Complexity-Probability-Posthumanism: Symposium and Time Laboratory Presnts:
December 3rd 2022 - 9 AM PDT
Meeting Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84072676115
Beyond the Chronometric and the Temporal Divide
The divide between scientific measured time (chronometrics) and experiential phenomenological time (temporal constitutions) that dominated science in the late 19th and 20th centuries has shifted paradigmatically in response to the analysis of direction of time in relation to probability. Moreover, the differentiation between time-consciousness and objective (relative) time seems exceedingly less self-evident within the context of complex dynamic systems, computation, and A.I.
More specifically, it is the role of causality in science that has been replaced to a large extent by a novel grounding of the concept of probability. Looking at the works of Boltzmann, Plank, and quantum mechanical theories in science and that of Brentano, Husserl, and Bergson in phenomenology the notions of probability, observation, and continuum become pivotal in explaining time.
Popper’s Of Clocks and Clouds and Prigogine’s The End of Certainty overall conceptions of scientific programs are predicated on evolution and emergence to which probability is crucial to explaining the changing laws of physics. Their ontological take on probability can be viewed as earlier critiques of temporal isotropy, or time symmetry as dominated physics and as connected to the common assertion about time’s arrow (anisotropy) as subjective, assumed by Newtonian, statistical and quantum mechanics, as well as both relativity theories. Notwithstanding are Boltzmann’s deep conception of probability (beyond the scope of statistical distributions of macro and microstates) as well as later Bohm’s articulation of the role of chance and probability in quantum theory and physics.
As a case study, we will discuss Brentano-Boltzmann’s “the opening-of-the-drawer-experiment” which helps to examine questions that arise from the conception of probability, observation, temporal continua, and measurement. Can we imagine such a thought-experiment as a computational Blackbox? Finally considering the developments of the last decades in complexity theories, computational theories, and A.I in general the divide between chronometric and phenomenological time will be reassessed through cross-disciplinary computational infractions, what can be regarded as theoretical transcoding of the measure and duration of time bits or temporal objects.
Readings:
- Karl Popper, Of Clouds and Clocks. 2 PDF
- Ignazio Licata, From Predictability to the Theories of Change. https://www.academia.edu/401058/Physics_of_Emergence_and_Organization
- Adam Berg, “Husserl’s Time Theory”, “The Opening-of-the-drawer-experiment” from Phenomenalism, Phenomenology, and the Question of Time. PDF
- David Bohm, Causality and Chance in Modern Physics. PDF (12 Chance, Statistical Law, and Probability in Physics; 13 The Enrichments of the Conceptual Structure of Classical Physics and the Philosophy of Mechanism;14 A New Point of View towards Probability and Statistical Law—Indeterministic Mechanism)
- Ilya Prigogine, The End of Certainty. PDF (chapter 8)
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