The Wykehamist
the situation of least energy( the‘ ground state’), and it is this situation which allows the atoms to bond in harmony. We can phrase this in the above language as such— firstly, the interaction with the rest of the world is what drives( any open system) towards its lowest possible energy, because the system is imprinted, repeatedly, till it is a memory, with the low-energy quality of the rest of the world( this is the second law of thermodynamics, a name often used to refer to this entire thesis though it originally, as per the name, only refers to this specific example, and though it is posited empirically and not‘ derived’ from the abstract image of memory above), and secondly, because the bond itself is a remembrance, through the many interactions of the atoms, of which combined state of the two does the first thermodynamic task best. Now, naturally, the forcing of the word memory here is unnatural, perhaps taking the unification of this rather scientific thesis with the nostalgia with which I will conclude this piece too far, and a more elegant approach to incorporating chemistry into this thesis is by describing it is a computationally irreducible( terminology borrowed from Stephen Wolfram’ s work, A New Kind of Science being the key text, meaning that it cannot be predicted from its parts in isolation) syngenetic set of structures over physics, meaning in lay terms that a molecular bond is something in‘ memory harmony’ with the rest of the world composed in a more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts way of pieces that are themselves in‘ memory harmony’ with the rest of the world( atoms).
Language, then, is a molecular bond where the atoms are us and the molecule is society. This is more than analogy, too; the natural entropy( natural unpredictability) of language, LLMs have shown us( their softmax sampling), is very similar in mathematical form to the randomness that appears as the discrepancy( in my outthere thinking) between Kant’ s thing-in-itself( das Ding an sich) and its appearance to us( die Erscheinung), more familiarly known as quantum mechanics. Returning to a phrasing in terms of memory harmony, language is the medium that allows humanity to exist in nature as harmoniously as possible,( read as‘ be evolved’— biological evolution is the prime example of such a goal-fulfilling stochastic process where things become more than the sum of their parts) transcending the person in isolation; a group of language-endowed people is a better candidate for evolution than a lone couple with no language.
There is something in this that smacks too of Wittgenstein, for it is elegant that, in this picture, under which we can consider him briefly to be operating, we know by having language that the world exists, given that we need it( language) to be able to be in harmony with it( the world) when taken( humans) as a group( the above argument), but secondly, the wonderful thing about language, sitting at that apex of the previously mentioned hierarchy of things that are, we know that the world we describe is a good( up to h-bar) description of the world, since that is the language that is in best memory harmony with it.
* Where then, does this leave us with the Weetabix? Well, for one, perhaps with that twinge of pseudo-saddened-solipsism, as I sit( sometimes) alone in Hall, knowing that though I am, as are all things, a memory of the world, I am an imperfect one, like the stone that can never be truly polished into shape by the river, and so am slightly permanently detached from it— or perhaps trying to work out my own harmony with the fact that while many more studies than either of us could ever read have demonstrated the superior significance of sleep to cramming before exams, exam-leave regulations are what they are. But these things, as all those many pieces of change we lament that make this home but too, a memory, are beyond our control, and so it is best, then I think, to only remember with fondness those memories that have shaped us. Because if you will indulge— or excuse— my sentimentality, I do feel that the manic glimpse into my thinking with which I have here presented you is, in a genuine way, in both its quirkiness and its ambition, a product in great part of this College, and it is my sincerest hope that, as much as we now mammon-conform, that that spirit— and indeed through this publication— continues well past the memories we make of it.
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