In the 1700s Pierre-Simon Laplace's rigid, deterministic viewpoint left no space to uncertainties and contradictions. In the 1680s Isaac Newton's concept of absolute, mathematical time depicted a uniform flow deprived of any psychological aspect, including a propensity to flow only toward the future. Probability, Uncertainty, and the Arrow of Time It is only during the twentieth century that, thanks to an attentive evaluation of the nature of time and the adoption of a probabilistic approach to the evolution of natural systems, ambiguity, meaning the coexistence or confluence of two or more incompatible aspects in the same reality, has acquired a non-negative connotation in the Western world. Furthermore, throughout two millennia, the tertium non datur has influenced Mediterranean culture. For instance, in Myron's Discobolus (The discus thrower), fifth century b.c.e., Museo nazionale, Rome, time seems to be frozen in the act of launching the discus. This schematizes evolution as a quasi-static change of objects rather than a continuous course of events.Īristotle's conception is reflected in the rigid aesthetic canons of the art of antiquity. His logic seems to imply a step-by-step flow of time and rules out the intervention of a critical situation where opposite qualities can smoothly cooperate and compete together in the same substance. AmbiguityĪccording to Aristotle, the substitution of opposite qualities hosted by a substance during a transformation has a discontinuous character. No object exists simultaneously hosting opposites." No alternatives exist besides these two any third possibility is excluded: tertium non datur. Similarly, nothing is at the same time white and black. At any instant, however, one can assign either a quality or its opposite to a substance: According to Aristotle, "Nobody can be simultaneously sick and healthy. In his Categories, Aristotle states that the essential character of a substance seems to be its ability to host opposites. This attitude is reflected by the assumption, authoritatively legitimized by Aristotle (384 –322 b.c.e.), that no responsible statement can exhibit internal contradictions. By instinct humans yearn for reassurance and certainties and dream of an orderly universe where the reasoning process corresponds to external reality.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |