In article <7nse4b$fq9$1 at panix2.panix.com>, gcf at panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
>"Phil Roberts, Jr." <philrob at ix.netcom.com>:
>| How about LESS DETERMINED in the sense that we are a species which is
> beginning
>| to show signs of having some SERIOUS RESERVATIONS about blindly and
> obediently
>| caring out a number of nature's emotional mandates....
>>Indeterminacy exists at the lowest levels of the physis.
>Even if it were not for QM, as Feynman showed, classical
>mechanics also produces indeterminacy.
>
It's not quite so simple. What most people mean by indeterminacy
depends on a viewpoint in which causes temporally precede effects. This
is true of macroscopic irreversible systems (like you and me) but not
always of electrons. So indeterminacy in this context really means the
inability of the macroscopic systems to predict the microscopic in
detail. ObSciences: thermodynamics, quantum theory, information theory.
>Probably, the organization of living beings is a way of
>evolving larger determinable systems in spite of this
>fundamental instability. The organization of animal
Indeterminacy is not instability.
>bodies, for example, is highly homeostatic. In the larger
>animals, especially in primates, we begin to see the
>evolution of societies which impose order and conformity
>on their members. And in the case of human beings, a large
>brain, originally evolved for some purpose like better
>swinging from branches or rock-throwing, now fills with
>rhetoric which commands obedience to simple principles and
>fits the individual ever more snugly in with his social
>context.
>>Finally, humans evolve the mass media and the Internet,
>where they increasingly hear about and conform to a
>rhetoric of non-conformity and submit to the dictates of
>"freedom." The direction of evolution is clearly towards
>obedience, not away from it.
>>Too bad.
>
Here we are as the microscopic electron, to the macroscopic eye of the
historian. We may not be 'free', but we will preserve our
indeterminacy.
- Gerry Quinn
