On Determinism and Chaos

Note:

This post is a patch to Part 1: Truth and comes immediately after the excerpt "on causality and free will". While "causality and free will" (I will modify its contents in the near future) focuses on the integration and moderation of epistemological logic and ontological feelings, this excerpt will focus on the prevalent need of integration of Realism (materialism) and Idealism. This excerpt also focuses closely on the scientific faculty of real and ideal epistemology; for more information of ontological realism and idealism, please do refer back to the excerpt "on Love".

As most of the following concepts are congruent to my current university module on the Chaos Theory, which i do not have a prior knowledge to initially; hence I apologize for only being able to write this excerpt 3 months after we have left the topic of truth. While what is presented here is not a complete summary of the Chaos theory, and neither is it a full account of determinism, what stands is its relevance to the moderation doctrine- and of course a personal reaffirmation and reconciliation between school, project RN, and the general knowledge.


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The basic concept of radioactivity has already baffled many determinists- indeed, the decay of nuclear particles are caused by the instability of the nucleus, but there is virtually nothing that determines which particle decays at which point in time…

-On causality and free will, on determinism and chaos

Determinism is the philosophical belief that every event or action is the inevitable result of preceding events and actions. Determinism establishes the idea of causality, or what the layman considers as ‘cause-and effect’ or ‘action-and –reaction’. The rules of determinism govern all motions and structures on the logical level.

On the previous account we have considered in greater detail on biological determinism, theological determinism, and their corresponding regard to ethics and free will. An integration of both philosophies, in the product of compatibilism, was concluded to set the first moderation of science and religion- the advocators of epistemological logic and the ontological soul. In this excerpt today we will attempt to look at another aspect of determinism, this time with respect to order and chaos, to see the second moderation between the real (material) and the ideal.

Now for a start, what is real and what is ideal? At first thought we assume real things as tangible things- things that we can sense ontologically and explain with simple laws and relations; ideal things would be considered as abstract concepts, things that are supposedly there and yet never there, and no more than thoughts of a deranged mind. While real things exist in the ‘here and now’, ideal things seem ‘eternal’. Oxygen and nitrogen are quite real, and Ideal gases… the name really explains it all.

But most importantly- ideals are perfect in nature, while real (materials) are never perfect enough to follow fundamental laws of physics and mathematics. That be the reason why even as humans we ourselves (being real) are imperfect, but the one difference between human knowledge and natural stupidity is our ability to understand idealistic concepts. The theist draws reason to the soul; since it is in God’s image and idealistic in nature, to be able to discern perfection and idealism from the materialistic imperfections of the world. The atheist believes that such idealism stems from the human fragility and cognitive deductions. The true reason behind this is subjective but unimportant currently.

For a start humans know many things. We know that two plus two equals four, we know that squares have straight sides, that circles are round and a shove can send a person accelerating at an acceleration that is proportional to the force exerted in that same direction. We know that the earth orbits around the sun owing to the gravitational force between the two planets, and many a time we have taken all these facts for granted as the complete objective truth. While Newtonian physics sets the deterministic nature for the dynamic aspects of our objective world, logical determinism and assumption sets the causal rules of our cognitive knowledge of such materialistic phenomenon.

But we also know that the true material world, although deterministic, is imperfect. While the perfect world is idealistic, this reality that we live in, being real and materialistic, is far from it.

Counter-cognitively, it is not the determinism of the world that influences us to an idealistic logical determinism that two plus two equals four, that squares and circles are as such, or that the earth goes around the sun in ellipses. Rather, it is our idealized deterministic cognition that interprets the true dynamics of our world to our current disposition. While we can assume that the mass of two similar pairs of mandarin oranges theoretically summates to a mass four times the individual orange- we know that there is no two orange that is congruent in size, shape, and identity. Practically, the mass of an infinite pair of oranges can never be a perfect multiple of two, and if we were to weigh them out one by one we will get a string of answers that approximates to four, but in a random manner.

Four in this case, is an idealized truth- and the erratic results that normalize to four (as we assume it to be as such) are the essence of realism, of materialism, and chaos. Materialism entails the lack of idealistic perfection, and the lack of it entails chaos, complexity and disorder.

Similarly, we know that straight lines and perfect circles are no more than idealized Euclidean geometry. Where the naturalistic world tends to such ideals, it always leaves a compliment of imperfections and chaos behind for us to crudely assume as negligible. The planets move in a trajectory that is theoretically impossible to define even with the most extensive knowledge of Newtonian physics and calculus, owing to the constant flux of feedback influence the gravities of planets impose upon each other as they move around the sun. For a fact we are actually just within a window of stability of a chaotic system, and from our perspective of knowledge we believe that such windows of stability are universal and chaos being a window of error instead.

Then why still tend to the idealized determinism of Newtonian dynamics and mathematics? Why learn the impossible if the real world never produces a perfect four to a summation of a pair of twos? Why go to the science laboratory and assume air resistance and turbulence as negligible when we know that the answer will never be perfectly objective? We might as well reject all physical laws and assumptions and return back to empirical statistics.

On the other hand we could always live with the delusion that all imperfections are negligible and continue believing that the universe is run by an idealistic set of rules. We can always strive for an ideal world, abolishing imperfection along the way, and suit the real (materialistic) world (and even ourselves) to a fanciful and unattainable ideal of perfection and harmony. We can deem chaos, which is inevitable with the real world, as an aberration- a mistake to that perfect picture we had painted while we were children with our blindfolds still on.

To which truth do we subscribe to? Do we subscribe to the real world of imperfection and chaos, or the ideal world of simplified laws and assumptions from our current perspective?

Intuitively, we know that we need to subscribe to both realistic (materialistic) and idealistic interpretations of truth should we wish to understand the complete truth of things. While epistemological (ideal) knowledge can allow us to see linear relationships and trends of perfection in our universe, empirical statistics can explain to us the chaotic (indefinable) nature of things- of what’s not, in our understanding of our world and ourselves. Without an acknowledgment of materialistic chaos our knowledge is, as above, no more than a subjective delusion of the truth. Without an acknowledgment of deterministic-idealistic laws of Newtonian Dynamics, Euclidean Geometry, and Mathematical Calculus etc. we will never be able to discern patterns within this soup of chaos and disorder, nor can we go beyond the initial complexity to find out higher knowledge and truths.

Just like a series of numbers between 1 and 100, indeed, we can never find the governing laws of multiplication for prime numbers; and it is owing to this reason why prime numbers are distributed chaotically and stick out like a sore thumb in a complex mathematical equation when simplification is key. But we cannot neglect them if we want to consider each and every natural number between 1 and 100. It is the integration of both prime numbers and the other numbers (with idealistic factors) that forms the full truth of numbers between 1 and 100.

Similarly, it is the integration (or moderation) of both the reality and idealism of issues can we see the full truth of what is, and what isn’t of our world and of ourselves. This concept is partially overlapped by the complimentary doctrine- which states that a full understanding of the system can only possible when one understands both the strength and flaw of the system; of what is perfect, and what is imperfect; and ultimately what is ideal and real.

With this we have made an acknowledgment of the need of integration of epistemology and ontology, as well as the real (material) and the ideal. These two set of integrations (moderations) forms the basis of the moderation doctrine, in which we will consider in our next discussion on the ‘Introduction to the Moderation Doctrine’. We will subsequently scale down such lofty concepts to the individual perspective, and from there recreate an objective identity in answer to our quest for the living best.