What Constitutes Historical Evidence?
Immortalist
Some people have argued that anything fundamentally historical cannot be a
science. After all, you can't repeat experiments. How would you repeat Julius
Caesar? What lab has built a planet?
Those arguments misunderstand science. Repeatable experiments are important, but
the Big Bang is not an experiment. A measurement about the Big Bang is an
experiment. If others can repeat and verify my measurement, then I have a
repeatable experiment about the Big Bang.
Society agrees that it is possible to become very certain about past events. We
hold murder trials, although the jury was not at the murder.
In any case, prediction is much more important than repeatability. Theories about
history are scientific if they make predictions that can be tested.
Examples range from the murder mystery and astronomy to geology.
T.H. Huxley wrote a wonderful essay, "On The Method Of Zadig", about how one can
make predictions about past events.
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/historical.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/frank_zindler/gish-zindler/appendices.html#appendix_b
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22On+The+Method+Of+Zadig%22
http://www.grisda.org/origins/13005.htm
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9094/scimethod.html
Historical Evidence
Historians need many kinds of evidence before they are able to reconstruct the
past. Like a detective, the historian looks for evidence in the things people
have left behind. An historian begins research by asking questions. Once the
historian has decided which questions to ask, he or she begins to collect
evidence.
The evidence that an historian uses comes in many different forms. Secondary
evidence, which is secondhand information, is sometimes used but more often, an
historian choses to use primary resources: these include official records, such
as graduation or marriage certificates; public records, such as newspapers; and
private documents, such as letters and diaries. Historians also use photographs,
paintings, drawings, artifacts, architecture, and oral history. It is important
that historians use a variety of evidence so that they get as complete a picture
of the topic as possible.
Once historians have collected all their evidence they check to see if they have
enough sources, if the sources are correct, and if the sources conflict with each
other. It is very important for historians to check their sources. If they make
mistakes, and other historians base their new work on these mistakes, incorrect
stories will be told to the public.
http://www.vermonthistory.org/educate/evidence.htm
Historical Evidence & Evidence for Ancient History
The study of the ancient world is possibly the oldest discipline to be found in
universities: its expertise in interpreting minimal or obscure evidence has a
long standing. It is also necessarily inter-disciplinary, since it must draw on
any available evidence. Notwithstanding this relative poverty of data, it can
represent a sophisticated society in an intelligible form and there is enough
material for us realistically to address probing questions as to how complex
evidence was handled. This project will focus specifically on the treatment of
evidence in three related modes of thought: medicine, religion and science.
The discipline of ancient history encounters unique types of evidence and
therefore has expertise in areas where evidence is of a limited or compromised
nature. As a discipline, it has had to develop ways of interpreting data that is
not only obscure but often unique and/or damaged. In addition, and unlike the
majority of disciplines, it can rarely supplement existing evidence.
Historically this has shifted the burden of research to a discourse on
methodology and complex interpretative systems, whereby the same evidence is
examined repeatedly from a number of different angles or in different
combinations. This tends to produce a level of sophistication that is rarely
necessary in disciplines where clarification can be sought in the form of further
research. As such the only checks on the validity of our understanding of ancient
history are normally internal: there can be few experiments; control groups are
only available as uneasy comparative studies; and orthodoxies can be instantly
overthrown merely by the chance discovery of a single archaeological item.
The learning process in this interdisciplinary project will, then, potentially be
two-way: ancient historians are only erratically aware of methodologies used in
other disciplines, and any remedy to this situation, even in the short-term,
could be of immense benefit in studying the ancient world (the 2003 Journal of
Hellenic Studies contains a piece that supplements our scant knowledge of
population levels by using modern models). On the other hand, the inherently
multidisciplinary methodologies used in ancient history may throw new light on
the approaches used by other disciplines.
http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/evidence/projects/historical_evidence/
What knowledge of a process is in principle obtainable from the data (evidence)
it generates? Models of processes provide restrictions which can be sufficient to
identify features of a data generating process, that is structural features. We
study the nature of the restrictions that are required to identify interesting
features and seek to determine minimally restrictive models for particular
structural features.
How can data be processed to give information about identified structural
features? We study methods for estimation and inference in the context of models
embodying weak identifying restrictions.
Can models be falsified? There may exist a model that identifies a structural
feature which embodies restrictions so weak that the model is non-falsifiable.
Conclusions drawn from processing evidence through such a model must be
contingent on the veracity of the restrictions embodied in the model. We study
the characteristics of non-falsifiable models that identify interesting
structural features and how the existence of more than one distinct
non-falsifiable model bears on the interpretation of evidence.
http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/evidence/projects/model_contingent/index.html
"Oral History" is a maddeningly imprecise term: it is used to refer to formal,
rehearsed accounts of the past presented by culturally sanctioned
tradition-bearers; to informal conversations about "the old days" among family
members, neighbors, or coworkers; to printed compilations of stories told about
past times and present experiences; and to recorded interviews with individuals
deemed to have an important story to tell.
Each of these uses of the term has a certain currency. Unquestionably, most
people throughout history have learned about the past through the spoken word.
Moreover, for generations history-conscious individuals have preserved others'
firsthand accounts of the past for the record, often precisely at the moment when
the historical actors themselves, and with them their memories, were about to
pass from the scene.
Shortly after Abraham Lincoln's death in 1865, for example, his secretary, John
G. Nicolay, and law partner, William Herndon, gathered recollections of the
sixteenth president, including some from interviews, from people who had known
and worked with him. Similarly, social investigators historically have obtained
essential information about living and working conditions by talking with the
people who experienced them. Thus, the Pittsburgh Survey, a Progressive Era
investigation of social conditions in that city designed to educate the public
and prod it towards civic reform, relied heavily on evidence obtained from oral
sources.
Among the most notable of these early efforts to collect oral accounts of the
past are the thousands of life histories recorded by Federal Writers Project
[FWP] workers during the late 1930s and early 1940s. An agency of the New Deal
Works Progress Administration, the FWP was deeply populist in intent and
orientation; the life histories were designed to document the diversity of the
American experience and ways ordinary people were coping with the hardships of
the Great Depression. Plans for their publication fell victim to federal budget
cuts and a reorientation of national priorities as World War II drew near; most
of them remain in manuscript form at the Library of Congress and other
repositories around the country. The best known of the FWP life histories are the
"slave narratives" elicited from elderly former slaves living in the South; other
narratives were collected from a variety of regional, occupational, and ethnic
groups.
Though of considerable value, early efforts to record firsthand accounts of the
past can be termed "oral history" by only the most generous of definitions. While
methods of eliciting and recording them were more or less rigorous in any given
case, the absence of audio- and videotape recorders--or digital recording
devices--necessitated reliance on human note-takers, thus raising questions about
reliability and veracity. Many early interviews were also idiosyncratic or
extemporaneous efforts, conducted with no intention of developing a permanent
archival collection.
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/oral/what.html
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/oral/how.html
Denis Loubet
"Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:6oydnVhSHNN...@comcast.com...
> Can a Historical Science be Science?
>
> Some people have argued that anything fundamentally historical cannot be a
> science. After all, you can't repeat experiments. How would you repeat
Julius
> Caesar? What lab has built a planet?
>
> Those arguments misunderstand science. Repeatable experiments are
important, but
> the Big Bang is not an experiment. A measurement about the Big Bang is an
> experiment. If others can repeat and verify my measurement, then I have a
> repeatable experiment about the Big Bang.
>
> Society agrees that it is possible to become very certain about past
events. We
> hold murder trials, although the jury was not at the murder.
>
> In any case, prediction is much more important than repeatability.
Theories about
> history are scientific if they make predictions that can be tested.
>
> Examples range from the murder mystery and astronomy to geology.
The point is that you CAN repeat the observation. Evidence of Caesar can be
viewed by anyone, repeatedly, and conclusions can be drawn. New observations
can even be drawn from such evidence that overturns previously held
understandings.
--
Denis Loubet
dlo...@io.com
http://www.io.com/~dloubet
Llanzlan Klazmon
news:6oydnVhSHNN...@comcast.com:
> Can a Historical Science be Science?
>
Of course all observations are of things in the past due to the finite
speed of light. In that sense all of physical science is based on
historical information.
LK.
<SNIP>
Immortalist
"Llanzlan Klazmon" <llan...@llurdiaxorb.gov> wrote in message
news:Xns956C79B6BD837ll...@203.97.37.6...
You mean if we suppose, that there are basic empirical beliefs, that is,
emperical beliefs which are epistemically justified, and whose justification does
not depend on that of any further emperical beliefs, since for a belief to be
episemically justified requires that there be a reason why it is likely to be
true and a belief is justified for a person only if he is in cognitive possession
of such a reason, then a person is in cognitive possession of such a reason only
if he believes with justification the premises from which it follows that the
belief is likely to be true, but the premises of such a justifying argument must
include at least one empirical premise, whence the justification of a supposed
basic empirical belief depends on the justification of at least one other
empirical belief, contradicting that there are basic empirical beliefs, that is,
emperical beliefs which are epistemically justified, making it so there can be no
basic empirical beliefs including completely justified sceptical beliefs about
past events?
http://images.google.com/images?q=mr+spock
>
>
> <SNIP>
johac
"Denis Loubet" <dlo...@io.com> wrote:
And one can make predictions. If one finds a coin with Caesar's image
on it, one could predict that other coins with Caesar's face on them
should be found in other parts of what was then the Roman empire.
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
-The ability to change one's mind, ideas, and opinions when confronted with
new facts is the sign of the rational and intelligent. The inability to do
so is the hallmark of the dimwitted and the fanatic. This applies not only
to science and philosophy, but also to politics.-
Immortalist
"johac" <jha...@ixpresremove.com> wrote in message
news:jhachm-82E0AA....@news.giganews.com...
Which method would that be of Mill's methods of induction?
Mill's Methods
Mill's methods are some methods used to formulate hypotheses of certain
phenomena. It is clearly a species of inductive arguments as we shall see. More
precisely the methods, first proposed by British philosopher and logician John
Stuart Mill, are used to find causes of the phenomena to be explained. All of
Mill's methods share the same characteristics in that they separate the phenomena
into two parts, namely the parts to be explained, or the effects, and the
antecedent phenomena which include the likely causes of the effects. The method
is conducted by observing the effects and then reason to the likely causes by
observing common features, different features, features that vary with each
other, and so on. According to Mill, there are five of his methods:
1. Method of Agreement
2. Method of Difference
3. Method of Agreement and Difference (Joint Method)
4. Method of Residue
5. Method of Concomittant Variation
Here is what the first method, Method of Agreement, does. First you have a
phenomenon you would like explained, for example a group of students in a certain
school all having diarrhea and vomiting. You want to know what caused the
symptom. You know that the symptom could only be caused by food. So you list all
the food eated by the affected student up to the time when they were attacked,
and suppose this is the result:
A B C D ==> j h l k
E F A G ==> k o m n
H I J A ==> q r s k
The capital letters on the left hand side represent the antecedent conditions,
and the small letters on the right show the phenomena on the effects side. Thus,
in case of the students having diarrhea, the left hand side represents the food
eated by the students, and the right hand side show the symptoms that they have.
Suppose that each capital letter represents a kind of food, and the small letters
on the right hand side represent a symptom. Then we can see that the phenomena on
the left hand side have one thing in common, A. And similarly for the phenomena
on the right hand side, the symptom k. Thus we can conclude, using the First
Method, that A is the likely cause of k.
Here is the diagram for the second method:
A B C D ==> j k l m
B C D ==> m l j
Suppose we have only two events which are alike in all aspects but one. Then it
is likely that the part that is the difference on the left had side is the cause
of the part that is missing on the right hand side.
The third method has nothing but a joint consideration of the first two methods
in finding likely causes. Let's look at this diagram
A B C D ==> k l m o
A E F G ==> l p n r
A H I J ==> q u r l
H I M N ==> q r z y
O P Q R ==> x w n r
Here is the diagram for the fourth method:
A B C D ==> o p q r
We know already that
A ==> p
B ==> q
C ==> r
Thus, we can conclude that D is the likely cause of o, because the pair is the
only one left from the matching of causes and effects which we know already. That
is why this method is called the Method of Residue.
Here is the diagram for the last method:
A B C D1 ==> w x y z1
A B C D2 ==> w x y z2
A B C D3 ==> w x y z3
A B C D4 ==> w x y z4
A B C D5 ==> w x y z5
The phenomena are alike except only that there is a variation in the degree of D
on the left hand (causes) side, and the same for z on the right hand side. Since
everything else is equal we conclude that here D is the likely cause of z.
http://pioneer.netserv.chula.ac.th/~hsoraj/PhilandLogic/WeekFive.html#Mill
http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/sci/mill.php
http://www.thelogician.net/4_logic_of_causation/4_mills_methods.htm
johac
"Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
I don't know if these apply here. I am assuming that the coin is a
genuine find and not a counterfeit which can be demonstrated by
various techniques. The hypothesis is that if the coin were genuine
Roman currency of that era, and Caesar was emperor, and it was his
face were on that coin it is reasonable to expect that other such
coins should be found throughout his empire and places that had
contact with it. The finding of such coins would support the
hypothesis, the absence would undermine it.
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
-The ability to change one's mind, ideas, and opinions when confronted with
Bob's Boyfriend
johac <jha...@ixpresremove.com> wrote:
> > Mill's Methods
> >
> > Mill's methods are some methods used to formulate hypotheses of certain
> > phenomena.
I'm intrigued by the formula of this method, however, because the method
would only be useful with "certain" phenomena is a concern. The example
provided does seem to be evidence of confirmation bias. In the example,
one student could have a flu while three others have been exposed to
food with a toxic substance. The methods seems to work in certain
situations because a conslusion has already been made. In the example,
vomitting and diarhhea could be the result of a number of issues where
food is irrelevant or coincidental. To state, "you know the cause is
food" is a bias.
Immortalist
The various technics that you describe are some variants of Mill's methods of
"induction." Mill just established some of the main ways scientists think and
research through induction when deduction is inadequate.
You mentioned hypothesis which means you are speaking of the attributes of the
class inductive logic which Mill pretty much covered with his methods. There have
been only a few modifications since Mill to his mehods which is now known as the
scientific method.
Immortalist
"Bob's Boyfriend" <toge...@wyoming.com> wrote in message
news:together-6CF22F...@news.isp.giganews.com...
Although the method sometimes breaks down as you say, the only real alternative
in some of those cases is to fine tune our inductive methods and come up with the
stongest theories we can. All your saying is that we have the set of all known
theories and the sub classes; those theories that provide some evidence and those
theories that don't provide any evidence of relevence to the problem at hand. So
we in the end are seeking a method for choosing one or more theories of other
theories in the first subclass (below metajustification).
Coherence theory: "An empirical belief is realatively true if and only if it
coheres with a system of other beliefs, which together form a comprehensive
account of reality."
Stephen J. Gould, the Harvard Paleontologist, offers this definition: In science,
"fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to
withhold provisional assent."
Succesfully Competitive Inductive Cogency:
Depends upon the evidential and conceptual ("context") of reasoning. An inductive
argument from evidence to hypothesis is inductively cogent if and only if the
hypothesis is that hypothesis which, of all the competing hypothesis, has the
greatest probability of being true on the basis of the evidence. Thus, whether it
is reasonable to accept a hypothesis as true, if the statements of evidence are
true, is determined by whether that hypothesis is the most probable, on the
evidence, of all those with which it competes.
...We enoble ourselves in seeking truth, even when we realize that we may fail to
obtain that noble objective. If the justification we find does not rest on error
and enables us to reach the truth, we shall have attained our revised kind of
knowledge. This new knowledge is based on a fallible quest for truth without any
guarantee of sucess; we may attain it, though we cannot prove that we will. To
the skeptic who asks for proof that we shall succeed, we must put our hands over
our mouths in silence. We have no proof. We may, however, invite her to join our
quest for truth and the new kind of knowledge we seek. Once we admit to the
skeptic that she is right and we have no guarantee of success, she, being a woman
of insight and character, who has, moreover, freed us of our dogmatism and
arrogance, may join as a sympathetic friend in our noble undertaking. We may say
to her, "Let us reason further with one another to find some fallible
justificafion to lead us to the truth in what interests us, concerning freedom,
mind, God and morals," and she, our brilliant adversary, will become a friend to
our philosophical undertaking. The modesty resulting from a recognition of our
own fallibility becomes us, opens the road to inquiry and removes the roadblocks
to understanding. Revisionism combines the insights of skepticism and epistemism
in harmony.
Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction
by James W. Cornman, Keith Lehrer, George Sotiros Pappas
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0872201244/
Meta-Justification and Explanation
The original question Lehrer poses is this: "When we construct a complete theory
of justification, a special issue arises when we ask whether the theory itself is
justified" (p. 228). The range of answers he proposes shows that he is not really
concerned with justifying a theory of justification (providing an
"meta-justification"), but with whether we can use the theory to explain why we
are justified in accepting the theory of justification. Couched in these terms,
the task is much easier, since when we explain why something is the case, we
suppose that it actually is the case. I would not try to explain why there are
thirty people in my office right now, because I am the only one here now. But I
might try to explain why I am alone in the office, as I presently am.
Lehrer thinks it would be a defect in a theory of justification if it did not
explain why one is justified in accepting the theory itself. This is because we
cannot appeal to a different theory to explain it, on pain of generating a
potentially infinite regress. So the choice is between explaining why the theory
is correct and not explaining it. If we seek to maximize explanation, we must
just put up with the fact that the only resources we have available are drawn
from the very theory whose justification we are trying to explain. This is what
makes the "explanatory loop" here a virtuous one. "The loop in the theory of
justification is a virtuous one for the purpose of explaining as much as we can
and leaving as little unexplained as we must" (p. 229).
This detour into explanation, does not, as mentioned above, give us an answer to
the question whether the theory of justification actually is justified. The
problem of the criterion applies here, and it appears that Lehrer should defend a
loop in meta-justification as well as the loop in explaining justification. If he
were to do this on the same grounds, he should have to say that we seek to
justify as much as possible and leave as little as possible unjustified. But
while this principle promotes the epistemic goal of accepting as many truths as p
ossible, it conflicts with the goal of not accepting as many falsehoods as
possible. The reason only one of these two goals is mirrored in explanation is
that what is to be explained is already given and does not have to be established
by the explanation. So the issue remains whether it is legitimate to use a theory
of justification to justify acceptance of its own truth.
http://hume.ucdavis.edu/phi102/tkch9.htm
(Print this intro to epistemology before it disappears)
http://hume.ucdavis.edu/phi102/lecmenu.htm
Bob's Boyfriend
"Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
These seem more question of "why?" I am more concered with how, when and
where we theorize.
In the example of the past few days, how did we come to determine
(believe) that global warming was a problem that needed analysis?
Immortalist
Evidence usually accumulates until someone takes notice or some people get an
idea and then try and see if its true and various other situations. With global
warming it just came up and hit us in the face out of geology and
archaelogically. With observations of layers of dirt in the historical record in
the ground and coming to understand how to interpret "tree rings" that form each
year, we created a history for one reason but out jumps the evidence that the
atmosphere has changed recently more than it has changed in the past. When
researchers told others that the rate of substance amounts was changing in the
air, the critics yelled that the sky was falling and claimed this boy was just
cryin wolf. This lead to others check it out, competition and rivalry etc... and
now we have "undefeated justification" that here are problems that humans are
causing to the environment. If water boils all of a sudden when raising the
temperature slowely maybe events could all of a sudden cascade out of control in
the environment. Maybe one day everything is going along as usual and the very
next day there are storms and layers shifts all over the world.
http://images.google.com/images?q=bifurcation
Bob's Boyfriend
"Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
All of a sudden. That sounds rather mystical -- even supernatural. It
just happneed one day. Something like a god just appeared, a universe
just appeared, man just appeared.
The explanation of how we came to determine "what is global warming?"
seems quite illogical from what what you've written.
Immortalist
Please explain how it is illogical. Are you claiming that water doesn't all of a
sudden start boiling when the temperature is raised slowely? Or is basic physics
too mystical?
In a dynamical system, a bifurcation is a period doubling, quadrupling, etc.,
that accompanies the onset of chaos. It represents the sudden appearance of a
qualitatively different solution for a nonlinear system as some parameter is
varied. The illustration above shows bifurcations (occurring at the location of
the blue lines) of the logistic map as the parameter r is varied. Bifurcations
come in four basic varieties: flip bifurcation, fold bifurcation, pitchfork
bifurcation, and transcritical bifurcation (Rasband 1990).
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Bifurcation.html
Bob's Boyfriend
"Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Do an experiment. I've watched a pot of water come to a boil and the
process is not all of a sudden. I appreciate the physics of the
sitution, I am objecting to your characterization of the event.
Sudden or suddenly, generally means that which is unexpected. I find
nothing unexpected in the process of leaving water with heat at this
level. The use of the term sudden implies that an outcome is not known,
as you describe below, there is nothing unexpected in the process.
Immortalist
You need to learn some physics then for when the water reaches a particular
degree the boiling begins. The change of one degree cause completely different
behavior. More is different qualitatively and this bifurcation and tecelation of
movements is apperent in many physical systems from the frequencies of dripping
faucets to avalanches, all of which are similar to boiling points. In non-linear
dynamics its talked about kind of like this;
- Conduction, Expansion, Density, Friction, Rolling, Convection Cells,
Transitions
The simplest kind of textbook convection takes place in a cell of fluid, a box
with a smooth bottom that can be heated and a smooth top that can be cooled. The
temperature difference between the hot bottom and the cool top controls the flow.
If the difference is small, the system remains still. Heat moves toward the top
by conduction, as if through a bar of metal, without overcoming the natural
tendency of the fluid to remain at rest. Furthermore, the system is stable. Any
random motions that might occur when, say, a graduate student knocks into the
apparatus will tend to die out, returning the system to its steady state.
Turn up the heat, though, and a new kind of behavior develops. As the fluid
underneath becomes hot, it expands. As it expands, it becomes less dense. As it
becomes less dense, it becomes lighter, enough to overcome friction, and it
pushes up toward the surface. In a carefully designed box, a cylindrical roll
develops, with the hot fluid rising around one side and cool fluid sinking down
around the other. Viewed from the side, the motion makes a continuous circle. Out
of the laboratory, too, nature often makes its own convection cells. When the sun
heats a desert floor, for example, the rolling air can shape shadowy patterns in
the clouds above or the sand below.
Turn up the heat even more, and the behavior grows more complex. The rolls begin
to wobble. Lorenz's pared-down equations were far too simple to model that sort
of complexity. They abstracted just one feature of real-world convection: the
circular motion of hot fluid rising up and around like a Ferris wheel. The
equations took into account the velocity of that motion and the transfer of heat.
Those physical processes interacted. As any given bit of hot fluid rose around
the circle, it would come into contact with cooler fluid and so begin to lose
heat. If the circle was moving fast enough, the ball of fluid would not lose all
its extra heat by the time it reached the top and started swinging down the other
side of the roll, so it would actually begin to push back against the momentum of
the other hot fluid coming up behind it.
Chaos - Making A New Science - James Gleick
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140092501/
But by all means come back for more this is only the beginning of the refutation
of your argument.
Mike Painter
>> Please explain how it is illogical. Are you claiming that water
>> doesn't all of a
>> sudden start boiling when the temperature is raised slowely? Or is
>> basic physics
>> too mystical?
>
> Do an experiment. I've watched a pot of water come to a boil and the
> process is not all of a sudden. I appreciate the physics of the
> sitution, I am objecting to your characterization of the event.
>
> Sudden or suddenly, generally means that which is unexpected. I find
> nothing unexpected in the process of leaving water with heat at this
> level. The use of the term sudden implies that an outcome is not
> known, as you describe below, there is nothing unexpected in the
> process.
>
not actually boil. A microwave oven is the most frequent cause these days.
The water will sit in a super heated stage until touched then may "explode"
out of the container as it (ta-da) suddenly starts to boil.
Immortalist
"Mike Painter" <mddotp...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:IHh5d.19882$QJ3....@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com...
Wrong again since at different altitudes the boiling point or temperature is
different. This based upon atmospheric pressure. Didn't anyone ever teach you
basic physics? In the container the pressure is great enouph to raise the boiling
point higher.
My argument did not deped upon a particular atmospheric pressure at a particular
temperature but merely state that once the boiling point is reached "more is
different."
As the sink empties, all of its water passes through the spiral. When finally the
basin of water has sunk from the bowl to the cistern pipes, where does the form
of the whirlpool go? For that matter, where did it come from?
The whirlpool appears reliably whenever we pull the plug. It is an emergent
thing, like a flock, whose power and structure are not contained in the power and
structure of a single water molecule. No matter how intimately you know the
chemical character of H2O, it does not prepare you for the character of a
whirlpool. Like all emergent entities, the essence of a vortex emanates from a
messy collection of other entities; in this case, a pool of water molecules. One
drop of water is not enough for a whirlpool to appear in, just as one pinch of
sand is not enough to hatch an avalanche. Emergence requires a population of
entities, a multitude, a collective, a mob, more.
More is different. One grain of sand cannot avalanche, but pile up enough grains
of sand and you get a dune that can trigger avalanches. Certain physical
attributes such as temperature depend on collective behavior. A single molecule
floating in space does not really have a temperature. Temperature is more
correctly thought of as a group characteristic that a population of molecules
has. Though temperature is an emergent property, it can be measured precisely,
confidently, and predictably. It is real.
It has long been appreciated by science that large numbers behave differently
than small numbers. Mobs breed a requisite measure of complexity for emergent
entities. The total number of possible interactions between two or more members
accumulates exponentially as the number of members increases. At a high level of
connectivity, and a high number of members, the dynamics of mobs takes hold. More
is different.
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-e.html
There are two extreme ways to structure "moreness." At one extreme, you can
construct a system as a long string of sequential operations, such as we do in a
meandering factory assembly line. The internal logic of a clock as it measures
off time by a complicated parade of movements is the archetype of a sequential
system. Most mechanical systems follow the clock.
At the other far extreme, we find many systems ordered as a patchwork of parallel
operations, very much as in the neural network of a brain or in a colony of ants.
Action in these systems proceeds in a messy cascade of interdependent events.
Instead of the discrete ticks of cause and effect that run a clock, a thousand
clock springs try to simultaneously run a parallel system. Since there is no
chain of command, the particular action of any single spring diffuses into the
whole, making it easier for the sum of the whole to overwhelm the parts of the
whole. What emerges from the collective is not a series of critical individual
actions but a multitude of simultaneous actions whose collective pattern is far
more important. This is the swarm model.
These two poles of the organization of moreness exist only in theory because all
systems in real life are mixtures of these two extremes. Some large systems lean
to the sequential model (the factory); others lean to the web model (the
telephone system).
It seems that the things we find most interesting in the universe are all
dwelling near the web end. We have the web of life, the tangle of the economy,
the mob of societies, and the jungle of our own minds. As dynamic wholes, these
all share certain characteristics: a certain liveliness, for one.
We know these parallel-operating wholes by different names. We know a swarm of
bees, or a cloud of modems, or a network of brain neurons, or a food web of
animals, or a collective of agents. The class of systems to which all of the
above belong is variously called: networks, complex adaptive systems, swarm
systems, vivisystems, or collective systems. I use all these terms in this book.
Organizationally, each of these is a collection of many (thousands) of autonomous
members. "Autonomous" means that each member reacts individually according to
internal rules and the state of its local environment. This is opposed to obeying
orders from a center, or reacting in lock step to the overall environment.
These autonomous members are highly connected to each other, but not to a central
hub. They thus form a peer network. Since there is no center of control, the
management and heart of the system are said to be decentrally distributed within
the system, as a hive is administered.
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-f.html
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic
World
by Kevin Kelly
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201483408/qid=1096135300/
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Bob's Boyfriend
"Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
We've covered that -- you provided the physics. My objection is in your
characterization of "sudden"-ness. Despite the appearance of suddenness
there is a clearly traceable course of events that take place whether
water is brought slowly to a boil, or water is placed in an environment
of tremendous heat. Sudden is s human perception of time and it does
seem mystical and as I metioned, is used frequently to describe
unexpected outcomes. Suddenness is in the perception of the observer,
not necessarily a factual account of what has been taking place outside
of the observer.
the phone suddenly rings is from my vantage point. It appears then as an
unexpected event in time. In reality, for my phone to ring someone must
make the choice to call and go about the physical stages of placing the
phone call. The suddness is refernce to my knowing that the event will
or is expected to occur.
Bob's Boyfriend
"Mike Painter" <mddotp...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Like magic, right?
IOW, because the (time of the) outcome is unexpected we as human tend to
use these words to describe a process we know but cannot predict with
any degree of certainty or accuracy.
Bob's Boyfriend
"Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:
And this is the point. We cannot predict from your examples with any
degree of certainty. Like the theists who attributes certain unexplained
or unknown events to a god, we attribute them to suddenness.
As you describe, an avalanche is understood -- at least the factors and
proces are. As a time factor, we cannot predict when it will precisely
happen. As a results we use would of mysticism, magic, and suddeness.
The avanlache example of "trigger" is yet another example. the avalance
appears to us a suprise from our vantage point, because we don't
understand how to predict its pattern YET.