RICHARD SANSOM:

Correct me if I am wrong, but both of you seem to be overlooking the possibility [and presently working reality] of intervention by sentient agents. The laws of thermodynamics, gravity, etc, can be thwarted, thus equilibrium, entropy and all such 'natural' inclinations of the cosmos [if there are any] can be altered. How does such intrusion by sentient agents, such as ourselves, play into EP?

GARY. C. MOORE: Do not take what I say too seriously. It is muddled and merely reactive and maybe wholly inappropriate. The phrase 'intrusion by sentient agents' bothers me, but this is not an objection because what Richard goes on to say I agree with whole heartedly.

1] If in a material and logically determinative systematizing - not system because all thinking starts from a finite system, the so called self or whatever, and therefore is always open, even though it looks systematic as we proceed with it, which means it requires, always, an unspoken qualifier "I think it should be understood in this fashion but I can always be completely wrong upon learning new NON-SYSTEMATIC facts'  . . .

I even got lost in my own sentence, but the point is, 1] thinking is always a work-in-progress, and second, the actual point I was trying to get to, 2] thinking is always-already within the system being thought about so it cannot be 'intrusive' as it is always-already within it, and 3] the system itself is, by nature of the mortal, finite human existence thinking it, always incomplete, fallible, and the very word 'law' means merely a group of non-systematic facts FORCIBLY correlated together because they seem to fit together, produce results, and can be replicated in scientific experiments. However, I would say the concept 'natural law' is wholly bogus because, as a 'law' it can only be meaningfully enunciated within a CLOSED SYSTEM which is only perceivable by the mind of God – which, if no logical objections can be raised and they probably should be, there can be no 'closed systems' whatsoever because the only REAL judge is fallible, finite, and mortal human existence.

So a sentient agent cannot 'intrude' into a system, or rather ongoing systematization it is always-already within and which can only observe the immediate, and therefore temporary – 'temporary' not in the sense it will change, for instance the law of thermodynamics, but that I can only 'know' it on a momentary, now now now now basis. And that, because of my finite human nature, no, rather because I simply am what I am whatever that is – another open unsystematic systematizing in progress.

RICHARD SANSOM:

Gary, if I understand the above, you are saying that as integral elements in the cosmos, we are part of it and ‘intrusion’ is superfluous.  I agree with you – if that is what you mean. However, I make the distinction between organic and inorganic entities – and in that sense, the organic gopher ‘intrudes’ into the inorganic earth, and we intrude into the cosmos – i.e. sentience intrudes into insentience .  If one chooses to make no such distinction, I simply disagree. Perhaps it boils down to the concept of ‘intentionality,’  I may be entirely wrong, but that concept I ascribe only to organic entities, and only sentient ones at that [Does that mean that sentience =  the ability of intentionality? Probably.].  Yes, crystals ‘grow’ and other natural processes occur as a function of their composition, but growing crystals can surely be separated from my choosing a certain wine?

GARY. C. MOORE:

Just like in the beginning of Hume's A TREATISE ON HUMAN NATURE you have sensation in serial order that becomes the abstraction time, and sensations as mere flow of experience become 'each', individual, become facts because they FORCE us to think of them as separate events, acts, and, eventually, facts which, unfortunately, we automatically put on them an aura of eternity, that a fact will be forever, that it has the beginning realization of becoming law-like – which immediately in 'factual' truth puts it far outside our finite human purview. We can never escape the THIS, THIS, THIS, NOW, NOW, NOW even though we abstract successful laws of action and achieve anticipated results.

  JON NEIVENS:

I guess it depends on the scale of the intervention. The most obvious example of entropy in our locality is of the Sun. Obviously Darwinian evolution itself, which can be seen as trapping and exploiting the energy given off by the Sun, runs in the opposite direction to entropy, even if it does not entirely escape it. I would say the same thing applies to human culture. That was the point that interested me in the exchange with Jud, whether order, including Darwinian evolution, occurs as the best means of achieving entropy. But on your specific point, I would say that we can, on a very local level, hold entropy at bay, but I am not sure that would have much effect on Universal scale. I do not know if this really answers your question though, I suspect that you âre asking something more specific that I have not seen?

RICHARD SANSOM:

I have always been suspicious of the concept of entropy and the reason is the apparent spontaneous organization of matter into replicating molecules and the resulting complexity [which some might call a kind of order] that has led to ourselves and our human achievements. While employed, I worked in estimation theory and became intrigued by what exactly is meant by ORDER. Clearly it is an invention, an abstraction that has no perfectly definable characteristics. There is a mathematical technique called auto-correlation that can be applied to determine the degree of order as defined by repetitive patterns in some medium that is conducive to mathematical representation. . . . But this is due simply to the construction of the autocorrelation algorithm. So, what is ORDER? I believe it to be in the eye of the beholder/analyzer. As for us having much effect on Universal scale, I see our capabilities [unless we destroy our species] as limitless.

GARY. C. MOORE:

Yes, this is perfect and I think perfectly consistent with what I said above.

JUD EVANS: 
A good quote I found to define entropy was:

*A tendency towards disorder within a closed system, as potential energy gets "spent". "The physical Universe's macrocosmic proclivities of becoming locally ever more dissynchronous, asymmetric, diffuse, and multiplyingly expansive". (Buckminster Fuller) FEEDBACK: "Any reciprocal flow of influence. In systems thinking it is an axiom that every influence is both cause and effect. Nothing is ever influenced in just one direction. ...*

GARY. C. MOORE:

Still muddled, but I think these are definitions that refute themselves. There cannot be disorder in a closed system or either 1] it is really not 'disorder' or 2] it is not a 'closed system'. Disorder refutes both 'system' and 'closed'. Though the law 'matter cannot be created or destroyed', keeping in mind matter is wholly energy, which means – no longer with a material 'subject' – it is the ability to do work without anything doing the working, it is again a tool of action, a spyglass by which to examine what actually does occur with atomic particles, that is, if matter cannot be destroyed, and yet you cannot find the missing pieces, then you continue to look for them and, seemingly, almost always find them.

JUD EVANS: 

The first thing I wonder about is whether the cosmos [everything-there-is-for-ever-and ever] REALLY is a closed system? Nobody on God's earth knows this, so how can they describe it as a closed system? Intuitively [my guess] is that it is completely the opposite, and the cosmos is an 'unclosed' everything-there-is-for-ever-and ever system that extends for ever in every direction. I say to those who claim otherwise: *Describe what the boundaries are, and what they are made of?* And if he answers:  *They are made of nothing,* I would answer: 'Ok! Go and make me a 'nothing sandwich' with plenty of 'nothing sauce!'

GARY. C. MOORE:

I would immediately apply this to the only real observer, that is, human nature, that is, Jud Evans. Though finite, fallible, and mortal, are you in any REAL way whatsoever a 'closed system'? You know limits to what you can do and know but that always comes down to specific THISES and THAT’S, this fact here and that fact there WHILE REMEMBERING 'fact' itself is an abstraction from basic human experience. Does basic human experience, pure and simple, pure and most simple minded, have any limits? Is not 'limit' itself a useful abstraction imposed upon experience to make it more profitable? Sticking a pin in your finger versus savoring a freshly baked roll seem to be two vastly different experiences redefined as facts. But how much of that is really the creation of the useful abstraction and experience sorter 'contrast'? I think if you really edit down human experience to the most literal and bare experience, though some of this distinction between pain and pleasure always seems to be there, in fact the distinction becomes fuzzy and one begins to see the interference of a 'context' of 'contrast'. I know this is vague, but I think in one's human experience one distinctly at times discovers this fuzziness of basic experience – and immediately disposes of it in one's mind as foolishness, nonsense, or even as disturbing the basic order of the universe. It is really hard for me to say more than that, but I hope that is because I am dealing with something just beyond the reach of words.

JUD EVANS:

 If the cosmos is an open system that goes on for-ever-and-ever then it means that parts of that for-ever-and-ever will eventually be affected by other [even far-flung] parts of the for-ever-and-ever. 

I was as usual impressed by both contributions and Richard's mention of the 'replicating molecules' hit me right in the solar plexus.

 It never occurred to me that inanimate matter could replicate itself - I always mistakenly [or unthinkingly] assumed that replication was a feature that was only possible of organic matter. The 'idea' of inorganic replication has inspirited me regarding the possibility of some Darwinan-style struggle for dominance twixt dead matter or different types - but yet again - can we describe matter as being *dead* if it can write a molecular blueprint of itself and have the script copied?

RICHARD SANSOM:

Jud, the definition of an organic compound is simply that it must contain carbon and some other elements like hydrogen or nitrogen, etc. I believe the first replications occurred with what are called organic compounds – though they are certainly not ‘living.’ Inorganic compounds are simply those that do not contain hydrocarbons -- combinations of carbon and hydrogen. i. e. Without carbon, we aint here.

GARY. C. MOORE:

We have always had the examples of crystals and viruses. And the law of the conservation of nature becomes useful when we consider the powerful distillery of matter the stars about which someone has said we are all made of star dust. On rare occasions and in pitifully small amounts, sometimes even artificially manufactured, we find new elements. But IN THE BEGINNING, God wanted a kind of brandy and created stars which made out of the exact sameness of nothing various basic somethings that, further distilled, because several hundred absolutely basic somethings, giving us, in actuality, no reason to see any end to the periodic table of elements.

That there seems to be real limits to what is at least discoverable as elements necessarily means matter replicates itself or that God has a hand in it, your choice. But those limits are, again, reflecting back upon what I said, very fuzzy. And we can only know what we know, and we cannot know what we cannot, in any way, anticipate at all – of which the universe may well be filled with.

I hope all of this haggis is not too fuzzy?