Catherine Keller, probably my favourite theologian at the moment, builds up a mythology/ontology which is very much in line with Process Philosophy. In her book, Face of the Deep, she argues for creatio ex profundis (creation out of the depths), instead of the traditional (Christian) creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing). She talks about the depths as the infinite potential from which everything (be)comes. What I want to pick up on here is the use, and maybe the need for, the infinite.
Wendell Berry, a wonderful, ecological, Christian, agrarian writer/poet/novelist/farmer, also writes about infinite. In The Art of the Commonplace, he discusses how people have often seen a huge resource and called it infinite. For example, the vast forests of North American were considered infinite, until they were cut down. The oil 'reserves' have been described as infinite, but now we are (probably) past peak oil. Fish in the sea were considered infinite, but now some of the most abundant are on the soon-to-be-extinct- (or even the extinct-) list. For the problem humanity has made has been to equate (currently) un-countable with infinite. "Just because I cannot measure how much oil there is currently, I am free to assume there is an infinite supply." This is obviously naive, as Berry points out, on par with assuming the Earth is flat because it looks like it is from where I am standing.
My question in this post: Is the category of the infinite a category that will always be destructive to ecology? The earth (and even the universe) is limited, so is talk of the unlimited, the infinite, something that will necessarily be alien and dangerous to the earth (and to the universe)?
Keller wants to be able to account for the New, for the ability for continual liberation from whatever tries to ensnare, for creativity to never be exhausted, for our options to never be merely A. or B., with no possibility of a C. or D. or E. (ad infinitum). To achieve this, she senses that she needs to make the potential in the chaos to be infinite. Is this the case? The ocean (to which she compares the pool-of-potential) is limited (being part of planet Earth), but it is also a continuous source of creativity and newness (new species emerge continuously in the depths). Is it's creative potential infinite? Or unlimited? Or limitless? Or unaccountable? Or un-countable? Can we keep potential being non-exhaustible without making it infinite? Or is the category of the infinite not as much to blame for eco-disaster as I (and Berry) make it out to be?
One further point worth making is that Brian Swimme (a mythological cosmologist) points out that the universe can lose creativity (I forget whether this was in The Universe is a Green Dragon, or The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos). Spiral galaxies are the only galaxies in which new stars are born (from nebula). However, the universe is no longer producing new spiral galaxies, and seems unable to. In fact, the number of spiral galaxies is decreasing, because when spiral galaxies collide they generally form elliptical (egg-shaped) galaxies, where new stars are no longer born. The universe seems to have lost the potential to create spiral galaxies (star breeding-grounds). Is this an example that demonstrates non-infinite potential? Or is this just that other 'options' were 'chosen', so that although spiral-galaxy-creation may no longer be an option, creativity is still infinite in other ways. I.e. just because I chose to eat banana bread for breakfast, and not an omelet, does not necessitate that potential is now decreased or limited, that is, ∞÷2=∞ (infinite/2=infinite).
Matter does not exist in infinite possibilitys, though the number is so unfeasibly large that it is not imaginable.
ReplyDeleteSpace is finite (even the universe is finite in space). The number of possible "choices" for a given point in matter is finite, as the number of atomic "things" (the word particles is no longer applicable) is finite. Thus, the entire universe can be imagined as one of those breifcase locks, which go from 000 - 999 with all combinations in between. The number of combinations is unfeasibly large, but it is still finite.
The infinite only makes sense when talking about abstract concepts. The set of all Prime Numbers is infinite.
But i'm not sure that making a notion of a difference between the two is needed. The number of combinations of human personalities, based upon neuron configuarations is estimated at over a tera-googol (10^112). Very much a finite number, but still so unfeasibly large that it is effectivly infinite. (much more than the number of atoms in the entire universe, which is 10^79).
So, what I am saying is, that in most cases, there is no difference in terms of human practicality between the stupidly large, and the infinite.
-Iain
(PS: oil was neither of the above).
Another ridiculously large number that we liked to bandy around at games club was the number of possible games of "Go" (the Chinese board game) which is something stupidly high like 10^777.
ReplyDeleteThis means that there is a high chance that no game of "Go" in the history of the universe has ever been the same, nor ever will be.)
It is kinda cheating though to compare this to human brain configurations, or atoms in the universe, or oil resources in 1970, as the above are all measures within space, whetheras a "Game of Go" is a measure of space over time. A better comparison would be "The number of possible human lives" which... I dunno how you would measure that... but it would be pretty darn big but *still* not infinite!
-Iain
A question a friend put forward when discussing this goes as follows:
ReplyDeleteYou can say the number of grains of sand on the sea shore are uncountable. However, they only remain uncountable as long as someone doesn't build a counting machine that is big enough (and has enough time) to count them. This is why Keller has to go for infinite: to guarantee that all possibilities can never be accounted for (if they are, you're in a closed system).
But maybe when talking number of possibilities it doesn't matter - they could never be accounted for (or counted) because there is not enough universe (nor time) to count them (possibilities remaining larger than actualities). Therefore you do not need the infinite to guarantee openness.
Btw, since we're talking about really large numbers, you should go here (go down to the bottom of the page and make sure you check out Knuth's notation if you don't know it).
Yes, I totally agree with you Stuart. Regarding that number you posted... Woot!
ReplyDelete