The New Knowledge

Entropy, Information and the Continued Stranglehold of Reductionism

Here is a recent article from Quanta Magazine on entropy:

What Is Entropy? A Measure of Just How Little We Really Know. | Quanta Magazine

Notice how “uncertainty” is being defined. As a lack of knowledge of details.

The problem is the reductionist assumption that details are what make a thing. That detailed knowledge is what defines the object or process.

I argue for redefining knowledge such that it moves us away from this fine-grained reductionism, towards that which is observed at the surface, since at the surface is where emergence occurs, and emerges is fundamentally disconnected from details.

Entropy is not about uncertainty as much as it is about multiple realizability; the more microscopic configurations that are possible (higher entropy) the more stable the emergent property or physical pattern, which in fact leads to more certainty about what we are looking at.

But one must accept emergent knowledge as the “new knowledge” going forward. Not the details. Details only serve to drive the higher level, non-detailed patterns that matter.

See DND: tinyurl.com/yc5fusjs