<3B230CCB.F414E390@hem.passagen.se>
Subject: Re: MF Entropy, information and time
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 19:07:53 +0300
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Hi Magnus, Elephant and Jaap,
It appears that Magnus and Elephant take Kant's view:
MAGNUS
> I don't mean to make fun of the second law, and maybe I'm just old-fashioned
> about this time concept, but time seems to be a more basic concept than the
> rest of the second law.
ELEPHANT
> A short comment. Simplicity and complexity are features of our picture of
> the world rather than of the world (which is continuous and therefore not
> individuated, and so neither simple nor complex). For this reason I do not
> find *definitions* of the passage of time in terms of entropy movement on
> the complex - simple axis terribly plausible. Time passes, and there's an
> end on it. This is as much as we can say, this is what time is.
I think we all agree that time is some sort of pattern of value, but is Kant
right that it is somehow "more real" than other patterns?
Jaap raises some interesting points as to what sort of pattern time is.
JAAP
> - I think that the concept of time (and space) is interwined with the
> concept of order, for time is one of the first, primary and most powerfull
> ways to order events (as space is for objects), without the concept of time
> the dynamical world would be a chaos of events that "travel through *time*
> like it was up, left, or forward". Further, as stated by Magnus, at the
> quantum level of fysics time seems to have hardly any meaning, this can also
> be an indication that time first appears in the evolution towards the
> organic level.
>
> - An other question is whether you need time in order to have Dynamics - you
> need time in order to have (fysical) movement, but is DQ thinkable "outside"
> time ? If it isn't is it permitted at all to think of time as a stattic
> pattern, or are we then forced to regard time as the very manifestation DQ ?
Could it be that the pattern we call time precedes or eludes the
static/dynamic split?
This is not good for the MoQ . . .
> The problem here is that Dynamical influences can only appear through time,
> and static patterns are also only stable through time (how can a system be
> stable "outside" time; without time there is no movement, has the word
> "stable" or "static" any meaning there ?). An other possebility is that our
> human minds are simply unable to think "outside" the innate/inborn idea of
> time, then we are to conclude that "time" is one of the limits of the human
> mind.
It's difficult to know if this limit is "biological" or something we have
imposed on ourselves.
Either way, the "topsy turvy feeling" Pirsig talks about in ZAMM - i.e. our
difficulties in relating to relativity and quantum mechanics are primarily
problems arising from our conception of time.
What I proposed in my Causality essay (MoQ website forum) was that the origins
of this problem go back much further to the issue of causality, and the
attempts to unify mechanics (Newton) and empirical thermodynamics. This is the
true background to the "Time's Arrow" idea.
Obviously my attempts to explain this idea have been inadequate. Should I
continue?
Jonathan
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