Eric B asked me for a test to prove "free thinking" - & I'm getting to it -
but I realised it raised a much deeper philosophical & presumably
mathematical issue which some of you guys, especially the
supermathematicians, may have well have given thought to, and I certainly
haven't.
The issue is this: how can you prove a given form - whether a physical form
or form of behaviour - is disordered? How can you prove that it cannot be
considered as having been programmed, and there is no underlying formula for
it? (And another way of saying "disordered" is "free" as in free-form - and
NOT free-willed).
How can you show that a free verse form really is free and does not conform
to some underlying pattern? Or that a Jackson Pollock abstract action
painting is not the result of a complex formula or program?
Or that a given series of numbers 3..1,017..19.. 4..1,000,039..etc is not
produced by any formula?
Or that a given stream of association of words (in which some do appear to
connect to each other, and others don't) really is disordered? How, to take
an application of that, could you show that a schizophrenic's stream of
speech really is mentally disordered?
Or that a ramshackle dwelling really has been chaotically cobbled together?
Will the proponent of order, so to speak, always be able to claim that no
matter how disordered a given form may appear, (and no matter how most
people may agree that it is disordered), there is always an underlying order
waiting to be revealed?
P.S. None of this actually relates to answering Eric's request. But I
realised it did raise an important issue.
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