Dear Jerry,
As responding to my saying that
occurrence of a Planck's quantum is very peculiar in that both the context
(the particle-like nature) and the contextual elements (the wave-like
nature) appear simultaneously as bare empirical phenomena,
you said it to be a very curious statement. This may be a good starting
point to respond to your various concerns. I would agree with you if the
above statement is made as an instance of theoretical syllogism. I cannot
deduce the above as a theoretical deduction in terms of acceptable component
propositions. The way I understood the above is through observation of
events or empirical induction. Although I appreciate modal logic as a scheme
of the classification of logical propositions according to their asserting
or denying the possibility, impossibility, contingency, or necessity of
their contents, it is not clear to me how myriad single instances occurring
in nature fall under the general scheme of modal logic, prior to the
relevant events. Empirical observations run risks every time they are made.
Theoretical questions like you raised mostly refer to what, when, where
and how. Although the aspects of what and how, may be properly abstracted
depending upon the questions to be phrased, the other two aspects of when
and where remain concrete particular throughout without suffering from
abstractions. Anybody interested in raising theoretical questions, including
myself too, presumes a scheme of space and time, in one form or another.
Unless we have a prior framework of space and time, it would be hard to
raise questions of when and where. A most weakest framework must be
homogeneous space and time. Once we accept spatiotemporal homogeneity to
start with, the real numbers would turn out quite convenient in accessing
how close or separated once something happens to be located there.
A big problem associated with the real numbers is how one could come up
with the natural numbers. Emergence of the natural numbers to us is what
emergence of quanta, the atomic numbers and the like is to nature.
The situation surrounding the issue of information seems very tricky. If
we stick to the habit of understanding whatever subject matter theoretically
in terms of component propositions, there would remain no room of being
further informed once the endeavor is successfully accomplished. Information
is of no use there. In contrast, if we are willing enough to tolerate
empirical synthesis of curious or surprising implications for some time to
come, we may run the risk of making fatal errors. But, there may also be a
possibility of being informed of a new situation if we are lucky enough.
Cheers,
Koichiro
Received on Wed Oct 19 08:42:09 2005
