Newtonian Universe
Sep. 26th, 2005 04:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_divided[Poll #577855]
I’m taking a seminar on Nineteenth Century European Intellectualism. It’s pretty cool – there’s at least one guy I recognize from Modern China, two guys from Great Books, a girl from Early Middle Ages. It’s the first time I've felt like I’ve narrowed my gigantic university down to a manageable size. (When I first typed that last sentence I wrote “universe” instead of “university” ummmm. U of M is not that big.))
Today we were discussing Herder and Hegel, the German philosopher/historians who didn’t like Enlightenment thinking. Herder wrote that history happens the only way it can, according to the nature of history and the nature of the people who create it. Enlightenment thinkers were wrong to say that there are universal laws of history, because the laws change as the people change; but at the same time it’s possible to look at the progression and say, it could only have happened this way. (Hegel takes that one step further, and says that the actions of individuals are always good because they always contribute to history, which is an ultimately beneficial process, but anyway.)
We talked for a little while about the obvious weakness of Herder’s argument, which is that nations don’t exist in vacuum. (I thought of it as existing in vacuum. Everyone else used “walled gardens.” Incidentally, I’m the only science major in that class.) It’s all very well to say that people develop according to their own unique characteristics, but what about outside influences? What about making contact with new people/new ideas, and not only interpreting those ideas in light of your own (uniquely culturally, circumstantially, and genetically determined) prior influences, but being in turn influenced by them?
But I can only think about metaphysics in terms of physics, so I said: “Even if you assume a closed system, Herder’s argument still breaks down because the fabric of reality doesn’t allow for absolute laws of determination. We aren’t living in a Newtonian universe anymore.”
Everyone looked at me funny and said, what do you mean anymore? Either we’ve always lived in a Newtonian universe or we never have, and anyway Newton’s laws work just fine in the case of moderately sized objects (ie, the everyday world). Class ended before I could explain what I meant, which is that we don’t perceive ourselves as living in a Newtonian Universe anymore. [Time out: Newtonian physics is knowing where something is at time A, and the laws governing its motion, and being able to say with absolute certainty where it will be at time B. Time in.] Modern historical studies put a much greater emphasis on probability, chance, freak occurrences, historical anomalies…** General relativity might not effect everyday science (except that it does, go ask someone with a GPS navigational system), but it’s affected the way we think about the world.
And then I realized that this might not be true. Maybe I think of events as resulting from the accumulation of discrete probabilities, so that you can never really know what’s going to happen just because it's happened that way before, but does everyone? Do people in general? I dunno, man, I hang out with a lot of physics majors. Maybe I’ve lost touch.
Thus, poll. Also I started my weekly math homework at 4:00am last night for class at 10:00am this morning, how are you? I’m tired.
**More chance when compared to Enlightenment thinkers – right away I can think of at least two examples of the importance of Chance in Ancient Greek thought.
...I've only used the "poll" function five times, and this is one of them. *fallsdowndead*
I’m taking a seminar on Nineteenth Century European Intellectualism. It’s pretty cool – there’s at least one guy I recognize from Modern China, two guys from Great Books, a girl from Early Middle Ages. It’s the first time I've felt like I’ve narrowed my gigantic university down to a manageable size. (When I first typed that last sentence I wrote “universe” instead of “university” ummmm. U of M is not that big.))
Today we were discussing Herder and Hegel, the German philosopher/historians who didn’t like Enlightenment thinking. Herder wrote that history happens the only way it can, according to the nature of history and the nature of the people who create it. Enlightenment thinkers were wrong to say that there are universal laws of history, because the laws change as the people change; but at the same time it’s possible to look at the progression and say, it could only have happened this way. (Hegel takes that one step further, and says that the actions of individuals are always good because they always contribute to history, which is an ultimately beneficial process, but anyway.)
We talked for a little while about the obvious weakness of Herder’s argument, which is that nations don’t exist in vacuum. (I thought of it as existing in vacuum. Everyone else used “walled gardens.” Incidentally, I’m the only science major in that class.) It’s all very well to say that people develop according to their own unique characteristics, but what about outside influences? What about making contact with new people/new ideas, and not only interpreting those ideas in light of your own (uniquely culturally, circumstantially, and genetically determined) prior influences, but being in turn influenced by them?
But I can only think about metaphysics in terms of physics, so I said: “Even if you assume a closed system, Herder’s argument still breaks down because the fabric of reality doesn’t allow for absolute laws of determination. We aren’t living in a Newtonian universe anymore.”
Everyone looked at me funny and said, what do you mean anymore? Either we’ve always lived in a Newtonian universe or we never have, and anyway Newton’s laws work just fine in the case of moderately sized objects (ie, the everyday world). Class ended before I could explain what I meant, which is that we don’t perceive ourselves as living in a Newtonian Universe anymore. [Time out: Newtonian physics is knowing where something is at time A, and the laws governing its motion, and being able to say with absolute certainty where it will be at time B. Time in.] Modern historical studies put a much greater emphasis on probability, chance, freak occurrences, historical anomalies…** General relativity might not effect everyday science (except that it does, go ask someone with a GPS navigational system), but it’s affected the way we think about the world.
And then I realized that this might not be true. Maybe I think of events as resulting from the accumulation of discrete probabilities, so that you can never really know what’s going to happen just because it's happened that way before, but does everyone? Do people in general? I dunno, man, I hang out with a lot of physics majors. Maybe I’ve lost touch.
Thus, poll. Also I started my weekly math homework at 4:00am last night for class at 10:00am this morning, how are you? I’m tired.
**More chance when compared to Enlightenment thinkers – right away I can think of at least two examples of the importance of Chance in Ancient Greek thought.
...I've only used the "poll" function five times, and this is one of them. *fallsdowndead*
