I’m granting to physics theory that technological-scientific development is, on the surface of the earth, the present-day form of a process of negentropy or complexification that has been underway since the earth began its existence. I’m granting that human beings aren’t and never have been the motor of this complexification, but an effect and carrier of this negentropy, its continuer. I’m granting that the disembodied intelligence that everything here conspires to create will make it possible to meet the challenge to that process of complexification posed by an entropic tidal wave which from that standpoint equates with the solar explosion to come.
If you are like me, you are probably asking, “Say what? What did Lyotard say in that passage?”
Well, lets start breaking it down. First, we have to define some words. Negentropy or negative entropy is the process of putting things in order. Take for example an ice cube. The entropy increases as an ice cube melts into water and then evaporates and the liquid water becomes gaseous water vapor. Negentropy would be the opposite of that; gas to liquid then to ice. Complexification is the act of making something more complex.
Ok, so we have the big, ten-point words out of the way. Now lets look at the sentences. The first sentence, “I’m granting to physics theory that technological-scientific development is, on the surface of the earth, the present-day form of a process of negentropy or complexification that has been underway since the earth began its existence,” describes Lyotard’s thoughts that human beings and their physics theories help bring about our understanding of the universe to order while the universe is still gaining in complexity because the more we know, the more we do not quite grasp yet. The universe is ever more so complex due to new the physics from Einstein, such as his theories of general and special relativity to the present day physicists working out the string theory and the ideas of multiple dimensions.
The second sentence states, “I’m granting that human beings aren’t and never have been the motor of this complexification, but an effect and carrier of this negentropy, its continuer.” Lyotard is saying here that human beings aren’t technically causing the universe to become more complex. It has always been this complex. With our deeper understanding of the universe, we are unlocking even harder ideas to comprehend and figure out.
Finally, to understand the last sentence of this passage, “I’m granting that the disembodied intelligence that everything here conspires to create will make it possible to meet the challenge to that process of complexification posed by an entropic tidal wave which from that standpoint equates with the solar explosion to come,” we need to understand the context of the whole text. The text explains to the philosophers analyzing questions that do not have answers why they should not bother with those answerless questions. In 4.5 billion years, when our sun ends its journey on the main sequence, there will be no reason to answer such questions like “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound,” because we will all be gone and dead. The sun would have expanded and grew so large that it would have engulfed earth completely thus causing the unanswerable questions to be moot. Now back to the final sentence. Lyotard discusses that humans will have to create an artificial intelligence that will be able to continue our search for answers to answerless questions and survive the catastrophic moment when our star, the sun, novas. It will have to survive being in the most complex environment matter has been in since our sun and the rest of our solar system formed from a previous super nova 4.5 billion years ago.
That’s a lot of work to dissect three sentences. Why were they so difficult? Well, this is a complex idea. It requires complex themes. These complex themes are often in hard and complex subject matter and they consist of words that are not common in everyday language. I am a natural science major and have taken chemistry and physics and I still had to look up and decipher what entropy means. Also, Lyotard’s audience is not the common man. He is speaking to philosophers -- people who study language and its usage and people who have been in higher education for many years. Or, maybe he is helping us develop our minds so we can create this artificial intelligence. I doubt it, but you will never know.
5 comments:
hey kevin, I just wanted to apologize for not commenting earlier. I just received an e-mail from Mr. Johns yesterday telling me to check the blog for our partners. My pitt e-mail account has not been working properly. Although it doesn't mean much now, I will comment on it later today and maybe those comments will help in the future.
-Sam
Kevin -
Since Sam is going to catch up with this, go ahead and make your revisions in response to his comments (if you choose to make them), then email me when you're ready for me to grade it - you can give yourself several days after Sam comments, if necessary.
I see Sam didn't comment. Here are my quick comments, then. If you choose to revise, let me know when the revision is posted.
While your discussion of how physics theory *complicates* things is good, I think you're missing out on the point that technology and science also bring order - disentropy, that is.
Your discussion of the second sentence seems incomplete - especially given the larger context, in which Lyotard claims that technology created people, rather than the other way around. These two ideas are related - humans are, in a sense, tools by which disentropy happens.
I liked your discussion of the third sentence.
You do a solid job, despite a couple individual complaints I had, explaining the passage by itself, and reasonably well explaining it in context. Your discussion of why it's hard, though, seems to almost brush the difficulty off. You aren't really *working* with Lyotard's difficulty here, the way (for instance) the 10/10 paper from last time did.
One thing to think about is ways in which Lyotard's project itself demonstrates the themes that he's working with in this passage. That's just a thought, though- not an order.
Kevin-
First of all, great job on picking a complicated passage. I did not understand it at all.
I like how you first defined words in the passage that may be troublesome to the readers. This gives them at least a start to understanding the passage literally. Analyzing the first sentence- I do not have any problems with it because of the fact that you gave an example (Einstein's theories) to support your idea of what the first sentence meant.
Second sentence - It seems like a short analysis of the sentence but it also seems to do the job. One problem I do have with it is that you state "human beings aren't technically causing the universe to become more complex". I agree and disagree. You say because of our understanding, we are finding more questions. But don't forget that with every new understanding and new idea, we are adding another piece to the puzzle. Although the puzzle is getting bigger, we are still working our way to the final goal (if that makes sense? this passage confused me so I am having a hard time giving you advice on how to change it. Maybe just try and describe your thoughts a little more if you can.
Third sentence- well done with the background information. Again, nothing stands out to me as needing cut or added. Maybe discuss why Lyotard says that we need to create this A.I. Why can't we be content with just the end as we know it?
Closing- Again, good with information on Lyotard's audience. Although he is talking to people of the same intelligence, is he going overboard and scaring people away who might be able to help create this artificial intelligence?
Well done. I'm sorry this is so late. I hope these comments help a little bit because I did not understand most of Lyotard myself.
-Sam Luffy
Can thought go on without a body? Jean-Francois Lyotard tackles the question, can thought go on without a body, in his text; Can Thought Go On Without a Body? Now, I am not going to focus on the whole text, but merely a passage I found rather difficult to comprehend. On page 22 of the text, Lyotard states,
I’m granting to physics theory that technological-scientific development is, on the surface of the earth, the present-day form of a process of negentropy or complexification that has been underway since the earth began its existence. I’m granting that human beings aren’t and never have been the motor of this complexification, but an effect and carrier of this negentropy, its continuer. I’m granting that the disembodied intelligence that everything here conspires to create will make it possible to meet the challenge to that process of complexification posed by an entropic tidal wave which from that standpoint equates with the solar explosion to come.
If you are like me, you are probably asking, “Say what? What did Lyotard say in that passage?”
Well, lets start breaking it down. First, we have to define some words. Negentropy or negative entropy is the process of putting things in order. Take for example an ice cube. The entropy increases as an ice cube melts into water and then evaporates and the liquid water becomes gaseous water vapor. Negentropy would be the opposite of that; gas to liquid then to ice. Complexification is the act of making something more complex.
Ok, so we have the big, ten-point words out of the way. Now lets look at the sentences. The first sentence, “I’m granting to physics theory that technological-scientific development is, on the surface of the earth, the present-day form of a process of negentropy or complexification that has been underway since the earth began its existence,” describes Lyotard’s thoughts that human beings and their physics theories help bring about our understanding of the universe to order while the universe is still gaining in complexity because the more we know, the more we do not quite grasp yet. The universe is ever more so complex due to new the physics from Einstein, such as his theories of general and special relativity to the present day physicists working out the string theory and the ideas of multiple dimensions. The universe is more complex now, but yet again it is also more organized. We cannot just look at the complexities that science and technology have unlocked, we have to also consider the organization that science and technology have given us. Take for example the geocentric earth system. By the time Aristotle came around, the thought was that the earth was in the middle with the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn revolving around the stationary earth in uniform perfect circles. Sounds pretty simple right? Well, fast-forward a few hundred to thousand years and the simple uniform circles had evolved to circles embedded on them called epicycles. Not only did the planets revolve around the circles, they also had to revolve around on the epicycles too. The more epicycles a planet has, the easier it was to predict its motions. This brings us to a model of the universe with hundreds of circles upon circles. It is very complex. And then came Johannes Kepler, the father of the heliocentric system. With his theories on planetary orbits, he revolutionized the thought of the universe making it much more organized and easier to understand.
The second sentence states, “I’m granting that human beings aren’t and never have been the motor of this complexification, but an effect and carrier of this negentropy, its continuer.” Lyotard is saying here that human beings aren’t technically causing the universe to become more complex. It has always been this complex. With our deeper understanding of the universe, we are unlocking even harder ideas to comprehend and figure out. Not to mention that Lyotard considers human beings as part of that technology. We are made from technology and we are technology. So, in the creation of human beings and all that we do, we are taking the matter of the universe and organizing it in the many ways in which we live our lives. For example, we organize the universe by mining ores from the ground and making them into metals or deforesting the globe to place rows of crops.
Finally, to understand the last sentence of this passage, “I’m granting that the disembodied intelligence that everything here conspires to create will make it possible to meet the challenge to that process of complexification posed by an entropic tidal wave which from that standpoint equates with the solar explosion to come,” we need to understand the context of the whole text. The text explains to the philosophers analyzing questions that do not have answers why they should not bother with those answerless questions. In 4.5 billion years, when our sun ends its journey on the main sequence, there will be no reason to answer such questions like “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound,” because we will all be gone and dead. The sun would have expanded and grew so large that it would have engulfed earth completely thus causing the unanswerable questions to be moot. Now back to the final sentence. Lyotard discusses that humans will have to create an artificial intelligence that will be able to continue our search for answers to answerless questions and survive the catastrophic moment when our star, the sun, novas. It will have to survive being in the most complex environment matter has been in since our sun and the rest of our solar system formed from a previous super nova 4.5 billion years ago.
That’s a lot of work to dissect three sentences. Why were they so difficult? Well, this is a complex idea. It requires complex themes. These complex themes are often in hard and complex subject matter and they consist of words that are not common in everyday language. I am a natural science major and have taken chemistry and physics and I still had to look up and decipher what entropy means. Also, I have just bumped over the thousand-word mark to describe three sentences. If Lyotard took this long to say what he was saying in three sentences, his book would nearly increase in size at least ten-fold. Also, this whole essay has been talking about complexification and negentropy. So, Lyotard could have made his essay so difficult that we, the readers, will consider the concepts of complexification and negentropy as we read it. At first, Lyotard’s excerpt was extremely intense and complex to read, but the more and more you read into it and break it down in your head, the more organized it becomes. Lyotard was ingenious with the way he makes the readers practice what he preaches.
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