Carlo Rovelli: “Perhaps the rivers of ink that have been expanded discussing the nature of the ‘continuous’ over the centuries, from Aristotle to Heidegger, have been wasted. Continuity is only a mathematical technique for approximating very finely grained things. The world is subtly discrete, not continuous.” [1] [2] This is what Carlo Rovelli wrote in his brilliant book, The Order of Time. Rovelli is in this book mainly concerned with Time and its place in physics. However, I think that this dichotomy of things being perceived as either discrete of continuous is relevant in a much broader perspective, namely in what philosophers like to call ontology. Ontology is the study of what is, or what exists in this world.
Rovelli argues that granularity is ubiquitous in nature. Light is made of photons and electrons can only acquire certain values. Although less obvious in our everyday experience, space (and) time are also discrete and not continuous. What Rovelli is telling us here, is that ontologically, everything in this universe is granular and discrete.[3] However, Rovelli explains that our world is one of events and not of things because what matters more is not the present state of something, but the relative change from one state to another.[4]
Biologically, our brains are only capable of constructing, interpreting and thereby modelling discrete objects or events. We have a lot of trouble when we need to construct models that seem to be continuous. Take the simple concept of beauty. When is something beautiful or not? We cannot simply put a scale to some object of concept and measure its beauty (since it is in the eye of the beholder..). Especially the recent scientific discoveries made by Hawkins and his team seem to point in the direction that we are biologically not capable of constructing concepts without points of reference.[5] These points of reference are what makes something discrete. (see my earlier Post: Our Brains are the Measure of all Things, for more details). For example, if you have only two points of reference such as good or evil, it becomes very difficult to determine whether something is slightly more good than evil. An interesting observation is that many, if not all, continuous concepts are a dichotomy. Since they are so difficult to grasp, we are left with only the two outer most extremes as points of reference, like in the dichotomy of good and evil. I think that this dichotomy is incredibly important for how we view and interpret the world, especially when it concerns anthropocentric models. Note that this explanation is one of epistemology (how we acquire knowledge) and not of ontology. Yet if we are biologically limited to epistemologically only acquire certain knowledge, does this not automatically delineate our ontology (what is)?
There is also an interesting link with one of my other earlier posts: Solving the Sorites Paradox. In the Sorites Paradox we confuse the concept of something which we think is very discrete, sands of grain, with something that seems to be also discrete but on closer inspection is rather continuous. In this case we do not think it is possible to delineate a heap up to a single grain of sand. ‘Heaps’ are rather ambiguous and do not have a clear delineation and are thus interpreted as being continuous.
The question now is this: is the world subtly discrete or does it also have some continuity? Or is continuity merely a human construct and perhaps a tool for understanding or constructing things of which we cannot sufficiently measure its discreteness? Finally, there is also the possibility that our brains have simple evolved in such a way that we have trouble modelling continuous concepts o things. Our brains are possibly not up to the task. The physicist Rovelli on the other hand argues that our current understanding of physics does not support continuity and favours granularity and discreteness. If we truly live in a world that is discrete, what are we to make of these many continuous concepts we have created? Why can’t we make concepts like beauty or the dichotomy of good and evil discrete?
[1] Carlo Rovelli: The Order of Time, P84
[2] Carlo was specifically referring here to the following: It is not possible to think of duration (of time) as continuous. We must think of it as discontinuous.
[3] Carlo Rovelli: The Order of Time, P85
[4] Carlo Rovelli: The Order of Time, Chapter 7. I will not delve into this thesis in this post since it requires quite a lot of explaining. Yet it is relevant to mention that Rovelli has another explanation for whether things are ‘real’ or what it means to say something ‘exists’.
[5] Jeff Hawkins. A Thousand Brains: A New Theory on Intelligence
Bibliography:
- Jeff Hawkins. A Thousand Brains: A New Theory on Intelligence (New York: Basic Books, 2021)
- Carlo Rovelli. The Order of Time (New York: Riverheads Books, 2018)
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