Neurath's Boat and Theseus' Ship are Dissipative Structures.

[This entry was edited on August 5, 2004 to remove the text of M.R.M. Parrott's email to me. See my comments for details.]

A while back, I made the connection between Neurath's Boat and the Ship of Theseus. I thought the lack of connection elsewhere on the Web was interesting. Only a site by M.R.M. Parrott mentioned both terms, but there is no mention of a connection.

I guess I forgot to post this discovery back in January (surprise). I'm posting it now because I've made another interesting connection, IMO. Both metaphors are examples of dissipative structures (aka dissipative systems): A dissipative [structure] is characterized by the appearance of stability, but is continually changing. A simple example is a whirlpool: a similar shape is maintained, while water is continually moving through it. More complex examples include lasers, Bnard cells, and even life itself. The term dissipative structures was coined by Ilya Prigogine.

Thus this seemingly paradoxical boat (or ship) is simply a dissipative structure whose compositional materials are continually flowing through it (albeit at a much slower pace than a whirlpool). Of course this means that it is both the crew and the boat that are the dissipative structure, unless the boat is imagined to be autonomic, i.e., self repairing.

As you philosophers are well aware, this coincidence of opposites (a term coined by Nicholas of Cusa -- see NICHOLAS OF CUSA (1401-1464): FIRST MODERN PHILOSOPHER?) for an excellent overview, "One can identify at least sixteen Cusan themes that have a peculiarly Modern ring to them and on the basis of which Nicholas has been deemed to occupy a special relationship to Modernity.") "stability and change" permeates all our concepts. For an excellent essay on the roots of this fundamental unity of opposing aspects and how it has been transformed and extended to myriad contemporary dichotomies see EARLY GREEK THOUGHT AND PERSPECTIVES FOR THE INTERPRETATION OF QUANTUM MECHANICS: PRELIMINARIES TO AN ONTOLOGICAL APPROACH. I am also in the process of connecting all of this to the concept of a limit (thanks to Keith), which is a kind of attractive fixed point (related to a fixed point), which is a kind of attractor, which comes full circle back to dissipative structures.