Skip to main content

I need to study this passage in Physics more thoroughly:

It's Book 6, chapter 8. It's almost as if Ari's saying that when a thing is moving, it's not right to say that it's here or there... otherwise, one would be saying that this (moving thing) is at rest. Sorta like the scientific discovery that moving things have a certain indeterminacy re their location. I see a parallel...or the mirage of a parallel.

Of course, the latter discovery may be thought to be more epistemic than ontological. That is, one may object to my spotting of a parallel by saying that modern science has shown something about the limits of a scientist's knowledge of motion rather than having gotten an insight into the nature of motion itself. Again, one may object that just because we can't determine exactly where a moving thing is, doesn't mean it doesn't have a definite "where."

Something to look further into.

Comments

Unknown said…
I wouldn't say that quantum indeterminacy means that we are fundamentally uncertain about the location of an object, as though it's a limit to the length of a ruler. The real issue is that before measurement, a particle is a smeared out blob, whereas upon measurement, it collapses into a point, and then starts to smear out again.

This brings me to the issue - the way that quantum mechanics understands measurement seems to be another example of an inherent "arrow of time" in nature - a phenomena, like the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which delineates a definite beginning, middle, and end.
9:10 PM
Leo White said…
Re first comment: Really? They should call them weirdicles instead of particles.
Re second: I don't see the arrow of time in the blob-point-blob pattern. But I do see it w/ entropy. But isn't entropy just a global application of the principle that things seek equilibrium (wait: "seek" hmmmn: teleological: voila!).
The amazing thing about observer dependence in quantum theory is that it might be another way in which striving to deanthropomorphize natural science is futile.
12:12 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dembski's "specified compexity" semiotics and teleology (both ad intra and ad extra)

Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...
Post a Comment
Read more

particular/universal event/rule

While listening to a recorded lecture on Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism, it occurred to me that every rule is in a way, a fact about the world. Think about baseball: from the p.o.v. of an individual player, a baseball rule is not a thing but a guide for acting and interpreting the actions of others.  But this rule, like the action it guides, is part of a concrete individual --i.e., part of an institution that has come into existence at a particular place and time, has endured and  may eventually go out of existence.  The baseball rule, as a feature of that individual, is likewise individual.  The term "baseball rule," on the one hand, links us to a unique cultural event; it can, on the other hand, name a certain type of being.  In this way, it transgresses the boundary between proper and common noun. If there were no such overlap, then we might be tempted to divide our ontology between a bunch of facts "out there" and a bunch of common nouns "in here....
Post a Comment
Read more

continuing the discussion with Tim in a new post

Hi Tim, I am posting my reply here, because the great blogmeister won't let me put it all in a comment. Me thinks I get your point: is it that we can name and chimps can't, so therefore we are of greater value than chimps? Naming is something above and beyond what a chimp can do, right? In other words, you are illustrating the point I am making (if I catch your drift). My argument is only a sketch, but I think adding the ability to name names, as it were, is still not enough to make the argument seem cogent. For one can still ask why we prefer being able to name over other skills had by animals but not by humans. The objector would demand a more convincing reason. The answer I have in mind is, to put it briefly, that there is something infinite about human beings in comparison with the subhuman. That "something" has to do with our ability to think of the meaning of the cosmos. Whereas one might say"He's got the whole world in His han...
2 comments
Read more