Edwina, Jon A, Jeff, Jerry, Jon AS, Kirsti,
This topic has so many ramifications that it's impossible to say
anything complete and definitive. The observation I considered
important was Bateson's remark about stories as a natural way for
minds or quasi-minds to think, talk, and reason about experience.
For example, Einstein's Gedanken experiments about relativity
can be analyzed as stories that enabled him to think about
physics in novel ways that nobody had previously discovered.
Edwina:
You are saying, I think, that different modes of time, eg,
a mathematical analysis and a physical experience...have to be
considered. The mathematical analysis might be in progressive
time; while the physical experience is in both present and
perfect time.
The four kinds I mentioned were not an exhaustive analysis. I just
started with Bateson's remark about stories. It implies that the
many ways of thinking about time are at least as varied as the many
kinds of stories (formal and informal) and the many ways of relating
the storyteller to the audience and the topic(s).
Re verb tenses: Those are syntactic options for telling a story
and relating episodes to one another. Different languages have
different options for the grammatical forms that express such
relations. The number of options could lead to a combinatorial
explosion, but the practical number is limited by human memory.
ET:
This pointing out for the necessity for dialogic interaction...
That is another interesting path to explore. It leads to another
combinatorial explosion of ways of interacting among participants,
topics, speech acts, contexts -- many aspects of larger stories.
Jon A
trying to understand inquiry and semiosis in general as temporal
processes is one of the things that forced me to develop differential
logic as an extension of propositional logic, for which I naturally
turned to Peirce's logical graphs as a starting point.
Yes, that's another path to explore. For any version of logic,
it's important to determine what kinds of problems it can express
and what solutions it can facilitate. What useful stories or
Gedanken experiments can you explain in terms of it?
Jeff
thinking about the analogy between (1) mathematical models of
the differentiation of spaces starting with a vague continuum of
undifferentiated dimensions and trending towards spaces having
determinate dimensions to (2) models for logic involving similar
sorts of dimensions? How might we understand processes of
differentiation of dimensions in the case of logic?
Those questions are related to the methods Jon A. is exploring with
his differential logic. It's important to look at sample problems
(Gedanken experiments) and ask what models can help solve them.
Jon AS
your identification of three different "kinds of time" might align
nicely with the points of view of the three Categories that Nicholas
Guardiano adopted to analyze Peirce's cosmogony...
I was only analyzing one specific problem. I believe that there is
an open-ended number of kinds of stories -- or perhaps a continuum
of variations in stories, ways of telling them, and ways of relating
the storyteller to the participants, episodes, side plots, audience...
JAS
Guardiano... singles out "the big bang theory" for criticism because
of "its temporal nature and the need for its explanatory cause prior
in time."
Kirsti
Time-sequences between stories do not apply. - The big-bang is
just a story, one on many just as possible stories.
Yes. Every science is always a work in progress.
Physicists are not happy with the idea that the universe suddenly
popped into existence about 13.8 billion years ago. They have
proposed many versions that include a Big Bang as just one stage:
1. A Big Crunch (an earlier universe imploding under the force
of gravity) followed by a Big Bang.
2. A cyclical universe with multiple big crunches followed
by big bangs.
3. Multiverses. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse
The Wikipedia article quotes a summary from the Scientific American:
George Ellis (2011) Does the Multiverse Really Exist?
As skeptical as I am, I think the contemplation of the multiverse is an
excellent opportunity to reflect on the nature of science and on the
ultimate nature of existence: why we are here.... In looking at this
concept, we need an open mind, though not too open. It is a delicate
path to tread. Parallel universes may or may not exist; the case is
unproved. We are going to have to live with that uncertainty. Nothing
is wrong with scientifically based philosophical speculation, which is
what multiverse proposals are. But we should name it for what it is.
John
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