Introduction to Philosophy of Science
Professor Jim Fahey
May 3, 2004
The traditional view on the progress of science is mostly scientific for most empiricists. It consists of updating current theories on how the world works with new observations and discoveries. According to the traditional view of scientific progress, observation is an objective way to settle disagreements among scientists when talking about how the world works. The “theory-ladenness of observation,” however, has to do with “whether observational evidence can be considered an unbiased or neutral source of information when choosing between theories, or whether observations tend to be ‘contaminated’ by theoretical assumptions in a way that prevents them from having this role” (Godfrey-Smith 155). This theory was developed and supported by Hanson, Kuhn, and Feyerabend.
The argument simply states: “observation cannot function as an unbiased way of testing theories, because observational judgments are affected by the theoretical beliefs of the observer” [and] therefore, [the] traditional empiricist views about observation in science are false (Godfrey-Smith 156). Another point made by this theory is the influence of the scientist’s theoretical framework when there is an experiment to be talked about. In other words, there is no language whose application to phenomena is totally “theory-free” (Godfrey-Smith 157). Hanson also agrees with Kuhn on the “theory-ladenness” of observation. He gives the example of the famous drawing which consists of both a young woman and an old Parisienne. The view taken here is that the observer can see two different drawings depending on his or her interpretation. Similarly in science, one can take different observational views on the same object and record different data based on each of their own interpretations (Hanson 11). Both Kuhn and Hanson successfully support the views of observational bias in the traditional views of theory change in science and are in favor of the “theory-ladenness of observation.”
There are some positions that have been put forth in response to theory change and progress in science. These include: empiricism, scientific realism, social constructivism, and pragmatism. First, empiricists are anti-metaphysicists who believe that all we have is only just givens of experience and truth can only be proven by induction. Second, scientific realists define truths in the universe to be out there regardless of the frame of reference or whether we can know about reality. They believe that reality exists independently of what we think. Next, social metaphysicists think that there is truth but only relative to a specific conceptual framework. Lastly, pragmatists deny the capacity of getting at the truth. Unlike realists, they think that we are always altering our truths as we find new ways to explain how things work in the world. There is no absolute truth, to a pragmatist; there is truth when it works for us best in a given situation and a given frame of reference.
Furthermore, views on science diverge as it comes to quantum mechanics and when relating to the famous Bell Inequality problem. Empiricists would say that if we can’t explain something on the quanta level based on our gathered data then it does not exist. Realists would say that if the data we have does not make sense in explaining the world then we just can’t know about it yet in this time and age of science. For instance, if Newton had not discovered gravity, then realists would just assume there to be some kind of force keeping everything on the earth attached to the ground. In contrast, unlike empiricists, they wouldn’t say that the force doesn’t exist just because we don’t know about it yet. Perhaps this is not the perfect example but moreover, if we discussed about quantum theory with empiricists from pre-Newtonian time, then they would deny the existence of any sort of particle activity going on at the quanta level in atoms because they have not had the advantage of electron microscopes and such to be able to observe these phenomena.
As epistemology and metaphysical views depart from one another, other views merge. In addition empiricism and realism, the social (metaphysical) constructivists would see quantum mechanics being more relativistic than realistic, or empiric. They are relativists whose beliefs are in a truth is completely dependent of its conceptual framework. This means that on the quantum level, they would believe quantum mechanics to work only if it is referred to on the quanta level. Similarly, the pragmatist would agree that on a quantum level, if quantum mechanics can explain the phenomena happening there best, then that is the pragmatist’s reality on the quanta level.
Another issue rose in the discussion of quantum mechanics: the Bell Inequality theory. To examine the theory of the Bell Inequality, as of current, nothing can explain why there are supposedly signals faster than the speed of light. Just this assumption eliminates the law of the light barrier posed by Einstein, which says that nothing can get to or exceed the speed of light (3 x 108 m/s) without becoming light itself. Empiricists would deny this theory completely because there is no proof of this thing that is going beyond light speed. Realists would say that either we made the wrong assumption, or we just haven’t found ways to prove the theory, but there is something going on regardless whether we can know about it. A metaphysicist would argue that it does make sense to say that something must be traveling faster than the speed of light because it is referring to a different set of framework, so Einstein’s theory of the light barrier may not apply to the quanta level. Naturally, the pragmatists would agree with the metaphysicists in saying that because the theory explains best what we can currently observe, it must be truth. On the whole, I consider myself a realist in believing the world to be absolute regardless of whether we can find out about these truths. It makes the most sense to say that quantum mechanics cannot explain the Bell Inequality because we are still missing information on the whole. I believe that activities on the quantum level use the same set of reference frame as everything else in the universe, and that we just have to look harder to discover the appropriate set of laws that applies to all.
References
Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Theory and Reality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Hanson, N. R. Patterns of Discovery. London: Cambridge University Press, 1958.
Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Perfection
Why can't one simply appreciate one's own parents' effort in giving birth and raising another human being? Why do we seek perfection? It is perhaps only because we are not perfect which comes denial, prejudice, anger, distrust, and a plethora of emotions involving the playing of social and psychological games with one another. If we were all equal and no one is better or worse than another, then we would not possess any emotions, including the good ones like trust, love, courage. Likewise, I am not perfect. I am nowhere near flawlessness. I am human. Ergo, it is that human imperfection which drives me to search and reach for that ideal perfect reality, which obviously does not exist in this time and place. Without the search for perfection, there will reach a point of equilibrium, in which the world does not need to progress, there will be no purpose to live out one day and wait for the next. The speed of evolutionary progression is directly dependent on the level of desire for a perfect world. The more society seeks to have, the more society will produce and will get more efficient at it as time progresses. In a society where people are happy and desire little more than what they already have around them, social evolutionary progression slows. By chance if another society with a higher level of want happens to come across the less socio-evolutionarily developed society, then the latter would be at much disadvantage, ergo would be conquered by the former of the two societies. Thus is the beginning of war and a war to keep the most perfect race and society.
Friday, June 13, 2008
After a movie
Catherine Zeta-Jones is so sexy!! I love the movie Intolerable Cruelty and recently just caught up with Entrapment, not so intense but sexy nonetheless =)
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Let me sleep
I just can't seem to go to bed before 2 or 3 in the morning, I must have been born an owl my last life time... or a vampire! ha!
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
More National Geographic
I actually just stumbled upon this link... a really cool picture slide show of this photographer's aerial views of different parts of china, mostly remote showing its unseen beauties... some even I have never seen before... Check it out!
China: An Aerial View
Photographer George Steinmetz took to the air to give readers a bird's-eye view of China's geological and cultural wonders.
There's a link to all his pictures used on this slide show next to the video window.
China: An Aerial View
Photographer George Steinmetz took to the air to give readers a bird's-eye view of China's geological and cultural wonders.
There's a link to all his pictures used on this slide show next to the video window.
Reaction... a very strong one at that
Now everything I read in the papers or online is about Oil and Global Warming... and of course in all of them mentions somewhere that CHINA is a big contributor to this excessive production of CO2 in the air. Even this random article I thought was going to be about chinese modern marriage or something is not about that but especially regarding the situation of lack of environmental/foreign affair/political concerns in the young chinese generation. I would have been one of his students paying him for private english lessons if I was not fortunate enough to immigrate to america.
The perception of the chinese youth is based on media, movies, television that shows Las Vegas, New York City, Chicago... yet they don't see or really care to hear about the polygamy reservation in the middle of the mid-west! They don't hear about the hooker life in Vegas, they don't hear about the smell of chemical pollution in Port Elizabeth, NJ when you pass through it on I-95. To be chinese and not to be there for the last decade makes my awareness of changes in china much more acute than if I was still that upper-middle class school girl in the bustling city of Beijing.
I too make the mistake of having been brainwashed in my earlier childhood years to hate the Japanese regardless if they were even born in Japan. I too am guilty of not caring about politics, china's foreign affairs, who the new leader is, who is the new president? (Not trying to make a pun here) but it is certain something I have not paid much attention to, also attributing to this are my parent's lack of interest in such affairs and my whole family being very hands-on technical people. I sometimes still can't bring myself to read the chinese newspapers online, at least the english versions. Like me, the young chinese generation needs to become AWARE of the environmental threats and results if nothing is done to stop more gigantic non-eco-friendly coal factories, or new pollutant sources that the chinese government is sanctioning just so that our economic GDP is reaching its annual 10% quota.
It is definitely hard being overseas and hearing all the rumor going around about the chinese communistic way of governing a nation that has 25% of the planet's population. The people will make a difference once information can be passed along to them. Just a recent example, when the 7.8 degree earthquake hit ChengDu, how many chinese civilians dropped whatever they were doing, left whoever was precious to them at home and gave themselves to saving other people underneath the rubbles of the quake's aftermath. Today on CCTV-4 it showed an award and recognition ceremony in which the government mentioned many unsung heroes who have given their own lives to saving the victims of this, literally, earth shattering disaster. Many of them were as young as new soldiers only in their early 20's. The military leaders and reporters gave speeches that left the audience in tears, even the soldiers in their full uniforms began sobbing for the dead, the survivors, the people who've lost everything (family, shelter, life... ).
How, if LIFE can be saved after a disaster like this, then why can't the chinese people work together to better the LIFE of humanity? The factories and coal-burning power plants are emitting into the atmosphere carbon dioxide resulting in the highest levels ever recorded in 800,000 years. This increase in greenhouse gases around the globe is causing the atmosphere to trap in more heat, in turn this rise in almost 3/4 of a degree in average temperature just in this past few decades, has caused the melting of polar ice caps. Not only this, the pollution from chinese factories, power plants, car exhaust, among a million other factors is causing the desertification of inner mongolian grasslands to turn into dust and sand.
The desert outside of northwest skirts of Beijing has been expanding towards the city and is now only 71km or 150 miles from the city border. All this dust, sand, pollution mixed together gives the city of Beijing more frequent sand storms about 20 times a year, risen from only once or twice a year in the past decade. The pollution is in the atmosphere and therefore has no borders. Japan, North Korea, and South Korea have all been victim to "acid rain", which is a pH level below 5.6. Acid rain causes soil to become infertile, trees to slowly die, plants to not produce, fish to literally die in the ponds because they're soaked in acid water. Other parts of the world even including Canada and Colorado has experienced increased pollution and "chog" chinese smog casting over their beautiful cities as well. I mean Chinese certainly falls victim to even worse than these other places due to it caused by many industrial centers all over.
This is not just a Chinese issue but a global concern, which requires immediate attention. How can anyone foresee having grandchildren growing up in a sky that's forever smoggy, never can see the sun, having an epidemic of lung diseases and asthma attacks, and overall age beginning to decrease. I sure can't. I mean what's the point, to give birth to life so that it can be easily taken away during infancy? NO WAY!
Referenced statistics from the book The Coming China Wars
The perception of the chinese youth is based on media, movies, television that shows Las Vegas, New York City, Chicago... yet they don't see or really care to hear about the polygamy reservation in the middle of the mid-west! They don't hear about the hooker life in Vegas, they don't hear about the smell of chemical pollution in Port Elizabeth, NJ when you pass through it on I-95. To be chinese and not to be there for the last decade makes my awareness of changes in china much more acute than if I was still that upper-middle class school girl in the bustling city of Beijing.
I too make the mistake of having been brainwashed in my earlier childhood years to hate the Japanese regardless if they were even born in Japan. I too am guilty of not caring about politics, china's foreign affairs, who the new leader is, who is the new president? (Not trying to make a pun here) but it is certain something I have not paid much attention to, also attributing to this are my parent's lack of interest in such affairs and my whole family being very hands-on technical people. I sometimes still can't bring myself to read the chinese newspapers online, at least the english versions. Like me, the young chinese generation needs to become AWARE of the environmental threats and results if nothing is done to stop more gigantic non-eco-friendly coal factories, or new pollutant sources that the chinese government is sanctioning just so that our economic GDP is reaching its annual 10% quota.
It is definitely hard being overseas and hearing all the rumor going around about the chinese communistic way of governing a nation that has 25% of the planet's population. The people will make a difference once information can be passed along to them. Just a recent example, when the 7.8 degree earthquake hit ChengDu, how many chinese civilians dropped whatever they were doing, left whoever was precious to them at home and gave themselves to saving other people underneath the rubbles of the quake's aftermath. Today on CCTV-4 it showed an award and recognition ceremony in which the government mentioned many unsung heroes who have given their own lives to saving the victims of this, literally, earth shattering disaster. Many of them were as young as new soldiers only in their early 20's. The military leaders and reporters gave speeches that left the audience in tears, even the soldiers in their full uniforms began sobbing for the dead, the survivors, the people who've lost everything (family, shelter, life... ).
How, if LIFE can be saved after a disaster like this, then why can't the chinese people work together to better the LIFE of humanity? The factories and coal-burning power plants are emitting into the atmosphere carbon dioxide resulting in the highest levels ever recorded in 800,000 years. This increase in greenhouse gases around the globe is causing the atmosphere to trap in more heat, in turn this rise in almost 3/4 of a degree in average temperature just in this past few decades, has caused the melting of polar ice caps. Not only this, the pollution from chinese factories, power plants, car exhaust, among a million other factors is causing the desertification of inner mongolian grasslands to turn into dust and sand.
The desert outside of northwest skirts of Beijing has been expanding towards the city and is now only 71km or 150 miles from the city border. All this dust, sand, pollution mixed together gives the city of Beijing more frequent sand storms about 20 times a year, risen from only once or twice a year in the past decade. The pollution is in the atmosphere and therefore has no borders. Japan, North Korea, and South Korea have all been victim to "acid rain", which is a pH level below 5.6. Acid rain causes soil to become infertile, trees to slowly die, plants to not produce, fish to literally die in the ponds because they're soaked in acid water. Other parts of the world even including Canada and Colorado has experienced increased pollution and "chog" chinese smog casting over their beautiful cities as well. I mean Chinese certainly falls victim to even worse than these other places due to it caused by many industrial centers all over.
This is not just a Chinese issue but a global concern, which requires immediate attention. How can anyone foresee having grandchildren growing up in a sky that's forever smoggy, never can see the sun, having an epidemic of lung diseases and asthma attacks, and overall age beginning to decrease. I sure can't. I mean what's the point, to give birth to life so that it can be easily taken away during infancy? NO WAY!
Referenced statistics from the book The Coming China Wars
What touched me ever so slightly...
I just came across this article on the National Geographics website about the changes over the past few years of China observed by an American Peach Corp who's been keeping an eye on the trends and her generation of students... (original article via link below)
By Peter Hessler
Photograph by Fritz Hoffmann
My students wrote essays on paper so cheap and thin that it felt like the skin of an onion. The brittle pages tore easily; if held to the light, they glowed. The English was flawed, but sometimes that only gave the words more power. "My parents were born in poor farmer's family," wrote a young man who had chosen the English name Hunt. "They told us that they had eaten barks, grass, etc. At that time grandpa and grandma had no open minds and didn't allow my mother to go to school because she is a girl." Another classmate described his mother: "Her hair becomes silver white, and some of her teeth become movable. But she works as hard as ever." Those were common themes—my students valued patience and diligence, and they liked to write about family. National events often left them perplexed. "I'm a Chinese, but I feel it difficult to see my country clearly," wrote a woman named Airane. "I believe there are many young people are as confused as I'm."
Her teacher felt the same way. In 1996 I had been sent to China as a Peace Corps volunteer, and that was the first time I had lived in the country and studied the language. The only thing I knew for certain was that the place was bound to change. Deng Xiaoping was still alive, although there were rumors that he was in poor health. Hong Kong still belonged to the British; China had yet to join the World Trade Organization; Beijing had recently failed in its bid to host the 2000 Olympics. On the middle Yangtze, the government was building the world's largest hydroelectric dam, the Three Gorges project, and I was assigned to a teaching job in Fuling, a small city that would be affected by the new dam. The Yangtze was visible from my classroom, and with every glimpse I wondered how this mighty river could ever become a lake.
In the beginning much of what I learned about China came from reading the onion-skin essays, layer by layer. The past could be painful for my students—when they wrote about history, it was usually personal. Even a distant event like the 19th-century Opium War made them indignant, because the Chinese believed that such foreign aggression had initiated the country's long decline. When it came to modern disasters—the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution—they left much unsaid. "If I had been Mao Zedong," wrote a tactful student named Joan, "I wouldn't have let the thing happen between 1966 and 1976." But they refused to judge their elders. Eileen wrote: "Today, when we see [the Cultural Revolution] with our own sight, we'll feel our parents' thoughts and actions are somewhat blind and fanatical. But if we consider that time objectly, I think, we should understand and can understand them. Each generation has its own happiness and sadness. To younger generation, the important thing is understanding instead of criticizing."
They were the first Chinese to grow up in the post-Mao world. Most had been infants in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping initiated the free-market changes that eventually became known as Reform and Opening. Nearly all my students came from the countryside, and when they were small, the nation's population was still 80 percent rural. Many of their parents were illiterate; some of their grandmothers had bound feet. A number of my students were the first people from their villages to attend college.
They majored in English—a new subject for a nation hoping to overcome a history of troubled foreign relations. Ever since the Opium War the Chinese had wavered between perceiving the outside world as a threat or as an opportunity, until Mao's xenophobia resulted in over two decades of isolation. But Deng took the opposite approach, encouraging foreign trade, and in the 1990s all middle schools and high schools began to institute mandatory English courses. The nation faced a severe shortage of instructors, and most of my students would go on to teach in small-town schools.
Sometimes the old xenophobia flashed across their essays. Once, I assigned the topic "What Do You Hate?" and never had those brittle pages contained so much anger. They hated the Japanese for invading their country in the 1930s; they hated the Nationalist government for ruling Taiwan. "I hate all the countries in the world that abstruct our country developing," wrote Sean. History was personal, and so were international affairs; a student named Richard hated a man he had never met, the president of Taiwan. "Lee Teng-hui don't follow the mandate of the heaven and comply with the popular wishes of the people," Richard wrote. "He want Taiwan continue to be an independent kingdom which is under his control."
But already it was becoming more common for Chinese to see the outside world as an opportunity, and usually my students showed intense curiosity. They asked endless questions about American customs, laws, products. Don, who had grown up in one of the poorest homes of all my students, composed a letter to Robert J. Eaton, then the CEO of the Chrysler Corporation. "My hometown is Fengdu, I hope you have heard its name," Don wrote. "But my hometown's economy hasn't been developed. So I want to establish a factory for making cars and trucks." They were dreamers, and I could tell that some of them were bound to wander far from home. In every class certain students stood out, like a young woman named Vanessa. She was beautiful, and her English was among the best in the class, but mostly her ideas were different. "Someday, I will visit U.S. to see the wide, eternal Midwest Prairie," she wrote. "And I want to know what the Indians look like, and what kind of life they lead. 'Dance with Buffalo' is my dream."
After finishing the Peace Corps, I stayed in China as a writer, eventually spending more than a decade in the country. During that time I witnessed a number of major events: the death of Deng Xiaoping, the return of Hong Kong, the successful bid to host the 2008 Olympics. Occasionally the old anger flared up, like the massive demonstrations that followed NATO's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999. That same year, protests by Falun Gong practitioners made headlines; a few years later the outbreak of SARS briefly occupied the world's attention.
But these incidents were most remarkable for how little they affected the lives of average Chinese. It was different from the narrative of the 20th century: After 1900, when the Boxer Rebellion swept across Beijing, every decade included at least one major political upheaval. Usually these events were violent, ranging from the Japanese invasion to the Cultural Revolution to the massacre around Tiananmen Square in 1989. Together they made for a troubled century, which was why my students wrote so delicately about the past.
Perhaps this awareness of a painful history was also why the 1990s turned out differently. It became modern China's first decade without a major upheaval, and thus far the 21st century has also been peaceful. And yet despite the lack of political change, the nation has been radically transformed. For three decades the economy has grown at an average annual rate of nearly 10 percent, and more people have been lifted out of poverty than in any other country, at any other time. China has become home to the largest urbanization in human history—an estimated 150 million people have left the countryside, mostly to work in the factory towns of the coast. By most measures the nation is now the world's largest consumer, using more grain, meat, coal, and steel than the United States. But apart from Deng Xiaoping, it's difficult to credit these critical changes to any specific government official. The Communist Party's main strategy has been to unleash the energy of the people, at least in the economic sense. In today's China, government is decentralized, and people can freely start businesses, find new jobs, move to new homes. After a century of powerful leaders and political turmoil, Chinese history has become the story of average citizens.
But there are risks when a nation depends on the individual dreams of 1.3 billion people rather than a coherent political system with clear rule of law. China faces an environmental crisis—the nation has become the world's leading emitter of carbon dioxide, and there's a serious shortage of water and other basic resources. The gap between rich and poor has become dangerously wide. The difference between urban and rural incomes is greater than three to one—the largest since the reforms began in 1978. Each of these problems is far too broad to be solved, or even grasped, by the average citizen. And because the government continues to severely restrict political freedom, people are accustomed to avoiding such issues. My students taught me that everything was personal—history, politics, foreign relations—but this approach creates boundaries as well as connections. For many Chinese, if a problem doesn't affect them personally, it might as well not exist.
Over the years I've stayed in touch with more than one hundred of my former students. The cheap onion-skin paper is long gone; today they communicate by email and cell phone. Most are still teaching, and they live in small cities—part of the new middle class. Because of migration, their old villages are dying, like rural regions all across China. "Only old people and small children are left at home," a woman named Maggie recently wrote. "It seems that the countryside now is under Japanese attacks, all the people have fled."
Although my students were patient with the flaws of their elders, today they seem to feel a greater distance from the young people they teach. "When we were students there wasn't a generation gap with the teachers," wrote Sally. "Nowadays our students have their own viewpoints and ideas, and they speak about democracy and freedom, independence and rights. I think we fear them instead of them fearing us." A classmate pointed out that most of today's students come from one-child homes, and many have been spoiled by indulgent parents. "We had a pure childhood," wrote Lucy. "But now the students are different, they are more influenced by modern things, even sex. But when we were young, sex was a tatoo for us."
Recently I sent out a short questionnaire asking how their lives have changed. Responses came from across the country, ranging from Zhejiang Province on the east coast to Tibet in the far west. Most described their material lives as radically different. "When I graduated in 1998, I told my Mum, if I got 600 yuan [about $70] each month, I would be satisfied," Roger wrote. "In fact I got 400 yuan then, and now each month I get about 1700 yuan." When I asked about their most valuable possession, 70 percent said that they had bought an apartment, usually with loans. One had recently purchased a car. They were still optimistic. When I asked them to rate their feelings about the future on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the most positive, the average response was 6.5.
I asked what worried them the most. Several mentioned relationships; one woman wrote: "The marriage is not safe any more in China, it is more common for people around here to break up." A couple of respondents who now work far from home were concerned about their status as migrants. "I am like a foreigner in China," Willy wrote. But the most common source of worry seemed to be mortgage payments. "Ten years ago, I worried that I could not have a good and warm family," Belinda wrote. "Now I am worried about my loan at the bank." None of her classmates expressed concern about political reform, foreign relations, or any other national issue. Nobody mentioned the environment.
For years I didn't hear from Vanessa. Finally, half a decade after I had taught her, I received an email. She had found a sales position with a company that produced electronic components: "I am changed a lot. I am in Shenzhen now, which is a big city in China.... Do you know American companies like America II or Classic components corp? They are our customers. I am little proud to have opportunity to co-operate with them. Because they are very big companies in the world, President Bush even visited America II last year. And the big reason I like my work now is I can use my language I learned."
The next time I was in Shenzhen, we met in the lobby of the Shangri-La Hotel. "Did you see my car?" Vanessa said, and then she looked disappointed that I had missed her arrival. She explained that her fiance had just given her the vehicle as a gift. "He's the boss of my company," she said.
She was still quite pretty, and I couldn't help but conjure a stereotypical boss image: a leering man in his 50s, smoking Chunghwa cigarettes and shouting into a cell phone. But I said I'd like to meet him.
"Oh, he's waiting," Vanessa said. "He had to drive, because I don't have my license yet. I've been too busy!"
We walked outside. In the parking lot sat a silver BMW Z4 3.0i convertible coupe—in China, a hundred-thousand-dollar car. I peered inside: no cigarettes, no cell phone. Crew cut, acne, rumpled clothes. He smiled politely, stepped out of the car, and shook my hand. The company boss was all of 27 years old.
"Chinese history has become the story of average citizens. But there are risks when a nation depends on the individual dreams of 1.3 billion people rather than a coherent political system with clear rule of law."
By Peter Hessler
Photograph by Fritz Hoffmann
My students wrote essays on paper so cheap and thin that it felt like the skin of an onion. The brittle pages tore easily; if held to the light, they glowed. The English was flawed, but sometimes that only gave the words more power. "My parents were born in poor farmer's family," wrote a young man who had chosen the English name Hunt. "They told us that they had eaten barks, grass, etc. At that time grandpa and grandma had no open minds and didn't allow my mother to go to school because she is a girl." Another classmate described his mother: "Her hair becomes silver white, and some of her teeth become movable. But she works as hard as ever." Those were common themes—my students valued patience and diligence, and they liked to write about family. National events often left them perplexed. "I'm a Chinese, but I feel it difficult to see my country clearly," wrote a woman named Airane. "I believe there are many young people are as confused as I'm."
Her teacher felt the same way. In 1996 I had been sent to China as a Peace Corps volunteer, and that was the first time I had lived in the country and studied the language. The only thing I knew for certain was that the place was bound to change. Deng Xiaoping was still alive, although there were rumors that he was in poor health. Hong Kong still belonged to the British; China had yet to join the World Trade Organization; Beijing had recently failed in its bid to host the 2000 Olympics. On the middle Yangtze, the government was building the world's largest hydroelectric dam, the Three Gorges project, and I was assigned to a teaching job in Fuling, a small city that would be affected by the new dam. The Yangtze was visible from my classroom, and with every glimpse I wondered how this mighty river could ever become a lake.
In the beginning much of what I learned about China came from reading the onion-skin essays, layer by layer. The past could be painful for my students—when they wrote about history, it was usually personal. Even a distant event like the 19th-century Opium War made them indignant, because the Chinese believed that such foreign aggression had initiated the country's long decline. When it came to modern disasters—the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution—they left much unsaid. "If I had been Mao Zedong," wrote a tactful student named Joan, "I wouldn't have let the thing happen between 1966 and 1976." But they refused to judge their elders. Eileen wrote: "Today, when we see [the Cultural Revolution] with our own sight, we'll feel our parents' thoughts and actions are somewhat blind and fanatical. But if we consider that time objectly, I think, we should understand and can understand them. Each generation has its own happiness and sadness. To younger generation, the important thing is understanding instead of criticizing."
They were the first Chinese to grow up in the post-Mao world. Most had been infants in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping initiated the free-market changes that eventually became known as Reform and Opening. Nearly all my students came from the countryside, and when they were small, the nation's population was still 80 percent rural. Many of their parents were illiterate; some of their grandmothers had bound feet. A number of my students were the first people from their villages to attend college.
They majored in English—a new subject for a nation hoping to overcome a history of troubled foreign relations. Ever since the Opium War the Chinese had wavered between perceiving the outside world as a threat or as an opportunity, until Mao's xenophobia resulted in over two decades of isolation. But Deng took the opposite approach, encouraging foreign trade, and in the 1990s all middle schools and high schools began to institute mandatory English courses. The nation faced a severe shortage of instructors, and most of my students would go on to teach in small-town schools.
Sometimes the old xenophobia flashed across their essays. Once, I assigned the topic "What Do You Hate?" and never had those brittle pages contained so much anger. They hated the Japanese for invading their country in the 1930s; they hated the Nationalist government for ruling Taiwan. "I hate all the countries in the world that abstruct our country developing," wrote Sean. History was personal, and so were international affairs; a student named Richard hated a man he had never met, the president of Taiwan. "Lee Teng-hui don't follow the mandate of the heaven and comply with the popular wishes of the people," Richard wrote. "He want Taiwan continue to be an independent kingdom which is under his control."
But already it was becoming more common for Chinese to see the outside world as an opportunity, and usually my students showed intense curiosity. They asked endless questions about American customs, laws, products. Don, who had grown up in one of the poorest homes of all my students, composed a letter to Robert J. Eaton, then the CEO of the Chrysler Corporation. "My hometown is Fengdu, I hope you have heard its name," Don wrote. "But my hometown's economy hasn't been developed. So I want to establish a factory for making cars and trucks." They were dreamers, and I could tell that some of them were bound to wander far from home. In every class certain students stood out, like a young woman named Vanessa. She was beautiful, and her English was among the best in the class, but mostly her ideas were different. "Someday, I will visit U.S. to see the wide, eternal Midwest Prairie," she wrote. "And I want to know what the Indians look like, and what kind of life they lead. 'Dance with Buffalo' is my dream."
After finishing the Peace Corps, I stayed in China as a writer, eventually spending more than a decade in the country. During that time I witnessed a number of major events: the death of Deng Xiaoping, the return of Hong Kong, the successful bid to host the 2008 Olympics. Occasionally the old anger flared up, like the massive demonstrations that followed NATO's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999. That same year, protests by Falun Gong practitioners made headlines; a few years later the outbreak of SARS briefly occupied the world's attention.
But these incidents were most remarkable for how little they affected the lives of average Chinese. It was different from the narrative of the 20th century: After 1900, when the Boxer Rebellion swept across Beijing, every decade included at least one major political upheaval. Usually these events were violent, ranging from the Japanese invasion to the Cultural Revolution to the massacre around Tiananmen Square in 1989. Together they made for a troubled century, which was why my students wrote so delicately about the past.
Perhaps this awareness of a painful history was also why the 1990s turned out differently. It became modern China's first decade without a major upheaval, and thus far the 21st century has also been peaceful. And yet despite the lack of political change, the nation has been radically transformed. For three decades the economy has grown at an average annual rate of nearly 10 percent, and more people have been lifted out of poverty than in any other country, at any other time. China has become home to the largest urbanization in human history—an estimated 150 million people have left the countryside, mostly to work in the factory towns of the coast. By most measures the nation is now the world's largest consumer, using more grain, meat, coal, and steel than the United States. But apart from Deng Xiaoping, it's difficult to credit these critical changes to any specific government official. The Communist Party's main strategy has been to unleash the energy of the people, at least in the economic sense. In today's China, government is decentralized, and people can freely start businesses, find new jobs, move to new homes. After a century of powerful leaders and political turmoil, Chinese history has become the story of average citizens.
But there are risks when a nation depends on the individual dreams of 1.3 billion people rather than a coherent political system with clear rule of law. China faces an environmental crisis—the nation has become the world's leading emitter of carbon dioxide, and there's a serious shortage of water and other basic resources. The gap between rich and poor has become dangerously wide. The difference between urban and rural incomes is greater than three to one—the largest since the reforms began in 1978. Each of these problems is far too broad to be solved, or even grasped, by the average citizen. And because the government continues to severely restrict political freedom, people are accustomed to avoiding such issues. My students taught me that everything was personal—history, politics, foreign relations—but this approach creates boundaries as well as connections. For many Chinese, if a problem doesn't affect them personally, it might as well not exist.
Over the years I've stayed in touch with more than one hundred of my former students. The cheap onion-skin paper is long gone; today they communicate by email and cell phone. Most are still teaching, and they live in small cities—part of the new middle class. Because of migration, their old villages are dying, like rural regions all across China. "Only old people and small children are left at home," a woman named Maggie recently wrote. "It seems that the countryside now is under Japanese attacks, all the people have fled."
Although my students were patient with the flaws of their elders, today they seem to feel a greater distance from the young people they teach. "When we were students there wasn't a generation gap with the teachers," wrote Sally. "Nowadays our students have their own viewpoints and ideas, and they speak about democracy and freedom, independence and rights. I think we fear them instead of them fearing us." A classmate pointed out that most of today's students come from one-child homes, and many have been spoiled by indulgent parents. "We had a pure childhood," wrote Lucy. "But now the students are different, they are more influenced by modern things, even sex. But when we were young, sex was a tatoo for us."
Recently I sent out a short questionnaire asking how their lives have changed. Responses came from across the country, ranging from Zhejiang Province on the east coast to Tibet in the far west. Most described their material lives as radically different. "When I graduated in 1998, I told my Mum, if I got 600 yuan [about $70] each month, I would be satisfied," Roger wrote. "In fact I got 400 yuan then, and now each month I get about 1700 yuan." When I asked about their most valuable possession, 70 percent said that they had bought an apartment, usually with loans. One had recently purchased a car. They were still optimistic. When I asked them to rate their feelings about the future on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the most positive, the average response was 6.5.
I asked what worried them the most. Several mentioned relationships; one woman wrote: "The marriage is not safe any more in China, it is more common for people around here to break up." A couple of respondents who now work far from home were concerned about their status as migrants. "I am like a foreigner in China," Willy wrote. But the most common source of worry seemed to be mortgage payments. "Ten years ago, I worried that I could not have a good and warm family," Belinda wrote. "Now I am worried about my loan at the bank." None of her classmates expressed concern about political reform, foreign relations, or any other national issue. Nobody mentioned the environment.
For years I didn't hear from Vanessa. Finally, half a decade after I had taught her, I received an email. She had found a sales position with a company that produced electronic components: "I am changed a lot. I am in Shenzhen now, which is a big city in China.... Do you know American companies like America II or Classic components corp? They are our customers. I am little proud to have opportunity to co-operate with them. Because they are very big companies in the world, President Bush even visited America II last year. And the big reason I like my work now is I can use my language I learned."
The next time I was in Shenzhen, we met in the lobby of the Shangri-La Hotel. "Did you see my car?" Vanessa said, and then she looked disappointed that I had missed her arrival. She explained that her fiance had just given her the vehicle as a gift. "He's the boss of my company," she said.
She was still quite pretty, and I couldn't help but conjure a stereotypical boss image: a leering man in his 50s, smoking Chunghwa cigarettes and shouting into a cell phone. But I said I'd like to meet him.
"Oh, he's waiting," Vanessa said. "He had to drive, because I don't have my license yet. I've been too busy!"
We walked outside. In the parking lot sat a silver BMW Z4 3.0i convertible coupe—in China, a hundred-thousand-dollar car. I peered inside: no cigarettes, no cell phone. Crew cut, acne, rumpled clothes. He smiled politely, stepped out of the car, and shook my hand. The company boss was all of 27 years old.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, Turkey
I saw this picture on photograph collections on National Geographics, and I actually have been to this beautiful Masque, except it was all empty and was not prayer time...
Polar Bear Extinction
It's really a shame that my favorite animal in the world is becoming extinct. Polar bears are finding themselves having less and less ice mass to live on, harder to hunt, produce their young.. etc.. I mean this is just a synopsis of what's happening to a LOT of other species. They're not used to the hotter temperature so they migrate higher up in altitude on mountains or higher up north so they can survive...
The polar bear could be driven to extinction by global warming within 100 years, warns an ecology expert.
| | |
 | |
 | |
The animal, which relies on sea ice to catch seals, is already starting to suffer the effects of climate changes in areas such as Hudson Bay in Canada.
Scientists say Arctic sea ice is melting at a rate of up to 9% per decade. Arctic summers could be ice-free by mid-century. 
Prof Andrew Derocher
Current reading/listening selection
- The Coming China Wars by Peter Navarro
- Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Johari Window of me... according to my friends
Arena(known to self and others) able, complex, extroverted, observant | Blind Spot(known only to others) adaptable, calm, caring, confident, energetic, friendly, independent, intelligent, logical, loving, mature, modest, quiet, searching, sensible, sentimental, spontaneous |
Façade(known only to self) reflective, self-conscious | Unknown(known to nobody) accepting, bold, brave, cheerful, clever, dependable, dignified, giving, happy, helpful, idealistic, ingenious, introverted, kind, knowledgeable, nervous, organised, patient, powerful, proud, relaxed, religious, responsive, self-assertive, shy, silly, sympathetic, tense, trustworthy, warm, wise, witty |
Dominant Traits
60% of people think that Kathy is caring
60% of people think that Kathy is intelligent
All Percentages
able (20%) accepting (0%) adaptable (20%) bold (0%) brave (0%) calm (40%) caring (60%) cheerful (0%) clever (0%) complex (20%) confident (20%) dependable (0%) dignified (0%) energetic (20%) extroverted (20%) friendly (20%) giving (0%) happy (0%) helpful (0%) idealistic (0%) independent (40%) ingenious (0%) intelligent (60%) introverted (0%) kind (0%) knowledgeable (0%) logical (20%) loving (20%) mature (20%) modest (20%) nervous (0%) observant (20%) organised (0%) patient (0%) powerful (0%) proud (0%) quiet (40%) reflective (0%) relaxed (0%) religious (0%) responsive (0%) searching (20%) self-assertive (0%) self-conscious (0%) sensible (20%) sentimental (20%) shy (0%) silly (0%) spontaneous (20%) sympathetic (0%) tense (0%) trustworthy (0%) warm (0%) wise (0%) witty (0%)
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Reading Material
Current selection:
- The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
- Suze Orman's Young, Fabulous, and Broke
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Showcasing Troy, NY
This was a collage for a digital art studio course I took in college showcasing the town:
Theory Change in the Progress of Science
This is a paper I wrote shortly after the last post was written...
Written on May 3rd, 2004
The traditional view on the progress of science is mostly scientific for most empiricists. It consists of updating current theories on how the world works with new observations and discoveries. According to the traditional view of scientific progress, observation is an objective way to settle disagreements among scientists when talking about how the world works. The “theory-ladenness of observation,” however, has to do with “whether observational evidence can be considered an unbiased or neutral source of information when choosing between theories, or whether observations tend to be ‘contaminated’ by theoretical assumptions in a way that prevents them from having this role” (Godfrey-Smith 155). This theory was developed and supported by Hanson, Kuhn, and Feyerabend. The argument simply states: “observation cannot function as an unbiased way of testing theories, because observational judgments are affected by the theoretical beliefs of the observer” [and] therefore, [the] traditional empiricist views about observation in science are false (Godfrey-Smith 156). Another point made by this theory is the influence of the scientist’s theoretical framework when there is an experiment to be talked about. In other words, there is no language whose application to phenomena is totally “theory-free” (Godfrey-Smith 157). Hanson also agrees with Kuhn on the “theory-ladenness” of observation. He gives the example of the famous drawing which consists of both a young woman and an old Parisienne. The view taken here is that the observer can see two different drawings depending on his or her interpretation. Similarly in science, one can take different observational views on the same object and record different data based on each of their own interpretations (Hanson 11). Both Kuhn and Hanson successfully support the views of observational bias in the traditional views of theory change in science and are in favor of the “theory-ladenness of observation.”
There are some positions that have been put forth in response to theory change and progress in science. These include: empiricism, scientific realism, social constructivism, and pragmatism. First, empiricists are anti-metaphysicists who believe that all we have is only just givens of experience and truth can only be proven by induction. Second, scientific realists define truths in the universe to be out there regardless of the frame of reference or whether we can know about reality. They believe that reality exists independently of what we think. Next, social metaphysicists think that there is truth but only relative to a specific conceptual framework. Lastly, pragmatists deny the capacity of getting at the truth. Unlike realists, they think that we are always altering our truths as we find new ways to explain how things work in the world. There is no absolute truth, to a pragmatist; there is truth when it works for us best in a given situation and a given frame of reference.
Furthermore, views on science diverge as it comes to quantum mechanics and when relating to the famous Bell Inequality problem. Empiricists would say that if we can’t explain something on the quanta level based on our gathered data then it does not exist. Realists would say that if the data we have does not make sense in explaining the world then we just can’t know about it yet in this time and age of science. For instance, if Newton had not discovered gravity, then realists would just assume there to be some kind of force keeping everything on the earth attached to the ground. In contrast, unlike empiricists, they wouldn’t say that the force doesn’t exist just because we don’t know about it yet. Perhaps this is not the perfect example but moreover, if we discussed about quantum theory with empiricists from pre-Newtonian time, then they would deny the existence of any sort of particle activity going on at the quanta level in atoms because they have not had the advantage of electron microscopes and such to be able to observe these phenomena.
As epistemology and metaphysical views depart from one another, other views merge. In addition empiricism and realism, the social (metaphysical) constructivists would see quantum mechanics being more relativistic than realistic, or empiric. They are relativists whose beliefs are in a truth is completely dependent of its conceptual framework. This means that on the quantum level, they would believe quantum mechanics to work only if it is referred to on the quanta level. Similarly, the pragmatist would agree that on a quantum level, if quantum mechanics can explain the phenomena happening there best, then that is the pragmatist’s reality on the quanta level.
Another issue rose in the discussion of quantum mechanics: the Bell Inequality theory. To examine the theory of the Bell Inequality, as of current, nothing can explain why there are supposedly signals faster than the speed of light. Just this assumption eliminates the law of the light barrier posed by Einstein, which says that nothing can get to or exceed the speed of light (3 x 108 m/s) without becoming light itself. Empiricists would deny this theory completely because there is no proof of this thing that is going beyond light speed. Realists would say that either we made the wrong assumption, or we just haven’t found ways to prove the theory, but there is something going on regardless whether we can know about it. A metaphysicist would argue that it does make sense to say that something must be traveling faster than the speed of light because it is referring to a different set of framework, so Einstein’s theory of the light barrier may not apply to the quanta level. Naturally, the pragmatists would agree with the metaphysicists in saying that because the theory explains best what we can currently observe, it must be truth. On the whole, I consider myself a realist in believing the world to be absolute regardless of whether we can find out about these truths. It makes the most sense to say that quantum mechanics cannot explain the Bell Inequality because we are still missing information on the whole. I believe that activities on the quantum level use the same set of reference frame as everything else in the universe, and that we just have to look harder to discover the appropriate set of laws that applies to all.
Reference:
Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Theory and Reality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Hanson, N. R. Patterns of Discovery. London: Cambridge University Press, 1958.
Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
Written on May 3rd, 2004
The traditional view on the progress of science is mostly scientific for most empiricists. It consists of updating current theories on how the world works with new observations and discoveries. According to the traditional view of scientific progress, observation is an objective way to settle disagreements among scientists when talking about how the world works. The “theory-ladenness of observation,” however, has to do with “whether observational evidence can be considered an unbiased or neutral source of information when choosing between theories, or whether observations tend to be ‘contaminated’ by theoretical assumptions in a way that prevents them from having this role” (Godfrey-Smith 155). This theory was developed and supported by Hanson, Kuhn, and Feyerabend. The argument simply states: “observation cannot function as an unbiased way of testing theories, because observational judgments are affected by the theoretical beliefs of the observer” [and] therefore, [the] traditional empiricist views about observation in science are false (Godfrey-Smith 156). Another point made by this theory is the influence of the scientist’s theoretical framework when there is an experiment to be talked about. In other words, there is no language whose application to phenomena is totally “theory-free” (Godfrey-Smith 157). Hanson also agrees with Kuhn on the “theory-ladenness” of observation. He gives the example of the famous drawing which consists of both a young woman and an old Parisienne. The view taken here is that the observer can see two different drawings depending on his or her interpretation. Similarly in science, one can take different observational views on the same object and record different data based on each of their own interpretations (Hanson 11). Both Kuhn and Hanson successfully support the views of observational bias in the traditional views of theory change in science and are in favor of the “theory-ladenness of observation.”
There are some positions that have been put forth in response to theory change and progress in science. These include: empiricism, scientific realism, social constructivism, and pragmatism. First, empiricists are anti-metaphysicists who believe that all we have is only just givens of experience and truth can only be proven by induction. Second, scientific realists define truths in the universe to be out there regardless of the frame of reference or whether we can know about reality. They believe that reality exists independently of what we think. Next, social metaphysicists think that there is truth but only relative to a specific conceptual framework. Lastly, pragmatists deny the capacity of getting at the truth. Unlike realists, they think that we are always altering our truths as we find new ways to explain how things work in the world. There is no absolute truth, to a pragmatist; there is truth when it works for us best in a given situation and a given frame of reference.
Furthermore, views on science diverge as it comes to quantum mechanics and when relating to the famous Bell Inequality problem. Empiricists would say that if we can’t explain something on the quanta level based on our gathered data then it does not exist. Realists would say that if the data we have does not make sense in explaining the world then we just can’t know about it yet in this time and age of science. For instance, if Newton had not discovered gravity, then realists would just assume there to be some kind of force keeping everything on the earth attached to the ground. In contrast, unlike empiricists, they wouldn’t say that the force doesn’t exist just because we don’t know about it yet. Perhaps this is not the perfect example but moreover, if we discussed about quantum theory with empiricists from pre-Newtonian time, then they would deny the existence of any sort of particle activity going on at the quanta level in atoms because they have not had the advantage of electron microscopes and such to be able to observe these phenomena.
As epistemology and metaphysical views depart from one another, other views merge. In addition empiricism and realism, the social (metaphysical) constructivists would see quantum mechanics being more relativistic than realistic, or empiric. They are relativists whose beliefs are in a truth is completely dependent of its conceptual framework. This means that on the quantum level, they would believe quantum mechanics to work only if it is referred to on the quanta level. Similarly, the pragmatist would agree that on a quantum level, if quantum mechanics can explain the phenomena happening there best, then that is the pragmatist’s reality on the quanta level.
Another issue rose in the discussion of quantum mechanics: the Bell Inequality theory. To examine the theory of the Bell Inequality, as of current, nothing can explain why there are supposedly signals faster than the speed of light. Just this assumption eliminates the law of the light barrier posed by Einstein, which says that nothing can get to or exceed the speed of light (3 x 108 m/s) without becoming light itself. Empiricists would deny this theory completely because there is no proof of this thing that is going beyond light speed. Realists would say that either we made the wrong assumption, or we just haven’t found ways to prove the theory, but there is something going on regardless whether we can know about it. A metaphysicist would argue that it does make sense to say that something must be traveling faster than the speed of light because it is referring to a different set of framework, so Einstein’s theory of the light barrier may not apply to the quanta level. Naturally, the pragmatists would agree with the metaphysicists in saying that because the theory explains best what we can currently observe, it must be truth. On the whole, I consider myself a realist in believing the world to be absolute regardless of whether we can find out about these truths. It makes the most sense to say that quantum mechanics cannot explain the Bell Inequality because we are still missing information on the whole. I believe that activities on the quantum level use the same set of reference frame as everything else in the universe, and that we just have to look harder to discover the appropriate set of laws that applies to all.
Reference:
Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Theory and Reality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Hanson, N. R. Patterns of Discovery. London: Cambridge University Press, 1958.
Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
Realism of Time: A Refute to McTaggart’s Paradox
Here's a paper I wrote back in college in a philosophy of science course... please let me tell you that when I set out to write this paper I wanted to title it the Unreality of Time but my research in writing this paper has changed my position on this topic.
Written on: April 28, 2004
The concept of time has been a subject of dispute ever since ancient times. This is so mainly because we live in time so we do not see the full picture of time. Einstein suggested that we live in a four-dimensional world consisting of Newton’s three dimensions: length, breadth, and width, plus the fourth dimensional concept called time. In Newton’s universe there exists only the three former dimensions and that time is something that “flows equably without relation to anything external” (Principia Scholwer to DEF VIII). He also believed that these three dimensions are constants where as Einstein suggested that nothing is constant except for two things: one being the velocity of light, and two, causation (McFarland 18). The reality of time is apparent to most people and it has been supported by various physicists and theologians. John McTaggart, on the other hand, shares a different view on this with his argument that aims to prove the unreality of time. I will argue that time is real, opposing McTaggart’s proof by denying the reality of the A series and that there is no genuine change in the universe.
Albert Einstein suggests that everything that we perceive in the world that we know is relative to everything else. His famous Theory of Relativity describes, on the one hand, the relation between the observations of observers who move relative to each other in their various reference frames. For instance, if person A were to travel away from earth and person B stay on earth, we could say that B is moving away from A or we could also state that A is moving away from B. On the other hand, his theory is also an interpretation of how gravity plays a role in the whole scheme of relativity. As mentioned earlier, the speed of light is constant and thus it is independent of the reference system of the observer. It is a limit that can't be exceeded by any kind of matter without transforming in to pure energy, other wise known as the light barrier. This means that every time a measurement is taken of light’s speed it would always be approximately 3.0 x 108 meters per second, whether you stand still or move at 50% of light speed. Light speed is a universal constant which means that “time passes slower when you move than when you stand still” according to Einstein (McFarland 16).
Einstein’s Twin Paradox is a good example in illustrating the relative characteristic of time. The paradox is an interesting experiment involving two twins, who are nearly exactly the same age, one of whom sets out on a journey into space and back. Because of the time dilation effect of relativity, the twin who left experiences a slowing down of time and will actually be much younger than the twin that stayed behind. The reason that this is considered a paradox is that Special Relativity implies that either one can be considered at rest, with the other moving (Davies [How to…] 13). There are two ways to analyze this: 1) The twin staying on earth is at rest and the twin going on the journey is accelerating 2) the twin that goes on the journey is at rest and that the twin on earth is accelerating away and back. According to the latter view, the result of the paradox would be contradictory to itself. The question arises: Why does time slow for the twin traveling away from earth and not for the twin staying on earth if we use the second frames of rest. Therefore, time has the characteristic of being relative to the space-time velocity system of the viewer (Gale 93).
McTaggart argues that there is in fact no such thing as time, and that the appearance of a temporal order to the world is a mere appearance. He supports this in a work he published in 1908 called “The Unreality of Time.” He begins by characterizing that there are only two ways in which we can distinguish positions in time. One way is by referring to events as movement through time by using words such as past, present, or future: this he named the A-Series. The B-Series on the other hand, consists of orderly, related events, such that if Bob is before Jane, and Tom is after Bob, then Jane is always after Bob and before Tom. This series if put into two dimensions would more or less look like a number line of related events in the same space-time velocity system.
Furthermore, McTaggart’s proof of the unreality of time includes the use of deductive reasoning by introducing the concept of change in the universe. McTaggart argues that the B series alone does not constitute a proper time series, and the A series is essential to time. His reason for this is that change is essential to time, and the B series without the A series does not involve genuine change, since B series positions are forever “fixed,” whereas A series positions are constantly changing. McTaggart also argues that the A series is “inherently contradictory”. For this, he says that each of the different “A properties are incompatible” with one another. No time can be both future and past and future. Paul Horwich, a B-series philosopher who holds that McTaggart’s Paradox is cogent, rejects the claim that the Paradox has shown time itself to be unreal. Instead of proving his theory completely false, he holds that McTaggart’s Paradox demonstrates that the idea of tensed time, or the A series, is incoherent; and he sees that the Paradox as supporting evidence for the B series (Farmer 20). For instance, in his Asymmetries in Time Horwich points out that “it is impossible that the history of the universe contain the three facts: E is past, E is now, E is future” (Farmer 134). Nevertheless, McTaggart insists, for each moment in the A series it must possess all of the different A series properties, since a time that is future will eventually be present and past, and etc (Horwich 24). Thus this is false due to Horwich’s claim from above, and therefore, time must be real.
McTaggart interprets other philosophers’ views on time as being unreal in his brief introduction to the Unreality of Time, “In philosophy… time is treated as unreal by Kant… ” (McTaggart 110) Kant’s account of McTaggart’s proof exhibits a different perspective on his argument according to some people. Kant's general opinion of how we see the world is that we don't actually experience the objects we perceive. Just like we wouldn't consider a photograph of a tiger to be an actual tiger; no one would be scared of the animal just by viewing its picture. According to Kant we should not trust all the information we receive by our five senses. Thus, in truth, all we experience is the representation of the animal not the animal itself. Thus, there is no on-goingness in time; everything is all there at once. Hence, McTaggart’s A series is false.
In proving that the A series is untrue, we can now move on by saying that there is no genuine change, that everything is all there at once, supported by absolutists. In the absolutist view of the world, there is no present, future, or past, there is everything at once. McTaggart's example of the Greenwich Prime Meridian further demonstrates his misleading view for the necessity of his A series. Assuming that time is one dimensional; we can imagine the Greenwich meridian being a time line. Call point X, within the United Kingdom, "Monday". Point X’, not in the United Kingdom, shall be called "not Monday". If time is one dimensional, and we exist at a single point in time, then we can imagine ourselves as observers standing either at X (Monday) or X’ (not Monday) or somewhere else, but never in more than one place on the Greenwich meridian. If we stand at Monday and look around, we see the United Kingdom. Traveling to Tuesday, we see something which is not the United Kingdom. When asked if there was a change, we must say "Yes, there was a change." Now imagine that we have broken free of our one-dimensional time line and we are now orbiting above the earth looking at the Greenwich meridian. We see a line drawn on the surface of the earth. Is there any change? Of course not, we are looking at a line that always spans the globe. The point of this is to demonstrate that as long as we consider ourselves the be within time, and only able to experience the present, then we will see change as we move along a time line. If we are looking down upon time from a different dimension, we are able to see more than one point of time at once and will not see the change. McTaggart clearly states that we only experience the present, but violates this statement with his example. In this argument McTaggart was looking for change in the “wrong place”, and McTaggart's retort only strengthened this contention (Farmer 138). Thus, time must be absolute and that change is nonexistent, and if there is a sense of change, it only exists perceptually, relative to the viewer’s position and his or her frame of reference.
In addition, we may refer to time as eternal, but there is more than one way of interpreting eternity. The Christians believe that God is eternal and others say that God created time. When referring to the word “eternal” there are two completely different ways of defining it. One definition of eternal is for something to be “everlasting or existing without beginning or end for an infinite duration” (Davies’s [God…] 133). An absolutist would side with this first definition in that it accounts time as being all there at once instead of ever changing. The other definition, contrary to the first, simply defines eternal as being “timelessness” (McTaggart 113).
Furthermore, taking the view on the other side of McTaggart’s argument we would assume that there is genuine change and that time is not eternal. Some theologians suggest that time is growing or expanding and thus ever changing. In this view, we can deny the validity of McTaggart’s B series because if time is forever growing and expanding, then there is no future when we are at now. If we are at the present, there is only now and the past. Thus, this proves the falsity of his B series and that since there is genuine change, we can say that time is also real (Farmer 110).
If I had to take a side, I would most likely support Horwich and numerous other scientists on accounting that in fact time does exist. Contrary to McTaggart’s proof of the unreality of time, I disagree with there being change in the space-time velocity system which we live in. I believe that there is absoluteness in the universe and that change is unreal, it is more or less an illusion played by our perception of the world. Furthermore, I think that the A series is not a correct interpretation of the world. In his discussion between the skeptic and the physicist, in his God and the New Physics, the skeptic poses a very common question: “why [do] I feel the flow of time?” The physicist explains that it is all illusory what the brain tells us we feel, and that it most likely has to do with short-term memory processes. He refutes this further by giving the example that despite the feeling of “the world is spinning” when you experience dizziness, you do not actually believe that the entire world is rotating. He says that “the whirling of time is like the whirling of space—a sort of temporal dizziness—which is given a false impression of reality by our confused language, with its tense structure and meaningless phrases about the past, present and future” (Davies [God…] 132).
By reiterating the two slips of the McTaggart Paradox, we can prove that time does exist and that his A series can exist without the B series and vice versa. If we deny the A series, we would assume that there is no genuine change in the universe, that time does not actually flow from future, to present, and then to past. Similarly, if we suppose that his B series is false, then we would say that there is genuine change except that there is only a past and a present. In this view, there is no future because time is ever changing itself by expanding and growing, creating new “now’s”. Thus, if you are in the present speaking of the future, you would be speaking falsely. Based on these two rebuttals of McTaggart’s proof, we can conclude that time is indeed real and that by denying one of the two series we can prove its reality.
Bibliography and Reference:
Brown, J.R.,ed. Davies, P.C.W., ed. The Ghost in the Atom. Cambridge, Great Britain: University Press, 1995.
Davies, Paul. How to Build a Time Machine. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 2001.
Davies, Paul. God and the New Physics. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1983.
Farmer, David J. Being in Time. Lanham, ME: University Press of America, Inc., 1990.
Gale, Richard M. The Language of Time. New York: Humanities Press Inc., 1968.
Horwich, Paul. Asymmetries in Time. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1987.
McFarland, Ernie. Einstein’s Special Relativity. Toronto: Trifolium Books Inc., 1998.
McTaggart, J. McT. Ellis. Philosophical Studies. Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, Inc., 1966.
Principia Scholwer to DEF VIII.
Written on: April 28, 2004
The concept of time has been a subject of dispute ever since ancient times. This is so mainly because we live in time so we do not see the full picture of time. Einstein suggested that we live in a four-dimensional world consisting of Newton’s three dimensions: length, breadth, and width, plus the fourth dimensional concept called time. In Newton’s universe there exists only the three former dimensions and that time is something that “flows equably without relation to anything external” (Principia Scholwer to DEF VIII). He also believed that these three dimensions are constants where as Einstein suggested that nothing is constant except for two things: one being the velocity of light, and two, causation (McFarland 18). The reality of time is apparent to most people and it has been supported by various physicists and theologians. John McTaggart, on the other hand, shares a different view on this with his argument that aims to prove the unreality of time. I will argue that time is real, opposing McTaggart’s proof by denying the reality of the A series and that there is no genuine change in the universe.
Albert Einstein suggests that everything that we perceive in the world that we know is relative to everything else. His famous Theory of Relativity describes, on the one hand, the relation between the observations of observers who move relative to each other in their various reference frames. For instance, if person A were to travel away from earth and person B stay on earth, we could say that B is moving away from A or we could also state that A is moving away from B. On the other hand, his theory is also an interpretation of how gravity plays a role in the whole scheme of relativity. As mentioned earlier, the speed of light is constant and thus it is independent of the reference system of the observer. It is a limit that can't be exceeded by any kind of matter without transforming in to pure energy, other wise known as the light barrier. This means that every time a measurement is taken of light’s speed it would always be approximately 3.0 x 108 meters per second, whether you stand still or move at 50% of light speed. Light speed is a universal constant which means that “time passes slower when you move than when you stand still” according to Einstein (McFarland 16).
Einstein’s Twin Paradox is a good example in illustrating the relative characteristic of time. The paradox is an interesting experiment involving two twins, who are nearly exactly the same age, one of whom sets out on a journey into space and back. Because of the time dilation effect of relativity, the twin who left experiences a slowing down of time and will actually be much younger than the twin that stayed behind. The reason that this is considered a paradox is that Special Relativity implies that either one can be considered at rest, with the other moving (Davies [How to…] 13). There are two ways to analyze this: 1) The twin staying on earth is at rest and the twin going on the journey is accelerating 2) the twin that goes on the journey is at rest and that the twin on earth is accelerating away and back. According to the latter view, the result of the paradox would be contradictory to itself. The question arises: Why does time slow for the twin traveling away from earth and not for the twin staying on earth if we use the second frames of rest. Therefore, time has the characteristic of being relative to the space-time velocity system of the viewer (Gale 93).
McTaggart argues that there is in fact no such thing as time, and that the appearance of a temporal order to the world is a mere appearance. He supports this in a work he published in 1908 called “The Unreality of Time.” He begins by characterizing that there are only two ways in which we can distinguish positions in time. One way is by referring to events as movement through time by using words such as past, present, or future: this he named the A-Series. The B-Series on the other hand, consists of orderly, related events, such that if Bob is before Jane, and Tom is after Bob, then Jane is always after Bob and before Tom. This series if put into two dimensions would more or less look like a number line of related events in the same space-time velocity system.
Furthermore, McTaggart’s proof of the unreality of time includes the use of deductive reasoning by introducing the concept of change in the universe. McTaggart argues that the B series alone does not constitute a proper time series, and the A series is essential to time. His reason for this is that change is essential to time, and the B series without the A series does not involve genuine change, since B series positions are forever “fixed,” whereas A series positions are constantly changing. McTaggart also argues that the A series is “inherently contradictory”. For this, he says that each of the different “A properties are incompatible” with one another. No time can be both future and past and future. Paul Horwich, a B-series philosopher who holds that McTaggart’s Paradox is cogent, rejects the claim that the Paradox has shown time itself to be unreal. Instead of proving his theory completely false, he holds that McTaggart’s Paradox demonstrates that the idea of tensed time, or the A series, is incoherent; and he sees that the Paradox as supporting evidence for the B series (Farmer 20). For instance, in his Asymmetries in Time Horwich points out that “it is impossible that the history of the universe contain the three facts: E is past, E is now, E is future” (Farmer 134). Nevertheless, McTaggart insists, for each moment in the A series it must possess all of the different A series properties, since a time that is future will eventually be present and past, and etc (Horwich 24). Thus this is false due to Horwich’s claim from above, and therefore, time must be real.
McTaggart interprets other philosophers’ views on time as being unreal in his brief introduction to the Unreality of Time, “In philosophy… time is treated as unreal by Kant… ” (McTaggart 110) Kant’s account of McTaggart’s proof exhibits a different perspective on his argument according to some people. Kant's general opinion of how we see the world is that we don't actually experience the objects we perceive. Just like we wouldn't consider a photograph of a tiger to be an actual tiger; no one would be scared of the animal just by viewing its picture. According to Kant we should not trust all the information we receive by our five senses. Thus, in truth, all we experience is the representation of the animal not the animal itself. Thus, there is no on-goingness in time; everything is all there at once. Hence, McTaggart’s A series is false.
In proving that the A series is untrue, we can now move on by saying that there is no genuine change, that everything is all there at once, supported by absolutists. In the absolutist view of the world, there is no present, future, or past, there is everything at once. McTaggart's example of the Greenwich Prime Meridian further demonstrates his misleading view for the necessity of his A series. Assuming that time is one dimensional; we can imagine the Greenwich meridian being a time line. Call point X, within the United Kingdom, "Monday". Point X’, not in the United Kingdom, shall be called "not Monday". If time is one dimensional, and we exist at a single point in time, then we can imagine ourselves as observers standing either at X (Monday) or X’ (not Monday) or somewhere else, but never in more than one place on the Greenwich meridian. If we stand at Monday and look around, we see the United Kingdom. Traveling to Tuesday, we see something which is not the United Kingdom. When asked if there was a change, we must say "Yes, there was a change." Now imagine that we have broken free of our one-dimensional time line and we are now orbiting above the earth looking at the Greenwich meridian. We see a line drawn on the surface of the earth. Is there any change? Of course not, we are looking at a line that always spans the globe. The point of this is to demonstrate that as long as we consider ourselves the be within time, and only able to experience the present, then we will see change as we move along a time line. If we are looking down upon time from a different dimension, we are able to see more than one point of time at once and will not see the change. McTaggart clearly states that we only experience the present, but violates this statement with his example. In this argument McTaggart was looking for change in the “wrong place”, and McTaggart's retort only strengthened this contention (Farmer 138). Thus, time must be absolute and that change is nonexistent, and if there is a sense of change, it only exists perceptually, relative to the viewer’s position and his or her frame of reference.
In addition, we may refer to time as eternal, but there is more than one way of interpreting eternity. The Christians believe that God is eternal and others say that God created time. When referring to the word “eternal” there are two completely different ways of defining it. One definition of eternal is for something to be “everlasting or existing without beginning or end for an infinite duration” (Davies’s [God…] 133). An absolutist would side with this first definition in that it accounts time as being all there at once instead of ever changing. The other definition, contrary to the first, simply defines eternal as being “timelessness” (McTaggart 113).
Furthermore, taking the view on the other side of McTaggart’s argument we would assume that there is genuine change and that time is not eternal. Some theologians suggest that time is growing or expanding and thus ever changing. In this view, we can deny the validity of McTaggart’s B series because if time is forever growing and expanding, then there is no future when we are at now. If we are at the present, there is only now and the past. Thus, this proves the falsity of his B series and that since there is genuine change, we can say that time is also real (Farmer 110).
If I had to take a side, I would most likely support Horwich and numerous other scientists on accounting that in fact time does exist. Contrary to McTaggart’s proof of the unreality of time, I disagree with there being change in the space-time velocity system which we live in. I believe that there is absoluteness in the universe and that change is unreal, it is more or less an illusion played by our perception of the world. Furthermore, I think that the A series is not a correct interpretation of the world. In his discussion between the skeptic and the physicist, in his God and the New Physics, the skeptic poses a very common question: “why [do] I feel the flow of time?” The physicist explains that it is all illusory what the brain tells us we feel, and that it most likely has to do with short-term memory processes. He refutes this further by giving the example that despite the feeling of “the world is spinning” when you experience dizziness, you do not actually believe that the entire world is rotating. He says that “the whirling of time is like the whirling of space—a sort of temporal dizziness—which is given a false impression of reality by our confused language, with its tense structure and meaningless phrases about the past, present and future” (Davies [God…] 132).
By reiterating the two slips of the McTaggart Paradox, we can prove that time does exist and that his A series can exist without the B series and vice versa. If we deny the A series, we would assume that there is no genuine change in the universe, that time does not actually flow from future, to present, and then to past. Similarly, if we suppose that his B series is false, then we would say that there is genuine change except that there is only a past and a present. In this view, there is no future because time is ever changing itself by expanding and growing, creating new “now’s”. Thus, if you are in the present speaking of the future, you would be speaking falsely. Based on these two rebuttals of McTaggart’s proof, we can conclude that time is indeed real and that by denying one of the two series we can prove its reality.
Bibliography and Reference:
Brown, J.R.,ed. Davies, P.C.W., ed. The Ghost in the Atom. Cambridge, Great Britain: University Press, 1995.
Davies, Paul. How to Build a Time Machine. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 2001.
Davies, Paul. God and the New Physics. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1983.
Farmer, David J. Being in Time. Lanham, ME: University Press of America, Inc., 1990.
Gale, Richard M. The Language of Time. New York: Humanities Press Inc., 1968.
Horwich, Paul. Asymmetries in Time. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1987.
McFarland, Ernie. Einstein’s Special Relativity. Toronto: Trifolium Books Inc., 1998.
McTaggart, J. McT. Ellis. Philosophical Studies. Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, Inc., 1966.
Principia Scholwer to DEF VIII.
Dedications and Purpose
This blog is dedicated to my expressive side, I've officially boycotted livejournal but you never know. The reason I named this blog A New World Order is because I feel like I belong to a new generation of people that possess the most untraditional perspectives of this world. I believe we are the generation to bring about change and betterment of the plant. Not just change in innovation or new technology but most importantly we as a generation need to now see the damage we have done to the once pure and mother earth. We need to innovate towards more humane solutions, technology that does not harm the world we live in, and resources that do not increase the melting speed of the polar ice caps. These things are no longer just the moralistic, hippy environmentalists of America, but a very serious concern for us all living on this planet called Earth.
But really, I am and have never been an human race conscience person although the above really puts me in that boat. My posting on this blog is purely of my own opinion, I have most of the time no references. If these posts offend you in anyway, let it be know that I do not give a shit. Please just go elsewhere and do not come back. I am a soul searching person, please do not take any of my posts as facts. Enjoy!
But really, I am and have never been an human race conscience person although the above really puts me in that boat. My posting on this blog is purely of my own opinion, I have most of the time no references. If these posts offend you in anyway, let it be know that I do not give a shit. Please just go elsewhere and do not come back. I am a soul searching person, please do not take any of my posts as facts. Enjoy!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)