University of Aarhus, Denmark. September 1997
Whitehead and Entropy in Denmark
* Reprinted from CPS Newsletter vol. 21, issue1 [Fall/Winter 1997-8]
written by John Cobb
A conference on "Time, Heat, and Order" was held at the University of Aarhus, in Denmark, September 8-11. It was subtitled "Metaphysics and History of Thermodynamics." Its organizer was Neils Viggo Hansen, a gifted young philosopher of science who finds in Whitehead a satisfactory way of dealing with theoretical issues surrounding the second law of thermodynamicsentropy.
The conference focused "on thermodynamics as a particularly interesting case for connecting metaphysical, sociological and historical analyses of science and nature." Matthew Norton Wise examined the social context in Great Britain in which the idea of entropy emerged and was interpreted. Isabelle Stengers showed how the prejudice of the community of physicists in favor of time-reversibility relegated entropy to a secondary, even superficial, level of physics. David Depew related entropy to evolutionary theory, the other nineteenth-century scientific development that led to emphasizing the arrow of time. Bruno Latour was chief questioner and challenger.
The rise of quantum mechanics allowed for the assumption that the reversibility of time applied at the fundamental level despite thermodynamics. However, the general view of the conference was that this does not work that we should instead follow Whitehead in holding to irreversibility "all the way down." Participants recognized that the possibility of discussing metaphysics even in this somewhat limited way is a new one still widely contested. It was very important to be clear about the limitations of metaphysics and to avoid juxtaposing it to the relativizing tendency of social analysis of the rise of ideas and the rooting of ideas in practice.
The sins of traditional metaphysics are vividly remembered and no one wants to be tainted by them. Yet the possibility of a genuinely postmodern but non-dismissive understanding of metaphysics is emerging in Europe. In this context Whitehead has a chance to be appreciated and, indeed, is being appreciated. The philosophy faculty in Aarhus is certainly to be commended for its unusual willingness to tackle broad transdisciplinary problems. While remaining sensitive to the limits of what the current state of the discussion allows, it is expanding the boundaries.