The Distance From Impossible to Improbable to Totally Possible

As human beings we seem to run the gamut between the impossible and inconceivable, through the absolutely improbable, and on toward the totally possible. We often seem to be the sort of dreamers who prefer to dream in the light of day, constructing definitive pathways and building those dreams into reality.

In Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 Campaign Speech: He famously popularized a quote by George Bernard Shaw: "Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not.”

In John F. Kennedy's 1962 "Moon Speech" at Rice University: JFK spoke about national ambition, stating: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…”

Both perhaps drawing on words from classic literature, T. E. Lawrence "of Arabia”, author, statesman, soldier: "All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.”

Those who consider themselves builders, daring to actually build dreams into reality, are guaranteed to fail before it is possible to become a success. Failure is a guarantee - and it is in how we manage failure that dictates whether we eventually succeed or remain stuck in failure.

Those who can keep their eyes on the work while it becomes difficult and maybe impossible are the ones who often succeed, as it is the quality of the work which creates success. They seek to turn failure into a learning experience, and treat success as just another long step in a process.

There are now fields of physics, philosophy and science which are named: constructor theory, constructor quantum field theory, or variously known as either constructivism or constructionism.

Because I am going to link scientific methods and scientific philosophies under the heading of constructionism, we will resort to this term rather than trying to address all of the different terms.

“But paradigm debates are not really about relative problem-solving ability, though for good reasons they are usually couched in those terms. Instead, the issue is which paradigm should in future guide research on problems many of which neither competitor can yet claim to resolve completely. A decision between alternate ways of practicing science is called for, and in the circumstances that decision must be based less on past achievement than on future promise. ... A decision of that kind can only be made on faith.”

— Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, pp 157–8

This book refuses from the beginning to constrict itself to one narrow band of science, but instead seeks to look at those “alternate ways of practicing science” - in service to future promise, or probabilities, rather than past achievements.

Throughout we will refer to Thomas Kuhn, as our faithful & reliable guide through this unknown territory.