Nice explanation. This summer I was in Australia. While there we visited the Sydney aquarium and the land animal "zoo" next door. I found myself amazed at the enormous variety of kinds of life and the niches that they occupy. Even though I understand evolution and am firmly convinced that it's the right way to look at the world, I was still filled with wonder at what I saw. Perhaps *mystery *isn't the right word, but *wonder *and *amazement*come close.
Even quarks as we know them embody an inherent mystery -- besides how do they come to function the way they do. Our current theory of quarks includes probabilities and randomness. It seems to me that there is a mystery there all by itself. Attaching words like *probability *and *random *to that sort of behavior is less an explanationthen an acknowledgment that there is no explanation -- which is essentially what a mystery is. And that is built right into the theory. It's not even a meta-question like how come quarks (or strings, or whatever) operate according to whatever theory/laws describe how they operate. -- Russ On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 2:39 PM, Kim Sorvig <[email protected]>wrote: > Nick and all -- > I would have to say that *many* mysterious phenomena are not emergent. > > It takes one missing piece of information in an otherwise linear deductive > process to create "a mystery." The cat jumps into the window and knocks > over a kachina that strands there, while I am away. At least for a while, > it is a mystery how that happened. It is even more likely to be mysterious > if the cat's behavior is atypical, or if I don't see a path for it to get > from the floor to the window. > > Secondly, there are mysteries that I doubt we will ever be able to reduce, > with certainty, *either* to a linear explanation *or* to one involving > emergence. Esamples "What preceded the Big Bang?" or a religious version > thereof; "What is outside the Universe and how can it have a boundary?"; > or "Where did quarks get the ruleset under which it can be shown that they > operate?" There are a small number of baseline existential questions in > which mystery is both inherent and irreducible. I know that assertion will > get some of the true Rationalists going, and I am not looking for a big > fight. Such questions are very few in number, but I believe there are a > half-dozen or so that we are obliged to 'fudge' (that is, give operational > definitions to them) in order to proceed with rational analysis of the > remaining 99.99% of inquiry. > > Thus, from either a simple or sublime perspective, there can be mystery > without emergence. > > Last but perhaps not least -- and a reason for not making mystery an > essential part of a definition of emergence -- mystery is an experiential > quality more than an "objective" phenomenon. We can retain the sense of > wonder and of mystery even after we have analytically understood how some > phenomenon happens. Mystery is a willingness to remain astonished, and as > such is not discrete enough to define other terms. > > My two-cents worth -- which are bound to mystify some folks! > Kim Sorvig > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
