A philosophical deconstruction of one of my articles

I should go to bed now, but I have to post this first. It's just too "awesome."

I was doing a brief googling to see what would come up and I found a philosophical deconstruction (from February 2002) of an article Richard Liboff (my Ph.D. advisor) and I wrote for laypeople about quantum chaos. I'm not making this up. Somebody has actually bothered to do this.

Basic response: Hello? Anyone home? The point of loose language and analogies is that the article is meant to convey some difficult ideas to people from whom only a very limited background can be expected. Obviously, there are a ton of approximations and literary devices involved.

Herewith I include some comments to a few of his comments:

Disclaimer: I do not know a whole terrible lot about the intricacies of either chaos theory or quantum mechanics, let alone the combination of the two, this is more a philosophical thing than a scientific one, I know I get a lot of things wrong (on both sides)

Comment: No shit.



We cannot (rationally) justify the claim that the birth of chaos theory provides evidence for the future `commingling' of that theory with quantum mechanics. It does, however, provide a nice segue for the authors into a historical summary of the birth of chaos theory. Rather than an argument, it is a literary device (like exaggeration, alliteration, etc.) that aids both the achievement of the authors' goal (describing quantum chaos) and making the text itself more fluid.

Comment: Damn straight it's a literary device. That's why we describe the article as "expository." You know, as opposed to one submitted to a "research" journal. Oh wait, did I fuck up philosophically with this comment too?



Putting aside the theory of language acquisition proposed here, we see that Feyerabend believes that the form of our investigation is just as important as the content or result of it. Thus, we cannot understand an argument separately from the language it is phrased in, language that often contains suggestive (propagandistic) phrases. In other words what you say is often inseparable from how you say it Analogies to real world objects are also used by Porter/Liboff. For example: "A buckyball has a soccer-ball shape..." (Porter 536); "Nanotubes can also vibrate like a plucked guitar string..." (Porter 537); and, "Such a plot represents a series of snapshots of the system under investigation" (Porter 534). These analogies appear to be used simply to enhance the more abstract qualities of the quantum-chaotic world the authors are describing, and make them more understandable. But, it seems there is more going on here. If we view the article in the Feyerabendian sense that I have been developing above, the choice of metaphor can also affect the readers' conception of the `ideas' that the authors are attempting to put across.

Comment: You got me. I was really trying to brainwash people with that one.



In particular, the `snapshot' analogy seems suggestive to me. What the authors describe as `snapshots' are Poincaré sections taken from higher-than-three dimensional systems. In effect, two-dimensional plots that are, by a mathematical process, abstracted from `multi-dimensional masses.' These are possibly some of the most theoretical objects ever created yet the authors describe them as `snapshots'. Obviously there are qualities of the Poincaré section that lend it to the comparison: both a snapshot and a Poincaré section are thought to be reports of a particular time and space. But, other aspects of the comparison may (hopefully, for the Porter/Liboff) lead the reader into accepting highly theoretical concepts as real objects, more so than they would have without the analogy. Obviously the creation of a photographic snapshot is itself based on theory, but it is one that we use (and accept) in everyday life, one that we accept without reservations. Not only that, but the real-life snapshot (as opposed to the Poincaré section snapshot) represents things which we already accept as existing in the real world. In comparing the Poincaré section to a snapshot, the authors attempt to further solidify the reality of the objects that the section represents. Rather than seeing the n-dimensional objects of the Poincaré section as abstract objects, we are now more suggested to picture them as objects like our vacation slides, or wedding photos.

Comment: Please forgive me for trying to make abstract objects more understandable by using analogies.



As the author of this philosophical essay (which I admit to not having read fully because all I really wanted to do was provide the link and some snide remarks to a few of his comments) provides some conclusions, it's fitting that I also provide one: WTF?