ȁȈǿ Partʺʺ: Politics and Philosophyto specify the more complicated present and future in complete detail.
Such complete specification would constitute at least an equal degree of
complexityalreadyprevailing.
Ļe world is getting “more complicated” by any ordinary standard of
judgment. More people are living than in the past, with all their individ-
ual characteristics and thoughts and actions. Ļe number and intricacy of
the works of man are increasing, including the texts of all the books and
articles ever written. Ļe state of the world at any instant includes all the
information and all the misprints in all these documents, and even the
slightest details of all the flyspecks and coffee stains in individual copies.
Affairs on earth interact with affairs throughout the universe. Men or
man-made instruments have disturbed the surfaces of the moon and Mars,
and rockets have escaped our solar system. Eclipses, comets, planetary
movements, and supernovas have affected human activities directly and
through popular, religious, and scientific beliefs.
If a later state is fully determined by an earlier state, then that earlier
state must contain aspects or properties or patterns or whatever—whose
totality I am calling “information”—specifying that later state in complete
detail. And if the world is generally getting more complicated over time,
then more information is required to specify a later state than an earlier
state. It is hard to imagine how all the detailed information necessary to
specify the more complicated later state already existed in the simpler ear-
lier state. It is hard to believe that even the tiniest fraction of a second after
the Big Bang, the universe already contained detailed coded information
about everything that would ever happen thereafter, including the exact
configuration of every wisp of cloud I observed during my last airplane trip
and including the exact times at which and pressures with which I would
strike each key during my current session at my computer keyboard. Full
determinism seems still more incredible because it involves each state’s
specifying not only one subsequent state but also all the infinitely many
intervening states (“infinitely many” if time is continuous).
Ļese points tell against complete causal determination.ȃIts being hard
to conceive of does not, however, constitute disproof. Perhaps increasing
ȃConsiderations resembling these appear in PeirceȀȈȄȇ, selectionȈ, an article I had
read and then forgotten many years before first drafting this appendix.
My appeal to increasing complexity and information content may admittedly appear to
run afoul of the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy law, and I may be quite wrong.
On the other hand, that law in its central context pertains to energy and its degradation;
and its rationale is perhaps most clearly set forth with reference to the statistical properties
of crowds of nonliving molecules. Ļe law may not fully carry over to the present context.