by Corry Shores
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Things are in a certain state right now. The current state of things did not appear from nowhere. There are many forces that brought-about present conditions. The forces all have different strengths, and they compete with each other through various means of engagement, such as impact, pressure, charge, radiance, and so forth.
If the war of forces had ever achieved equilibrium in the past, things would not have changed since. But clearly the flux proceeds. Hence it must never have happened that the forces equalized. The present moment itself contradicts the hypothesis that forces once were equal. However, suppose someone proposes that at a previous time, things were absolutely identical to how they are now. If this were true, then we would still expect things now to be the way they are. So we do not find any counter-evidence for this claim in the present state of things. Thus it is possible that what is happening now once happened before. Now suppose that there are countless possibilities for how things can come to be at any moment. Also consider that time marches-on to infinity. So what is happening now is one of the innumerable possibilities. We know it is possible, because it is actual. And if time had already been going-on infinitely before now, that means every possibility would have already occurred. So the current state of things happened at least once before in the past. But not only would it have happened once in an infinite amount of time, it would recur an infinite number of times as well. It might be hard to conceive every possible state of things, but we at least can conceive of the way things are now, because it is real.
So our future is made-up of an infinite repetition of things that have already recurred infinitely in the past.
We noted that there never could have been a balance of forces in the past. We may say further that never in the future will there be a balance of forces. For, in the infinite past, all possibilities have been cycled-through. Balance was not one of them. So it is impossible for balance to be a possibility for the future as well. Never will there be an end to the universe's repetitions. But we see that there is at least one possibility that can never be actualized, namely, equilibrium. So there are more possibilities than there are realities.
Finally, let’s suppose that instead nothing reappears exactly as before. That could be either by chance or by some controlling factor.
Consider first that there are an incredible number of possibilities. And imagine that the gods play dice. Every time they roll, one of these possibilities is actualized. We will evaluate the probabilities for two scenarios:
a) despite there being an enormous number of possibilities, still somehow one combination is rolled again.
b) despite the infinite amount of time, the gods never roll the same throw more than once.
In both cases we presuppose an infinite amount of time. So it is much more probable that they cast the same throw again than that they never repeat a throw. So it would not be by chance that things never repeat. It would have to be because the forces have a purposive nature whereby they intentionally prevent repetitions.
From the Bianquis translation:
Si jamais l’équilibre des forces avait été atteint, il durerait encore maintenant; donc il ne s’est jamais produit. L’instant présent contredit cette hypothèse. Si l’on admet qu’il y ait jamais eu un état absolument identique au présent, cette hypothèse n’est pas réfutée par l’état présent. Parmi l’infinité des possibles, il faut que ce cas se soit déjà présenté, car jusqu’à l’heure présente un temps infini s’est déjà écoulé. Si l’équilibre était possible, il aurait dû se réaliser. – Et si ce moment présent a déjà existé, alors aussi celui qui l’a produit et l’antécédent de ce dernier, etc. – il en résulte que lui aussi a déjà existé une deuxième, une troisième fois – et qu’il reviendra de même une deuxième, une troisième fois, un nombre infini de fois dans le passé et dans le futur. C’est dire que tout le devenir consiste dans la répétition d’un nombre fini d’états absolument identiques entre eux. – Le nombre des combinaisons possibles, sans doute, n’entre pas dans l’imagination des cerveaux humains ; mais en tout état de cause, l’état présent est un des états possibles, abstraction faite de notre capacité ou de notre incapacité de juger en matière de possibles, – car il est réel. Il faudrait donc dire : tous les états réels doivent avoir eu dans le passé un état qui leur fût identique, à supposer que le nombre des cas ne soit pas infini et que, dans le cours du temps infini, ne puisse se réaliser qu’un nombre fini de cas ; en effet, si l’on remonte dans le passé à partir d’un état quelconque, il s’est déjà écoulé antérieurement une éternité. Le repos des forces, leur équilibre est un cas pensable ; mais il ne s’est pas présenté, donc le nombre des possibilités est supérieur à celui de réalités. – Si rien d’identique ne reparaît, cela pourrait s’expliquer non par le hasard, mais par une finalité inhérente à la nature même de la force : car si l’on suppose une masse énorme de cas, la répétition fortuite d’un même coup de dés est plus probable qu’une non-identité absolue. 1881-82 (XII, 1re partie, §103, emphasis mine)
Nietzsche, Friedrich. La Volonté de puissance, I. Transl. G. Bianquis. Paris: Gallimard, 1938.
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