Space Master wrote:
Order doesn’t have to come from Chaos.
Mind you they could take turns, but l don’t know how one switches to the other.
I think you’re talking about entropy. The amount of entropy in the universe is always increasing, no matter what you do. Entropy = disorder / chaos. You can create order by putting in energy, or so they say. I don’t see how that works though, as l don’t reckon Chaos can be proven to exist in the first place, and l don’t think Order can either.
So maybe ur friend was saying, if u smash a ceramic vase, it will never be back to its original order again, so similarly, no matter how much you tidy up, the original order is lost forever and the disorder from that point will forever increase.
But l’m not sure if a smashed vase is actually disordered or not, technically speaking.
And face it, the original settings are linked to time, so saying that the original vase will never be the same again is kinda fallacious, because you’d have to go back in time to make that vase the same again.
Even if the vase were untouched, it would be more disordered than it was exactly 2 seconds ago. How much more disordered? There’s no real sliding scale for disorder (there is a system in chemistry but l think it’s tied to temperature or something and l never understood it) so any disorder is unimaginably large, so every passing second does monstrous things to the vase even if you don’t touch it.
Order and chaos do come from each other, and do both exist. They are 2 sides of the same coin, because they are both human concepts (much like good and evil or large and small) – essentially what was once called “constructs of mind” (can’t remember which philosopher came up with it).
Humans define things in terms of what they are not as much as what they are, and our experience gets filtered and translated by our brain, which needs contrasting as well as similar experiences – essentially we work in opposites. Every human idea has it’s opposite, because that is the root of our concious thought process (to be self aware, we needed a concept of “I” – which requires the definition of “not I”).
The argument of wether the various concepts we create actually exist or not becomes one that is essentially irrelevant – everything we experience is translated by our brains, so the whole of existence for each of us could be a creation of our minds (which may not even exist themselves logically – the concept of self being a creation of the mind as well). At this point in the logical process, it’s advisable to get out and push, and remember what Mr Pratchett wrote – Logic is all well and good, but there are times it doesn’t beat actual thought…..:wink:
And actual thought says that the universe does exist, as do I because I am experiencing it. It also says that my sitting room is in chaos (equipment everywhere, and hasn’t been tidied), but my bedroom is ordered (because it did get tidied). I could turn those statements on their heads and have them be true though – just as you can with the vase. It could be the case that I like smashed vases, and in my concept of order the pieces are more ordered. Obviously not true in most peoples concept of order/chaos, but having lots of other people agree with your version doesn’t make it true in any actual sense.:groucho:
So yes, order and chaos do exist, because we think they do.
It is interesting to note that your view of the entropic nature of the universe is opposite to the one I have btw: In my version, entropy = order, because it is moving from more complex to less complex (and the end state of any entropic system is by definition one of uniformity)…:crazy_diz
As for the vase – it’s not more disordered then it was 2 seconds ago unless you want it to be – you could decide it’s getting more ordered and leave it be. You could decide that you are going to sweep it up and bin it, and therefore the vase is actually more ordered because it won’t be there to make you wonder if you can get away with binning it yet every time you see it (you got it from an aunt who will expect to see it when she visits)….:wink:
