SECTION I: BREAKING WITH TRADITION



Chapter 2 - Network Art as a Third Culture: In Between the Sciences & the Humanities


2.9 Science and Something Else


2.9.1 Gell-Mann is the founder of the Santa Fe Institute where Kauffamn, Bak, Penrose, and others have worked on the possibility that there might be a still-undiscovered law of nature that explains why the universe has generated so much order in spite of the supposedly universal drift towards disorder decreed by the second law of thermodynamics [8]. This something else as Gell-Mann refers to it (Horgan, 1996, pg. 214) would be located beyond the horizon of current science-something that can explain better the mystery of life and of human consciousness and of existence itself. To Gell-Mann this indicated a certain tendency towards obscurantism and mystification.

2.9.2 One of the most profound goals of chaoplexity pursued by Kauffman, Per Bak, John Holland, and others is the elucidation of a new law, or set of principles, or unified theory, or something that will make it possible to predict the behaviour of a variety of dissimilar complex systems. A closely related proposal is that the universe harbours a complexity-generating force that counteracts the second law of thermodynamics and creates galaxies, life, and even life intelligent enough to contemplate itself. How could one not then summon the ancient texts of the Vedas, Buddhism, and much of eastern mysticism? Although Gell-Mann was playing when he referred to the eightfold way and to Finnegan's Wake, he did touch on that something else many disciplines are struggling to define. [top]

Notes:

8. See the Gell-Mann interview clip on the CD-ROM [back]


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