KARL JASPERS FORUM

Short Note 37 (Response to N36)

EXPERIENCE CHAOS AND THE SPEED OF LIGHT
by Herbert FJ Müller
26 May 2002, posted 11 June 2002

The discussions in N36 raise a number of challenging questions. In the following, I will respond to a few of them, in a very preliminary fashion, and for discussion purposes only.

<1>
I will begin with an attempt to answer Alain Chouinard’s question (in N36<B>) how movement is related to the "now". One might start from Heraclitus’ flow (of ongoing mind-nature experience, which is not structured : apeiron, Anaximander). A trend toward fixation as a source of structure and stability is an aspect of the conceptual and mathematical treatment of movement. Archimedes invented many tools, both mathematical and mechanical. He and his king Hiero II of Syracuse could personally move heavy things with the help of levers and fixation points. Physicists went further and replaced the ongoing subjective experience (of the "observer" - a subject detached from the world, inside detached from outside) by the zero-point of coordinate systems. Then there was no more subject, no more experience, everything was object. Movement can be conceptually frozen as curves defined by fixed points, present movement can be stopped as a "now" point. This results in a hold but also in restriction and fragmentation of experience. However, the conceptual difficulties with movement are secondary (side) effects and stem from the invention and use of word-number concepts and the resulting static ontology in general. Using structured thinking tools can make people believe that the outside world "is" (Parmenides) pre-structured and static (the structures we invent are sometimes thought to be eternal), to be uncovered rather than to be constructed, to the degree that some, like Zeno, even thought that movement is impossible.

<2>
To re-gain access to the original flow, one can remember that fixed structures started out as our invention, and re-operationalize them by going back to ongoing experience, including its encompassing and unstructured aspect. One possibility is belief in God as first (fixed, unmoved) mover (Thomas Aquinas). Another is nirvana, where thinking structures are put on hold. Recent development of a "chaos theory" may in part be similarly motivated (moved), but in a mind-independent objective manner, it seems. Actually, the objective chaos in this theory is a misnomer because its "chaos" is not unstructured (apeiron) but has complex patterns, still accessible to mathematical analysis, like the weather, or internet communications. If it were really chaotic, structure-free, there would be nothing to analyze. Nietzsche’s notion that one has to have chaos in himself to deal with changing life ("Man muß noch Chaos in sich haben, um einen tanzenden Stern gebären zu können") is perhaps closest to what is needed.

<3>
Another difficult question is raised by Greg Nixon in his N36<A7> : what is, or what happens at, the so-called speed of light ? Einstein suggested the constant (absolute) speed of light as a pre-supposition for his special theory of relativity, instead of absolute time and space. Thus space and time (whether treated in 3, 4, or 23 dimensions) become secondary to speed of light in mathematical terms (despite the fact that speed is defined via space and time fixation), they can be deformed while speed of light is constant. But this is a problem only if you insist on traditional ontology. Now, speed of light is a concept used to quantify (count, digitize) the flow of visual experience, and dimensions were invented to count space and time. In science we are primarily visually oriented, other sensory qualities are reduced to vision, which in practice has made vision the anchor aspect of experience for science (but not necessarily for other fields such as music, poetry or religion). This may be a reason why constant speed of light works well for many experimental questions, but it will probably not help with all of experience.

<4>
Finally, a point mentioned by Glenn Wood in N36<C1> : whether the center of experience is structured or not can be answered in different ways. The apeiron is where we start, and movement is part of the origin of experience, but this source tends to be hidden by all kinds of fixed structures that we have improvised, or absorbed from others. In daily routine it is structured, the structures - including religious ones - can occlude the access to one’s own resources (cf Nietzsche, or Heidegger), and it may help to try starting from scratch. An ontology consists of structures, it cannot "be chaotic". In a zero-derivation view, the referents can be used, but then they are as-if-referents.

In closing I want to repeat that these remarks are only of preliminary nature, and that they are offered for discussion and correction.

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REFERENCE

Nietzsche F, quoted from H Walther’s web-site

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Herbert FJ Müller