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IMPOSSIBILITIES, POSSIBILITIES
AND PROBABILITIES Arun Bose
In
my note on these themes in Frontier of May 21-27, 2000 (Amartya
Discourses) I argued that modern
theorems explicitly, frankly, nonchalantly, amorally sacrifice aspects of
essential realities in all contexts, contingencies or circumstances so as to
prove irrefutably that some selected aspects are absolutely or approximately
or mainly true and must be accepted. In the case of most of them, the
acceptance must hold unless and until new evidence requires enlargement of
the scope of the theorem. Thus, the theorem 'crows are black' must hold until
white crows appear or are discovered or are bred in captivity and kept in
cages or released. The theorem is then restated to say 'crows are black or
white and of no other colour', to be accepted until by cross-bredding under
controlled conditions, crows of other colours are produced. As I
also pointed out in my earlier note, some economists and collective-choice
theorists, whether or not they are also interested in politics and sociology,
have also suggests that there are some foundational or 'mother theorems'
which are more fundamentally true, though it is conceded frankly that what
is the foundation and what is the
infra-structure and the superstructure (references to all three, however
vaguely identified, are in vouge), or indeed whether anything at all can be
called the foundation for anything (a pertinent question asked by Marx in the
Grundrisse) are all decided arbitrarily and selectively, to prove irrefutably
what is to be proved. Let
me add here that Baye's irrefutable theorem about probaility (upheld by the
modern Bayesian school) is sometimes more guardedly referred to as a
refutable formula. But whether it is a theorem or a formula, it says candidly
that to ascribe probability to some event we must first specify a certain
level of existing knowledge, based on an average of various structured or unstructured
samples of observation of its occurrence. Let
me add also apropos base-supersturcture theorems also mentioned in my earlier
note, which overlap partially with 'foundational' theorems, that the
structuralist schools of historians and sociologists insist that only
structures matter, neither superstructures nor infra-structures do. These
modern theorems about impossibilities, possibilities and probabilities have
diverted attention from or side-tracked two notable, increasingly
non-ignorable on-going human experiences of the 20th Century in all contexts,
contingencies or circumstances globally, as well as separately in various
countries and within some countries. |
First,
there is the almost irresistible, increasingly insistent, sometimes strident
clamour, sometimes soft-spoken pleas, for transparency about everything,
everywhere. Constantly reinforced by the accelerating revolutions and
counter-revolutions in modern computer-information-communication-transport
technology and robotonics, it became a reality when front-runners in global,
inter-regional and intra-regional conflicts of various kinds began to make
drastic about-truns and began to opt for transparency instead of
confidentiality and secrecy. As a first step, secrets were leaked on a trial
basis, to see what happened. Next, more and more secrets became open secrets.
Then opponents and enemies began trading their secrets, at first sporadiclly
and informally, then fromally as a routine matter. Till a point was reached
when these front-runners concluded that they should out-compete opponents and
enemies within and without in playing the transparency card. Among these
front-runners are: (1) spies, agents and double-agents of states,
international organizations, political parties and factions within and across
several political parties, (2)cohesive
traditional as well as non-traditional disintegrating families, (3)
media persons (4) instruments of state terror and of anti-state terror (the
former with 'shoot-to-kill' missions; the latter with 'kill or be killed' as
their motto) and 'Do or Die' karenge ya marenge forces and anarchists
opposing both kinds of terror; (5) ethno-communities within and across
countries, (6) scientists, military commanders, businessmen, trade unions;
peasant and caste organisations whether organised or unorganised both
consolidated and represented by civic bodies, co-operatives, collectives, and
private and public limited partnerships and companies. Among them are also
atheists, deists, mystics, secularists, communists, anti-communists, fascists
and anti-fascists (and anti-anti-fascists) of dozens and hundreds of kinds,
who resemble each other in word and deed and sometimes in thought as well so
much that it is hard to take their differences seriously. Second,
not only is diversity the name of the game of every game in all spheres
everywhere in the existential universe. It seems that barring a few still unexplained
cases, nothing that has evern taken shape seems to become non-existent and
become extinct. Moreover, powerful
cross-currents of increasing and decreasing diversity in all spheres do not
seem to cancel out. Instead, there is a net increase in deversity: some kind
of law or non-binding but inexorable tendency towards increasing diversity
seems to hold. |