Finitude and Infinitude

Last week, our discussion got into the idea of complete determinism -- a topic that will come up soon as we pursue Unit 3's Concept of Free-Will through Camus' piece, The Stranger (easily one of the most popular texts I've ever taught to students).  Now first, I'll say that I've never been a fan of the overly-scientific determinism that has become increasingly popular in our increasingly scifi-based society.  So, of course that colors my interpretation a bit, as I seek to prove things to myself for my already preconceived understanding :)

While I definitely believe that our understanding continues to increase over time with more and more discovery.  At the same time, I think that the more and more we continue to increase our understanding, the more and more we realize how much we don't understand -- each question, and answer, simply opens up a new realm of possible questions that need answering as the universe continues to expand into infinity.

So if we're even going to assume a scientific standpoint, we have to look at some of the presuppositions even that entails itself, before we argue for determinism or against free will.  If we're going to assume strict scientism, we have to accept entropy and the infinite expansion of the universe.  Something, which I've always had a hard time conceptualizing -- well, mostly because I've always tried to picture the universe somehow.  I remember as a kid, picturing in my mind the solar system. Then, trying to expand it past that to more galaxies, and then ultimately the universe.  However, I always knew the pitfalls of my thinking -- I can't force a picture of the universe (maybe the KNOWN universe, but not the universe in its entirety).  Anytime I drew a picture in my mind, I could always recognize the 'end of the paper' so to speak, and recognized that that wasn't the infinite universe.

My husband Andy always puts infinity in the clearest perspective for me.  He describes it like this:  Think of a library full of an infinite amount of white books, and an infinite amount of red books.  If you were to take away ALL of the red books, you would STILL have an infinite amount of books total.  The thought is totally crazy, but this is about as accurate of a conceptualization of infinity as I can wrap my mind around.So let's say we accept that the universe is infinite.  That means to me, then, that there is an infinite amount of stuff, and infinite amount of possibilities, an infinite amount of change.

It was brought up in class that if were could learn ALL there was about a person, their genetic history, past behaviors, etc. that it would be conceivable to predict everything about their futures.  However, this limits it down to one person's experience.  Humans are a social creature, and a lot of our life-situations are on dependent upon the circumstances that surround us.  Fine, we grant that, and say then we must learn ALL there is to know about the people and places surrounding those individuals.  Unfortunately, we meet the same issue with each expansion -- in order to learn ALL about those people, we must expand to all of their influences and environments and peoples within the circumstances, and this continues to expand (if you include both past and present) until it eventually becomes infinite, like the Universe (in fact it becomes knowledge OF the universe, which by our prior admission, is infinite).

But, using the words 'infinite" and "all" are incompatible.  We cannot know ALL because ALL assumes beginning and end -- finitude.  It's a limitation. We cannot ever know "all" about infinitude -- there is no all (see the library example above).  As a result, I don't see it as ever possible for us to learn everything there is to know, because everything means there is a finite amount of things to know, which is contradictory.  As a result, I definitely don't see it possible for us to ever determine human behavior with absolute certainty (sure, we can do some of that, based on averages and probabilities and such, but this is not certainty by any stretch, and there are plenty of instances where we defy our own probabilities).  As a result of this -- even if there is a greater being out there -- free-will seems to be a thing for us, and as we'll never be able to predict with absolute certainty, we might as well live as if free-will is the case for us.