The relation between history and the automaton
became topical with the advent of computers and informational
systems. The need to build nation-wide social information systems
functioning like a sociotechnical nervous system is an historical
requirement. One should not only search to elucidate the relations
between these systems and man or society, but also try to accomplish
our view on the essence of man and society. There exist only two
alternatives: either man is a superior automaton or he is more
than that owing to several ultimately physical properties.
2. If cogitation
on the existence admits the solution of an orthoexistence from
which the entire universe originates and is always related to;
if the material world possesses a profound informational physical
substance which is structure-and dynamics-giving; if the material
world possesses in profundity a source physical substance which
is no longer inert owing to information; if these substances are
outside time and space in orthoexistence, at least inasmuch as
we can cognize them in existence, then how could we understand
orthoexistence? And how could we operate in orthoexistence ?
A simple reasoning will show that the solution
might be informational if we could approach the profound informational
substance, or it might be physical-energetical if we could develop
the experiments based on elementary particles or those that might
be extended to an over-all cosmic realm. In the case of the first
solution, the only informational device to meet the above-stated
requirements, with due consideration of all the open questions
pertinent to the functioning of the central nervous system, would
be the animal brain and not just the human brain, for the physical
principle invoked must hold for all organisms built on similar
principles.
Beingness, as a phenomenon active in
both animal and man but eschewed in contemporary science, might
give the key to a like connection.
The time has come however for contemporary
scientists to wonder whether the laws of nature are not actually
programmes. Scientists are beginning to take an interest in the
profound realm of the energy-substance-information relation. Once
this realm is scientifically approached, science will be revolutionized
to an extent similar to the revolution began by Copernicus, Descartes,
Francis Bacon, Galileo, Kepler and Newton and developed down to
our days.
In fact, the promoters of the scientific revolution
in the 16th and 17th centuries, Francis Bacon, Galileo and Newton
in particular, hold that the principles of physics must derive
from experiment. They did not however attempt to explore the
nature of phenomena. This accounts most likely for the advancement
of science at the time, especially if we bear in mind that the
earlier scholastics of the Middle Ages employed notions like fluidity,
essence, rigidity and potentiality to explain mechanical
phenomena2.
A stone fell because its "nature" drove it towards the
center of the universe and, as Thomas Kuhn righteously observed,
explanation in terms of occult qualities had been an integralpart of the
scientific work3.
To alchemists, the inorganic substances consisted of matter and
spirit. The spirit of things could be
distilled4.
Galileo was the first to select a set of measurableconcepts such that their
magnitude be relatable by formulas: distance,time, velocity, acceleration,
force, mass, heaviness5.
These fundamental changes in the concepts of science became thenew paradigms
in science6.
Newton stated that his aim was only to interpret
quantitatively the gravity forces because he could not explain
how they arise in terms of physics. In Principia, Newtonwrote:
"For I here design only to give a mathematical
notion of these forces, without considering their physical causes
and seats ... But our propose is only to trace out the quantity
and properties of this force from the phenomena, and to apply
what we discover in some simple cases as principles, by which,
in a mathematical way, we may estimate the effects thereof in
more involved cases ... We said, in a mathematical way
(Newton's italics), to avoid all questions about the nature or
quality of this force, which we would not be understood to determineby any
hypothesis..."7.
In Newton's view, God governs the cosmos existing
always and everywhere, constituting the duration and space, abodiless being,
loving, intelligent, understanding things as awhole through their immediate
presence8.
This self-limitation of knowledge with Newton
so as to give way to God, together with the conceptual self-limitation
introduced by Kant in stating that the thing-in-itself cannot
be cognized have stamped science ever since. Roughly speaking,
God does no longer come into the scheme of scientists, but the
thing-in-itself is still at play, though it appears to be increasingly
remote from our immediate senses.
Science has furnished increasingly complex
physical models of reality via quantum mechanics and the
theory of relativity. Insight into the living cell, the cell nucleus
and membrane, or the knowledge gained in a large number of properties
of the nervous system and of its basic constituents gave further
grounds to these models. The informational properties of the nervous
system, the recent gains in genetical biology, the role of information
in society, the advent of electronic computers, the idea of a
profound programming realm of nature - all these drive the contemporary
scientist to further exertions towards the profundities of the
material world, possibly towards one of its ultimate strata. However,
even if the ultimate stratum were cognized, change and cognition
would not come to an end, because knowledge of this layer is entangled
with the possibility of some new creation, with the associated
new laws, and the end and the beginning of some new existential
cycles. And in this process, God is no prerequisite. Knowledge
of the internal properties of matter is solely required. From
the prime elements like the water, the fire, the air, from Democritus'
atoma or the elementary particles of today, we are almost
forced to think that the world is founded on two material principles
by virtue of the increasing role of information: a source matter
and an informational matter. Substance, energy and information
originate in these two kinds of matter.
The main thing is that matter acquires the
thinking ability in the universe (both logical, computational
and dialectical, intuitive, global thought), and owing to thinking,
matter can act upon itself.
History, Philosophical Futureand Science
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