Breaking the Galilean Spell
April 24, 2008 08:14 AM Work
"Even deeper than
emergence and its challenge to reductionism in this new
scientific worldview is what I call breaking the Galilean
spell. Galileo rolled balls down incline planes and showed that the
distance traveled varied as the square of the time elapsed. From
this he obtained a universal law of motion. Newton followed with
his Principia, setting the stage for all of modern science. With
these triumphs, the Western world came to the view that all that
happens in the universe is governed by natural law. Indeed, this is
the heart of reductionism. Another Nobel laureate physicist, Murray
Gell-Mann, has defined a natural law as a compressed
description, available beforehand, of the regularities of a
phenomenon. The Galilean spell that has driven so much science is
the faith that all aspects of the natural world can be described by
such laws. Perhaps my most radical scientific claim is that
we can and must break the Galilean spell. Evolution of the
biosphere, human economic life, and human history are partially
indescribable by natural law. This claim flies in the face of
our settled convictions since Galileo, Newton, and the
Enlightenment."
from: BREAKING THE GALILEAN SPELL By Stuart A.
Kauffman
Whatever else you're reading, you just gotta read this. It's gorgeous!!
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