Weekly Shtuff 1-4-2013
A little update: One reason I don’t really brood about the conclusions of really complex theories of anything is because they imply, even when stated explicitly otherwise, that we are on the verge of knowing everything. But then we find something new that causes us to rethink our positions. Here’s one I just read today, about scientists discovering temperatures below Absolute Zero, negative temperatures. What’s really interesting is that these negative temperatures are hotter than Absolute Zero, but colder than positive temperatures. Since objects with different temperatures tend to equalize by transferring the heat/cold, the upshot, as impossible as it may be to ever build one, you can theoretically have a negative temperature engine that could generate heat/energy to work, but which would absorb the heat produced, thus making an engine that works at more than 100% efficiency! Negative temperatures may also help explain dark energy. It may ultimately come to nothing, but it does indeed show that we don’t know everything.
I find Determinism both distressing and depressing. I first encountered it as a way of looking at the world through theology, specifically, Calvin’s Reformed Doctrine of Predestination. The contortions the writers went through to say that though God had created everything, thus condemning a large random number of souls to hell, this notion wasn’t to be be construed so as to imply that God was in any way the author of Evil were as baroque as an act in Cirque de Soleil, but lacking in entertainment value. I had many discussions (increasingly heated) with my pastor, who was an otherwise nice guy. But rejecting his core principles, and those of that particular denomination, there wasn’t anyway I could stay. I resolved the issue in my own mind and moved on.
The ugly idea that the entirety of life is fixed, immutable thing and we are merely going through the motions as we encounter each “now” raised its head again in Philosophy class. More heated discussions. On the positive side, I probably would never have read as widely or deeply as I did without that provocation (and I don’t mean to say I am in any way a philosopher). There’s no final proof, of course, but without any sort of free will I decided life just didn’t make any sense, and so I took the side of those authors who argued that we had at least some choice in the matter. Destiny or Free Will? As Forrest Gump said, maybe both.
Recently, though, reading Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality and The Fabric of the Cosmos, I ran up against determinism once again. Apparently, every theory of physics from General Relativity on comes to the ultimate conclusion that spacetime is just one big (if you want to call infinite “big”) loaf, completely unyielding to change. Even if we could go back into the past, it would be impossible to change anything. Oh, sure, there’s the alternate worlds escape hatch, but that doesn’t do much for me. If at every choice point (which I would think would be every single now) the universe splits into infinite alternatives in which each of the various possible choices becomes manifest, it only means that there are infinite fixed realities. Nothing actually happens; those alternatives, if the theories are right, must likewise be fixed and immutable.
Unless there is no such thing as the future. Unless our “now” is the leading point of time’s arrow. I’m sure, given the notion that ‘now’ is relative to a specific point of observation makes total hash of this idea, but that’s math for you. It works for me, though. Now I can look forward to getting up tomorrow and letting a day of choice unfold before me.
On a happier note, I’ve been on a Sherlock Holmes kick lately. You’ll be hearing more about that soon, but one of the highlights was finally sitting down and watching the 1937 Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war. It is without doubt the goofiest Holmes film I’ve ever seen, with German matinee idol Hans Albers making an excellent if more Teutonic-than-I’m-used-to Holmes. It’s a comedy, first off, and Albers isn’t really Holmes at all. He and his pall are con men pretending to be Sherlock and Watson, and fooling everybody with the gambit except one loudly dressed man who laughs every time he says them (turns out he’s Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the only one who tips to the scam.) Of course, the duo are soon plunged into a complex mystery –it’s really a pretty good detective movie—but the highlight comes about half an hour in. Having conned their way into a ritzy hotel, the two men retire to separate bathrooms for good hot bubble baths. But they sing a musical number as they scrub away, with Watson standing up in the tub covered in bubbles. For those of you so inclined, the film is available on YouTube.
Have a good weekend.
January 4th, 2013 at 7:34 am
I have to agree, essentially, with you on the idea that predestination, a set-in-stone fate that’s unavoidable and that man has no choice but to accept, is a big, steaming pile. I personally define destiny and fate as the excuses of the weak-willed and weak-minded for why they did what they knew was wrong or didn’t do what they knew was right. I’m a Roman Catholic myself, and my own understanding of this particular philosophical conundrum is that while God has an ultimate goal for all of us, we have a vast number of branching choices on how to pursue that goal and even the option to not pursue it at all (ill-advised as that may be).
January 4th, 2013 at 7:59 am
I find Calvinist infralapsarian predestination quite a lot more entertaining than the Circus of the Sun, in spite of them both being French.
Of course, Master Boethis has made some quite decisive arguments against the former: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Consolation_of_Philosophy#XL
January 4th, 2013 at 8:45 am
That’s more or less how I feel. But St. Augustine developed a doctrine very similar to Calvin’z.
January 4th, 2013 at 5:47 pm
Larry:
Don’t worry so much.
Be happier more.
Make some pictures, cause we all like it when you make pictures and it makes US happy, us selfish sods….
Make somebody laugh (ok, you made me laugh with the fervent brow-furrowing silliness of Calvinism, of all things!)
Predestination is just another name for chains, literally and figuratively.
God should post His own damn comments about what He’s up to, and frankly, I’ma kinda tired of waiting for Him to figure out the Internet. Happy New Year from MissAllen
January 4th, 2013 at 6:35 pm
I’m happier than I may sound:-) And my wrestling match with Calvinism was over 30 years ago. I was, however, struck by the similarities between Greene’s summmation of physics and Reformed Doctrine, though at least we don’t get the blame for things being how they are. Whatever the ‘truth,’ I still live my life as if I have a choice. And I choose to do things LIM.
January 4th, 2013 at 7:00 pm
I was first introduced to the concept of Determinism by the Old Gentleman Himself. Being scientifically-minded, it’s always made sense to Me. Everything in the Cosmos, even the seemingly erratic and random actions of Human Beings, is subject to the principle of Cause and Effect; therefore there is a discernable pattern to Existence which can not be modified by outside forces since there are no outside forces. (The Universe is, in the most literal sense of the word, Everything. If there are other Universes, they are completely seperate Spatially and Temporally, and thus can not interact with Ours in any way.) I’ve never found it particularly distressing. It’s simply how things are.
January 4th, 2013 at 10:50 pm
My views on predestination are either predetermined or undetermined. If they are predetermined, they are what they are and I don’t need to worry about them. If they are undetermined (as in free will changeable in the future), then my views on predestination could be subject to change either now or in the future.
Either way, I don’t need to worry about it (or I’m predestined not to worry about it). That is unless someone can persuade me to worry about it now (or I’m predestined to start worry about it now).
I think you get my drift.
January 5th, 2013 at 12:25 pm
Actually, current thinking has it that certain types of alternate universes do interact, though not in the sense that one of us could pop over for a visit.And there are plenty of questions regarding cause and effect; from certain points of reference, effect can be seen to precede its cause.
January 5th, 2013 at 12:32 pm
I do. The issue for me is that if things are predetermined, then it is no one’s fault when they, say, shoot 26 people at a school. Of course, civilization is generally set up with the idea we do have a choice, but if things are predetermined, then I get caught up in why things should be as they are. There’s no answer, I know, but one the drawbacks of consciousness/self-awareness is questioning.
January 7th, 2013 at 6:14 am
Now you are just being Jansenist, Larry.
Regardless, Master Boethius was a philosopher, not a theologian (a rather less politically sensitive approach), so he would not have to reference St. Austin on the matter. Even so, he was suspected of conspiring with the more semipelagian Eastern Empire.
January 11th, 2013 at 6:19 pm
Something a demon (or was it an angel?) once told me: Your problem is that you live in a universe where only one thing can be true at a time. When you encounter evidence that is not a real view of the universe, you label the contradiction Paradox and blissfully move on. God CAN make a rock so big he can’t move it and still be omnipotent. No problem.
That in mind, of course everything and everytime is one big thing-time. Everything is predetermined, and your choices still matter.
Or not.