There is only uniqueness. Everything is different. Then comes noticing that things are similar. An apple is different from another apple; an apple is different from an orange, but they are both fruit. People are all different, but they are all people. Abstraction is the process of noticing and using similar beginnings to predict when we will come to similar outcomes. Noticing differences is essential to know when there may be unexpected turns, and then it is useful to notice similarities amongst differences.This was also prompted by a conversation at dinner on Friday night with a Episcopal minister who is wife to a colleague of my wife. Science finds similarities that are very useful, but it cannot touch anything that is unique. If everything is unique, then, without taking away from remarkable success, Science makes contact with the world of measure zero. Also, we might think that there is no separation of one thing from another.
Science deals only with reproducible, similar events, it can say nothing about anything that is unique. Insofar as everything is absolutely unique, Science can say nothing about the world, absolutely, but insofar as we notice similarities, Science is very useful. If the similarities are only in our imagination, the "true objective world" is as tenuous, or as solid, as our imagination.
Insofar as theory is capable, we can imagine ways both to use and test that capability.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Uniqueness, similarity, difference.
Adam Frank, at NPR, in his post Things, Ideas And Reality: What Persists?, prompted the response below (which can also be found as a comment there).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments
(
Atom
)
5 comments :
Peter,
I've been struck by this piece from the first time I read it at 13.7; its profundity is so dense that I have to keep coming back to it. It really feels like you're illuminating something important here, and I think this piece deserves your serious attention in making a stand alone piece and not just a "blog post".
In the meantime, I need help with your last two sentences- would you mind paraphrasing and maybe riffing a bit more on this?
Mike
Second to last: "If everything is unique, then, without taking away from remarkable success, Science makes contact with the world of measure zero."
The "measure zero" thing is a weak mathematical "joke". The simplest example of something of measure zero is the set of rational numbers, all possible fractions constructed using integers, which are of Lebesgue measure zero amongst the real numbers. Between any two real numbers there are an infinite number of rational numbers, and between any two rational numbers there are an infinite number of real numbers, but there are quite a few senses in which there are far more real numbers than there are rational numbers.
As I pick away at the analogy, I find it falling apart. How surprising is that? Joke falls flat! It would be better just to replace this sentence with "If everything is unique, then, without taking away from remarkable success, Science makes almost no contact with the world." Then we can argue whether the glass is half-empty or half-full, or whether Science has painted religion into a corner of a room or has painted an infinitesimal spot in the middle of an infinite plain.
The very last statement takes my breath away, it is so disconnected from the rest of the post. "Also, we might think that there is no separation of one thing from another." There's no argument here for this idea. I started to write about this, because it is a thread of sorts, but I find that I can't right now. Best just to remove this sentence from the post.
By the way, Mike, when I wrote this comment, I thought of you a little. I was fairly pleased with how it came out and wondered whether it would make contact with you. So it's nice to hear that it did. Thanks!
Peter,
yeah, where's the "rim shot" when you need it? I like your paraphrase, "If everything is unique, then, without taking away from remarkable success, Science makes almost no contact with the world."
Perhaps if I were more math literate (something I'm working on btw) I would have gotten your joke at first; your explanation of it though worked and in hindsight I do see your poetic humor- and appreciate it.
As to you expanding this piece, I'm suggesting that this has an opus sense about it and will take time.
When you wrote that science can say nothing about anything that is unique, my head snapped back and you provided a doorway into a room that I didn't know existed. It's a room I'd like to explore.
I think also, there's something here to provide ground to spirituality, which so often traffics in Oneness. For me however, I'm amazed by Otherness: Physically, I would expect one big thermodynamic soupy blob, not such discrete existence. Spiritually, what does it say that I value an Other because we're the "same"?: I want to guard Otherness and experience guard in return.
And then you write your last line,
"Also, we might think that there is no separation of one thing from another."
With this you powerfully and elegantly bring paradox into the fold and I feel myself in awe of the Oneness: because when I imagine your work, I see you engaged in the domain of things that could be called the very fabric- the very warp and weft- of Physical reality.
Like I said there's more here and I 'm looking forward to exploring this piece!
Mike
that was a good post.It reminds of some lines Of the Bhagavad Gita in which Lord krishna says that all individuals and Himself are the same,they are One but having said that he also reminds that each person is responsible for his own acts nd must work towards his own salvation.Actually this uniqueness and yet similarity concept is called "Adwaitham" in Hindu spirituality.
Post a Comment