Immortal Curiosity

During part of my time at St. John’s I did a lot of thinking on determinism, causal necessity, things of that nature. This became most conscious when reading what I found to be an awe-inspiring observation by Laplace:

We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.

—Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (Wikipedia entry)

I was stopped in my tracks upon reading this, for it resonated with a strong sense of things I’ve been possessed with for some time. From a variety of studies I had come to think that, with the enormous and perhaps insurmountable hurdle of “sufficiently advanced” technology, humanity might gain the ability to understand all past and future states of the universe. I won’t delve into why I was attracted to this, or what I feel now; suffice it to say I was plenty interested.  Read more... (579 words, estimated 2:19 mins reading time)

Notes on Zoological Philosophy, by J.B. Lamarck-

Chapter 7-  Read more... (396 words, estimated 1:35 mins reading time)

• Concerning the influence exerted by the environment on the various living bodies exposed to it. It is in all times and places operative on living bodies.
• The state in which we find any animal is, on the one hand, the result of the increasing complexity of organisation tending to form a regular gradation; and, on the other hand, of the influence of a multitude of very various conditions ever tending to destroy the regularity in the gradation of the increasing complexity of organisation.
• It is only by an inspection of ancient monuments that he becomes convinced that in each of these localities the order of things which he now finds has not always been existent; he may thence infer that it will go on changing.
• First Law of Nature:
  • In animals not past the limit of development, more use of an organ strengthens and develops that organ, while disuse weakens the organ until it disappears.
• Second Law of Nature:
  • All acquisitions or losses wrought by nature on individuals are preserved by reproduction to the new individuals which arise.

11 /26/2005
Notes and thoughts from Stephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell, chapter 6, Star Trek or Not.

The world’s population plotted through time is a measure of our technological ability to preserve life. During recorded history, this measure has only increased. Of course, there are certain exceptions: the Black death etc. within the last 200 years, population growth has become exponential. Currently, the world population doubles every 40 years. Other measures of technological growth include power consumption and the number of scientific articles published. All three of these measures cannot continue to grow at the same rate that they are now. So what are the possibilities?

Putting self-destruction aside, one major consideration in considering how future development will be shaped would be whether faster than light travel is possible. Since we do not yet possess a complete theory of physics, we cannot rule such a possibility out. However, we do know laws of physics which apply to almost all “normal” situations.  Read more... (779 words, estimated 3:07 mins reading time)

Notes on The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
(first edition text)

-”I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species–that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers.” –it is interesting that he refers to this first, i.e. to the inhabitants (viz., assumably, the human inhabitants) and not the animal species. He does not reference this again in the first chapter, but moves on to domesticated animals. What about the distribution of men gave him insight into the origin of species? Was it perhaps, in refering to the “geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent”, that he saw how the various human populations had changed in combination with their geographic motion (speciation as a result of separation, etc)?

-Many people came up with similar ideas around this time. This is odd in some ways. Perhaps due to the movement of the World-Spirit…  Read more... (3840 words, estimated 15:22 mins reading time)

Notes on “On Instinct in Man and Animals”, by Alfred Wallace.

• Pleasure and Change- If a pleasure is associated with a certain beneficial activity there will be an advantage conferred, namely that the activity would be likely to be emulated within a population within a shorter period of time than mere genetic inheritance. However, this association will be disadvantageous in that it will be that much harder to stop the activity from occurring. In fact, it seems that such a pleasure would counter all but the strongest survival benefits to its cessation.
• It seems one readily associates a physical characteristic with instinct. I.e. Instinct has some physical cause, or is a manifestation of a physical structure or process. Is Wallace getting around instinct by saying that things called “instinctual” are really just caused by physical structure, or “organization”? Was not this obvious? Does this eliminate the idea of instinct, though? Consider examples like sea turtle hatchlings going to the ocean.
• His definition of instinct: “the performance by an animal of complex acts, absolutely without instruction or previously-acquired knowledge.”
• “Now, in a scientific inquiry, a point which can be proved should not be assumed, and a totally unknown power should not be brought in to explain facts, when known powers may be sufficient.”