[lit-ideas] Re: Madness, Foucault, Nietzsche & Emerson

  • From: "Eric Yost" <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2011 04:19:10 -0500

John: In between we have a vast zone where things become too complex
for straightforward explanation in either simple mechanical or
simple statistical terms. <snip> The science zone is expanding and
defenders of what they see as other types of knowing are once again
on the defensive. Whether new claims on behalf of metaphysical
barriers will last any longer than previous attempts is an
interesting issue.  


In Newtonian physics, there is the old "double pendulum," which if
the arms are extended in a large arc, produces unpredictable
"chaotic" movements. Usually these movements group around ratios of
Feigenbaum numbers but they are still as unpredictable as next
month's weather. And incalculable to boot.

 Irreducibility can be observed in all kinds of complex systems (the
behavior of market sectors in economies, for example). Emergentist
topics are not limited to biology.

This may be what Poincare (an early groundbreaker in chaos theory)
had in mind when he wrote that the theorems of geometry -- whether
Euclidian, Lobachevskian, or Riemannian -- were merely conventions.

Curiously these self-organizing complex systems we are part of, and
of which we consist, may offer philosophers a way out of the
Derridian rejection of lexical foundations, or the Rorty-inspired
rejection of epistemology itself. 

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