a discourse on scale |
"Why should a man desire in any way
To vary from the kindly race of men
Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance
Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?"--Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Tithonus, P.103, The Amis Anthology, Arena ed, 1989
As a general question, disregarding particular death, why do we strive to be different from what we are? Tithonus was granted immortality and growing old, longed for mortality, the common heritage. As a race we seek what we do not have, furtherance, in the individual. Who can claim, this is my doing? None of us. Yet it is!
Webster:Ordained by the gods? How do we know? A manifest property of the race, that we shall strive. Accident is the opportunity, not the cause. We fit the accident, the accident fits us. Whatever, we amass physical properties that permit us to survive. I call them "physical" being the simpler inclusive term. I do not exclude other gifts. As in "give", not "gifted". Gifts of our kind, our forebears!
Tangents of the general bell-curve, the genera and the genus. A question of scale, whether the property belongs to the order or to the individual. We make no distinction in the analogy, for that is what the bell-curve is, rationality has not proceeded that far. A confusing figure.
An exponent is a trapped tangent. It describes an integral or completed whole. Though no such being lurks in the crevices of earth. Immortals are myths. And they are usually shape-shifters, having no further metamorphosis to make. What would be the point? Perfection is perfection. You smile, perhaps. Yes, they are our images and compound our faults. I press a point.
The index or indice turns outward, thus, one, two, three... The exponent turns in on itself, self-dividing. Trapped. As when we logically analyze. Fractals, then. Sub-ratios. Internal proportions. Proportions with a different twist. Different properties. Rational properties. Regression to infinity shall not complete a whole. Nor shall extrapolation. They are motions in the mind. Inventions. Our inventions. Gifts to ourselves.
"The waters of the storm-lashed sea is warmer than that of the tranquil ocean, other things being equal."
E.N. Da C. Andrade, The Mechanism of Nature, P.23, G. Bell & Sons, London, 1930
"Our ordinary laws of physics, engineering, and chemistry are laws for the behaviour of crowds of molecules."
ibid, P.34
Try this on for size: "Our ordinary laws of sociology, psychology and economics are laws for the behaviour of crowds of human beings." Individuals discounted. The mass is considered the criterion. The finite comparitive behaviour of a mass in motion. An unnatural whole. We know how crowds perform. As they are jointly impelled. If not, randomly. Other things being equal. Perspectives of scale?
Webster:Our natural laws of science, then, are not true proportions. Then what are they? "Laws" of finite comparitive behaviour in the mass" Some subjects of observation are particularly obedient, some particularly unruly. Science tackles what it is best at. Processed by graduated scale. Physical science. Other studies try to follow this example identifying the unruly. And the most unruly is subject to randomly variable factors, or so it would seem, where controls are hard if not impossible to locate. Irrational is the word. Welcome to the real world. The world of the senses. Ours. We who discourse on knowledge that permits knowledge. Engulfed in motions. The storm-lashed sea of phenomena. Away from the tranquil ocean of the orderly average where controls exist, or seem to.
"Of course, there is no such thing as a law of nature. There is only the universe, going about its business, while humans scurry around trying to put everything into neat little intellectual boxes... But the boxes have no reality or permanence; a 'law of nature' is useful until we discover cases where it doesn't apply."
--Charles Sheffield, The Winding Road, P.98 (copyright 1988) in "New Destinies", Vol III, Spring 1988, Baen
"In human terms, femions are loners, each with its own unique state; bosons love a crowd, and they all tend to jam into the same state."
--ibid P.103
"Is it impossible that a penny fairly tossed shall come down heads six thousand times or more in ten thousand tosses? The answer ... is 'No, not impossible, but exceedingly improbable.' Actually in the case of the penny, it requires a number of eighty-seven zeros to express how improbable it is...
"Suppose we toss only a hundred times: is it so wildly improbably that there will be sixty heads or more? No, it is only thirty-three to one against. And suppose we toss only ten times: the chance of six heads, or more, is quite large, only about 2 to 1 against."--E.N. Da C. Andrade, The Mechanism of Nature, P.35. [logic 523]
"It's the wumman should measure up, not her measurements. Think of that afore you lose yr head."
--Tich Backhouse, advice to prospective suitor.
"Advice iz ony worth what it'll cost you, if'n you ignore it."
-- ibid
Design is a human concept. So is a law of nature. Nature itself has blood on its hands. Bloodless design explaining blood. Odd! And by means of orderly patterns, admired for their elegance. Clung to for their tidiness. A law of nature ought to be useful in cases where it doesn't apply. Extrapolations of the bell-curve. Warps. We think the truth must be orderly, surely it should contain the disorderly, the unruly, the inexplicable?
Webster:Things only happen in the now, not any other time. To have happened is a dead motion, survived, if at all, by its gradually diminishing reverberations, which too are motions in the now. We put odds on the future and gamble. Number has scale on its side and against it. The individual whatever may have an design of its own. Sometimes called picturesquely, the butterfly effect, which taken as causation is misleading. Dependence on local conditions, perhaps.
Not loco but
Webster:We see order in the unruly. Not at the time when it happens, in the now, but by hindsight, looking back, over our shoulder. Because we can't predict the exception, not by an intellectual process, that is, logical steps, recursive procedure, algorithms. Nature offers alternatives. May we take nature's advice and not suffer the consequences. Nature is not a wumman nor is it genderless, for the most recent orders are divided by sexual characteristics. We belong on the bell-curve, a locus, as individuals and as a race, affecting the probabilities of scale. Design in motion, being designed and designing itself.
In sub-atomic terms we are fermions and bosons, quantum mechanics extended to human behaviour. Bring on the tape-measure!
©Laurie Ashton, 1999
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