Logic in Reality (eBook)

Joseph E. Brenner was born in Paris in 1934, the son of the American sculptor Michael Brenner (Lithuania, 1885 – New York, 1969). After primary and secondary education in New York, he received B.A. and M.S. degrees from the University of Chicago. In 1958, he earned a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, which was followed by post-doctoral studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1960, he joined the E. I. Du Pont de Nemours Company at its Wilmington, Delaware laboratory as a polymer chemist. From 1965 to his retirement in 1994, he was involved in corporate development and technology transfer with Du Pont de Nemours International in Geneva, Switzerland, working primarily in the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe. In 1998, he began collaboration with Basarab Nicolescu, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Paris VI and President of the International Center for Transdisciplinary Research (CIRET) in Paris. The focus of this on-going collaboration has been to make the logical system of the Franco-Romanian thinker Stéphane Lupasco (Bucharest, 1900 – Paris, 1988) accessible to English-language readers. Brenner’s extension and up-dating of this work has been the subject of publications and presentations at conferences and seminars in Europe, Brazil and the U.S.A. Dr. Brenner is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the New York Academy of Sciences; and the Swiss Society for Logic and the Philosophy of Science.

CONTENTS 5
FOREWORD 11
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 14
INTRODUCTION 15
1. REALITY AND LOGIC 15
2. THE OBJECTIVE AND PLAN OF “LOGIC IN REALITY” 17
1 LOGIC IN REALITY (LIR) AS A FORMAL LOGIC 21
1.1 INITIAL AXIOMATIZATION: THE FUNDAMENTAL POSTULATE 21
1.2 THE REAL AND REALITY 26
1.3 LIR VERSUS STANDARD LOGICS: DEDUCTION 31
1.4 NON-CLASSICAL LOGICS 40
1.5 INDUCTIVE LOGIC AND ABDUCTIVE LOGIC: PROBABILITY 50
1.6 QUANTUM LOGIC 54
1.7 THE FORMAL AXIOMATIZATION OF LIR 56
2 LIR AS A FORMAL SYSTEM 61
2.1 THE NON-CLASSICAL CALCULUS OF LIR: IMPLICATION 61
2.2 TRUTH VALUES, CONTRADICTION AND REALITY VALUES 63
2.3 IMPLICATION BETWEEN THE LIMITS 69
2.4 CONJUNCTION AND DISJUNCTION 76
3 LIR AS A FORMAL ONTOLOGY 82
3.1 REALISM AND FORMAL ONTOLOGIES 82
3.2 THE LIR ONTOLOGICAL PREDICATES: DUALITY 84
3.3 THE DOMAIN OF ENTITIES: LEVELS OF REALITY 85
3.4 LIR AS AN INTERPRETED FORMAL SYSTEM 86
3.5 THREE CRITICAL CONCEPTS 87
3.6 SOME METALOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS 92
3.7 THE LOGIC OF BEING 94
4 THE CATEGORIES OF LIR 100
4.1 THE DEFINITION AND FUNCTION OF ONTOLOGY 100
4.2 THE ESTABLISHMENT AND CONSTRUCTION OF CATEGORIES 103
4.3 THE PHYSICS OF REALITY: THE FUNDAMENTAL DUALITIES 104
4.4 THE CATEGORY OF ENERGY 106
4.5 THE CATEGORY AND SUB-CATEGORIES OF DYNAMIC OPPOSITION 118
4.6 THE CATEGORY OF PROCESS: CHANGE 123
4.7 THE CATEGORY OF T-STATES 125
4.8 THE CATEGORIES OF SUBJECT, OBJECT AND SUBJECT- OBJECT 128
4.9 LIR AS A FORMAL ONTOLOGY: NEO AND THE CATEGORY- AXIOM FIT 132
4.10 THE INTERPRETATION OF LIR 138
5 THE CORE THESIS OF LIR: STRUCTURE AND EXPLANATION 142
5.1 THE CORE THESIS OF LIR 143
5.2 A TWO-LEVEL FRAMEWORK OF RELATIONAL ANALYSIS 145
5.3 ONTOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS IN PARALLEL 151
5.4 THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY IN LIR 154
5.5 WHAT IS AN EXPLANATION? 169
5.6 THE ANALYTIC/SYNTHETIC DISTINCTION IN LIR 175
6 LIR, METAPHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHY 182
6.1 INTRODUCTION: CAUSE AND DETERMINISM 182
6.2 CAUSALITY IN LIR 183
6.3 CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY 204
6.4 STATISM AND DYNAMISM 211
6.5 DETERMINISM AND INDETERMINISM 213
6.6 REALISM AND EXPERIENCE 216
6.7 THE PRINCIPLE OF DYNAMIC OPPOSITION AND LAWS OF NATURE 227
6.8 FRIEDRICH HEGEL: IDEALISM AND/ OR CONTRADICTION? 235
6.9 THE LIR APPROACH TO PHILOSOPHY 238
7 LIR AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE: TIME, SPACE AND COSMOLOGY 248
7.1 TIME AND SPACE: PRELIMINARY REMARKS 248
7.2 THE LIR THEORY OF SPACE-TIME 250
7.3 SOME ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF TIME 256
7.4 BEING AND BECOMING IN MODERN PHYSICS 258
7.5 QUANTUM MECHANICS 265
7.6 TOWARD A LOGICAL COSMOLOGY 274
8 EMERGENCE, LIVING SYSTEMS AND CLOSURE 287
8.1 INTRODUCTION 287
8.2 THE LIR APPROACH TO EMERGENCE 291
8.3 EMERGENCE IN PERSPECTIVE 295
8.4 EXPLAINING EMERGENCE 302
8.5 CLOSURE IN LIVING SYSTEMS 310
8.6 DOWNWARD CAUSATION 313
8.7 EVOLUTION AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 317
8.8 THE THERMODYNAMIC AND CYBERNETIC STANDPOINTS 331
CONCLUSION: NEW DIRECTIONS AND A NEW SKEPTICISM 340
1. NEW DIRECTIONS 342
2. A NEW SKEPTICISM 344
APPENDIX 1 CLASSES AND SETS: THE AXIOM OF CHOICE 347
1. THE LOGIC OF FROZEN DIALECTICS 347
2. THE AXIOM OF CHOICE 350
APPENDIX 2 THE SYSTEMS VIEWPOINT 353
1. THE ONTOLOGICAL BASIS OF SYSTEMS IN REALITY REALITY 353
2. CYBERNETICS AND SYSTEMS THEORY 356
INDEX 363