20 ideas
| 21054 | Reason enables the unbounded extension of our rules and intentions [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Reason, in a creature, is a faculty which enables that creature to extend far beyond the limits of natural instinct the rules and intentions it follows in using its various powers, and the range of its project is unbounded. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Idea for a Universal History [1784], 2nd) | |
| A reaction: I'm inclined to identify the mind's creation of universals as the source of this power, rather than reason. Generalisations are infinitely extensible. Cantor's infinities are a nice example. Can't ideas be extended irrationally? |
| 20457 | Zeno assumes collecting an infinity of things makes an infinite thing [Rovelli] |
| Full Idea: One possible answer is that Zeno is wrong because it is not true that by accumulating an infinite number of things one ends up with an infinite thing. | |
| From: Carlo Rovelli (Reality is Not What it Seems [2014], 01) | |
| A reaction: I do love it when deep and complex ideas are expressed with perfect simplicity. As long as the simple version is correct. |
| 18203 | Avoid non-predicative classifications and definitions [Poincaré] |
| Full Idea: Never consider any objects but those capable of being defined in a finite number of word ...Avoid non-predicative classifications and definitions. | |
| From: Henri Poincaré (The Logic of Infinity [1909], p.63), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics II.4 |
| 20468 | Quantum mechanics deals with processes, rather than with things [Rovelli] |
| Full Idea: Quantum mechanics teaches us not to think about the world in terms of 'things' which are in this or that state, but in terms of 'processes' instead. | |
| From: Carlo Rovelli (Reality is Not What it Seems [2014], 04) |
| 20467 | Quantum mechanics describes the world entirely as events [Rovelli] |
| Full Idea: The world of quantum mechanics is not a world of objects: it is a world of events. | |
| From: Carlo Rovelli (Reality is Not What it Seems [2014], 04) | |
| A reaction: I presume a philosopher is allowed to ask what an 'event' is. Since, as Rovelli tells it, time is eliminated from the picture, events seem to be unanalysable primitives. |
| 21053 | The manifest will in the world of phenomena has to conform to the laws of nature [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Whatever conception of the freedom of the will one may form in terms of metaphysics, the will's manifestations in the world of phenomena, i.e. human actions, are determined in accordance with natural laws, as is every other natural event. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Idea for a Universal History [1784], Intro) | |
| A reaction: So free will either requires total substance dualism, or it is best described as transcendental fictionalism. This seems to imply the Leibnizian idea that metaphysics contains facts which having nothing to do with the physical world. |
| 21055 | Our aim is a constitution which combines maximum freedom with strong restraint [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The highest task which nature has set mankind is to establish a society in which freedom under external laws would be combined to the greatest possible extent with irresistible force, in other words of establishing a perfectly just constitution. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Idea for a Universal History [1784], 5th) | |
| A reaction: The 'force' is to restrict the harms that may result from individual freedom. This seems to equate justice with liberal freedom. Force can prevent direct harm to others, but what to do about indirect harm? Many lack freedom, but whose fault is it? |
| 21056 | The vitality of business needs maximum freedom (while avoiding harm to others) [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If the citizen is deterred from seeking his personal welfare in any way he chooses which is consistent with the freedom of others, the vitality of business in general and hence also the strength of the whole are held in check. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Idea for a Universal History [1784], 8th) | |
| A reaction: This is a rather American view of liberalism. Kant has been praising the virtues of aggressive competition. |
| 21057 | The highest ideal of social progress is a universal cosmopolitan existence [Kant] |
| Full Idea: There is hope that the highest purpose of nature, a universal cosmopolitan existence, will at last be realised as the matrix within which all the original capacities of the human race may develop. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Idea for a Universal History [1784], 8th) | |
| A reaction: Apart from Diogenes of Sinope, Kant seems to have been the first great champion of the cosmopolitan ideal. As I write (2018) the western world is putting up growing barriers against immigrants. I think my response may be to adopt Kantian cosmopolitanism. |
| 20469 | There are probably no infinities, and 'infinite' names what we do not yet know [Rovelli] |
| Full Idea: 'Infinite', ultimately, is the name that we give to what we do not yet know. Nature appears to be telling us that there is nothing truly infinite. | |
| From: Carlo Rovelli (Reality is Not What it Seems [2014], 11) |
| 20461 | The basic ideas of fields and particles are merged in quantum mechanics [Rovelli] |
| Full Idea: The notions of fields and particles, separated by Faraday and Maxwell, end up merging in quantum mechanics. | |
| From: Carlo Rovelli (Reality is Not What it Seems [2014], 04) | |
| A reaction: This sounds to me just like Anaximander's 'apeiron' - the unlimited [Rovelli agrees! p.168]. Anaximander predicted the wall which enquiry would hit, but we now have more detail. |
| 20462 | Because it is quantised, a field behaves like a set of packets of energy [Rovelli] |
| Full Idea: Since the energy of the electromagnetic field can take on only certain values, the field behaves like a set of packets of energy. | |
| From: Carlo Rovelli (Reality is Not What it Seems [2014], 04) |
| 20463 | There are about fifteen particles fields, plus a few force fields [Rovelli] |
| Full Idea: There are about fifteen fields, whose quanta are elementary particles (electrons, quarks, muons, neutrinos, Higgs, and little else), plus a few fields similar to the electromagnetic one, which describe forces at a nuclear scale, with quanta like photons. | |
| From: Carlo Rovelli (Reality is Not What it Seems [2014], 04) | |
| A reaction: According to Rovelli, this sentence describes the essence of physical reality. |
| 20464 | The world consists of quantum fields, with elementary events happening in spacetime [Rovelli] |
| Full Idea: The world is not made up of fields and particles, but of a single type of entity: the quantum field. There are no longer particles which move in space with the passage of time, but quantum fields whose elementary events happen in spacetime. | |
| From: Carlo Rovelli (Reality is Not What it Seems [2014], 04) | |
| A reaction: If you are not a scientist, there is (I find) a strong tendency to read and digest stuff like this, and then forget it the next day, because it so far from our experience. Folk like me have to develop two parallel views of the nature of reality. |
| 20459 | Electrons only exist when they interact, and their being is their combination of quantum leaps [Rovelli] |
| Full Idea: Electrons don't always exist. They exist when they interact. They materialize when they collide with something. The quantum leap from one orbit to another constitutes their way of being real. An electron is a combination of leaps between interactions. | |
| From: Carlo Rovelli (Reality is Not What it Seems [2014], 04) | |
| A reaction: If a philosopher with an Aristotelian interest in the nature of matter wants to grasp the modern view, the electron looks like the thing to focus on. You can feel Rovelli battling here to find formulations that might satisfy a philosopher. |
| 20460 | Electrons are not waves, because their collisions are at a point, and not spread out [Rovelli] |
| Full Idea: Schrödinger's wave is a bad image for an electron, because when a particle collides with something else, it is always at a point: it is never spread out in space like a wave. | |
| From: Carlo Rovelli (Reality is Not What it Seems [2014], 04 note) | |
| A reaction: And yet there is the diffusion in the two-slit experiment, which Thomas Young discovered for light. I must take Rovelli's word for this. |
| 20466 | Quantum Theory describes events and possible interactions - not how things are [Rovelli] |
| Full Idea: Quantum Theory does not describe things as they are: it describes how things occur and interact with each other. It doesn't describe where there is a particle but how it shows itself to others. The world of existence is reduced to possible interactions. | |
| From: Carlo Rovelli (Reality is Not What it Seems [2014], 04) | |
| A reaction: Fans of 'process philosophy' should like this, though he is not denying that there may be facts about how things are - it is just that this is not mentioned in the theory. There is not much point in philosophers yearning to know the reality. |
| 20465 | Nature has three aspects: granularity, indeterminacy, and relations [Rovelli] |
| Full Idea: I think that quantum mechanics has revealed three aspects of the nature of things: granularity, indeterminacy, and the relational structure of the world. | |
| From: Carlo Rovelli (Reality is Not What it Seems [2014], 04) |
| 20458 | The world is just particles plus fields; space is the gravitational field [Rovelli] |
| Full Idea: The world is made up of particles + fields, and nothing else; there is no need to add space as an extra ingredient. Newton's space is the gravitational field. | |
| From: Carlo Rovelli (Reality is Not What it Seems [2014], 03) | |
| A reaction: I get the impression that particles are just bumps or waves in the fields [yes! Rovelli p.110], which would mean there are fields and nothing else. And no one seems to know what a field is. |
| 20470 | Only heat distinguishes past from future [Rovelli] |
| Full Idea: It is always heat and only heat that distinguishes the past from the future. | |
| From: Carlo Rovelli (Reality is Not What it Seems [2014], 12) | |
| A reaction: I can remember the past but not the future - so can that fact be reduced to facts about heat? |