Science: the unifying factor for humankind in the future by Alexandre Serge François de Pomposo

Dear Joe:

I am very sorry for, apparently, you found some discomfort while reading my article. I already read yours, though I need a second view of it. Meanwhile, I allow myself to think loudly about your observations on my paper: to begin, when I say that "we all live in the present" I pretend to underline the fact that we should learn from our past experiences, that we shall orient our best efforts in order to prepare the future, but mainly that we must live our present responsibly, this is to say, being capable to respond for our acts and thoughts, facing the whole reality. I certainly agree with you that reality, whatever it be, presents itself at once, however on an evolutionary path. Henri Bergson, the french philosopher, began his philosophical work asking himself why the world, as we see it today, had to follow a very long way, through millions and millions of years, instead of being at once without all the struggle we know. Well, his answer, after a whole life of thinking, was that evolution is a creative process and reality is our appreciation about it, with a certain relation with all things we qualify as strictly "objective".

Present is understood as the victorious fight of love against death, of eternity, in the figure of promise, against the extremely hard objectivity of past who seems to condition everything. The flowing of time, the multiplication of "presents" and of love tasks, bring nothing essentially redressing the precariousness of the communication within the word; it is precisely because of that we can assure that every single instant is already mature to be the last one and that makes it eternal. That's why science has to be shared in common with human beings and human nature.

For sure, reality was not created: reality evolves creating novelty. The authentic is eternal, the eternally profound. The real is posteriority resolving riddles of something previous; everything bringing life resolves some enigma, paying the price of posing new enigmas.

Best wishes for you too.

Alexandre

Dear Joe,

I thank you, once again, for your reply. I think that I can see very clearly now where is the "problem": the turning point is in the difference between the concepts of "complex" and "complicated". The term "complex" denotes a property of things; so, when I say "that is complex" what I am actually saying is that such realities possess a complex nature (see below). Instead, when I declare that something is complicated, what I am pointing out is my bigger or lesser capability of understanding or dealing with reality itself.

You might be asking why do I suppose complexity as a property of reality. Well, I guess that the problem before us is like that of a jig-saw puzzle. Suppose we have a box of pieces out of which we are to construct a certain picture (in fact, what we call "nature", "reality", and so on). But the pieces contained in the box are more than can be used, an from among them we have to select those which are needed for our purpose. Furthermore, the pieces do not fit together, and they have to be reshaped. Finally, many necessary pieces are missing, and we have to supply them ourselves (hypothesis). But to offset all these difficulties, we have an outline of the picture which we are to construct... What do we want to do? Do we describe reality or do we invent it? Simplicity is the lowest degree of complexity we can understand.

Alexandre

Dear Professor Turil Sweden Cronburg,

I thank you a lot for your encouraging words and, as I see in the paper you wrote, the discovering of how we deeply coincide in many points. I greatly enjoyed reading you, particularly expressed in the diagrams you beautifully presented. However, if you allow me to make a few comments about your ideas, I would like to know how can we pretend to use experience, consciousness, space, time, etc., as we don't even know the real meaning of all that. I understand quite well that, by centuries we have been forced to accept all those concepts as provisory hypotheses, otherwise we would never progressed a bit in science... Nevertheless, I think, we should keep in mind that all the basic conceptual structure of science, including evolution as a model o time developing systems, has to be questioned again and again. In fact, I consider that what we actually call "experience" inevitably is a past reality, an already done structure, good or bad, beautiful or ugly, constructing or disastrous, whatever, but always known in a posteriori manner. Present, instead, cannot be seen or even experienced as such, since in the case of conscious experience, this always happens in a sort of estrangement of oneself, whilst the rest of atoms, not Adams, seem to me as simply being there without a notion of experience. I keep thinking that, even though I ignore what consciousness is.

Another heavy term you employ in your exposure is purpose; I would have rather utilized the term intention, but it doesn't matter. Indeed what I suppose is really important to tell you is that I don't think we get things clearer by assuming the equation purpose = function. You probably know that one of the main disjunctive topics is the question for what was first, structure or function: does structure make function or is it the other way around? I am sure that as far as we stay on that twofold situation we will never be able to get off the hook. I propose to add a third element, namely, fluctuations triggering and modulating reality. Now yes, we break through the undecidable binomial; instead of the old dialectic one-dimensional relationship structure 竊" function, we get a threefold relationship, not strictly dialectic, an equilateral triangle with structure, function and fluctuations, each one of three on each corner.

This relationship cannot be purely dialectic because there wouldn't be any possible evolution of such a closed system. Not only does each one of the three moments depend on the other two, but also each one of them has to be opened to new possible conditions. That is why fluctuations play a crucial role in evolutionary perspectives. Don't you think so? I know all that is present between the lines of your text but, perhaps, it would have been very useful to do it explicitly. No doubt, all the factors you mention for a fully functioning Earth are relevant and, in a certain sense, they all are urgent to meet.

I didn't fully developed the idea of epistemic polyglotism because of the lack of space we counted on for the contest; however, and I am very glad to confirm that you did understand the point, in order to answer a foundational question like how should humanity steer the future, only illustrious ideas like yours and mine can effectively contribute to get a glimpse of an answer. I widely develop the subject of polyglotism in a book I just registered in Mexico, it is written in Spanish, titled "La conciencia de la ciencia: un juego complejo" [The consciousness of science: a complex play (game)]. May be I will think of a translation into English and French.

Finally, I would like to tell that, yes, I would like a hot cup of tea!

Yours,

Alexandre de Pomposo

Dear John,

I appreciate both your paper and your beautiful reply. I mostly agree with you and what you say made me stop for a little while in my job, walk out and start considering your concepts, one by one, under the trees of a park. The result of those thoughts are expressed in the following lines.

Basic sciences have shown, from their very beginning, the greatest interest to understand the world as well as the laws governing it. They have assumed again and again that knowing reality and predicting its behavior, both aspects are the same thing. Nobody doubts, even building on such oversimplified basis, that sciences have provided numerous and overwhelming examples of their validity; one can find at the present time that most scientists uncritically accept that the initially unavoidable assumptions, made in order to go straight ahead in research, those assumptions are in fact the immovable principles for the functioning of the world. The initial breath of fresh air that signified the birth of science, quickly vitiated and today prevents us from seeing with new eyes the complexity of the world, of human beings and their becoming. Science has betrayed her own consciousness.

This is why it is absolutely necessary to review, with a critical sight, what we mean by knowing, by doing and by knowing what to do. Hence the false choice between theory and praxis, forgetting that every theory finds its justification in experience; abstraction, as the explanation of reality by means of the impossible, the search of universals as an extension of the strictly local, towards the global, and its summit, action, developing a response ability for our movements at the interior of existence, all that needs the resources of humans. And, on their side, humans mustn't be alienated by a science being stubborn about considering the world as if we weren't there! I think it should be quite the contrary, namely, as science is one of the main achievements of human thought, provided she ennobles man and makes him living with responsibility.

The "antidote" to prevent the inability in considering men as integral part of the stuff developed by sciences, a spiritual blindness, is the implementation of an integrating discourse without leaving anything outside which concerns humans. The old disjunctive between the ideal and what actually happens in the flowing of time, between necessity and contingence, between universal and particular, puts the solution not at the decision point, but at the enriching fusion of both branches. That's the way the universal particular and the particular universal emerge as the solution to the contingence of the laws of nature. Reality manifests as a play of contingence, Yes, man can take himself into account while knowing and describing the world by fusing the contraries, in a never ending and never complete hug, because whatever is touched by human beings turns into an enigma, as he is himself one.

What can we do? Even though science is not the only possible answer, she certainly is a privileged path so to structure the human intellect; this is so because of the direct projection of the structure of human intellect that mathematics actually is. In other words, science, which is a product of human mind, goes back to man in order to draw him once more. Nonetheless, this is not a consistent lie undistinguishable from truth; it rather is the helicoidal construction, which cannot go on a straight line, since straight lines are the product of induction, which hardly fits into natural thought, unless mathematics becomes integrated to the structure of the spirit.

Concluding, sciences shall accept that the only possibility for them to keep their consciousness intact is... being willing to change (i.e. to inspect their basic assumptions) whenever is necessary. Like seeing is the function of view, believing is the function of childhood, and only children know that the horizon, even it looks like a border line, is the mark of the beginning of the invisible. From the horizon as the limit of knowledge (Kant), up to that treat with things, fixing the horizon (Zubiri), passing by a construction of a vital horizon (Ortega y Gasset), human beings surely roam through their lives thinking, acting, dreaming...Capable of the highest ideals, as well as the worst nightmares, man will always be a god while he dreams, but a beggar while he thinks (Hölderlin).

Best regards,

Alex

Dear John,

I thank you very much for your openness of thinking. As I already told you, I completely agree with you and I celebrate that you like to watch from a distance: open spaces are essential to have an idea of the entire landscape. So, after that, you deserve that I widely open my heart to you in a matter as fundamental as time is. But before that I must prevent you that, as it seems to me is your case, I am not a draft animal, I mean that I usually don't react after whiplashes, on the contrary I frequently resist: I have payed a high price for my freedom in thinking, and I'm sure you know quite well what I'm talking about. I am convinced that a construction of scientific knowledge without taking into account that science is nothing without scientists who, before being scientists, are humans, is a ridiculous, irresponsible, absurd and even monstrous and grotesque task.

We often mistake considering time as equivalent to duration. Starting with the works of Galileo, the isomorphism between time and the line of the real numbers, stablished once and for all that instants in time are points on a straight line. This, of course, banishes us from the whole panorama of the description of nature. That is a consequence of pretending that things are as they are independently of our presence or absence from the cosmic stage. Certainly not, and quantum mechanics, dipping in the same deterministic point of view, still had to recognize that the observer was there for a reason, and he couldn't be innocuous in knowing reality, whilst measurements are on the way.

Well, that is the reason why I've been thinking since almost thirty years ago, when I talked a lot with my supervisor in the PhD in physics, Professor Prigogine, that all this story about multi-dimensional, multi-cosmic, "reality" is nothing but a projection of our deterministic brains. In fact, all we know, all we experience about reality is always past: we cannot see the present, we usually suffer it, one way or another. So the things, in one occasion I said to Prigogine, "well Professor, then there exists only one dimension, namely, TIME, and what we actually call SPACE is nothing but the trace of time, this is to say, past". Professor Prigogine looked pensive after my statement; few minutes later he said that my idea looked a little bit extreme, however I might be right since I was young... I am not young any more, but I still think the same. The only way one can dip into the present is dying. Time is not duration and that is why practically all the equations of physics are perfectly indifferent about the sign of "t": if you change t by -t you will get exactly the same result in all the differential expressions based upon classical mechanics. Even Schrödinger's equation is deterministic, of course, as well as the mathematical characterization of Boltzmann's theorem. That is why time cannot be either a parameter nor a fourth dimension: it's got to be some sort of "operator", comparable with momentum, position and total energy (hamiltonian) operators. Only then Heisenberg's uncertainty relations will have a real meaning.

So, speaking frankly, I think we have really missed the mark from the very beginning (i.e. more than four centuries ago!). The amazing thing is that we have said few things not so stupid. But it is time now to rethink the role of mankind in the generation of knowledge. Self confidence is a good thing as far as it doesn't lead us to be arrogant: you say well, our knowledges and movements in the cosmos are so "viscous", slow, clumsy, naive, that we should be extremely careful about the range of our achievements. In the scope of time, past is space already done (faith, oblivion), future is space not yet done (hope, ignorance) and present is time itself (love, knowledge). Forgive my pseudo-theological allusions, but what I want to say is that we should take seriously all human nature, not just the part that suits me.

I am sorry, dear John, for I've been too long in my reply but, I feel good "talking" with you by this means. As a matter of fact, besides the contest, which is pretty interesting, the "colateral effect" of these communications among the different authors is the best part of it. Thanks for your patience and I hope all this be of some usefulness.

Best wishes.

Alex

Dear John,

Thank you for your reply. Your arguments forced me to have a look on some texts that came to my mind while reading you. Namely, I though about some of the ideas of Spinoza as you argued about space and time, for the Dutch philosopher thinks that thought and extent are the attributes of the one substance (which is infinite in itself, with an infinite number of attributes, each one of them being infinite), so that nothing is "outside" of it since, in fact, there does not exist any "outside". Well, I suppose that your own idea of space as an irreducible entity gets very close to Spinoza's conception. And referring to the concept of time as pure action, Spinoza says in the same tenor that action is the deployment of the substance (as a matter of fact, God, in the philosophical system of Spinoza) by means of the temporal unity of man. Ergo, time precedes existence, and human action needs time as a backdrop.

Indeed, information travels not at infinite speed, as we have a limit, c. Now, this reminds me that whatever we say, we pretend to know or to describe, we must have an irremovable referent, i.e. a frame of reference with respect to which we can say whatever: Ptolemy (Earth), Copernicus (Sun), Protagoras (man), sound (air), light (ether...or light itself), many human beings (God), etc., even this writing I am doing right now needs the referent of alphabet, language, syntax, and so on. Apparently infinite can only fit in human spirit; I think that is so for simultaneity as well. To will, more than to determine, is to get an idea of possibility: reality is the complex of possibilities. You remind me, once again, Spinoza when you say that free will is a sort of oxymoron, and I agree with you: we are not simply actors on the stage of space-time, but we rather create the stage being there and acting. But once this process begins, not only do we make the stage, but the stage makes us too. The main problem I see with determinism is not being simply false, because it is not, but that it pretends that everything is exclusively fixed by previous conditions, not allowing the appearance of novelty, of the radically unexpected, of emergence. Now, in fact, nature provides us with so many examples of emerging systems, proving that structures are not the ensemble of parts, but the collection of possible correlations between those parts, so far that even after the disappearance of them, correlations stay (e.g. fossils). That is why I think space as the trace of time (which is not duration), not as an effect coming out from a cause, unless we accept this view as the price to pay for our particular way on perceiving the phenomenal world.

About expanding universe, I do agree with you, provided they are not confused space and time as simple degrees of freedom. Physics has very often assumed homogeneity and isotropy of space, in an attempt to fulfill the conditions for solving non-linear equations, and that's understandable; however, we in general forget pretty soon that such conditions were exceptional and oversimplifying, so we entangle the feet with our own games. This is why I would like to talk about your phrase: "when we measure time, we measure actions, but when we measure space, be it distance, area, or volume, we are measuring space." What measuring is? Measuring is comparing couples of systems, assuming that one of them is, at least for a while, fixed. The "landing" or "shoulder" not in time, but in our understanding, are an indispensable condition for measuring anything. When we measure time we compare actions and when we measure space we compare historical moments, this is to say, places of the past. Of course, void is not the carbon copy of nothingness, since the former is actually something whilst the later cannot simply be, otherwise it wouldn't be nothingness. Light needs a propagation medium, which is light itself. Einstein spent almost twenty years before he realized that although it is true that ether as such doesn't exist, light does need a medium. I think that medium, light, is a direct property of the geometrical structure of space, this is to say, of time (from there the particular metrics of space-time).

I don't think there is a single center of the universe, i.e. it is nowhere or, equivalently, it is everywhere; as you assert right, each one is a fortiori the center of the universe; I'd rather prefer to say that each one is the center of his or her own universe. I am not quite sure though that either the presence or the absence of gravity is the only explanation of contraction or expansion, respectively, of space. I suppose science still has a very long way to go. However it is puzzling too the fact of remembering those old models (Greek atomists like Democritus, Descartes, etc.) praising vortices organizing reality; I am afraid that, for the time being, these are more philosophical than scientific subjects. Nevertheless, I hope scientific thought will eventually dig in them.

Thanks John and excuse me for the delay answering your deep reply.

Regards,

Alex

Dear James,

Thank you for the score you gave to me. You are right about the missing part of providing sustainable support of investigative efforts. However, my article, being written by a physicist, hardly could deal with such items, and I wanted to put the accent on the epistemological attitude facing the legitimate unification of knowledge, of realities and, mainly, of humans. Indeed, I think that attitude is first; economics is later. As a matter of fact, one can find quite often such confusion in most of the western countries, namely, that prosperity in education comes from prosperity in economics; I think it is exactly the opposite.

You say well that we don't even teach common sense at schools (neither public nor private): common notions are completely oriented to making money, to generate and utilize technologies, to worship the body, to be as popular as possible, to reach wealth at any price, and so on and so forth. In other words, we have consciously organized our world on an egoistic basis and, as a consequence, rather that dignifying the human individual by making him more responsible of the world, humans within, we block the natural volition of humankind to live with the others, to live for the others as the best possible self-service, to back feed a healthy self-esteem, ... That's why I believe science can become an area of hopefulness for humankind in the future, provided we actually understand the crucial role of self-critique in science generation and the importance of learning other ways of thinking the world and the whole reality. ¿Don't you think so?

Best regards,

Alex

P.-S. I shall read your paper in detail. Only then, I will be able to making comments to you; however, I can see in advance that it will be an enjoying experience.