Jonathan said:
> We've been there before - the determinism vs. non
> determinism issue previously (though implicitly) raised its head in
> resolving the mechanical vs. thermodynamic descriptions of how matter
> behaves. This was something mostly resolved in the 19th century, before
> relativity and quantum theory burst on the scene. For anyone interested, I
> have a prototype essay at
> http://indycc1.agri.huji.ac.il/~marder/Science_Philosophy/Causality.htm
> entitled "The End of Causality". I'm still working on it, so would
> appreciate feedback.
What you say in this essay makes sense to me, and it seems clear. You write
well.
I have a slightly different take on randomness. I worked through some of
this stuff recently, and came to the conclusion that randomness is the
integral, dynamic part of everything that IS, (DQ), but that the
intellectual snapshot of a system, by definition, must always leave some of
the randomness out. Are you saying the opposite? Randomness is perceived
from the lower level, the system itself?
I just finished a semester in a "Systems Theory" class that had us wrestling
with some of the same concepts.. I put it in a paper--The Demon's
Envelope--where the Demon is Maxwell's demon, and the envelope is provided
by MoQ lenses.
Since everything I write gets around to MoQ eventually, there might be
something interesting in the other papers as well. There's a set of four,
one of which you've already seen.
* Margaret Wheatley and Edith Stein: Mystic Particles in an Evolutionary
Wave--which includes a perspective on what MoQ shows and other systems leave
out, something that Edith Stein might have been trying to point out as well.
http://members.iglou.com/hettingr/maggie/ClassPapers/WheatleyStein.html
* Questions / Comte's Dream--A look at one instance of cultural development
of rationality (intellectual choice being socialized)
http://members.iglou.com/hettingr/maggie/ClassPapers/WhoWhatWhen.html
http://members.iglou.com/hettingr/maggie/ClassPapers/ComteDream.html
*The Demon's Envelope -- entropy turned inside out, Maxwell's Demon and MoQ
http://members.iglou.com/hettingr/maggie/ClassPapers/DemonEnv.html
*Letter to Laura and Natalie -- Schrodinger's Cat, Henri Bergson, Anthropic
principles and MoQ
http://members.iglou.com/hettingr/maggie/ClassPapers/LauraNat.html
I wish I could say they're easy reading, like yours, but they're not.
(They were written for a class, in which the lovable Dr. John Dillon
proscribed that we deal with an unbelievable list of specific topics. This
required us to bite off much more than we would ordinarily chew <grin> in
case you're wondering why I didn't restrain myself a little better.) Still,
that forced me to find some MoQ perspectives I wouldn't have seen
otherwise. Thank you, Dr. D!
Comments welcome,
Maggie
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