Table Of ContentT H E F R O N T I E R S C O L L E C T I O N
Bernd-Olaf Küppers
THE
COMPUTABILITY
OF THE WORLD
How Far Can Science Take Us?
123
THE FRONTIERS COLLECTION
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Iyar The Israel Institute for Advanced Research, Rehovot, Israel
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Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, India
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Department of Physics, University of Portland, Portland, OR 97203, USA
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Mark P. Silverman
Department of Physics, Trinity College, Hartford, CT 06106, USA
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Jack A. Tuszynski
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THE FRONTIERS COLLECTION
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ü
Bernd-Olaf K ppers
The Computability
of the World
How Far Can Science Take Us?
123
Bernd-Olaf Küppers
Munich
Germany
Translated by
PaulWoolley
Berlin
Germany
ISSN 1612-3018 ISSN 2197-6619 (electronic)
THEFRONTIERS COLLECTION
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Preface
“If one tries to discover something new in science, one should avoid following
well-wornpaths.Alongthemthereisnothingtobegained.Instead,onehastoleave
the road and to cross untrodden spaces”.
This advice was given in the Age of Enlightenment by the German physicist
GeorgChristophLichtenberg.Itcontainsavaluablenuggetoftruthaboutthenature
of scientific progress. In fact, the ascendance of science in modern times has only
beenpossiblebecausescience,againandagain,hascrossedborderlinestoabandon
its well-trodden paths.
Such border crossings are also the subject of this book. It asks the provocative
question of the computability of the world. This is done by reference to the
all-embracing phenomena that—in the traditional view—seem to lie beyond rig-
orous scientific computability: life, time and history. Behind this hides the deeper
question of whether the complex phenomena of our world, which are often loaded
withsenseandmeaning,canbecomethesubjectofanabstractsciencethatisbased
on experiments and mathematics.
Howfar cantheexistence andthecolourfulvarietyofliving beings,theunique
character of information and language, the compelling beauty of Nature, the
mysterious essence of temporality and the singular historicity of the world be
explained and understood within the framework of the exact sciences—which by
their very nature are designed to investigate comparatively simple phenomena of
our world? It is obvious that the philosophical question of the possibilities and
limitsofhumanperceptionandknowledgewillalwaysresonatethroughoutthisset
of problems.
The chapters of this book are based upon lectures that I have given on various
occasionsforinterdisciplinaryaudiences.Eachchapterhasbeenthoroughlyrevised
andattunedtotheothers,withfurthermaterialadded,tomakeup(Ihope)aunified
whole. Nevertheless, one has to regard this book, to use another phrase of
Lichtenberg, as an “experiment with ideas”. As is characteristic of any true
v
vi Preface
experimentinscience,theoutcomewillultimatelyonlyteachuswhichofourideas
waswrong.Thisalsomustbeseenastheconsequenceofanopen-mindedscience,
which is permanently changing and progressing.
Munich, Germany Bernd-Olaf Küppers
January 2012
Note on the English Edition
The questions dealt with in this book were the subject of a series of lectures that I
have given over the last 30 years, mainly in Germany. In order to make these
lecturesaccessibletoawideraudience,thepublisherhasencouragedmetoprepare
anEnglishtranslationandtoreviseandtoupdatethematthesametime.Aboveall,
IhavefelttheneedtoimproveChaps.3and5,inwhichIhavenowincludedrecent
advances in the objectification and quantification of semantic information. The
researchinthisparticularfieldseemstometobeofgeneralrelevance:notonlyfor
thescienceofinformationitself,butalsoforthetheoreticalfoundationsofmodern
biology, which rests largely upon the concept of information.
As far as possible, the references have been rearranged to include only articles
and books published in English. Foreign-language quotations are taken verbatim
from English translations of the originals wherever an authorized translation is
available. All other quotations, mostly from German philosophy and literature
of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, have been translated directly from the
originalinclosecooperationwiththetranslatorofthisbook,PaulWoolley,whomI
wish to thank for his dedicated work.
Munich, Germany Bernd-Olaf Küppers
July 2017
vii
Contents
1 Is Absolute Knowledge of the World Possible?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 The Dream of Parmenides. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 In Search of the Archimedean Point of Knowledge. . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Utopian Fallacies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4 From the Absolute to the Relative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2 Are There Unsolvable World Enigmas? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.1 The “Ignorabimus” Controversy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.2 Crossing Boundaries in Science. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.3 The Whole and Its Parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.4 Concerning Hypothetical Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.5 We Must Search, We Will Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3 How Could Life Have Originated? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.1 What Is Life?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.2 How Complex Is Living Matter? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.3 How Does Information Originate? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.4 Evolution in the Test-Tube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.5 Are We Alone in the Universe?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4 What Is Information? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.1 Dimensions of Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.2 Naturalism Versus Constructivism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4.3 Information in Living Matter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.4 On the True Nature of Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
ix
x Contents
5 Is Language a General Principle of Nature?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5.1 The Structure of Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
5.2 Towards a Radical Linguistic Turn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
5.3 Approaching the Semantic Dimension of Language . . . . . . . . . . 93
5.4 The Language of Genes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
6 Can the Beauty of Nature Be Objectified? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
6.1 Science and the Ideal of Beauty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
6.2 Features of Natural Complexity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
6.3 Algorithms of Natural Beauty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
6.4 What is Ultimately Beauty?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
7 What Is Time? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
7.1 The Thermodynamic Arrow of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
7.2 Weak and Strong Temporality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
7.3 Cosmological Foundations of Temporality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
7.4 The Entanglement of Time Modes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
8 Can History Be Condensed into Formulae? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
8.1 History and Causal Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
8.2 The Essence of Historicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
8.3 The World of Boundaries and Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
8.4 Outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
9 Where Is Science Going? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
9.1 The Search for the Unity of Knowledge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
9.2 The General and the Particular . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
9.3 Scientific Explanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
9.4 The Ascent of Structural Sciences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
9.5 Towards a Technology of Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Figure Sources. .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... 187
Author Index.. .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... 189
Subject Index.. .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... 191
Titles in This Series .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... 195
