Dear Organlearners,
Ray E. Harrell <mcore@IDT.NET> writes:
> I had a rather visceral reaction to this post. I'm not referring to
> anything else in the thread but just the ideas as I understood you to say.
> Winifred, I hope this is not too rude considering the fact that I'm
> breaking in. Perhaps the artistic perspective will be useful, perhaps
> not.
Ray, thank you very much for joining the dialogue. I appreciate your
contributions very much - even more so if they are visceral, yet
civilised. We must be able to speak out our gut feelings, but we must
also try to understand each otherd feellings so expressed.
While reading through your contribution, I was reminded of how one
name can mean so many things. For example, South Africa is very rich
in succulent plants. One vernacular name often used (in my lnaguage
Afrikaans) is "Kanniedood". In English it would mean "Cannot-die".
People in each region uses the name "Kanniedood" for a particular
species. However, if we travel from one region to another, we soon
come deep under the impression how many different species have the
vernacular name "Kanniedood". In fact, I have once made a list of how
many diffrent species I have heard of being called "Kanniedood" - 43
of them!
Furthermore, in the beginning I was often caught up in never ending
arguments that the species ABC of this region is the true
"Kanniedood" and not that species XYZ of a different region. Now I
simply avoid such arguments.
The same can be said of the words/names "reversible" and
"irreversible".
> The first thing that strikes me is that an "irreversible change" of
> direction is what we call an "undoing." It is not that it is truly
> irreversible but that in an action which is called "reversible" direction
> has no significance. To reverse direction in an "irreversible" forward
> motion situation of time or space is what one does to undo an action or to
> go back in time for example.
That much I have realised with my discussion with Marietta Britz, a
lecturer in the music department for whom I have programmed a "note
processor" capapable of interactive feedback in CBT kessons.
The sort of irreversibility to which I refer, using a musical rather
than a linguistic metaphor, is that of playing the entire Beethoven's
Fifth Symphony backwards. In the old days of vinyl records it was not
too difficult. All it needed was an arm and cartridge which could
pivot over the entire record. Rather than placing the needle at the
left outer groove to move inwards to the centre, it is placed beyond
the centre at the right inner groove to move outwards to the
circumference. Furthermore, the motor-wiring had to be swopped so
that the turntable could run in the opposite direction.
I did it a couple of times in the late sixties, after having awakened
to "irreversibility". I did it with a number of records, including
the Fifth (Von Karajan), to observe if there was not something
sensible somewhere. The only result was a cacaphony rather than
a symphony. This is what irreversibility is about! Doing it the one
way results in a symphony, doing it in the opposite way results in a
cacaphony.
> You already point out the linguistic metaphor later so I will deal with
> that at that time. In music you have significant reversibility which is
> almost a kind of joining of the two concepts. Composers play with the
> concepts of forward and retrograde motion and direction (inversion) all
> within the same Universe of a piece of music. A fugue for example has it
> all. Significance is not lost if within the forward motion of a melody
> e.g. the melody is reversed (retrograde). Even though the melody is not
> equal in effect when in retrograde, it is non the less significant in
> affect.
What you have described in music, is very much what happens in
chemistry. A chemist isolates a complex natural substance. Then
begins the task of analysing the substance into its smallest parts -
the atoms.- and how they are arranged with respect to each other. The
entire process is irreversible and specifically destructive.
Then begins the task of synthesising the whole substance out of its
individual atoms. This is no easy task because with, say 500 atoms
making up the substance, up to 500 000 different substances can be
made with exactly the same composition! Each of the other
possibilities arises through a forking event (bifurcation) along the
road. Controlling each of these bifucrations is no easy task.
Furthermore, the entire process is again irreversible, but now
specifically constructive!
Only when a chemist has performed both the analysing and the
synthesising jobs, is the the identity of the substance partly
established. The next phase is to see how this complex substance
react to other complex entities. This is phase becomes very important
in pharmacology.
Chemical reactions are basically/fundamentally irreversible rather
than reversible. It means that when two substances are mixed, they
react to form certain products. But as the products increase and the
reagents decrease, an opposite, but also irreversible reaction
ensues and increases. When the equilibrium state (the attractor) is
reached, both the forward and reverse reactons happen at the same
rate. A product is thus produced and consumed at the same rate. Its
mass thus appears to be constant. This is called the reversible
state - a slight change in the amount of either a reagent or a
product can force the reaction slightly into the opposite direction.
Note that this reversibility is obtained in terms of two
irreversible, opposing reactions.
Now compare all this with your own superb explanation of what happens
in music.
> Another common example is the four note theme of the Beethoven Fifth which
> is literally turned every which way imaginable (with both a retrograde and
> an inversion in each of the five elements of music and then their
> multitude of various manners of changing those five elements). What this
> means is that both the retrograde of the order of a series of notes and
> their inversion constitutes only two of the many possibilities contained
> within the information that makes the BFS significant. What a retrograde
> does do is create a different melody as does an inversion, however a
> trained ear will both perceive and understand those devices while an
> untrained ear will be moved. Both are effected by the change in the
> information.Each change in direction of the primal elements simply adds to
> the possible information that is carried within the piece.
But then you add:
> It is at this
> point where I, (being the most ignorant of those who gaze at physics)
> would still question whether entropy is a more valid model for human
> interaction than the abstract relationships found within an aesthetic work
> that draws its power from the culture that is from a particular group.
> Just a thought.
Ray, I admire your frankness. But let us first look at the physical
side. The motions of the violist's muscles and the signals travelling
along the neurons are the result of irreversible bio-chemical
reactions. The violin itself is made of wood - from a seedling which
has grown irrversibly into a tree, unceasingly producing entropy. To
get an idea of this, read my contribution "Are living systems
dissipative" to Doc Holloway's journal. The URL is
<http://www.thresholds.com/journal/articles/delange.html>
Even the sound made by the violin propagates irreversibly through
the air to the ears of the audience. Should it propagate reversibly,
it means that many sounds would turn around somewhere in the air,
move back into the violin and never reach the ears of the audience!
That would be terrible. It means that no faithful rendering of the
score is possible any more.
I am totally convinced that the material/phsyical world changes
primarily/fundamentally/basically irreversible. In non-technical
terms it simply means that the future is not a reverse copy of the
past. The future becomes through the present the past, but the past
itself is gone forever. In technical terms it means the "entropy
production" (the creation/increase of entropy) distinguishes the
future from the past. The future will always have more entropy than
the present just as the entropy of the present is more than that of
the past. This is why the cosmologist Sir Arthur Edddington called
entropy the arrow of time.
Our real problem begins when we question the abstract world of mind
and not the material world of the brain. Is the abstract world of
mind primarily/fundamentally/basically irreversible as in the case of
the material world. In other words, does the abstract world of mind
has a arrow of time?
The answer for me is a clear yes. But I fully realise that my
thinking in terms of "irreversibility" (or "entropy production" or
entropy related terminology), is like Egyptian hierogliephs to you.
It has become a "lingua franca" for me to discuss almost every topic
under the sun with - to become conscious of the wholeness of all
reality. But if a person does not know this "language", can that
person really claim that it cannot cover all reality? Does any person
have another "language" which can cover all reality? If so, I would
gladly begin to learn that language and set up a "translation"
between these two "languages".
> > Other readers may ask "What the heck is a reversible description?" (snip)
>
> very interesting stuff. I've really enjoyed At's explanations of entropy
> and especially the one a while back with pixels.
>
> > Readers may now think that it is incredible stupid trying to read
> > something backwards. (snip). Reading the book backwards is exactly like
> > rolling the
> > movie backwards.
>
> Is not the difference here that 1+1=2 is timeless and it's significance is
> neither grounded in order (time) or position (space) but in quantity? By
> the way, on the piano two seconds equal a third not a fourth. Two seconds
> have nothing to do with quantity but with distance and are something like
> your entropic pixels.
Ray, your intuition is superb. We can can indeed consider 1 + 1 = 2
as timeless! This is also what happened to Newtonian mechanics. Time
became an extrenal parameter to describe motion with - time stopped
being an internal parameter. In fact, the genius Hamilton succeeded
in formulating Newtonian mechanics with out reference to time at all,
thus showing that the reversibility of time is in affect
timelessness.
Ray, you can easily model entropy in terms of sounds rather than
pixels as I have done. The richer the diversity in sound (tone,
texture, harmonics, etc), the more the entropy of a score. The richer
the patterns in this diversity, the even higher the entropy rises.
> > (snip) This difference between playing a movie forwards or backwards
> > indicates irreversibility.. If no difference can be observed, then
> > the movie depicts a reversible phenomenon.
>
> Doesn't this indicate the need to find the right category instead of a
> universal law. e.g. quantity and distance share common numbers and even
> some other things but one is grounded in space and the other is an
> intellectual construct to measure amounts for a practical purpose beyond
> itself? Again I hope I'm not embarrassing myself by even playing on this
> field.
Forget it my friend, you are not embarrassing yourself. You are
venturing into new hunting grounds - a very brave thing to do. The
embarressment comes when we mistake the squeeck of a mouse for the
roar of a lion.
First of all, a universal law is nothing but a special kind of
category. It concern the category of relationships (an entity with an
internal structure accounted for by a relationship).
Secondly, we will come in due time to the essentiality
"quantity-limit" (spareness) so that I do not want to go into too
much detail here. I think the way in which you (as other musicians)
use "distance", is much like "difference in diversity". The more the
"difference in diversity", the more the "distance". It is somewhat
like the concept "variance" in statistics. But physicists, chemists
and engineers use "distance" in a much restricted sense, namely that
which can be measured in terms of a unit of length.
Your phrase "is an intellectual construct to measure amounts for a
practical purpose beyond itself" gives an intuitive clue to what much
of physics and chemistry is about. At least two such intellectual
constructs (concerning a phenomenon) are needed. They are then
compared with each other. Any pattern common to them establishes a
physically measurable relationship. By now comparing common patterns
themselves so that even deeper common patterns are discovered, a
universal law may eventually be discovered.
> > One of the main problems of the theoretical tools of physics is that
> > they can produce only reversible descriptions (movies). (snip)
>
> I don't understand why a movie is a reversible description.
I am sorry for this confusion. I used the word "movies" in
brackets to supply an alternative to the word "descriptions".
I should have used the words "reversible movies" in brackets.
Movies taken from real life phenomena are irreversible. It
means that playing the movie forward corresponds to what has
happened. Playing the "irreversible movie" backwards corresponds to
something which will never happen outside the movie.
All the universal laws of physics (except the Second Law of
thermodynamics which tells us about "entropy production") give
reversible descriptions. Should we make a movie (with modern computer
simulations) of such descriptions, these movies would be reversible.
We would not be able to distiguish between the forward and backward
playing of these movies.
> > The only exception is the Second Law of Thermodynamics concerning "entropy
> > production". This law says that when ANY SYSTEM changes, only those
> > changes will happen by which the entropy of the universe will
> > increase. Playing a movie of real life backwards, will represent
> > changes by which the entropy of the universe will decrease!
>
> Predictability will decrease but "information" will increase, yes? There
> is more information in a reversal because of "perceived" decrease in
> predictability. (Am I off here?) In the BF symphony it often constitutes
> surprise and novelty and even though the order is rigidly defined it still
> is too complicated to seem predictable.
Ray, predictability will certainly decrease if we want to use
something which cannot complexify itself to predict anything else
which does complexify itself. This is one reason why the seven
essentialities are so intrigueing - the possibility to complexify
them as the emergences which we wish to predict become more complex
themselves.
> In music we call that contrapuntal harmony and it is a nightmare to
> comprehend, so much so that in today's dumb and dumber climate it often is
> not even taught in conservatories. Training for that must begin much
> earlier than today's public schools).
I must now admit something. While still at primary school, I was
forced to study music. I loved music, but I hated the forcing. I
loved contrapuntal harmony, but I hated to comprehend it by
memorisation rather than through self trial and error. Eventually,
when I reached secondary school and the advanced level of music
(Trinity College), I rebelled. I banned music from my life and tried
to forget all which I have learned. I almost succeeded.
Ten years later, while at university, I visisted my uncle. He was
listening to Beethoven's fifth piano concerto. I respectfully sat
until the whole damn thing was finished before I began speaking. My
uncle sensed my distress and switched off the hi-fi. We had a
delightful discussion until the early morning hours on many topics
except music. I went back to the dormitory for a peaceful sleep. But
about one hour later I was wide awake. A wierd thing was happening. I
was hearing the whole concerto in my mind, every bit of it. I tried
to switch my mind off, but the music simply flowed - panta rhei. I
had no power against it.
How was this possible? How could my mind record such a complex thing
in such a perfect manner - me hating every moment of listening to it
earlier that evening?
Afterwards I was very glad that it happened. I regained my love for
music through that incident.
Agter having discovered beyond any doubt that entropy production
also happens in the abstract world of mind, causing complexity to
increase (as well as discovering the seven essentialities as a
result of it), I began to explore (and practice!) some of Beethoven's
sonatas on the piano myself. I had to begin right at the beginning,
having not touched a piano for 25 years. But I persisted for three
years until I could play two of them comfortably. Why?
Because I realised that what Beethoven had to say about complexity
in musical terms corresponded very much to what I then knew in
entropy related terms. To experience the same thing told in two such
seemingly unrelated mediums brought me deeply under the impression
how we must learn to express our feelings through different mediums.
Ray, please do not ask me to play the piano now. After three years I
stopped doing it, not because I hated it, but because of limited
time. A world was unfolding before me and playing the piano
restricted my excursions into it. I would rather meet you in person,
ass you to play a sonata, stop you form time to time and reformulate
what Beethoven did in terms of entropy related terminology.
> > (snip) All the planets, for example, are unceasingly subjected to
> > ever changing solar winds (plasmas emerging from the sun). (This was
> > not known in previous centuries and thus to Newton.) Making a movie
> > of these plama winds and playing them forwards or backwards affords
> > great differences. Newtonian mechanics depicts the movements of these
> > solar winds very poor. Thus the notion that our solar system can be
> > described reversibly, is an illusion.
>
> Complexity creates a problem with Predictibility? But is the
> incomprehensibility out there or is it within us, like the non musician's
> lack of conscious comprehension of retrograde/inversion in the Beethoven
> Symphony?
Ray, you do not answer your question so that I will have to do it. I
believe that the incomprehensibility is not out there, but within us.
Things become more and more incomprehensible as we fragment ourselves
more and more from the whole. We may have our reasons for such
fragmentation. For example, the majority of white people in South
Africa favoured the ideology of Apartheid (fragmentation) because
they could not see how the black people of Africa would ever fit into
an Europen based society. Unfortunately, they also did not manage to
foresee the injustice to be caused by Apartheid. Thus Apartheid was
dismantled four years ago.
However, the majority of white people (and an ever increasing
fraction of black people) still cannot see how the black people of
Africa would ever fit into an Europen based society. They are now
fast becoming pragmatists - exploring opportunities at the spur of
the moment. Predictions and thus planning for the future has become a
lost art. Corruption, confusion, violence and oppotunism have
become the order of the day. It seems as if South Africa is sinking
into the same state as the rest of Africa.
But something is brewing. Some young people begin to exhibit a depth
of thought which astounds me. They are far less in numbers than in my
own young days, but their quality of thinking exceeds that of my own
generation by far. They are becoming very sensitive to creativity in
general and emergences in particular. They realise that Africa has
to take its own course, not the historical course of either the white
or black peoples, nor that of Asians from the far east, but a new
emerging course.
Ray, you have discussed many other things which I would gladly have
touched upon. In most cases we agree, given our different
experiences. But this contribution is becoming too long. However,
there is one thing which you have mentioned and which I just cannot
leave untouched, eventhough it seems that we agree on this topic
also.
> How historically appropriate that the Romans invented concrete while
> drinking themselves stupid on lead cups, pipes and sweeteners. Latin has
> reversibility based upon word endings. Latin also is the grammar that
> every European language has built their concepts of verbs (process and
> action) upon. That it doesn't fit any of the Germanic languages is an
> obvious statement but these Latin worshipers even write Latin Grammar
> books about Japanese. I question whether the current push towards the
> short solutions to the educational dilemma of low Math scores in the
> schools isn't based on the desire to see Mathematics as a kind of
> replacement Latin as a Universal language.
I have given in previous contributions some account of my own
language Afrikaans. The best way to understand it, is to think of
modern English as having a bottom layer of Old English (Germanic)
covered by a a top layer of pidgen Latin and Greek (Romanic). Whereas
in Modern English much of this bottom layer of Old English has been
lost owing to the interaction of the top layer, in Afrikaans much of
the bottom layer is still there and functioning. Thus it is possible
in Afrikaans to formulate a complex topic entirely in terms of words
of Germanic origin, but also to replace most of its terminology in
terms of their Romanic equivalents.
The usual practise, using Afrikaans, is to teach the students by
using the Romanic terminology. The basic idea is that the Romanic
terminology "internationalise" ("globalise") their ability to
communicate. Well, this idea fails miserably. The simple reason is
that students have not been teached how to figure out etymologically
the meaning of any Romanic term, nor even to recognise them. Thus,
what they try to learn, remains Latin and Greek to them. So they try
to memorise the use of the terminology - how absurd and futile!
I also followed this teaching route and all its failures. But
fortunately, I discovered that should I explain something once again,
but now using Germanic words as far as possible, the reaction of the
students would invariably be: "Oh, it is clear now. Why did you not
say so in the first place!" Since then I have changed my tactics. I
now often give two accounts of the same topic. In the first account I
use as far as possible words from a Germanic origin. But I also warn
the students never to use these Germanic "terms" in any formal work
(reports and examination papers). Then I give the second account in
the "internationlised" (Romanic) version - the "acceptable" account.
It works much better this way, eventhough it is more tedious. While
it is still possible to do it in Afrikaans, it is not possible to do
it in English. Winfried should try to do the same thing in German and
compare his results with mine. Ray, I really do not know how your own
mother tongue (Cherokee, if I remember correctly) has succeeded in
covering itself by a layer of pidgen Latin and Greek (or even Englsih
for that matter). If it has done something like that, try the
experiment yourself so that we can compare our results.
What we have here, is the interplay between the essentialities
"identity-categoricity" (sureness) and "associativity-monadicity"
(wholeness). Using the Germanic version promotes the sureness
more than the wholeness while using the Romanic version promotes the
wholeness.more than the sureness.
However, there is an "internal wholeness" in the Germanic version,
but this is not appreciated by people who do not have a Germanic
language as mother tongue. There is also an "internal sureness" in
the Romanic version, but this is not appreciated by people who do not
have a Romanic language as mother tongue. The only way how they could
uncover this "internal sureness", is to use a dictionary with an
etymological dimension to it.
The same applies to using an artifical language (such as mathematics,
compouter programming or physics) and a natural language (such as
English, Spanish or Afrikaans). One must cultivate the ability to
give an entire account of something complex in either the artificial
or the natural language.
It goes even further. What we say in terms of an artificial or
natural language, we must also try to convey in terms of music
(eg Beethoven) or paintings (eg Magrite) as artistic languages. We
still have a long way to go before we can "speak" each other's
favourite "language" - before we become whole again.
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
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