Re: mystery and emergence
Posted by
Nick Thompson on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/mystery-and-emergence-tp3599553p3600197.html
Kim,
I stand corrected on the first and agree on the second.
N
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
----- Original Message -----
Sent: 9/7/2009 3:39:29 PM
Subject: [FRIAM] mystery and emergence
Nick and all --
I would have to say that many mysterious phenomena are not emergent.
It takes one missing piece of information in an otherwise linear deductive process to create "a mystery." The cat jumps into the window and knocks over a kachina that strands there, while I am away. At least for a while, it is a mystery how that happened. It is even more likely to be mysterious if the cat's behavior is atypical, or if I don't see a path for it to get from the floor to the window.
Secondly, there are mysteries that I doubt we will ever be able to reduce, with certainty, either to a linear explanation or to one involving emergence. Esamples "What preceded the Big Bang?" or a religious version thereof; "What is outside the Universe and how can it have a boundary?"; or "Where did quarks get the ruleset under which it can be shown that they operate?" There are a small number of baseline existential questions in which mystery is both inherent and irreducible. I know that assertion will get some of the true Rationalists going, and I am not looking for a big fight. Such questions are very few in number, but I believe there are a half-dozen or so that we are obliged to 'fudge' (that is, give operational definitions to them) in order to proceed with rational analysis of the remaining 99.99% of inquiry.
Thus, from either a simple or sublime perspective, there can be mystery without emergence.
Last but perhaps not least -- and a reason for not making mystery an essential part of a definition of emergence -- mystery is an experiential quality more than an "objective" phenomenon. We can retain the sense of wonder and of mystery even after we have analytically understood how some phenomenon happens. Mystery is a willingness to remain astonished, and as such is not discrete enough to define other terms.
My two-cents worth -- which are bound to mystify some folks!
Kim Sorvig
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org