Quote:
Originally posted by Dinohunter
The most powerful force man has wielded is thought. People can be hurt, people can be saved, people can be killed, people can be created (naturally..). Once we began to think there was no turning back. Thought is a way to discover but also to grow, and can change something so easily its often considered part of Chaos Theory.
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Absolutely. I remember when I was studying it (and BTW, I didn't go that far in college, I got tired of it and just went with my career, plus I was only going for education and not a better job) people always asked what the hell good a Philo degree would bring me. Questions like that always made me laugh, people trying to figure out how your degree can help you earn more money in a new career. All I told them was that I would use it every moment of every day, since I was studying how to think and how some of the world's greatest minds thought. That always shut them up too, they realized in a sudden flash there's more to education than jobs if that's what you are looking for. And personalyl I think higher learning for the sake of a better career is often stupid, the whole point of learning is to be better and smarter in all things. Which is why philosophy is the #1 subject in my book, I had to pay my own way during school and damned if I wasn't going to really learn somthing important when I was there.
Also, here's my explanation of Chaos Theory...
Wherever there is motion or activity, there are seemingly chaotic events occuring at unpredictable rates and in unpredictable ways. Science has long ignored the cause of these systems and just chalked them up to chaotic and random motion, such as turbulence in water and it's seemingly random nature. However, back in the 80's a new mathematical theory was posed claiming that all seemingly random and chaotic events were simply events of extremely complex organization, hence they took out the chaos and randomness of everything. If one can understand the higher complexity of organization present, one can understand chaotic activities as a predictable and possibly managable way. Now chaos theory remains the domain of scientists and mathematacians for the most part, but it also spawned complexity theory and that leads to all sorts of things...
Complexity theory
There is no simple definition to complexity theory, other than the idea that most things in our universe do not act on the principles by which we would like them to. People want to see interaction in all things on a simple, linear and cause-effect type scale, but most often this is not the case (which is part ofthe reason I think we are so bad at predicting the future). According to complexity theory, things occur due to complex, non-linear reactions, a holistic approach to understanding if you will. And most of the field of study which is really interesting involves organic model study, where it's interaction between living things in a system which define the actions of that system. A good example of this is how a person interacts with their world vs. how a group of people interacting with their world. Now we've all been in a large crowd before, and interestingly event though it's made up of individuals, it doesn't even closely resemble how a person thinks or acts. The so-called mob mentality, where decisions are made by sweeping order of the crowd and often the actions taken as a result are in no way similar to how a single person would have reacted. Why is this? Because the rules have changed, the complex interactions present in the crowd follow a basic rule book that isn't the same as a single person's rules in interacting with the same world. And interestingly, a group's different set of rules can also lead to achievment above and beyond what any of it's constiuent parts are capable of, so to put it simply... change the rules of a system and you change it's limitations.
And that's just one small example of complexity theory. This field of study reaches into computer development, sociology, economics, probably every field of study in existence. And truly, both theories deal more with philosophy than anything else, the idea that all things are examples of some level of order is the same as that of all philosophers... logic dictates all things, so in any logical system everything can potentially be understood. It's all in finding the correct viewpoint, where the unexplainable becomes easily understandable.
I know this is getting long too, but I wanted to pose one more theory here. I think a good part of the reason ideas like this have taken so long to gain foothold and acceptance is actually due to the rise of Bible based schools of worship (I'll include any basic sampling of the Old Testament here too, so Judaism and Muslim worhsip also fall into this category). As a system of belief should, the Bible actually molds the way in which we view reality, especially since there is a single Creator who makes all the rules. In the Bible's system, time is perfectly linear, all rules are made by an individual, and all interactions are simple in nature as they are largely the result of interaction with that Creator or His rules. Infinity is similarly ignored in Bible based systems, since there is a clear beginning and end to all things besides the Creator. I was wondering awhile back why our concept of infinity was still in it's infancy, and why complex levels of interaction in systems are just now being explored. Also I wondered why viewpoints in the semi-modern world that challenged those of Catholicism and Christianty were so long in being adopted, such as the non helio-centric universe to give an example. If you have a hard time believing that a belief structure gives rise to you entire world viewpoint (even on a scientific scale), just look to the past to see ideas which make perfect sense being rejected by nearly everyone because they don't fall nicely inline with the established religous belief. In contrast, societies like the Mayan and Egyptian show a much greater understanding of mathematics, engineering, astrological movement and time measurement. Why? Because they were not bound by the same belief rules most of our ancestors were, so they were free to acheive such scientific advancement at a greater rate. Hell, their knowledge was even lost (or mostly lost) regarding these principles due to Bible worship.