. But even if it were a problem of physics, I would
still argue that physics doesn't settle it.
>
> This is the picture of Einstein's spacetime in relativity theory. *All*
> spacetime events exist and forever continue to exist, from time zero to
> plus infinity everywhere across our universe.
>
> The physicist Brian Greene in his _Fabric of the Cosmos_ explictly
> states that Einstein's spacetime is *literally* real, and in fact, most
> physicists simply take it for granted. I'll provide some quotes and
> further commentary tomorrow as I don't have the time right now. Even
> Einstein expressed anxiety when he first realized the implications of
> spacetime.
>
> Perhaps Steve Carlip, if he's listening in, would care to comment?
>
>
> --dk...@cris.com
>
>
> "Be careful what you wish for, if you would wish for reality."
dkomo
So are you making a distinction between "my" reality, "your" reality and
a cosmic reality that is the sum total of every observer's reality? And
would cosmic reality include all those spacetime sectors that don't have
any observers?
Note that you skirted around the question "is spacetime reality?" I'm
not contesting that "now" is observer dependent, and that "now" is
infinitesimal slice of spacetime.
Note also that a similar set of questions arise in quantum mechanics,
except now they center around the issue of wave function collapse rather
than obervers in motion as in relativity.
r norman
wrote:
Far too many issues are floating around here. According to
relativity, there are events that are accessible to you (within your
light cone) that are not to me. These can play absolutely no role in
my universe and are completely irrelevant as far as I am concerned.
The universe with which I can interact definitely depends on me.
As to whether the overall universe is greater than that which I can
interact with is a completely different question. And yet a different
question is whether that greater universe including all of space-time
with which I can never interact really exists in some "physical"
reality or is just an epiphenomenon of certain mathematical equations
is not at all determined by physics.
The real point on which I tried to comment was to support John's
objection to your claim that physics has shown that "reality" is a
chimera. Physics produces a mathematical system that seems to
correspond to an extremely close degree to what we observe. The
mathematical system is not the reality, though, nor is it the denial
of the reality. The mathematical system does predict that some things
can occur that are quite surprising according to what we traditionally
think of as "reality" and if you look carefully enough you find that
the surprising predictions actually occur. So we adjust our notion of
"reality" to include those events.
dkomo
The following quote explains my chimera remark.
"So, where does this all leave us? Remember that we grew weary of the
philosophers and turned to science for some answers concerning the
reality of matter and light, of space and time. What have we got?
We have wave shadows and particle shadows. We have spooky action-at-a
distance between entangled quantum objects. We have space built from
hypothetical loops in a universe without time. We have hypothetical
vibrating strings in an eleven-dimensional spacetime. We have a
universe that might be a three-dimensional membrane in which there might
be seven extra dimensions hidden in your hair. Some of these things are
experimental or observational fact. Others are theoretical speculation.
So what is real? We have to admit that we don't know.
We have reached the very bottom of the rabbit hole. But it seems we
have no choice but to keep following the white rabbit:
'Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped up on to her feet in a moment:
she looked up, but it was all dark overhead: before her was another long
passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it.
There was not a moment to be lost: away went Alice like the wind, and
was just in time to hear it say, as it turned a corner, "Oh my ears and
whiskers, how late it's getting!"'"
Jim Baggot, _A Beginner's Guide to Reality: Exploring Our Everyday
Adventures in Wonderland_, p. 226-227
And in conclusion:
"We are at the end of our road, at the bottom of the rabbit hole. What
you do next is up to you. If you look carefully you can just see the
white rabbit turn a corner. You can resign yourself to the fact that
you will never catch the elusive creature or, like Alice, you can set
off like the wind in pursuit. You have a choice."
"Where are you right now? What is real? How do you know? The answers
are here, but to understand them you must first choose what to believe."
Baggot, p. 240
Do we choose to believe in reality, or in sur-reality? Or give it up as
a bad business.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
Albert Einstein
dkomo
Or we could more simply admit that the four dimensional spacetime
continuum is only a mathematical abstraction and say, "By God, Kant was
right! Space and time are just categories in the mind by means of which
we order our experience."
But I almost forgot. You said:
"Strictly I think that the most real objects just *are* those that are
required by the most coherent and consistent theory - in Quine's terms,
to be is to be the value of a bounded variable (in a scientific model
that works). But metaphysically I also think that science has to be
"about" something - what the scholastics would call "first intention".
And since I don't think with the scholastics that *God* is what science
is about in that way, I am happy to think there is a noumenal world."
So the spacetime events are not just mathematical entities but real
objects in your noumenal world. You've dug quite a hole for yourself.
r norman
wrote:
Somehow, when John digs a nice hole for himself he always remembers to
take a ladder down with him.
carlip...@physics.ucdavis.edu
> On Apr 24, 4:09 pm, carlip-nos...@physics.ucdavis.edu wrote:
>> Two things to remember:
>>
>> 1. For time-reversibility, you have to reverse *everything*, not just a single
>> piece of the system.
>> 2. Although the exterior of a black hole is static, the interior is not; it is
>> a dynamical system, changing with time.
>> So if you want to look at the time reversal of an apple falling into a black
>> hole, you have to reverse not just the apple, but the interior dynamics. This
>> gives you a "white hole," a perfectly good solution of the classical field
>> equations of general relativity (although one that probably doesn't exist in
>> our Universe).
> Would this not also reverse 2LOT? (which is the subject of this
> sub-thread.)
I'm not sure what it means to "reverse the second law of thermodynamics." The
second law is a statistical statement -- it says that given typical initial
data, it is overwhelmingly likely for entropy to increase. A white hole is
*not* typical initial data.
(In the same way, ordinary classical (or quantum) dynamics tells you that you
can, in principle, set up initial data that lead to the molecules of air in your
room to suddenly flow into one corner. This doesn't violate the second law,
because such initial data are extremely unlikely.)
Steve Carlip
John Wilkins
John Wilkins
> Somehow, when John digs a nice hole for himself he always remembers to
> take a ladder down with him.
Yes. The rule for throwing away the ladder is when you have climbed
*up*, not *down*.
Tractatus 6.54
http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/t654en.html
Walter Bushell
j.wil...@uq.edu.au (John Wilkins) wrote:
>
> There *could* be pink unicorns that you can't see, but that is not a
> warranted inference. I took it that this discussion is about warranted
> claims vis a vis science.
Die heretic!
Walter Bushell
dkomo <dkom...@comcast.net> wrote:
> A religion is dominant for a
> particular society because a large number of people "validate" it.
Or the king validates it. Believe it or die is a convincing argument,
however logically incorrect.
carlip...@physics.ucdavis.edu
[...]
> At this point let me ask you a piquant question. As a card carrying
> Realist do you believe that dinosaurs *still* exist? Not as fossils,
> but as actual tail thumping, teeth gnashing giant reptiles? Do you
> believe that the future *already* exists and that there is a desolate
> scene of a burnt-to-a-crisp earth and brown dwarf sun out there in your
> Reality at this very moment?
> This is the picture of Einstein's spacetime in relativity theory. *All*
> spacetime events exist and forever continue to exist, from time zero to
> plus infinity everywhere across our universe.
I'm not sure what you mean by "still," "already," or, for that matter,
"exist." This stuff is hard to talk about, but it doesn't help to
use words about time with multiple meanings without being clear about
which meaning you mean.
At the least, your "at this very moment" seems to be incorrect. A "moment"
in general relativity is a "time slice," that is, the collection of spatial
points at some fixed value of a time coordinate. The choice of the time
coordinate is not unique -- there is no absolute simultaneity, no preferred
way to synchronize clocks at different locations -- but no matter what your
choice, there is no brown dwarf sun at the same moment I am writing this.
> The physicist Brian Greene in his _Fabric of the Cosmos_ explictly
> states that Einstein's spacetime is *literally* real, and in fact, most
> physicists simply take it for granted. I'll provide some quotes and
> further commentary tomorrow as I don't have the time right now. Even
> Einstein expressed anxiety when he first realized the implications of
> spacetime.
> Perhaps Steve Carlip, if he's listening in, would care to comment?
Brian Greene's opinion here is an opinion, one held by many physicists but
not held by many others. Physics itself does not yet have much that's very
decisive to say about this.
In particular, there are two relevant formulations of general relativity.
In the Lagrangian formulation, a solution of the field equations is a
single, whole four-dimensional spacetime. In the Hamiltonian formulation,
one instead specifies initial data at some time, and the equations tell
you how the data evolve in time. The two are not quite equivalent -- the
Lagrangian formulation is a bit more general, allowing spacetimes with
strange topologies and causal structures that are not permitted in the
Hamiltonian formulation. But as far as we can tell from existing
observations, our Universe is equally well described by either. (The
technical term is that it's "globally hyperbolic.")
The view you're describing is associated with (although not absolutely
required by) the Lagrangian formulation. It may have been Einstein's
view -- I am not an expert on this, and I am suspicious of drawing too
strong a conclusion from one quote, but he did famously say, in a letter
to the sister and son of his friend Besso after Besso's death, "Michele
has preceded me a little in leaving this strange world. This is not
important. For us who are convinced physicists, the distinction between
past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent." But
many other very good physicists have very different views; see, for example,
Prigogine's essay www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/Prigogine84.pdf.
There is a book coming out about this subject, edited by Vesselin Petkov,
called _Relativity and the Dimensionality of the World_, in the series
_Fundamental Theories of Physics_ (Springer 2007, in press). I have to
say that I'm a bit skeptical -- physicists don't always do so well dabbling
in philosophy (and vice versa) -- but there's at least one interesting
preprint you might want to look at, http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0703098.
In general, I'd say this is an area in which you should not conclude too
much from popularizations.
Steve Carlip
r norman
carlip...@physics.ucdavis.edu wrote:
>In general, I'd say this is an area in which you should not conclude too
>much from popularizations.
I deliberately deleted all context from the above comment because it
applies no matter what the context.
Perplexed in Peoria
"r norman" <r_s_norman@_comcast.net> wrote in message news:pdn433lstc34vj2nt...@4ax.com...
That is, the maxim was verified inductively by looking at LOTS of
popularizations. So the conclusion is sound. ;-)
Bill Morse
Brian Greene also argues in "The Fabric of the Cosmos" that the second law
does not itself dictate an arrow to time - given any set of initial
conditions, a system should become more probable in either direction of
time. What gives time an arrow is a universe that is initially highly
ordered - and this order still requires explanation. I suspect from reading
your posts that you know a lot more about this than I, but I thought it
worthwhile to toss in to the discussion.
--
Yours, Bill Morse
Perplexed in Peoria
"Bill Morse" <wdNOSP...@verizonOSPAM.net> wrote in message news:6IAYh.55$Hd1.9@trndny07...
This is why I dislike the usual identification of entropy with 'disorder'.
Because the universe immediately after the big bang wasn't 'highly ordered'
as we usually understand that phrase. It was as disordered as it could be
and still fit into the same space. The universe hasn't really become more
disordered since then. Mostly, it has just gotten bigger. And cooler.
And as it cooled, the opportunity has arisen for a variety of exothermic
entropy-producing condensations, including gravitational collapse of stars
and planets, solidification of metals, and crystalization of minerals.
Which look to Friar Brocolli as if they are creating new kinds of order.
And, in a sense, they are.
It isn't the initial 'order' of the universe which requires explanation.
It is the initial smallness of the universe which we need to explain.
The expansion of the universe is not (AFAICT) driven by the 2LOT. However,
it does have the side effect of 'sucking' entropy out of the fermionic
(matter) components of the universe and transfering them to the bosonic
(radiation) components. Which then get a low entropy density due to the
expansion.
carlip...@physics.ucdavis.edu
> Brian Greene also argues in "The Fabric of the Cosmos" that the second law
> does not itself dictate an arrow to time - given any set of initial
> conditions, a system should become more probable in either direction of
> time. What gives time an arrow is a universe that is initially highly
> ordered - and this order still requires explanation.
That's right (as far as we know now, at least), though "highly ordered"
has a technical meaning here that's not much like most people's intuitive
sense of the phrase. To a physicist, a uniform cloud of hydrogen is likely
to be "more ordered" -- in the sense of having lower entropy -- than a star
made of the same hydrogen, surrounded by a little hot gas and some light.
The question is why the very early Universe was so homogeneous, and not
much more lumpy. When it's phrased this way, it sounds less mysterious,
but when you start to look at the details, it is very strange.
This question is not at all settled. Zeh has written a nice book, _The
Physical Basis of the Direction of Time_, that discusses a bunch of ideas
of solutions. You can find a nice, not very technical paper by Albrecht
at http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0210527.
Steve Carlip
carlip...@physics.ucdavis.edu
> "Bill Morse" <wdNOSP...@verizonOSPAM.net> wrote in message news:6IAYh.55$Hd1.9@trndny07...
[...]
>> Brian Greene also argues in "The Fabric of the Cosmos" that the second law
>> does not itself dictate an arrow to time - given any set of initial
>> conditions, a system should become more probable in either direction of
>> time. What gives time an arrow is a universe that is initially highly
>> ordered - and this order still requires explanation. I suspect from reading
>> your posts that you know a lot more about this than I, but I thought it
>> worthwhile to toss in to the discussion.
> This is why I dislike the usual identification of entropy with 'disorder'.
> Because the universe immediately after the big bang wasn't 'highly ordered'
> as we usually understand that phrase. It was as disordered as it could be
> and still fit into the same space. The universe hasn't really become more
> disordered since then. Mostly, it has just gotten bigger. And cooler.
> And as it cooled, the opportunity has arisen for a variety of exothermic
> entropy-producing condensations, including gravitational collapse of stars
> and planets, solidification of metals, and crystalization of minerals.
> Which look to Friar Brocolli as if they are creating new kinds of order.
> And, in a sense, they are.
True, if you are using the ordinary colloquial sense of "order" and
"disorder." But it's also true that the very early Universe had a very
small entropy.
> It isn't the initial 'order' of the universe which requires explanation.
Sure, it is. The initial entropy of the Universe -- in the technical sense
of the word -- was tiny; a highly inhomogeneous early Universe would have
had a much higher entropy. Homogeneity is a very special initial condition,
which does not occur as a natural outcome of any previous evolution.
> It is the initial smallness of the universe which we need to explain.
> The expansion of the universe is not (AFAICT) driven by the 2LOT. However,
> it does have the side effect of 'sucking' entropy out of the fermionic
> (matter) components of the universe and transfering them to the bosonic
> (radiation) components. Which then get a low entropy density due to the
> expansion.
Gravitation, and gravitational entropy, are probably more important here than
expansion. The growth of structure in the Universe, from galaxies to planets
to life, can be traced back to the fact that in a system dominated by gravity,
inhomogeneous configurations have higher entropies than homogeneous ones.
Steve Carlip
Perplexed in Peoria
<carlip...@physics.ucdavis.edu> wrote in message news:f10a8k$5de$2...@skeeter.ucdavis.edu...
I don't see how you can say this. Homogeneity is the ultimate *high entropy*
generic situation, and it is the natural outcome of any evolutionary process
taking place at high enough temperatures. High enough to overwhelm the enthalpy
term in the Gibbs free energy definition.
Inhomogeneity has lower entropy than homogeneity, almost be definition.
> > It is the initial smallness of the universe which we need to explain.
> > The expansion of the universe is not (AFAICT) driven by the 2LOT. However,
> > it does have the side effect of 'sucking' entropy out of the fermionic
> > (matter) components of the universe and transfering them to the bosonic
> > (radiation) components. Which then get a low entropy density due to the
> > expansion.
>
> Gravitation, and gravitational entropy, are probably more important here than
> expansion. The growth of structure in the Universe, from galaxies to planets
> to life, can be traced back to the fact that in a system dominated by gravity,
> inhomogeneous configurations have higher entropies than homogeneous ones.
Hmmm. I may be getting in over my head here, but I just don't see how it can
be said that inhomogeneous configurations have higher entropy than homogeneous
ones. Not without counting entropy from black holes, anyways. There is nothing
special entropy-wise about Newtonian gravitation. Gravity can no more increase
entropy by creating inhomogeneities than can electromagnetism. I would claim
that the thermodynamic root cause of inhomogeneity is thermal disequilibrium
rather than gravity. A gas cloud can collapse into a star only if it can
radiate away entropy (in the form of heat) into the surrounding space. If the
surrounding space is just as hot as the gas cloud, then the collapse cannot
happen. And it is the expansion of the universe which is the real explanation
for why surrounding space is cool and why it doesn't ultimately heat up after
receiving all those photons.
Friar Broccoli
> Perplexed in Peoria <jimmene...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> "Bill Morse" <wdNOSPAmo...@verizonOSPAM.net> wrote in messagenews:6IAYh.55$Hd1.9@trndny07...
> [...]
Hurrah !! I was even going to ask you about this:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/9e195198711f486c
Note that I am aware that I have problems with the kinetic
theory of gases and intend to apologize to rnorman. For the
last little while however I've been feeling like crap and am
having difficulty participating in this conversation even at
this minimal level.
Cordially;
Friar Broccoli
Robert Keith Elias, Quebec, Canada Email: EliasRK (of) gmail * com
Best programmer's & all purpose text editor: http://www.semware.com
--------- I consider ALL arguments in support of my views ---------
dkomo
If the objects in general relativity like 4D spacetime, curvature of
space and spacetime events are abstractions -- mental pictures only --
you're saying they are nonetheless "real" objects because they are in a
scientific model that works. So your noumenal world (the
"world-in-itself" to use Kant's expression) contains abstractions, hence
reality itself is at least partially a set of abstractions. Your
territory becomes conflated with its map.
John Wilkins
That is a really weird argument. So far as I can tell, you are saying
something like this:
1. The theory has abstract entities
2. I say the abstract entities represent real entities
Therefore
C. I say abstract entities exist
Whereas I would say
1. The theory has abstract entities (because all theories do)
2. The entities of a good theory represent real entities
3. This is a good theory
Therefore
C. I say that real entities are represented in this theory
which doesn't lead to anything like your conclusion. Please elaborate
how this leads me to your conclusion. Note that the distinction between
the concept and the object is important in my argument. The abstractions
are concepts. The reference of those concepts are not themselves
concepts.
Moreover, note that saying that entities in a good theory can be assumed
to be real doesn't mean we have equal warrant for the reality of *all*
the entities in a theory, but I will accept that for the moment.
Perplexed in Peoria
"Perplexed in Peoria" <jimme...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message news:kLPYh.6345$2v1....@newssvr14.news.prodigy.net...
Well, by Boltzmann's S = K log W definition of entropy anyways. But it is
less clear using Clausius's dS = dW / T definition. More on this below.
(Warning to the perplexed: S is entropy in both formulas, but W has completely
different meanings.)
> > > It is the initial smallness of the universe which we need to explain.
> > > The expansion of the universe is not (AFAICT) driven by the 2LOT. However,
> > > it does have the side effect of 'sucking' entropy out of the fermionic
> > > (matter) components of the universe and transfering them to the bosonic
> > > (radiation) components. Which then get a low entropy density due to the
> > > expansion.
> >
> > Gravitation, and gravitational entropy, are probably more important here than
> > expansion. The growth of structure in the Universe, from galaxies to planets
> > to life, can be traced back to the fact that in a system dominated by gravity,
> > inhomogeneous configurations have higher entropies than homogeneous ones.
>
> Hmmm. I may be getting in over my head here, but I just don't see how it can
> be said that inhomogeneous configurations have higher entropy than homogeneous
> ones. Not without counting entropy from black holes, anyways. There is nothing
> special entropy-wise about Newtonian gravitation. Gravity can no more increase
> entropy by creating inhomogeneities than can electromagnetism. I would claim
> that the thermodynamic root cause of inhomogeneity is thermal disequilibrium
> rather than gravity. A gas cloud can collapse into a star only if it can
> radiate away entropy (in the form of heat) into the surrounding space. If the
> surrounding space is just as hot as the gas cloud, then the collapse cannot
> happen. And it is the expansion of the universe which is the real explanation
> for why surrounding space is cool and why it doesn't ultimately heat up after
> receiving all those photons.
Well, since writing this, I have done some Googling and reading on the subject
of thermodynamics+gravitation. Even with Newtonian gravitation, there are
some serious problems extending the traditional concepts of chemical thermodynamics
to large gravitational systems. Here is one web page which points out some of
the issues:
http://www.ids.ias.edu/~piet/act/phys/thermo/index.html
The problems arise at the foundational and conceptual levels. In large gravitational
systems, many of the traditional extensive state variables are no longer additively
extensive. Scaling is no longer linear. And I was particularly struck by
Piet Hut's statement that you can get situations in which heat capacity is negative.
So how do you apply thermodynamics to gravitation? I have to confess that I don't
know. But it does seem that something has to give - Boltzmann's definition of entropy,
Clausius's definition, and/or probably one or more traditional formulations of the
2LOT.
So Brocolli will be please to hear that I am backing off a bit from my earlier
claim that there is nothing special about (Newtonian) gravitation - 2LOT-wise.
It is more complicated than I thought.
But I stand by my claim made to Carlip that inhomogeneous configurations have
lower entropy by *Boltzmann's* definition. And I'll stand by and clarify my
claim regarding gravitational collapse. When a cloud of gas molecules undergoes
spontaneous collapse to become a single star, it doesn't increase the entropy of
the gas molecules. The entire system increases in entropy only because photons
are being radiated into the void. Wrap the whole cloud in tinfoil so that the
photons are reflected back into the gas and the collapse won't happen. That
is, the large scale structures spontaneously produced by gravitation are not
*states of matter* that are higher in entropy than the original homogeneity.
The universe is higher in entropy only because of the enormous amount of
entropy (outside the clusters and clumps) in the form of photons. And I don't
see this as different in principle from what happens when a plasma of electrons
and protons undergoes small scale 'collapse' into a gas of hydrogen atoms, or
what happens when the gas of atoms undergoes a second 'collapse' into a gas
of diatomic hydrogen molecules. The configuration of the matter has actually
decreased its entropy. And it couldn't have happened unless more-than-compensatory
entropy was produced and radiated *elsewhere*.
dkomo
> "Perplexed in Peoria" <jimme...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message news:kLPYh.6345$2v1....@newssvr14.news.prodigy.net...
>
>
> systems, many of the traditional extensive state variables are no longer additively
> extensive. Scaling is no longer linear. And I was particularly struck by
> Piet Hut's statement that you can get situations in which heat capacity is negative.
>
> So how do you apply thermodynamics to gravitation? I have to confess that I don't
> know.
Usenet spacetime events never completely disappear. Here's one from May
'05:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
carlip...@physics.ucdavis.edu wrote:
>
> In a system dominated by self-gravitation, the entropy of a
> completely disordered ideal gas is quite low compared to that
> of a "lumpy," gravitationally contracted system with a few
> high-energy particles tossed out as the system shrinks. You
> will find a nice discussion at the beginning of chapter 5 of Zeh's
book, _The Physical Basis of the Direction of Time_. (The famous
original paper on this was Lynden-Bell and Wood, ``The Gravo-Thermal
Catastrophe in Isothermal Spheres and the Onset of Red-Giant Structure
for Stellar Systems,'' Mon. Not. R. Astr. Soc. 138 (1968) 495.)
>
How do you reconcile this:
"Can Gravity Decrease Entropy?"
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/entropy.html
which states "the entropy of a gravitationally bound cloud of gas
decreases as the cloud shrinks."
The answer might be here:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/entropy2.html
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Warning: the 1st link above contains mathematics!
Perplexed in Peoria
"dkomo" <dkom...@comcast.net> wrote in message news:IdOdnbpl5cYrtqjb...@comcast.com...
Thanks for the quote. As I read it, Carlip is saying in this quote the same
(incorrect IMHO) thing that he says in this thread. And then dkomo throws
quotes from Baez at Carlip to refute him. It doesn't show here, but if
you look at the May 05 thread, Carlip responds to dkomo *agreeing with Baez*.
So, maybe I am missing something here. Carlip seems to be saying that
clumped matter has high entropy, then he agrees with Baez that clumped
matter has low entropy. I'll leave it to Carlip to resolve this seeming
contradiction.
Friar Broccoli
wrote:
> So Brocolli will be please to hear that I am backing off a bit
> from my earlier claim that there is nothing special about
> (Newtonian) gravitation - 2LOT-wise. It is more complicated
> than I thought.
And as you wrote those words it was as if a great weight had
been lifted from your shoulders and you were filled with a joy
and lightness of heart the likes of which you had never before
known !!
But honestly, I don't see what difference this all makes. With
or without the complexity, we all agree that gravity
redistributes entropy: decreasing it in the clumps, while
increasing it overall for the system.
Without gravity we would not have local concentrations of lower
entropy, so we have a clear simple answer to the creationist
claim that life in our solar system violates 2LOT.