GAIA: The hypothesis proposed by James Lovelock that the earth is a living organism. It is an organic world picture as opposed to the mechanized world picture of the scientific revolution. (see machine) The name Gaia means Earth Goddess and was suggested to Lovelock by William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies. Leaving aside the anthropological element, the central element of Gaia theory is that the earth is a self-regulating system in which biological life does not simply adapt to conditions which happen to sustain life but in fact ensures the stablity (homeostasis) of those conditions. It is a form of coevolution between organism and environment.
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Singularity
A singularity is a kind of discontinuity. It might or might not be interesting. A vaguer use of the term is simply "a point where something happens" (although this equally describes an event.) Deleuze and Guattari are fascinated by singularities because they are points of unpredictability, even when deterministic. They are thus the sites of revolutionary potential.
As used by mathematical physicists, a singularity means a place where slopes become infinite, where the rate of change of one variable with another exceeds all bounds, and where a big change in an observable is caused by an arbitrarily small change in something else. (cf sensitivity to initial conditions). It is an actual point of infinite density and energy that's kind of a rupture in the fabric of space-time.
Astrophysics describe the centers of black holes as singularities.The Big Bang is considered to be a singularity.
A phase singularity is a point at which phase is ambiguous and near which phase takes on all values. Time at the poles of the earth is an example.
basin of attraction
in fractal, physics, theory, abstraction
The phase space of a particular dynamical system is partitioned into one or many basins of attraction , perhaps intimately intertwined, each with its own attractor .
basins of attraction for a pendulum swinging over three magnets. (from Peitgen, Jürgens, and Saupe, Chaos and Fractals)
dynamics
in physics, philosophy
a dynamical system consists of a space, or manifold, where the motion of the system takes place, and a rule of motion, or vector field. The starting point is called the initial state, and the path of motion the trajectory. The end point of a trajectory is the system's attractor.
energy
in physics
Joule's principle of the conservation of energy is an example of the subsumption of qualitative transformations into a quantifiable entity. "Thus it is that order is maintained in the universe--nothing is deranged, nothing ever lost, but the entire machinery, complicated as it is, works smoothly and harmoniously." (Joule, quoted in Prigogine, p.108-9)
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in physics
Entropy: Second law of thermodynamics:
Entropy is a measure of the energy distribution through a system. As energy becomes more dispersed or more evenly distributed in a system, the possibility of that energy's being used for mechanical work is decreased, and entropy increases.
force
Is the concept of force a technico/scientific one or a philosophical, even metaphysical one?
By defining force purely as the product of an acceleration (a purely kinematic magnitude--from Greek kineo, referring to constrained or controlled motion) and a mass (a coefficient to be determined empirically), modern science eliminated both the metaphysical terminology and psychological origins of the concept of force. (E. J. Dijksterhuis) (see machine ) see also qualititative / quantitative .
For classical physics, force is really only explainable in terms of bodies in contact. "Action at a distance", which is also a feature of gravity, seems "occult." Yet from the work of Kepler and Newton, particles had a dual nature: on the one hand, a highly localized object, and on the other an influence extending through the whole of space. But is the concept of force to be associated primarily with Newtonian mechanics -- as opposed to Newton's alchemical writings?
Newton refused to define the nature of his fundamental gravitational force. He emphasized its heuristic importance and the possibililty of mathematizing it. On the other hand, his alchemical speculations downright invited the amplification and translation of his concept of force into the realm of living things. Could magnetism and electricity, he asked, fulfill the same role for living beings that gravitation did for inanimate matter? (see mechanism / vitalism ) Whether as quasi-mechanical attraction of molecules (as suggested by Buffon and Maupertius) or eventually as formative force (as suggested by the epigeneticists) the Newtonian concept of force supplied the debate about generation with a new energy in the eighteenth century.
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dissipative systems
in physics, philosophy
Dynamical Systems can be characterized as conservative or dissipative, depending on whether their phase volume stays constant or contracts.
A linearized damped pendulum decays to a single point -- its attractor, and is said to be dissipative. (see Baker and Golub, Chaotic Dynamics)
Roughly speaking, a dissipative system is not conservative but "open," with an external control parameter that can be tuned to critical values causing the transitions to chaos. In physical terms energy flows through a dissipative system and is lost to microscopic degrees of freedom. Entropy "fans out" into irrelevant variables, while the trajectory of "relevant" variables occupies a smaller and smaller region of phase space.
Dissipative Structures: (usage in Prigogine) The interaction of a system with the outside world, its embedding in non-equilibrium conditions may become the starting point for the formation of new dynamic states of matter. A whirlpool, for example, is a dissipative structure requiring a continuous flow of matter and energy to maintain the form.
Read Moreresonance
in metaphorical, philosophy, physics, theory
Resonance: when waves resonate, their amplitudes pile up on top of each other, as opposed to interference, which reduces their amplitudes.
A feedback loop creates a resonance that grows without bound.
The Desana Indians of Columbia describe the sky as a brain, its two hemispheres divided by the Milky Way. Their brains, they say, are in resonance with the sky. This integrates them into the world and gives them a sense of their role in the cosmos.
The qualitative aspects of pleasure have been difficult to formulate for psychoanalysis, which uses the "hydraulic" model of tension and release. Hans Loewald suggests that "resonance" between systems of psychic organization, (love, for example) forms of "hypercathexis," might help understand the pleasure in higher organization and unpleasure in less or lower organization -- of the exitation inherent in living substance. (this is similar to Kant's philosophical pleasures -- see critique of judgement )
Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers talk about the resonance between theological discourse and theoretical and experimental activity in the success of the clock metaphor of the universe. Gilles Deleuze proposes that "philosophy, art, and science come into relations of mutual resonance and exchange, but always for internal reasons." For Deleuze and Guattari, the interaction of actual and virtual is a resonance.
For Deleuze, "the central state is constituted ..by the organization of resonance among centers." (Thousand Plateaus, p.211) "a central computing eye scanning all of the radii."
Rupert Sheldrake believes that morphogenetic events resonate with each other, that it becomes progressively easier for a particular form to occur as its occurrences accumulate. He cites the formation of crystals as an example, in which occurrences of a new cristalline form seem to occur shortly after a first one is observed, in places with no direct relation to the first occurrence. For Sheldrake the probability of the new form occurring increases rapidly with each occurrence, starting with the first.
One wonders, however, why Chinese isn't easier to learn if so many people speak it.
scientific space
in physics, philosophy, space, techno-science
"I do not believe that there exists anything in external bodies for exciting tastes, smells, and sounds, etc. except size, shape, quantity, and motion." (Galileo Galilei, On Motion, p.48) When Galileo proposed his doctrine of subject and object and the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, he established the scientific prejudgement that the concept of space is of something geometrical and not differentiated qualitatively.
Newtonian "absolute space" was based on a realist conception of mathematics (see Jammer p. 95) To Newton, mathematics, particularly geometry, is not a purely hypothetical system of propositions...instead geometry is nothing but a special branch of mechanics. Newton's first law of motion, which links change in motion with force requires an absolute (or inertial?) framework. It requires a distinction between absolute motion and relative motion and links force to a change in absolute motion. For example, as the train pulls away from the station, the station may appear to be moving and it can be said that the station is in relative motion to the train, but the force is acting upon the train, and it is the train that is accelerating absolutely. Newton tried to establish an absolute frame of reference for the universe defined in relation to its center of gravity. (not necessarily identical with the sun) Absolute spatial movement and position could then be measured in relation to that point.
But is geometry an empirical or ideal activity? For Cassirer, the most radical removal of geometry from experience had already occurred with Euclid, which was already based on figures that are removed from all possibility of experiment. Not only the idealizations of point, line, and plane, but the idea of similar triangles, whose differences are considered inconsequential or fortuitous, and that become identified as "the same" mark an immense step away form ordinary perception.
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