Clark,
I fully agree with your points.
Kirsti
Clark Goble kirjoitti 1.6.2017 22:33:
On May 30, 2017, at 2:49 PM, Helmut Raulien <h.raul...@gmx.de>
wrote:
I am not happy with tychism: Conservation laws require infinite
exactness of conservation: Energy or impulse before a reaction must
be exactly the same before and after a reaction. Though in a very
small (quantum) scale it is not so, but then there must be some kind
of counting buffer mechanism to make sure that in a bigger scale
infinite exactness is granted. This one is also governed by laws. I
do not believe in the dualism sui-generis versus laws, I rather
guess that it is all laws providing the possibility of evolution and
generation of new things, self-organization and so on. Without laws
nothing would happen, I´d say. I think that natural constants may
change, but that there are some laws that dont. And if these laws
are only the ones based on tautology: One plus one can never be
2.0000001, because 2 is defined as 1+1. I guess these eternal laws
are the laws of logic. I think they are tautologies, like a
syllogism is a tautology: The conclusion is nothing new, all is
already said in the two premisses: "Arthur is a human, all humans
are mortal, so Arthur is mortal", you can forget the conclusion by
just putting an "and" between the premisses: "Arthur is a human, and
all humans are mortal". The conclusion ", so Arthur is mortal" is
redundant, except you do not believe in continuity which is
indicated by the word "and" between the two premisses.
My conclusion: "Law" is an inexact term. A "law" is a compound
constructed of an eternal part (tautology, continuity), and a
changeable part ((temporary) constants).
Mathematically of course conservation laws arise out of Noether’s
Theorem. That more or less just states the relationship between
symmetries and conservation laws. I don’t think we need a
“buffer” to deal with this, just symmetries. It would seem that
continuity may (or may not) apply to those symmetries and thus
determines the conservation.
Of course Noether did her important work both on the theorem that
bares her name as well as linear algebra well after Peirce died. But
Peirce did do some work in the logic of linear algebra that is tied to
the theorem. So far as I know he never approached the insight of her
theorem though. He was familiar with the abstract principles though.
However Peirce did write on conservation laws which we discussed here
a few months back as tied to chance and determinism relative to
habits.
In my attack on "The Doctrine of Necessity" I offered four positive
arguments for believing in real chance. They were as follows:
1. The general prevalence of growth, which seems to be opposed to
the conservation of energy.
2. The variety of the universe, which is chance, and is manifestly
inexplicable.
3. Law, which requires to be explained, and like everything which is
to be explained must be explained by something else, that is, by
non-law or real chance.
4. Feeling, for which room cannot be found if the conservation of
energy is maintained. (CP 6.613)
So Peirce clearly didn’t see conservation of energy as universal due
to the role of chance. While I don’t think he put it in quite those
terms, I believe the implication is that chance breaks symmetries
enabled by determinism.
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