Well, whatever. In any case, what Nietzsche called “quanta” are not the smallest particles in physics, but rather that of which these particles consist. So indeed, such a smallest “particle” would be the result of the interaction of quanta. Neither Nietzsche nor quantum physics believe in “substance”, as the smallest particles of “substance” can themselves be destroyed (e.g., by nuclear fission).
“The concept of substance is a consequence of the concept of the subject: not the reverse! If we relinquish the soul, “the subject,” the precondition for “substance” in general disappears. One acquires degrees of being, one loses that which has being.”
[Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 485.]
Quantum means “how much”, of course. We might also say: “to what degree”.
“The degree to which we feel life and power (logic and coherence of experience) gives us our measure of “being,” “reality,” not-appearance.”
[ibid.]
What about this, then. Let’s try something new for a moment.
How do you claim that in a finite universe, there is chaos? This doesn’t work. If the entire universe is always existing toward a point where it will collapse, then there can never be a state of real chaos within that universe, since all events must be part of the summary of all events that are leading to the end of the universe. Understand? Okay, think of a circle. The duration of its existence is finite…it, as a line, will occupy a former position eventually. Any single moment or event is either after a former moment or event, or will be before a moment or event. The only time it can be the former case is if it is the first moment and event. If this is so, there had to be a first moment and event, and therefore there will be a last (when the circle reaches a former point). If this, in turn, is the case, there is no point on the circle that is truly chaotic or disorganized or in “flux”. Nonlinearly, the same principle applies. Every moment is precisely in order with the necessary effect it shall have after being affected itself. This system is airtight…not a moment or event escapes this causal relationship.
There is no real chaos where there was a beginning and where there will be an end. Agree?
Nietzsche was not alive during the time of the science of quantum physics, so he could not have known what “particles consist of”, much less that there are even things called particles.
What I’m trying to explain to you is that his concept of the “quanta” is only a kind of lexiconic anchoring for his brand of metaphysics/epistemology. He is using the term to refer to what he is trying to explain as the smallest, most fundamental unit of substance, of what exists. He can certainly invent such a term, but what it really means, what it really verifies, is in question.
Dio, are you sure? What does the eternal recurrence infer if not, in the least, an end to new events?
Nietzsche may mean that this repetition is endless, but he cannot mean new possibilities for “being”. What happens the “first time” must happen again, ad infinitem.
No. Heidegger refuted this interpretation -the eternal return of the self-same - quite thoroughly in his essay “Nietzsche’s Zarathustra”. I don’t have time to discuss it - nor do I have the patience to delve into so frustrating a topic at the moment - but suffice it to say that the concept does not actually entail the repetition of given events or moments in time, or even states of energy or ‘force’. I’m hoping Sauwelios has the essay on-hand and can jump into it with more vigor than I can muster.
This is where you are mistaken. Nietzsche’s philosophy is quantum mechanics avant la lettre. Philosophy need not follow science; rather, it can reason out things that science will only confirm later.
No, that is not true. A quantum is not a particle - neither for Nietzsche, nor for quantum physics. That it can behave as a particle, i.e., can be regarded as a particle for practical purposes is the reason it is meaningful to think of “quanta” of force at all.
As a philosopher, I can reason out that quanta do not exist - that there can be no two equal or even one self-same quantum. Even quantum physics is still thinking in terms of mathematics. Mathematics is Platonic: it does not correspond to the physical world (is a simplification and an abstraction of the physical world).
There are no “new events” for Nietzsche. The recurrence is the original occurrence. The eternal return of the same is really the same return of eternal flux.
There are no repetitions; there is only one circle.
Nietzsche had no conception of quantum uncertainty. He thought it possible that an all-seeing eye could know everything about the universe (scientifically speaking). I am referring to the passage about the waterfall.
I can’t recall that passage. But Dionysus is right: Nietzsche only thought that if such an eye could exist (which he didn’t think possible, of course), it could know everything about the universe.
The so-called “uncertainty principle” arises from the attempt to define that which is indefinite. As I said, I can reason out that no definite quanta can exist. I think Nietzsche may have seen this, too, aware as he was of the “soul superstition” as he called it.
I cannot at this point make myself any clearer than by saying that force is finite, yet not definite. A “quantum” (amount) has no definite bounds, yet that does not make it an infinite amount. In fact, I think that the words “infinite” and “unlimited” have been perverted precisely by their use in combination with words like “amount”, “number”, etc. Infinity is not a number; likewise, an amount is by definition a definite amount. Logic and language (note the etymology of logos) are simplifications (in the literal, etymological sense, as well). Fact is that without the idea of a “soul” or its equivalent, there can be no consciousness (hence Jung calls the subsumation of consciousness by the unconscious “loss of soul”).
Upon The Waterfall
When we look at a waterfall, we may think that we can see free will and choice in the innumerable turnings, meanderings, and breaking of the waves; but, on the contrary, everything is necessary, and it is possible to calculate every movement mathematically. And it is just the same with human actions. If one were omniscient, one would find it simple to calculate every single action in advance, every advancing step on the pathways to knowledge, every error, every act of malice. The acting man is entrapped in his illusion of volition. If the wheel of the world were to stop turning for a second and an all-knowing, calculating mind existed to take advantage of this hiatus, he would be able to plunge deep into the most distant future of all beings, and be able to describe every rut burrowed across the path of the wheel. This self-delusion of the acting man, this assumption that there is such a thing as free will, is also part of the calculable mechanism. - Human, All Too Human.
Thus, Nietzsche is suggesting that one can have precise knowledge of both the location and momentum of an electron, for example, or that such knowledge is inconsequential in terms of predicting future events. But I don’t think he would have made this second assertion.
First, let us note that this was Human, All Too Human, which was written in 1878, I believe. As you can see in The Will to Power (especially book III), most of his epistemology is from well after 1883 (and this, the necessity of some form of the soul superstition for consciousness, is an epistemological issue).
Secondly, I think Nietzsche would understand - this is simple Newtonian physics - that if the “wheel of the world” would stand still, that is, if we could make a recording of any one “moment” in the (r)evolution of the universe, there would be no momentum at all: for momentum is a product of (mass and) velocity, and velocity is traveled distance divided by elapsed time. Elapsed time means the time elapsed between two moments. If there is only one moment, i.e., if the elapsed time between the two moments is zero, this means we have to divide the traveled distance (it does not matter that this is also zero) by zero, which is meaningless.
The point is that, at any one moment, there is no velocity, because there is no motion (recall Zeno’s Paradox).
And of course, when recording the (r)evolution of the universe between two “moments”, there is no one location. So even with Newtonian physics, we cannot know both the location and the momentum of a particle at the same time.
Gentlemen, unless “quanta” refers to a scientifically verifiable entity, an “observable” object, it is a metaphysical concept. If it is a metaphysical concept, it is only postulation in an overall theory- if it is just a theory- then it is possible that it is wrong- if it could be wrong- “quanta” might not mean anything.
This is one problem with metaphysics. Consider Leibniz’s “monad”. Or Spinoza’s “sybstance”. What is it? It is a theoretical entity in a larger model of metaphysics. Nietzsche has done the same with his idea of “quanta”.
EITHER what each describe as a real “thing” can be verified through obervationable science, or each thing is no more than an arbitrary concept.
If all three are using those terms to re-describe “physical” being, they are simply describing one aspect of what out modern physicists call “light”. Therefore, the concept is no longer theirs…but belongs again where it could have only began…in physics. These philosophers are all conceptualizing what can only qualify as “real” through the verification of the scieitific method.
The reason why “quanta” works so well in Nietzsche’s theory is because it is a word that compliments any and all possible uses of it, such that it would almost be impossible to use it incorrectly. Give me an example of what is not “quanta”…or better, something quanta cannot do. Chances are you arrive at what is already the last quantum theory available to observational science: light behaves as particle and waves. And I got news for ya…none of that stuff is chaotic. Everything in nature is determined and necessary. Just because you can only calculate what is probable, doesn’t mean that what will happened is not determined.
The whole concept of an “entity” or “object” is metaphysical. “Observation” is already interpretation: you can only contemplate your image of the observed, never the observed itself (supposing there even is an observed apart from your observation, and the image is not a figment of your imagination).
This is ILovePhilosophy, by the way; not ILoveScience. I would like to invoke Heidegger’s statement here that “science does not think”, which he has explained in a television interview:
“Science does not move in the dimension of philosophy; it is, however, unwittingly dependent on this dimension. For instance, physics moves in the domain of space and time and motion. What motion, what space, what time is, science as science cannot determine. Science thus does not think, i.e., it cannot even think in that sense with its methods. I cannot, for instance, physically or by physical methods say what physics is; what physics is, I can only say thinking, philosophising.” youtube.com/watch?v=6BHvdTZomK8
Yes and no. The “language” we use to describe experience is metaphysical because it is a reference and not a thing. The things experienced are not metaphysical, they are material, and the reality of the things which allow us to describe things with language is certain. That is, it is real without description. Hence, your using both terms “entity” and “object” to describe a category called “metaphysical”. As of yet, nobody has been able to demonstrate the “metaphysical”…it remains a construct in language.
We are essentially arguing the “meaning” of term used in language. I do not so much wonder what language “means” as I wonder what it “verifies”. I may say that despite your ability to demonstrate exactly what either of the concepts are, you are no less describing something, and that “somethingness” is not in language. The terminology in language is contingent.
This is Kantian representationalism and I don’t follow it. There is nothing beyond the object that is observed. It is, as Sartre put it, the totality of the phenomena in profile. When I see a “tree”, I am seeing “the seeing of treeness”, and if I then see the atoms of the “tree”, I am seeing the “seeing the atomness of the treeness”. None of these compositional parts refer to anything behind them, such as a noumenal reality beyond interpretation. What you inevitably face is proving that the universe must be percieved by a “final eye” in order for you to exist in it, perceiving parts of it yourself, which would not exist without your observing them.
You theory there is hard idealism, Berkelean in a sense.
The quote from Heidegger. There is a difference between doing and thinking, in the “philosophical” sense. Philosophy is speculation in language, not experimentation and practice, so philosophy must always be about scientific findings and theories- not vice-versa.
I don’t mean to be trying to get the last word here, Saully, and I am being honest in my disagreements. I’m not arguing for arguments sake.
I’ve always had a bit of a problem understanding how to stamp ‘Being on the world of Becoming’ while at the same time embracing the world as Becoming. If Nietzsche says that ‘the highest will to power is to stamp Being on Becoming’, how does one continually create? Wouldn’t continual creation totally disregard Being?
As I have said above (but then this is perhaps the most complex idea of this thread):
“Becoming can be conscious of itself, understand itself, as a Being in the process of being destroyed or created (depending on its perspective). So even if it is shattering illusion, it can only understand itself as an illusion being shattered: for there is only consciousness of Being, not of Becoming. Thus Becoming stamps the character of Being on itself even in the very destruction of (the illusion of) this Being. This is its transfiguration.” ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewto … 79#1913979
Struggle/Becoming always “seeks [German will] to preserve itself, to grow, and to be conscious of itself”. All is struggle, and struggle is will to power. Indeed, struggle/Becoming is the result of the will to become Being, which is the will to power. Still more accurately: struggle/Becoming is Willing to become Being. It wills to become Being; that is its struggling. It - Becoming/struggle - seeks to be conscious of itself as Being (for as I’ve said before, all consciousness is consciousness of Being (however illusionary this Being may be)).
The embracing of Becoming requires a double transfiguration: first, the redemption from Becoming in Being; secondly, the redemption from this (illusion of) Being in its destruction.
Becoming transfigures itself in its own martyrdom:
“[T]he peculiar blending of emotions in the heart of the Dionysian reveler—his ambiguity if you will—seems still to hark back (as the medicinal drug harks back to the deadly poison) to the days when the infliction of pain was experienced as joy while a sense of supreme triumph elicited cries of anguish from the heart. For now in every exuberant joy there is heard an undertone of terror, or else a wistful lament over an irrecoverable loss. It is as though in these Greek festivals a sentimental trait of nature were coming to the fore, as though nature were bemoaning the fact of her fragmentation, her decomposition into separate individuals.”
[Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, chapter 2, with added emphasis.]
The first transfiguration is precisely this fragmentation, this decomposition, the illusion of individuation. The second transfiguration consists in nature’s redemption from this decomposition: in the destruction of (the illusion of) individuality. But nature can only be conscious of this double transfiguration by means of an organic being, most notably man. The first transfiguration is Apollinian; the second, Dionysian. Without the first transfiguration, Becoming would be Titanic. It is only because of (Greek) Apollinianism that Becoming can be experienced Dionysian:
“[I]n the place of the Babylonian Sacaea, with their throwback of men to the condition of apes and tigers, we now [looking at the Greeks] see entirely new rites celebrated: rites of universal redemption, of glorious transfiguration. Only now has it become possible to speak of nature’s celebrating an aesthetic triumph; only now has the abrogation of the principium individuationis become an aesthetic event.”
[ibid.]