Gary R., list,
Your quote from Smolin:
No, the key lesson of cosmological natural selection (CNS) is that
it makes falsifiable predictions for real observations. In fact the
predictions I published in 1992 have held up. To mention one: there
can be no neutron stars heavier than twice the mass of the sun.
Current limits come close; the heaviest well-measured neutron star
is at 1.9 solar masses, but so far none go over.
[End quote]
That rang a bell. I had read about this somewhere but I remembered
Smolin putting the limit at "1.6". I've dug it up. He said in a comment
at somebody's blog and in a book:
[....] In The Life of the Cosmos (1997), I reflected at length on
the implications of this idea, so I will not go into it in detail
here, except to say that that theory, which I called cosmological
natural selection, made genuine predictions. In 1992 I published two
of them and they have since held up, although they could have been
proved false by many observations made since then. These are (1)
that there should be no neutron stars more massive than 1.6 times
the mass of the sun, and (2) [...]
[End quote. See Smolin's comment at
http://asymptotia.com/2007/03/13/more-scenes-from-the-storm-in-a-teacup-vii/#comment-34765
]
and he seems to be quoting himself from page 167 in _The Trouble With
Physics_
https://books.google.com/books?id=d6MIUlxY-qwC&pg=PA167&lpg=PA167&dq=%22should+be+no+neutron+stars+more+massive+than+1.6+times+the+mass+of+the+sun%22&source=bl&ots=GP1YkoBbNc&sig=Qp8vvgboeFd47IvBhbxOsrSY03Q&hl=en&sa=X&ei=AXwMVa6EKcqrNp7Bg9gK&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22should%20be%20no%20neutron%20stars%20more%20massive%20than%201.6%20times%20the%20mass%20of%20the%20sun%22&f=false
So in the interview *this year* in Scientific American he says (A) that
in *1992* he predicted, with his cosmological natural selection theory,
that no neutron star is more than *twice* as massive as the sun and (B)
that neutron stars *have been found with **1.9 times* the mass of the
sun (the Wikipedia "Neutron star" article currently agrees about
observations, saying "The maximum observed mass of neutron stars is
about 2 M_☉ ") But in *2007* in his book and in a comment at a blog, he
said that in *1992* he predicted, with his cosmological natural
selection theory, that no neutron star is over *1.6* times massive as
the sun.
Peirce's idea that physical, chemical, biological, etc., laws are not
eternally immutable like those of pure math is captured in his use of
the word "nomological" (much like the word "nomothetic") to describe the
study of the laws and basic elements of nature. The idea is that there
is something arbitrary about them, they can't be deduced from sheer
mathematics alone. (It seems doubtful, in turn, that sheer mathematics
can be purely deduced from scratch, since postulates or basic hypotheses
need to be chosen). I always thought there was something to the idea
that physical etc. laws could evolve but it seems pretty speculative
currently. Peirce seems to allow that one might end up at a basic level
with both changeless laws and changing laws, when he says,
because the law of the conservation of energy is equivalent to the
proposition that all operations governed by mechanical laws are
reversible; so that an immediate corollary from it is that growth is
not explicable by those laws, **even if they be not violated in the
process of growth**.
[End quote, emphasis added]
Now, I've read that the current understanding is that energy is not
always conserved; as the universe expands, energy increases; as it
contracts (if it ever does), energy decreases; this is because change of
size of universe makes time asymmetrical, and energy conservation is a
matter of time symmetry. I'm not saying that Jon is right that it's just
a matter of discovering that supposed invariants do vary and of finding
deeper invariants. Who knows how much more radical the change and
evolution may be?
I think that you're right about a semiotic (therefore logical) arrow of
time. This gets complicated as one considers various modes of inference
embodied in semiosis, but I think that it's right, but I've gone on long
enough, and if I think about it more, I may end up not sending this post!
Best, Be
On 3/20/2015 2:10 PM, Gary Richmond wrote:
Here's a snippet from an interview this year of Smolin by John Horgan
in /Scientific American/ on the topic of laws evolving.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2015/01/04/troublemaker-lee-smolin-questions-if-physics-laws-are-timeless/
*Horgan*: You suggest above, and in your new book, that the laws of
nature “evolve.” Won’t that hypothesis make physics and cosmology even
more flexible and hence less falsifiable?
*Smolin*: No, the key lesson of cosmological natural selection (CNS)
is that it makes falsifiable predictions for real observations. In
fact the predictions I published in 1992 have held up. To mention one:
there can be no neutron stars heavier than twice the mass of the
sun. Current limits come close; the heaviest well-measured neutron
star is at 1.9 solar masses, but so far none go over.
At first I had the same intuition your question expresses. But it’s
wrong; making laws evolve increases the falsifiability of science
because it increases the number of hypotheses that can be checked
because they imply falsifiable predictions. The reason is that the
additional hypotheses concern the processes by which evolution took
place. Since these processes would have taken place in the past they
imply predictions which are checkable by real observations. This
point is discussed in detail in my books /Life of the Cosmos/ and
/Time Reborn/.
One way to reconcile evolving laws with falsifiability is by paying
attention to large hierarchies of time scales. The evolution of laws
can be slow in present conditions, or only occur during extreme
conditions that are infrequent. On much shorter time scales and far
from extreme conditions, the laws can be assumed to be unchanging.
As Roberto Mangabeira Unger and I argue in our new book /The Singular
Universe/, the most important discovery cosmologists have made is that
the universe has a history. We argue this has to be extended to the
laws themselves. Biology became science when the question switched
from listing the species to the dynamical question of how species
evolve. Fundamental physics and cosmology have to transform
themselves from a search for timeless laws and symmetries to the
investigation of hypotheses about how laws evolve.
Best,
Gary
*Gary Richmond*
*Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
*Communication Studies*
*LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
*C 745*
*718 482-5690*
On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 1:44 PM, Gary Richmond
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
List,
Here's a seminal text, quoted a number of times on the list over
the years, on Peirce's idea that laws evolve (more quotations when
I have time).
Now the only possible way of accounting for the laws of
nature and for uniformity in general is to suppose them results of
evolution. This supposes them not to be absolute, not to be obeyed
precisely. It makes an element of indeterminacy, spontaneity, or
absolute chance in nature. Just as, when we attempt to verify any
physical law, we find our observations cannot be precisely
satisfied by it, and rightly attribute the discrepancy to errors
of observation, so we must suppose far more minute discrepancies
to exist owing to the imperfect cogency of the law itself, to a
certain swerving of the facts from any definite formula. CP 6.13
Mr. Herbert Spencer wishes to explain evolution upon mechanical
principles. This is illogical, for four reasons. First, because
the principle of evolution requires no extraneous cause, since the
tendency to growth can be supposed itself to have grown from an
infinitesimal germ accidentally started. Second, because law ought
more than anything else to be supposed a result of evolution.
Third, because exact law obviously never can produce heterogeneity
out of homogeneity; and arbitrary heterogeneity is the feature of
the universe the most manifest and characteristic. Fourth, because
the law of the conservation of energy is equivalent to the
proposition that all operations governed by mechanical laws are
reversible; so that an immediate corollary from it is that growth
is not explicable by those laws, even if they be not violated in
the process of growth. In short, Spencer is not a philosophical
evolutionist, but only a half-evolutionist -- or, if you will,
only a semi-Spencerian. Now philosophy requires thorough-going
evolutionism or none.CP 6.14
Best,
Gary
*Gary Richmond*
*Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
*Communication Studies*
*LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
*C 745*
*718 482-5690 <tel:718%20482-5690>*
On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 1:22 PM, Gary Richmond
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Edwina, Soren, Jon, list,
I agree with you, Edwina, that a topic having been addressed
on peirce-l in the past might very well be fruitfully taken up
at a later time since any number of list members may not have
followed that earlier discussion or even joined the list after
said discussion, while those who have followed it or who even
participated in it may have modified their understandings (for
example, having been exposed to some of the contemporary
literature relating to it such as, for example, that which
Soren recently pointed to).
I also tend to strongly agree with you and disagree with Jon
that the matter of the evolution of laws is a "pseudo-issue,"
and I don't recall our arriving at anything like a consensus
that it's a "pseudo-issue" in that earlier discussion. Also
it seems clear from the Peirce and Smolin texts that they both
see the evolution of laws /as such /and//not as merely our
better, more clearly understanding them. For Peirce and Smolin
laws themselves evolve over perhaps vast periods of time. And
I would even maintain that Peirce's notion of laws evolving
includes not only biological laws relating to the evolution on
the earth, but involves 'cosmological' ones as well (this, I
think, is Smolin's position as well). I'll try to hunt up a
few Peirce excepts supporting that position in the next few
days, but at the moment I'm exceedingly busy, so any help here
would be appreciated.
The idea of evolution occurring "over perhaps vast periods of
time" leads me to one question I have regarding your
conclusion, Edwina. While I do agree with you that the present
question (the evolution of laws) "has little to do with
'variables varying over time' - which removes those variables
from a causality due to interaction with the environment and
reduces them to merely a causality due to the linear passage
of time. The theory of adaptive evolution on the other hand
inserts an informational networking of organisms with other
organisms/envt...and suggests a freedom, a spontaneous and
informed change to adapt to the requirements of the environment".
But you conclude "Nothing to do with time.
Even if 'variables varying over time' has little (or almost
nothing) to do with evolutionary change, it seems strange to
say that adaptive evolution has "nothing to do with time"
given that all, for one, semiosic processes involve time. Or
am I missing something here?
Best,
Gary
xxx
*Gary Richmond*
*Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
*Communication Studies*
*LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
*C 745*
*718 482-5690 <tel:718%20482-5690>*
On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 12:35 PM, Jerry LR Chandler
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
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