Hi Focs,
My second post in two days - it's a long time since I've done that.
Yesterday I brought up the idea of thermodynamics as time's arrow:
"Prigogine's change is a Copernican revolution that puts the evolutionary
process at the centre, with time and space orbiting in subservience."
I also noted that Pirsig's statements about more-dynamic choices being
preferable was an expression of the second law of thermodynamics.
Magnus responded with a Copernican revolution of his own:
MAGNUS [with my emphasis added]
> One word about Jonathan mentioning Pirsig's quote:
> In general, given a choice of two courses
> to follow and all other things being equal,
> that choice which is more Dynamic, that is,
> at a higher level of evolution, is more moral.
>
> The law of thermodynamics is merely one inorganic manifestation of Pirsig's
> more general, metaphysical, statement. There are lots of other examples,
> inorganic and others. I'd guess, well hope anyway, Pirsig paid much
attention
> to all those examples he could come up with, including thermodynamics, when
he
> formulated the quote above.
>
To say that the second law is "MERELY" an inorganic manifestation of Pirsig's
statement is rather cheeky, and if Magnus believes that thermodynamics is
limited to atoms and molecules, he is mistaken (e.g. Claude Shannon applied
the equations to the engineering of communications channels, giving rise to
the new field of information theory).
Prof. Frank Lambert has put together a great web site at
http://www.secondlaw.com. He calls the second law "The biggest, most powerful,
most general idea in all of science", but he also produces many non-scientific
statements that are verbal permutations of the second law. As Lambert points
out, "the second law is the mother of all serious Murphy's Laws".
Jonathan
P.S. Magnus, you asked Roger "When we leave the inorganic world and
enter the quantum level, time does not exist anymore, right?" I don't
understand your question. Please explain.
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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