Note that the notion of horizon does not imply absolute unknowability. The
lack of prospect is relative to the position from which you are looking: by moving to
another place (e.g. inside the event horizon), the outlook will change, and some
hidden things will become visible. But other things that were visible will at the same
time disappear behind the horizon.
The same dependence on perspective underlies most limitation principles. For
example, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle does not say that it is impossible to
accurately measure the position or the momentum of a particle: it only states that if
you accurately determine the one property, then you cannot simultaneously determine
the other. Similarly, the theorem of Godel does not state that the truth or falsity of
certain propositions can never be established: it merely states that their truth cannot be
demonstrated within a given formal system, while allowing that it may be
demonstrated within an extended system—which, however, will contain other
undemonstrable propositions.
This notion of horizon of knowability (i.e. context-dependent limitation on
prospect) immediately implies the complementary notion of mystery: from a given
vantage point, some things must remain hidden, i.e. mysterious, for an agent. From
time to time, this mystery may intrude into the agent’s course of action, producing a
surprise—for example, when a ship appears on the horizon, when the agent after
climbing to the top of a hill discovers a beautiful lake stretching in the distance, when
a predator that was hiding in a tree suddenly jumps into plain view, or when the
trajectory of a particle is deflected by one of the quantum fluctuations implied by the
Heisenberg principle. Such events are what we have called “diversions”. They change
the prospect of affordance and disturbances, and thus in general also the course along
which the agent will navigate. They are in essence what makes life into an adventure.
Generalizing Scientific Models
It is this ever-changing mixture of prospect and mystery that distinguishes a real-life
agent from either the prospectless dynamic system or the all-knowing Laplacean
observer. Yet, at the same time, it situates the agent squarely in between these two
extreme cases. Thus, the “life is an adventure” perspective can be seen as a
straightforward generalization of the Newtonian worldview. Instead of fixing the
parameter “prospect” either at zero or at infinity, it allows it to vary continuously,
from zero towards infinity (but without ever reaching the latter limit). Vice-versa, this
means that the Newtonian theory could be recovered from the adventure theory as a
limit case for prospect going towards infinity. This is an application of the so-called
“correspondence principle”, which says that the new theory (e.g. relativity theory) and
the old theory (e.g. Newtonian mechanics) should produce corresponding results for
the limit case (e.g. speeds much slower than light) in which the old theory has proven
to be accurate.
By turning the constant “prospect” into a variable, the ontology of adventure
brings the creativity, uncertainty and adaptivity of life, mind and society back into the
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