Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Wissenschaft, Zufall (randomness); verschiedene erklärende Schichten der Wissenschaften; Beispiel: Physik - Meteorologie

Kurzinhalt: It is not simply the physical and chemical principles of radiation and absorption of light which are relevant to understanding the earth's climatic ... Rather, it is the particular combinations of physical and chemical principles that ...

Textausschnitt: 4.2 Randomness and Scientific Explanation

6/4 This introductory presentation of world views might seem like a 'set up,' presenting straw men that can be knocked down. This is, in no way, the intent here, and again I must emphasize that these sketches should not be taken as responsible analyses of any thinker's work. Rather, the informed reader may recognize the problems introduced by one or more of these 'types' as a problem that he or she has had to grapple with in his or her own discipline. The following represents an introduction to the way in which Bernard Lonergan has tried to grapple with such problems and, again, the work of McShane in Randomness, Statistics and Emergence has set the general order of presentation of topics here. It will be left to the reader to compare emergent probability with the four views presented here. (101; Fs)

7/4 Having formulated a definition of randomness and of probability, Lonergan's next step is to ask if these notions can be employed to explain the fact that different 'levels' or branches of the natural and human sciences seem to explain recurring patterns of events and processes without always tracing these explanations back to a set of common determinants on some basic 'level.' An introductory example here might illustrate the problem more clearly. (101; Fs)

8/4 The weather at a given time and location is defined in terms of the categories and relations of meteorology: in terms of rainfall and other forms of precipitation, in terms of wind speeds and directions, in terms of classes of air masses and types of turbulence occurring at fronts where air masses meet, in terms of air pressures, air temperatures and countless other categories. We all know that meteorological phenomena are determined by the laws of chemistry and physics as they apply to atoms and molecules of chemical compounds in terrestrial geography and atmospheric fluid and thermodynamics, given the contemporary state of world conditions in the ongoing dynamics of the universe. And yet meteorological categories and processes do not correspond to physical or chemical categories in any direct sense but rather they represent correlations and convergences of particular ranges of values in specific combinations of units of physics and chemistry.1 (101f; Fs)

9/4 And with respect to explanations in physics and chemistry the particular patterns, magnitudes and combinations of physical and chemical elements that constitute the meteorological categories and relations are coincidental or without significance. For example, with respect to the fundamental laws and categories of physics and chemistry the value of thirty-four percent as an expression of the percentage of light radiation reflected by a surface has no relevance or significance. But when it is recognized that this value represents the approximate average annual sunlight radiation reflected by the earth2 and when this fact is linked to such other facts as the twenty-three and one-half degree inclination of the earth's axis, the nineteen percent of sunlight radiation that is absorbed into the earth's upper atmosphere, the dynamic properties of the particular combination of gases which make up the earth's atmosphere, the mass of the earth, the fluid-dynamic properties of that curious molecule, H2O, and the speed of the earth's rotation, then the particular value, thirty-four percent radiation, begins to take on a significant role in explaining the climatic conditions experienced, let us say, at Montreal, Quebec. It is not simply the physical and chemical principles of radiation and absorption of light which are relevant to understanding the earth's climatic and weather patterns. Rather, it is the particular combinations of physical and chemical principles that are operative in the atmosphere and at the surface of this particular planet in space, that converge to result in a general average sunlight reflection of thirty-four percent. And this fact, and its relative stability, are relevant to the terms and relations of meteorology and incidental to the basic terms and relations of physics and chemistry. Hence meteorological explanations do not try to explain a given day's average temperature in Montreal in terms of the subatomic physics of light absorption and reflection, but they begin with the fact that a certain conjunction of conditions tends to yield a relatively stable solar light reflection rate of around thirty-four percent per annum at a particular time and place of world process.3 (102; Fs)

10/4 This illustration serves to introduce an issue which looms much larger when we come to trying to explain the relationship between chemistry and biology or between zoology and psychology. There seem to be 'levels' or strata of scientific explanations. And while the explanations on a 'higher level'4 of explanation inevitably appeal to laws and processes on a 'lower level' they are nonetheless not conceived usually as being reducible to those 'lower level' laws. Science seems to divide into physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, etc., each with its own set of terms and relations, and each involving a further number of more specific strata of explanatory correlations (e.g. hydrology, astronomy, geology, etc., etc.). A world view that would reflect the procedures and results among and within these various 'levels' and strata would need some understanding of the relationships between these various sets of explanatory correlations and some understanding of the ways in which the processes of the various sciences have interacted throughout the ages of world process. Following Bernard Lonergan,5 Philip McShane begins his approach to this problem by asking if the notions of probability and randomness, as he has understood them, could contribute a clue towards an answer.6 (102f; Fs)