I'll give it a simplistic, but hopefully hooey-free shot at it. I too read a lot of this stuff, and even some of the more mathematical aspects, but I am a lawyer for a reason!
There's actually a couple of different ways to think about order, but they are largely mathematical abstractions rather than concrete examples, which is why he used the collapse of the quantum wave function of the electron upon measurement as an example. (i.e. the idea that the electron really isn't in one specific place but is fuzzed out over a region until you try to measure it's location, when it suddenly has a definite location) The idea that the electron actually is smeared out over a region gives many people trouble conceptually, and they figure it means we just haven't measured it yet so we're not sure, but experimental evidence actually suggests that the electron truly exists in more than one location at the same time to explain things like the wave-particle duality of sub-atomic particles.
So anyway, the chaotic aspect of the situation is that per Heisenberg, we can't really know the position of the electron without measuring it, and in fact until we do measure it, there is no specified location. However, the order that is kind of spooky is the fact that this chaotic particle that doesn't have a specific place in our universe suddenly collapses to a poiint when human beings try to measure it, as though human will can impose an order on the sub-atomic scale. Some people view this as evidence of a design or order to the universe because of the seemingly directed collapse of the chaotic smeared out electron to the well behaved measured electron through interaction with an observer. The interesting thing is that we can see that this doesn't happen when we are not directly observing a particular electron, because if it did, then you wouldn't get streams of electrons exhibiting wave-like properties such as diffraction and intereference, which have clearly been experimentally verified.
Another separate example in my view comes from the mathematical study of Chaos Theory. Chaos Theory has been around for quite a while, but in the late eighties people started talking about how order emerges from chaos, things like fitness landscapes and how emergent properties may be predictable from chaotic systems based on the parameters of the environment in which the system exists. For example, evolution could be seen as a chaotic system with intelligence as one example of an emergent property (others could include gills, bipedalism, fur, etc.) The principle of natural selection commonly described as survival of the fittest describes the critical path on what we would call the fitness landscape.
You have many, many random mutations of which some might help an organism survive better in it's environment, and some will be neutral, and others will be detrimental. Natural selection is like walking a ridgeline with steep cliffs on either side. The neutral mutations make the ridge a little wider, since some mutations won't have you fall off the cliff to extinction. However, the vast majority of all possible muutations will be detrimental. Furthermore, the landscape, (i.e. the environment in which this system operates) is constantly changing. Long term droughts, ice-ages, predation, availability of food, etc. constantly change (on evolutionary time-scales) so the fitness landscape itself shifts. In one eon and location, gills may be on the critical path and will help the organism survive in a different location or time, that same feature may result in extinction (as when an inland lake dries up due to climate shifts).
The idea behind this is that the driving principle is in essence an ordering principle, it creates order from chaos, but there is no particular reason to explain why this principle should function other than in anthropomorphic terms. We feel that it only makes sense that traits which enhance survivability should be reproduced, but if mutations are truly random, how can features persist reliably to the point that truly complex traits can be so entrenched in an otherwise random and chaotic existence.
The final example that I have heard referenced on this subject, off the top of my head would be the theory that the order of the universe as observed on vast scales such as galaxy clusters and super-clusters is an echo of sub-atomic order that existed within that infinitessinal singularity that existed prior to the Big Bang. Things such as gravity, the strength of the fuindamental forces, the speed of llight are also hypothesized by some to be emergent properties from that same order that dictated the outcome of an event as chaotic as the big-bang billions of years later.
I know that's a lot to swallow, but the reason for the examples was to see the question of what order is as a different idea than simply the rules that things follow. In a sense it could also be the meta-question of why are there rules and at what level are these rules still comprehnsible to human observers. Bit of a different take of the same idea that Photon was talking about I think.
This post is way too long, but man I love talking about this stuff....
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onetwo and threefour... Together no more. The end of an era. Let's rebuild...
Last edited by onetwo_threefour; 01-29-2009 at 05:25 PM.
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