58\u00a0 bar steep fall 30.12\u00a0 7mpn ENE dew-point 41\u00a0 Beltane, Sunny<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Gibbous Hare Moon<\/p>\n
“The aspects of things that are most important to us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity” – Ludwig Wittgenstein<\/a> <\/p>\n Wittegenstein is a notoriously opaque, but very influential philosopher.\u00a0 His Tractatus is a seminal work of 20th century philosophy, amazing for its brevity.\u00a0 In this quote, though, I grasp\u00a0his line of thought.\u00a0 How often do you consider the solidity of a table, for example?\u00a0 The beating of your heart?\u00a0 The exquisite elegance of your hands?\u00a0 The comfort of darkness?\u00a0 The revelation in sunlight?\u00a0<\/p>\n Have you ever considered, I mean really considered, the wonder of life itself?\u00a0 We are animate, moving through the world with intention.\u00a0 So are dogs, mosquitoes and groundhogs.\u00a0 The seed listens to its own voice, expresses itself and its genome through time and space.\u00a0 Alive.\u00a0 But.\u00a0 What is life?\u00a0 We see the results of life around us all the time; we experience it within ourselves, but what is it?\u00a0 What is the difference between the elements in my body–the same as those in a rock or in soil, or in the air–and their inanimate counter parts still locked in the fiery cauldron of a star or the massif of a mountain range?<\/p>\n A book I purchased recently, but have not yet read, argues against what the author calls the Gallilean conspiracy.\u00a0 I’ve forgotten why he calls it that, something about Gallileo’s approach to science, but the point is this:\u00a0 even if we knew all the laws of particles and quantum mechanics and could apply them with precision to all the matter in the universe, we could still not predict the future, though there is strong element of what he calls scientistic thinking that suggests just this possibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n Why can’t we predict the future based on fundamental laws of nature?\u00a0 Because of complexity. As things grow more complex, the complexity itself inserts a new dimension, something that does not obey the fundamental laws: intention.\u00a0 Intention and complexity reach an apex in the phenomenon of life.\u00a0 You could not analyze the physical elements within\u00a0 my body, apply the laws of relativity and Newtonian physics to them, and predict what I will choose to have for breakfast.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because consciousness adds intention, guided by will, and none of these added realities of complexity follow the laws of thermodynamics, say.\u00a0 Is the action of complex entities constrained and guided by laws of nature?\u00a0 Of course.\u00a0 Entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, will snuff out the complexity that I am.\u00a0 But not right now.\u00a0 While I’m upright and consciousness, and yes, you, too, I can choose to defy entropy by taking my blood pressure medication and staying on that good cholestrol lowering drug.\u00a0 Exercising.\u00a0 Good diet.\u00a0 None of these, nor my decision to go to the grocery store this morning have a necessary predicate in my constituent parts.<\/p>\n In part this all boils down to a divide which remains an abyss between, say, the Richard Dawkins and Sam Harrises of the world, and those of us who insist on considering the divine:\u00a0 vitalist or mechanist?\u00a0 That is, is any organism merely the sum of its parts–mechanist, or, is it the whole more than the sum of its parts–vitalist.\u00a0 I side with the vitalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 58\u00a0 bar steep fall 30.12\u00a0 7mpn ENE dew-point 41\u00a0 Beltane, Sunny \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Gibbous Hare Moon “The aspects of things that are most important to us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity” – Ludwig Wittgenstein Wittegenstein is a notoriously opaque, but very influential philosopher.\u00a0 His Tractatus is a seminal work of 20th century … Continue reading Mechanist or Vitalist?<\/span>