Timeline for What Would Be the state of philosophy of Science if There were no patterns in nature
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 14 at 21:10 | vote | accept | Dheeraj Gujrathi | ||
| Feb 1 at 0:30 | comment | added | Kevin Brant | I have no idea what a universe truly free of patterns would look like or if that perhaps is itself paradoxical, but I do think the most charitable interpretation of the question is probably more along the lines of A) imagine people are not made of atoms and molecules with rules but rather are some kind of homogeneous sentient human shaped blob (so as to not rely on human observable rules and patterns for humans to exist) B) imagine they occupied a made up but earth like world, like a video game perhaps but the rules of the game changed randomly. | |
| Jan 31 at 22:11 | comment | added | Galen | @wra Indeed! Even a uniform distribution of states would have definite properties. Rather, "pattern" and "lack of pattern", or somewhat vague and elusive concepts. | |
| Jan 31 at 22:09 | comment | added | Galen | @Corbin Ramsey theory may apply to some classes of problems, but note that the arrangements in Ramsey theory are in terms of sequences, arrays, or graphs that are discrete structures. Arrangements of particles embedded in a space, for example, would not have a clean notion of "adjacent elements of space" if that space is a dense set. I appreciate the mentioning of superdeterminism. | |
| Jan 31 at 21:43 | comment | added | wra | The complete and permanent absence of patterns would be itself a pattern. | |
| Jan 31 at 19:45 | comment | added | Corbin | Ramsey's principle applies here: the universe is too big to not have at least some patterns. This question invites speculative bikeshedding, but it might be fixable if it were to focus on certain correlations or other philosophically-interesting instances of patterns which may or may not exist. | |
| Jan 31 at 19:13 | answer | added | John Bollinger | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jan 31 at 17:33 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Jan 31 at 12:57 | answer | added | Jo Wehler | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jan 31 at 11:25 | comment | added | Mauro ALLEGRANZA | But according to anthropology, also Myths are patterns. | |
| Jan 31 at 11:24 | comment | added | Mauro ALLEGRANZA | The second issue is: is it possible that our (humans) "pattern seeking" attitude is compatible with a world without patterns? But if we (humans) are "hardwired" with that attitude, this is a clue that some sort of "programmer" exists, at least in terms of an evolution strategy that produced us, and this is some sort of pattern. | |
| Jan 31 at 11:21 | comment | added | Mauro ALLEGRANZA | Maybe we have two issues here: from one side we use laws to describe facts and phenomena of the world, and laws "impose" patterns (regularities) on facts. Maybe a scientific law can be refuted by deeper investigations and experiments, but the next move is to define a new - sometimes more complicated, sometimes more general - law, and thus a "pattern" again. So, humans (and not only?) are "patterns seekers". | |
| Jan 31 at 10:02 | answer | added | Professor Sushing | timeline score: 6 | |
| Jan 31 at 9:54 | answer | added | TKoL | timeline score: 14 | |
| S Jan 31 at 9:33 | review | First questions | |||
| Jan 31 at 10:05 | |||||
| S Jan 31 at 9:33 | history | asked | Dheeraj Gujrathi | CC BY-SA 4.0 |