| Thursday, March 30, 2006 |
| In our last adventure... |
I was pandering on about the second law of thermodynamics, and how human beings seem to dance, everso breifly, in an opposing tune to it, and then posing the query that if our ability to codify our thoughts via pen and paint and ink and the digital medium violates the conservation of energy.
I wish to continue in this vein for a moment or two. If we choose to say that the formation of ideas, which, after all, are simply electrical impulses across denrites and axoms and so forth, are not actually whole cloth creation of something completely new, that is to say, we accept non sub solum es novum, then we are beginning to tread, at least philiosopically on some very Pieper grounds. That is to say we are accepting that these ideas and thoughts have all been had before, and that perchance all we are doing is not actually having them, but somehow, tapping into a universal fount, and taking a ladleful of ideas and concepts out to use for our own purposes.
This is, of course, a rather humbling idea, and keeping with science on the whole and it's conception that we are very small, the universe is very large, and probability allows for this. We know that an infinite set of monkeys at an infinite set of typewriters will produce all the great works ever to be written, but do we actually accept what the consequences of this are? It is, after all, a bit of a shattering conception.
We cannot create ideas? Only tap into something that has already been created somewhere, thereby conserving energy and ensuring that omega remails at or close to one? Then where do these ideas reside? A pool somewhere? Part of a universal pulse of energy? God? It's very scary ground, and adds to it the possibility that, if you carry it far enough, that since we cannot create a new thought or idea, and are only accessing them, that perhaps our thoughs are simply our own way of justifying actions already predetermined. Aw snap. I went there.
The alternative, that we can spin new energy, and concepts and thoughts out of the void is also very very nice, inasmuch as it frees us from one disturbing line of thinking. Of course, it then raises the question of what exactly allows us to this while we are alive, what would let us create this energy, hold it in place, and codify it? The soul? And, if that is the case, if this energy and matter that are ideas can be codified, what happens to the part of us that can create it when we die? Does it boil away, left with no meat to fuel its engines, or does it dissape and rejoin that master fount I was mentioning earlier?
These are the reasons I don't sleep sometimes, and occasionally stare off into space. |
spouted by Johnny @ 4:34 PM  |
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| 3 Comments: |
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Humans (and all mammals) are like furnaces. We have to consume matter frequently to sustain ourselves. This fuel provides us with the energy to move, grow, heal, and think.
You could take this off on a tangent to say that your ideas on politics are really just the current manifestation of the chicken sandwich you digested a few hours ago. Before that, it was an egg, and before that, chicken feed, and before that, nutrients in soil, etc. So your ideas are coming from your surroundings in a much more literal sense than what is normally implied by that statement.
That you are able to manipulate matter into ideas is a function of your being. When a caterpillar emerges from the chrysalis with wings, do you suppose that all butterfly wings were pre-existing in some pocket dimension, and perhaps God took a pair from that pile and stuck them on? No, it's just a fascinating transformation of potential into actual by the natural functions of a living creature.
Ideas are of course abstract and intangible, so questioning their origin and nature is an engaging exercise. You can't use normal methods of dissection on something that doesn't exist in a manner you're used to, and this challenges the curious. But I think it's just a function of an organism.
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Thing 1: There is the possibility that we do not create, but only synthesize. That "ideas" are just rearrangements of our sensory experiences. So, not a big dream-pool from which all ideas are borrowed, but rather our memories.
Thing 2: Ideas certainly do not follow the thermonuclear laws. From one can spring many, without taking away from the one. I think you have pointed out the essential issue with the laws -- they should not be applied to other things. We should not live our lives in accordance to them. They should keep their mitts off politics, economics, and the arts, because they just don't damn apply.
But what if they did?
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Humans (and all mammals) are like furnaces. We have to consume matter frequently to sustain ourselves. This fuel provides us with the energy to move, grow, heal, and think.
You could take this off on a tangent to say that your ideas on politics are really just the current manifestation of the chicken sandwich you digested a few hours ago. Before that, it was an egg, and before that, chicken feed, and before that, nutrients in soil, etc. So your ideas are coming from your surroundings in a much more literal sense than what is normally implied by that statement.
That you are able to manipulate matter into ideas is a function of your being. When a caterpillar emerges from the chrysalis with wings, do you suppose that all butterfly wings were pre-existing in some pocket dimension, and perhaps God took a pair from that pile and stuck them on? No, it's just a fascinating transformation of potential into actual by the natural functions of a living creature.
Ideas are of course abstract and intangible, so questioning their origin and nature is an engaging exercise. You can't use normal methods of dissection on something that doesn't exist in a manner you're used to, and this challenges the curious. But I think it's just a function of an organism.