Complexity
Posted on April 18th, 2006
Just some notes here, for now, on our struggle to deal with the complexity of our universe:
Evolution gave us the need to model for the sake of predicting
…this led to symbols for communicating models to our kin
Thales declared there must be a central element that comprises everything (arch) and the hunt began
The Pythagoreans said “all things are numbers“
Aristotle gave us rules for reasoning about all things (Caegories)
Euclid added that there must be laws (axioms) (Elements)
…then that Christianity thing distracted us for 1500 years
Decartes applied reason to everything, refusing to except even morality and human thought (Discourse on Method)
Issac Newton gave us the framework for discerning the policies of nature (Principia)
Mandelbrot taught us to see the rules in even complex nature (chaos)
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Mandelbrot.html
Stephen Wolfram wants to teach us to see the algorithms (principle of computational equivalence):
http://www.wolframscience.com/
How this (and all science) impacts religion
Steve Grand: the universe is about persistent patterns:
http://www.edge.org/q2004/q04_print.html#grand
Seth Lloyd: the universe is a computer, fed input data by quantum monkeys. See also Charles Bennett’s logical depth and Rudy Rucker’s repudiation of the need for quantum mechanics at end of page.