Abstract
This chapter draws on the material developed in the first three chapters and, in part, recasts it into a semiformal set of axioms and theorems, beginning with another look at the causality issue because it is so central to the physiogenetic model. This is followed by three sections on assumptions, axioms, and a transitional axiom, the last dealing with the problem of starting at or above the level of an atom. The theorems come next, divided into two sections: primary and secondary theorems. Secondary theorems are more descriptive than derivative. The concluding sections extend the physiogenetic model to abstract and sociological systems (in part, figuratively), present a graph showing relationships among systems that can and cannot reverse entropy, preview how the book applies the model to representative systems, and offer a summary view on the potential utility of the model.
The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.
—Albert Einstein
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Notes
Although Walter Heisenberg developed the uncertainty principle,his subsequent 1932 Nobel prize cited it as the indeterminacy principle.
Niels Bohr balked until Heisenberg anchored the uncertainty principle to his own complementarity idea. See Rhodes, pp. 130–132.
Max Planck also balked at the idea of no causality, despite the determinacy-versus-indeterminacy issue. See Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, Great Books of the Western World, 2nd ed., vol. 56, pp. 102–103.
James R. Newman, book review of David Bohm’s Causality and Chance in Modern Physics, Scientific American, January 1958, pp. 111–112.
Leon Lederman [interview with D. Teresi],“ Modern Maturity, June 1994, pp. 60–62.
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster Inc., 1990), p. 1235.
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 150.
Personal letter from David B. Guralnick, May 18, 1976.
David B. Guralnick, ed., Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language ( New York: The World Publishing Company, 1972 ), p. 481.
Scientists look into the next century,“ Financial Times, September 14/15, 1996, p. 4.
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© 1997 George M. Hall
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Hall, G.M. (1997). Derivations and Applications. In: The Ingenious Mind of Nature. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6020-7_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6020-7_4
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