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April 30, 2007

Speculative Realism s-r arc

Iain Hamilton Grant: nature philosophy

A claim:

This can be taken in one of two (contradictory?) directions:

Suppose you are Goethe doing botanical studies. Through a long period of study of different flowering plants—and of particular plants in different states of development—through the use of the imagination to see plant forms related by a system of transformations—you allow the inherent logic of plant form to insinuate itself into your thinking. This gives you access to an idea of the plant that is objective in the sense of not belonging to you but to the plant itself. Appearing in thought is simply something that the plant does. (As a sideline perhaps, rather than as its day job.)

I think that there's a tension between saying that all structures of thought come from nature, and saying that a certain thought can be characterised as being objective by virtue of it taking its structure from its object's nature. In the latter case either thought is initially unnatural and can fail to obtain objectivity; or thought is initially objective but is prone to being denatured.

Many years ago I had an interest in John Lilly, a one-time NIMH researcher who invented the sensory deprivation tank (and so inspired the film Altered States, the source of my interest). I think he makes a good counter-example to this notion of objectivity. He pursued his investigation of the mind through naïve empiricism: self experimentation and self observation. He would spend hours in his tank, and then write up the resultant intense hallucinations. He progressed on to LSD, and then Ketamine. (I think it was around this point that he came to believe that he was a robot scientist sent back from the 25th century to observe 20th century human life.)

I remember reading an interview with Lilly in, I don't know, Omni or something. He was going on about the difference between ‘insanity’ and ‘outsanity’: where the latter is the consensual everyday world, and the former is the stuff in your (or rather his) head that it is difficult to talk about because it's so crazy. The reason I say that this is a counter-example is that this outcome looks largely determined by his method of investigation: a psychedelic cartesianism leading to mad dualism. In other words his thought was subjective in the sense of its content coming from its form, and not vice versa.

Perhaps the attempt to evacuate thought of content led to a cognitive equivalent video feedback, whereby the slightest remaining wisps of worldliness get amplified and mutated so that they seem to have a life of their own despite ultimately have an external source.

Graham Harman: Object-oriented philosophy

My initial curiosity was due a coincidence of words: Harman's is an object-oriented philosophy deriving from Heidegger's tool analysis. I thought I'd got the present-at-hand / ready-to-hand distinction through my thick skull. And a while back I was trying to think through the idea of Object Oriented Programming being Artificial Intelligence in drag, with both being based on a view of thought as the manipulation of representations of present at hand objects, leading to a suggestion that Rodney Brooks work in robotics and the emergence of agile software development (e.g. Extreme Programming) were parallel reactions. (I never got to the bottom of it.) I was worried that Harman might scramble what little I'd made of that all.

But, no, it wasn't anything like that.

There's the definition of an object: something which can be spoken of but that is not exhausted by what is said. (I think that was it. It now becomes clear why other people were taking notes.) It suggests that, e.g., if Boethius were right about music (that the theory is more perfect than the music itself) then music would fail to be an object. Come to think of it, if (big, up-front) object-oriented software design worked the way it was supposed to then objects would fail to be objects.

My mind's now gone rather blank, so I will make do with a couple of tangential remarks.

There was a claim that objects are distinguished by their qualities. There was an example given that, as real doubloons are different from imaginary doubloons, then they must differ in their qualities. There was a question as to how objects could be distinguished, since it was previously said that an object had an infinity of qualities. There was an answer that it was possible because there can be different sizes of infinity. This seemed needless and a bit random:

And also there's the thing about index cards. Harman mentioned that is preparation he'd written the names of the four speakers on different cards, and formed different arrangements on his desk of groupings and contrasts. Also:

We now have five kinds of object […] five different types of relation […] three adjectives for what unfolds inside an object […] and three different kinds of noise […] a good initial model whose very strictness will smoke out those elements it might have overlooked.
I'm just noticing; it might be nothing. Ward Cunningham; Raymond Lull. That's all I'm saying.

Posted by robin2 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2007

Book Review

“Here it is” Knowledge of London with Routes for Drivers — The Pin-Pointed Guide. Written and compiled by Colin A. Hunt (Knowledge of London Instructor) and Kenneth J. Cousland, M.B.E., T.D. (Editor)

From Mr. Hunt's introduction:

Having had over 40 years driving experience, principally on the London streets, I am well qualified to say that I know my streets of London. Since the last War, I have been instructing men in the Knowledge of London, to enable them to pass the very trying examination set by the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, for the licence to drive a London taxi-cab.

Mr. Kenneth Cousland, the Editor of this guide, visited my school, listened to my lectures and persuaded me to put my “knowledge” at the disposal of all motorists. This publication is the result of our efforts.

This guide will be found different to any so far published, in that I eliminate the constant reference to maps.

[…] In this book I am putting into practice a method of using well known landmarks, large or public buildings, stations, shops, road junctions etc. to “pin point” the address required. For example, let us say the destination is opposite the Marble Arch, Selfridges or so many yards from a railway station. This is the conversation way of directing, which I have found very successful in teaching the “knowledge.”

Obviously it was unfair of me to suggest that Mr. Hunt might have been a failed cabbie. I think my confusion is understandable, as it's difficult to see why this book was published. Despite being aimed at the general motorist, I can't see that it would be much use to anyone who wasn't actually trying to learn the knowledge. (And then they'd probably be better off going to a school such as Mr. Hunt's.) Editorial enthusiasm, perhaps.

The book can't directly help a driver find a route through London (unless it happens to co-incide with one of the standard routes); but if they devoted a few years of study to it then they'd be able to find any route without needing the help of a book.

Most of the book is made up of a directory of “points”: stations, department stores, squares, barracks, colleges, dance halls, embassies, etc. So if you want to know the whereabouts of the offices of the Primrose League (no idea), then you look up:

Primrose League, 54 Victoria St., SW1., north side, opposite Army & Navy Stores, adjacent corner of Buckingham Gate, quarter mile east of Victoria Station, three quarters of a mile west of Westminster Station via Bridge St., Parliament Sq., Broad Sanctuary.

There is also a section giving brief descriptions of the Knowledge of London routes, e.g.:

MANOR HOUSE STATION TO GIBSON SQUARE:—
Leave on the left Green Lanes (passing Clissold Part on the left), bear right Petherton Rd., cross Grosvenor Ave. to Wallace Rd., cross St. Paul's Rd. to Canonbury Part North, Canonbury Pl., Canonbury Sq., Canonbury Lane, left Upper St., right Barnsbury St., left Milner Sq., Milner Pl., Gibson Sq. facing. Alternative:—Upper St., right Theberton St., Gibson Sq. on the right.

The book also includes large scale maps of the City and the West End. My guess is that their inclusion is solely due to Mr. Cousland (editor and publisher).

Posted by robin2 at 02:49 PM | Comments (0)

April 10, 2007

On not understanding physics

My understanding of modern physics isn't high. I saw an episode or Horizon on it about ten or twenty years ago. Oh, and I once knew enough about Schrödinger wave equations to get through A-level chemistry.

However, from time to time I do look at Not Even Wrong, Peter Woit's on-going record of his dim view of string theory. I'm not really sure why. Perhaps its because academic wrangling—although unedifying—can make a good spectator sport.

In this vein I did find the Bognadov affair (a.k.a. the reverse Sokal) quite fun. I think it's remarkable that, going solely on the account on John Baez's website there's no particular reason—from a lay perspective—for believing the claim that the Bognadoff's work was jargon-thick gibberish. Obviously sock puppetry doesn't suggest any great trustworthiness. But if a judgement here rests on Baez coming across as a more honest character then this doesn't go anywhere near the physics.

I'm not particularly trying to suggest that the Bognadoff's have been picked upon unfairly, or that Baez has revealed some weakness by arguing from (his own) authority. Instead, the lesson I'd take from this is that technical discussions often don't make much sense from the outside. The idea of trying to explain physics in layman's terms doesn't make much sense to me. To be blunt: if layman's terms were adequate then you wouldn't have much need for physicists. Not that this necessarily matters, unless…I'll I'll get back to that later.

I could go beyond saying that physics can only be understood in its own terms. Somewhere Bachelard says that it is the mathematics that physicists use—rather than the physicists themselves—that understands physics. Which is to say that physics has become a cognitive machine that no longer requires the consciousness of a physicist at its heart. Not that this would stop the machine working, and so might not be important, but… again I'll leave this hanging.

Ignoring everything I've just said, I want to make some sense of string theory. My understanding is that string theory attempts to combine quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity by assuming that the universe has—despite appearances—a dozen or so spatial dimensions. There no doubt a great deal more to it, but that will do for me.

This chimes with my dim recollections of this telly program from years ago that I mentioned: something about the equations describing electro-magnetism being the same as something else (weak nuclear force?) if the universe were assumed to be five dimensional.

The obvious question to ask of this is whether it is really true that the universe has extra dimensions (wrapped up small so no-one can see them), or whether this is just a trick to make simplify the mathematics. My prejudice would be towards saying that it if it doesn't make any difference then it doesn't really matter, but that I doubt I'd care even if it did.

String theory is criticised for not being testable. Part of this seems to be a claim that it isn't a theory at all: it is a label for a research programme that hopes to find a theory but hasn't done yet. (And that, as the decades roll by, it becomes less credible to defend it as being a “promising approach”.)

But apparently there is another problem for anyone trying to combine quantum mechanics with relativity: the predictions made by these theories only differ noticeably from those of classical mechanics under certain conditions, and the sets of conditions for the two theories don't overlap. There's no reason why in principle they couldn't; but—for the time being at least—they just don't. Any unified theory must give an account of how ‘quantum phenomena’ and ‘relativity phenomena’ interact; but this has to be done in the absence of any experimental data as to what this interaction might be like.

I think in any other subject this sort of thing might be taken as a hint to give up and go home. If it were me I'd say that there's not much point in spending a great dealing of time working out how you might predict the results of experiments that can't be performed: better to cross the bridge when you come to it; and if you don't come to it then you'd have saved a lot of effort by not bothering before-hand. But physics isn't any other subject. No, physics is special.

Stepping back a bit, one can ask: what is the problem that string theory is there to solve? Well, quantum mechanics and relativity—the two jewels in the crown of 20th century physics—are incompatible. OK, so why is this a problem?

Given a commitment to a realist interpretation of physics—that theories aren't just there to fit experimental data, they describe the underlying laws of nature—then it must be irksome to require two different theories: it's not as if the universe could obey different laws depending on how it was being considered. But then life is full of disappointments: there must be more to it than this.

What is at stake is to do with one of the original motivations for mathematical physics—an inheritance from the renaissance hermeticism from which it arose. It befits the dignity of the miracle that is Man that He—having been given granted an intellect almost divine—should be the one who comprehends the secrets of the cosmos; who reads from the book of nature in its own language; who hums along with the music of the spheres; who should come to know the mind of God. This is why physics must push onwards to an unambiguous, and supremely elegant, statement of the laws of nature: it is Man's sacred destiny to know them. And, at last, this is why it won't do to have a theory that absolutely no-one (or, more charitably, almost no-one) understands: this isn't book-keeping; this knowledge is beatific.

It's enough to give an aspirin a headache.

Posted by robin2 at 07:34 AM | Comments (0)