The_FD

I am sorry my scheme is still to complicated to fit the discussion here, so I'll be going with a rather more general problem.

The initial question is
Can Normal and Pathology be divided in two or can are they the same?
ie: Is pathology an entity totally separated from the normal state, or is pathology the normal to its extreme?

Here is an example: a broken leg is clearly different from a non broken one. Can you see a straight bone or do you see it broken into two pieces? Here it seems that normal and pathology are clearly two distinct entities.

Now the same question for diabetes (which is a defined as a too high blood glucose concentration). First what is the limit for diabetes? 1g of glucose per liter of blood? 1.1, 1.2, 1.5 etc??? Then, glucose in the blood is normal (it is even vital to feed your cells) so how diabetes and normal blood glucose level are different? Is it a threshold? Isn't it just that the normal state is extended to a too large point that it causes pathology? This time, it seems than one cannot differentiate normal and pathology as clearly as in the case of a broken leg.

Hope everyone sees how categorization may be a very unappropriated way to think of some problems. I prefer to think in term of logic applicated to the given case rather than to apply a method that has been shown to work elsewhere but not in my case.

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The_FD

ok, let me try with my scheme anyway (it is attached below).
It is an autonomic system to supply electrical power to a car.

A waterwheel supplies electric power to an alternator that distribute it between a pump (P), and two motors (M). One of the motor (M1) acts to narrow or enlarge the diameter of the branch of the water circuit on which is attached the waterwheel. The other motor (M2) is the motor of the car.
The capacity area just behind the pump has elastic walls, thus it can widen or straighten depending on the pressure of water incoming.

Now imagine the system all off. To start it, I press on the capacity area, as the flow cannot go through the pump, which is off at this time, it goes other way, to the waterwheel. It makes it turn and creates electrical power that goes to the pump and let go on the water flow.
At this time you have sufficient power to set the car speed at 5mph. Now, you want to increase the speed of the car. so part of the power is dedicated to M1 to straighter the diameter of the water circuit corresponding to the waterwheel. The flow is then faster so the waterwheel goes faster and in turn produces more electric power, so the car goes faster (minus the power dedicated to keep narrow the branch of the water circuit). To increase the speed you can also increase the pump output by giving it more electric power.

No my question is, what does limit the system at its maximal speed, the water system or the electric system?

Remember that all this is made to show th limit of a categorization as often proposed by Descartes

Attached Thumbnails

 

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Lina

My God, I always give the wrong answer when asked such questions...!

Anyway, I'll say the water system, for you can't straighten the diameter of the water circuit forever. If we go on this way, the circuit will be closed and no water will pass to make the wheel turn. So there must be a time when you have to stop straigthening the circuit and so the speed will be limited.

But I think I'm very likely to be wrong, for I don't see how categorization intervienes here.

And now, everybody understands why I chose literature and not physics. I prefered your psysiological example, it was clearer for me.

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The_FD

Lina you forgot that you can also increase the pump action to increase the flow in the circuit.
Everything depends on how much you give to the car or to the pump, and also to the narrowing of the diameter of the water circuit.

The categorization is water circuit versus electric one. Can you separate them to look for the determinant of the maximal car speed or do you have to take them together as one acts on the other one reciprocally.

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Lina

There's a student in physics on my floor : I'll ask him your question, just to see what he will answer...

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JimiLe

There is a principal weakness in Descartes philosophy. Let's stay within the context of his program of "radical doubt." He began his Mediations by questioning everything, by asking how he could sure about what he supposedly knew.

This has been distilled to the practice of closely questioning and examining the premises or axioms of the system of thought you are using.

Descartes came to the point that he couldn't doubt tha "fact" that he was the one that was doubting and therefore, "I think, therefore I am." True enough. The problem came later as he tried to build back the world using the "cogito" as his foundation. I honestly don't remember the exact place where this occurred, but at one point, Descartes had to posit the existence of God to complete his project. And that doesn't necessarily follow from "I think, therefore I am." Of course, that seemed quite self-evidence to a man living in the culture and times in which he did.

The entire history of Western thought is troubled with premises that only seem self-evident. It was this error which Nietzsche and all the "post-modern" thinkers/artists that followed him are ultimately attacking.

There is a mathematical version of this insight: Godel's Incompleteness Theorem which shows that in any formal system as complicated as simple arithmetic, there are truths that the system cannot even formulate as well as questions which are undecidable. In short, there are limits to reason and logic alone.

Everyone knows this instinctively. And after all, linear reason and logic is an activity involving only the left side of the brain. The "non-verbal" or "emotional" correlates to the right side of the brain. And let's not forget that that there a pervasive network connecting the two brain hemispheres: the corpus callosum.

Beginning at least as early as Socratic philosophy, emotions and all things "feminine" were distrusted and only "masculine" linear (reason / logic) are trusted. All of this is implicit in Descartes' program.

I suggest we've had enough of (thinking / believing) we are half-people. What happens when intellect and emotion are integrated together instead of being at war with one another? This is what Friedrich Needs-She never got.

It's not a simple matter after centuries of indoctrination and conditioning. But for myself, I'm quite tired of carrying all that cultural baggage around. And as I look at the condition of the world around me, it certainly suggests that modern culture leaves something to be desired.

--Jimi Le