Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 09:23:13 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: BHA: test



And I have the feeling you view me as another Stalin here,
with his tautological "Foundations of Leninism."  Let me
reformulate my first paragraph as follows:

Whenever it rains, one might argue that it is at the same
time not raining, because the gaps between the raindrops are
just as important for the rain as the raindrops themselves.

But this was an overdrawn formulation, a joke, I did not
seriously advocate that one should say: "look out there, it
is raining and it is not raining."  It is perfectly
sufficient just to say: "it is raining", but the statement
that it is raining is not only one about the presence of
raindrops but also one about the absence thereof.

A possible definition of "rain" might perhaps be to say it
is a state of nature in which a continuous but sparse inflow
of drops of water makes things wet and therefore allows
certain physical mechanisms to take effect (having to do
with capillarity and stuff).  Under this definition, when
the first sprinkles come down it is not yet possible to say
whether this is the beginning of a rain or not; only time
will tell.  Perhaps it is even ontologically undecided
whether the cloud is going to flip into the state where it
rains, or whether it will, despite the few sprinkles, stay
in the state where it is just a cloud which does not empty
itself into raindrops.  All this does not imply that science
is impossible, on the contrary, if this coarseness and
indeterminacy were absent, then science would be impossible.

Then a storm might be defined to be a state in which the
inflow of water is larger than the absorption capacity of
the soil, so that not only capillarity and evaporation, but
also hydrodynamics become relevant.

Someone who says that the same laws of physics apply whether
it rains or whether it is dry, would still have to explain
why it makes sense to distinguish between three states,
dryness perhaps with evaporating sprinkles, rain, and
torrent, instead of a whole continuum of states.  This does
not come from the laws of physics alone, but from the laws
of physics together with the initial conditions here on
earth, the prevailing temperature and pressure and the
materials present.  Here you have a dialectical connection,
not a contradiction, because you have the confluence of
different factors generating something new (rainforests
would not exist without rain), although these different
factors are not contradictory to each other.  I guess I am
arguing that whenever there is emergence, dialectics is
involved.  Is that your understanding too?


Hans.






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