>>>> And portraits of every one your possible unconceived siblings.
>>>> And so on.
>>> Certainly there are a very, very large number of such combinations.
>>> But there aren't an infinity of them. There aren't an aleph null,
>>> the actualized infinity of them. They form a potential infinity. An
>>> actualized infinity is a mathematical abstraction which can never be
>>> realized.
>
> Kevin Kelly proposes a theory of "the method" or systematic ways to
> search through a very large "possibility space". He claims that
> evolution itself is a search method for finding organized patterns of
> form. But given a complex enough system conducting the "method" is
> actually the same as artistic creation of the artifact itself. This
> makes me think that creativity is itself just a search style for
> hidden patterns.
>
>
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch14-a.html
>
> Imagine a library which contained all possible books which could
> possibly be written with 26 or more letters, numbers or markings
>
> For every sensible line of straightforward statement in the readable
> books there are leagues of senseless cacophonies, verbal jumbles and
> incoherence. Nonsense is normal in the this hypothetical Library. The
> reasonable (and even humble and pure coherence) would be an almost
> miraculous exception.
>
> Nearly all the books are full of random letters. One book might be
> made up of the letters MCV, perversely repeated from the first line to
> the last. Another (very much consulted, by the way) is a mere
> labyrinth of letters, but the next-to-the last page says Oh time thy
> pyramids.
>
> All the books, no matter how diverse they might be, are made up of the
> same elements: the space, the period, the comma, the twenty-two
> letters of the alphabet. He also alleged a fact which travelers have
> confirmed: In the vast Library there are no two identical books. From
> these two incontrovertible premises he deduced that the Library is
> total and that its shelves register all the possible combinations of
> the twenty-odd orthographical symbols (a number which, though
> extremely vast, is not infinite).
>
> So, in other words, any book you could possibly write, in any
> language, could be found (theoretically) in the library. It contains
> all past and future books! Everything: the minutely detailed history
> of the future, the archangels' autobiographies, the faithful catalogue
> of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the
> demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel
> of the Basilides, the commentary on that gospel, the commentary on the
> commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death, the
> translation of every book in all languages, the interpolations of
> every book in all books.
>
> All possible books exist in this library of form.
>
> Re-arranged from OutOfControlKevinKelly;
>
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch14-a.html
>
http://www.kk.org/books/index.php
>
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201483408/
>
>
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch14-a.html
>
