The Second Law of Thermodynamics and Darwinian Evolution are founded on arguments of identical form, the employment of which is sufficient for drawing conclusions as to the gross behaviour of diverse physical systems. These arguments are a part of the description of any system which may be called deterministic; chaotic systems, in contrast, are unpredictable precisely because they cannot be thus treated. The chaotic behaviour of the general n‐body problem, and the non‐classical features of Quantum Mechanics, follow from the impossibility of fulfilling the prerequisites of determinism in the presence of ‘sub‐problems’, and at the level of elementary particles, respectively.
Keywords
philosophy of physics; foundations of physics; scale; probability; principle of indifference; randomness; complexity; simples; second law of thermodynamics; evolution; natural selection; n‐body problem; interpretation of quantum mechanics; e.t. jaynes
We develop the logic of ‘scale’ and apply it to the study of the general form of dynamical models of interacting bodies. We discuss the logical properties of space, time and motion, treating, in these terms, the boundaries of models, the relation between observer and observed, and the boundaries of the universe as a whole. We present a comprehensive philosophical description of the forces and constants fundamental to the physics of the world.
Keywords
philosophy of physics; foundations of physics; natural philosophy; naturphilosophie; scale; space; time; relativity; feedback; observation; determinism; chaos; fundamental force; fundamental constant