{"id":1470,"date":"2011-04-12T00:00:32","date_gmt":"2011-04-12T04:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=1470"},"modified":"2011-04-12T00:00:32","modified_gmt":"2011-04-12T04:00:32","slug":"is-our-explanation-world-how-the-natural-world-works-by-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/is-our-explanation-world-how-the-natural-world-works-by-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"Is our \u201cexplanation world\u201d how the \u201cnatural world\u201d works by itself?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I commented yesterday <\/em>on a Brian Lehrer radio show with Francis Fukuyama, discussing his recent book on The origins of political order<\/a>. \u00a0You may recall Fukuyama\u2019s previous book from 2006,\u201dThe end of History\u201d, which caused some stir. though history continued in any case. <\/em><\/p>\n

______<\/p>\n

Francis Fukuyama seems to do a good job of tracing the implications of modern social science theory back toward the origins of society. \u00a0He represents the natural process of human cultural evolution as a cultural historian naturally might, in terms of the history of cultural explanations.<\/p>\n

That describes the evolution of \u201cthe explanatory world\u201d of our attempts to represent history in terms of our cultural values. \u00a0It doesn\u2019t seem to reflect any consideration how the \u201cthe natural world” would have evolved to create the features we then attempt to explain.<\/p>\n

One can think of \u201cthe natural world\u201d as working by itself, whether the circumstance lets you see how or not. \u00a0That would make it the subject of \u201cthe explanatory world\u201d.<\/p>\n

Explaining things is then seen as the effort we make to connect our terminology with the working processes of the physical world, that are naturally occurring within and around us. \u00a0 It seems certain, then, that the working parts of nature would at least NOT coming from our explanations.<\/p>\n

All that could be actually following our explanations to operate would be \u201cthe explanatory world\u201d we construct to do so, and how we interact with the natural world and its different way of making connections would need to be through our use of its physical processes.<\/p>\n

It would NOT be by explaining things to nature, anyway. Seems reasonable, right? Our language of explanations, though, mostly overlooks that.<\/p>\n

What this is useful for is things like finding a more satisfying answer for why people needed to see Gods as a \u201cuniversal connector\u201d to fill in pervasive gaps in out explanations that we were unable to fill. People mostly can\u2019t explain how nature connects all kinds of things.<\/p>\n

That makes it hard to do without and reasonable to hypothesize Gods to do that. They serve as the connectors of the things of nature we can\u2019t explain, which is quite a lot.<\/p>\n

As science finds out how to connect more things it also seems what is unknown and unknowable may be expanding too\u2026 is one of the interesting things.<\/p>\n

In the evolution of science to date most of science has been trying to construct explanatory worlds, postulating that nature follows rules from a distance, leaving much to be explained. What\u2019s now happening, though, is that theoretical biology and systems sciences are very slowly inching forward toward becoming able to identify natural mechanisms of organization (how nature connects things) to replace the idea of \u201crules at a distance\u201d in nature.<\/p>\n

One basic leaping off point is realizing that to study a natural world, that works by itself using internal processes instead of by following external rules, it must be a study of uncontrolled systems. That gives you a way to draw a line between our world of explanations and the natural world that works by itself, that our thinking so imperfectly explains.<\/p>\n

I have a collection of work on the physics of open systems at\u00a0www.synapse9.com<\/a>, and two papers in\u00a0Cosmos & History<\/a> on some general aspects of how to observe and discuss natural processes of organization that work by themselves, (2010)\u00a0Models Learning Change<\/a> & (2008)\u00a0Life\u2019s Hidden Resources for Learning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

___________<\/p>\n

I also have two new papers about to be published on important applications. \u00a0One shows how whole system accounting results in far more accurate measures of energy use impacts (2011)\u00a0Systems Energy Assessment (SEA)<\/a>. \u00a0The other\u00a0is on how identifying behaviors\u00a0of the\u00a0whole\u00a0economy exposes when our trusted rules for it are unexpectedly changing (2011)\u00a0A decisive moment for Investing in Sustainability<\/a><\/p>\n

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I commented yesterday on a Brian Lehrer radio show with Francis Fukuyama, discussing his recent book on The origins of political order. \u00a0You may recall Fukuyama\u2019s previous book from 2006,\u201dThe end of History\u201d, which caused some stir. though history continued in any case. ______ Francis Fukuyama seems to do a good job of tracing the … Continue reading Is our \u201cexplanation world\u201d how the \u201cnatural world\u201d works by itself?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mail","category-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}