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Conservation, Causality and Chaos
Conservation, Causality and Chaos
Harlan Gilbert
Implicit in the outer manifestation is the inner nature; burgeoning in the inner nature is
the tendency to outer manifestation; and neither can reach a condition of completeness
without including the other.
A search for such a balance is manifesting powerfully inside of science today.
Few realize how deeply science is being called upon by the course of its own progress to
transform its once abstract-analytic stance. The development of our consciousness of the
outer world is making strides in every sense not only equalling, but also paralleling the
great strides made by our inner development over the last century. At the same time,
philosophy is working to build bridges reaching from the inner essence towards the outer
form and appearance of things. For philosophy to achieve clarity, and science depth, is
the great challenge of our new century and millennium.
Some of the ways in which science is already opening such windows to the light
of the new millennium will be presented in this essay: new ideas that are shaking and
replacing science’s central dogmas, and transforming our whole conception of the
physical world as a fixed and self-sufficient realm following abstractly determinable and
determinate laws.
A. The Conservation of Matter and Energy
“Don’t you see: that which was seed will get green herb, and herb
will turn into ear and ear into bread. Bread will turn into nutrient liquid,
which produces blood; from blood semen, embryo, man, corpse, Earth,
rock and mineral, and thus matter will change its form ever and ever and
is capable of taking any natural form.”
Giordano Bruno
2
It is for this reason that light behaves as a wave would when observed in a certain manner, and as a
particle would when observed in another manner; the manner of observation interacts with the indefinite
nature of elementary substance (such as light) to create the phenomenon observed.
3
One of the most interesting of such efforts is the attempt to simulation the physical conditions that might
have been present in the primeval earth before life began. Through the interaction of the intense energies
and simple chemical compounds that, it is postulated, were available in the early days of the earth’s
evolution, compounds quite similar to many of those that form the basic range made use of by living
organisms today have been successfully generated.
substance through structural metamorphoses. Life’s capacity to exert formative
influences on the physical world underlies all organic processes.
It is worthwhile building up a picture of the extent to which organic substances
are the results of structurally formative influences. The chlorophyll molecule, a
particularly symmetric but not especially complex example of an organic compound,
illustrates this:
(diagrams)
4
It has been shown that precisely regular heartbeats or patterns of neuron firing are signs of approaching
organ crisis or of an organism’s death. In both cases, the healthy pattern is a slightly turbulent – and thus
sensitive – one.
merely the result of the straightforward bonding of the two inherited chromosomes, as
was once thought, but are actually newly created combinations drawn from the genetic
material made available by the parent cells. Genetic inheritance is created through such a
free and unpredictable transformation that at the first moment of its creation the zygote
could be said to go through a phase of near total dissolution or chaos. What arises after
this must indeed be drawn from the available genetic factors (unless these are also
capable of being transformed; we do not yet have precise enough images of the process to
determine whether this is the case or not); how the new arrangement arises is not
determined by the genetic inheritance. The latter determines which substances (genes) are
available, but not the process of putting these together and thus not the resulting
arrangement. Here, too, cause and effect seem to disappear here and freedom – or
sensitivity to influences from realms higher than the observable, physical reality – reign.
Such sensitively free moments – moments when a phenomenon’s evolution is not
strictly determinable by even the most precise knowledge of its past course and its
environmental conditions – are as influential in the actual development of the world as
cause and effect. Under strictly controlled laboratory conditions, we can establish
situations where cause and effect appears to rule exclusively. Under the complex
conditions that exist in reality, sensitivity and unpredictability reign far more often. There
are actually clear principles that determine whether a given phenomenon unfolds
statically, rhythmically or sensitively, though many phenomena can unfold in any of
these ways depending upon the momentary situation. Classical cause and effect
relationships only hold true for static phenomena. Sensitive phenomena must be regarded
as unfolding largely independently of predictable, causal relationships. Rhythmic
phenomena hold a balance between the influence of causality and the unpredictability
introduced by sensitive phenomena.5
5
See my article Chaos, Rhythm and Stasis (in The Golden Blade 2002) for a much more extensive
exposition devoted to this theme.
C. Chance
A third of science’s ‘central dogmas’ is that the world constantly tends towards
ever more disorder, towards an ever more random arrangement.6 This is another counter-
intuitive principle, for we often see nature establish ordered conditions out of relative
disorder: waves wash onto the scattered sand and produce wonderfully rhythmically
patterned crests and dips; out of tiny seeds dropped in dirt and rain, highly complex,
beautifully arranged plants grow; bees build thousands of hexagonally arranged cells out
of formless wax; man creates cathedrals out of shapeless rock and symphonies out of
chaotic tones. It seems to be apparent that order arises in the world just as well as
disorder; in fact, that there is a play between these two polar principles, every order
decaying into disorder, every disorder being raised up into a new order again.
William Thompson (Lord Kelvin)’s fundamental work on energy and heat
transfer, a subject now called thermodynamics, showed that all increases in physical
order depend ultimately upon a sacrifice of an equal or larger order elsewhere, so that the
total disorder of the universe (or any part of the world independent of energy exchanges
with its environment) constantly grows. Any increase in local order thus depends
physically upon a greater loss of order elsewhere: Waves give up more of their ordered,
rhythmic energy than they provide ordered form in the sand; bees must reduce pollen’s
complex sugars (themselves built up at the cost of sunlight’s concentrated light and
warmth) in order to establish the waxy, hexagonal cells of their hives.
Increasing disorder, entropy, could also be considered as a progressive loss of
potential for further development. By the nature of existence in time, everything in the
world (at least, everything subject to time’s course) begins its existence with its
maximum potential for development; as this potential is fulfilled it is naturally used up.
This is obvious; all that is possible later must have already been latent as future potential
earlier in a being’s existence. Entropy is thus merely the physical expression of this
obvious fact, that all future developments must exist as latent potential in the universe’s
(or any other entity’s) being. If there is no source of renewal of this potential, it must
steadily decrease. Any finite quantity (note the assumption that the universe began with a
finite quantity of order) that steadily decreases will ultimately approach a minimum level.
Science thus predicts that the world will eventually arrive at a condition wherein no more
potential for further development remains, all matter and energy being evenly distributed
in a uniform, ‘lukewarm’ soup. In a world empty of all physical distinctions, there can be
nothing to induce further alteration.
The purely physical world does indeed appear to continually increase its entropy
by sacrificing greater orders for lesser. Is this so clear where there is a non-physical
influence, however: where life, consciousness or self-awareness are present and play an
active role? It is at least fair to say that the oak tree, the bee and the violinist certainly
create far more order than would exist if the sun shone on barren rock, the flower’s pollen
dropped unnoticed, or the relevant musical instruments remained in their cases unplayed.
Relatively speaking, life, sentience and self-awareness are at least extremely effective
6
This is generally expressed in terms of a quantity called entropy, which is the measure of the disorder of a
system. It has been shown that no closed (i.e. isolated) physical system may ever increase its total order, i.e.
that entropy (disorder) can never decrease.
creators of certain kinds of order, and in this sense to be extremely effective opponents or
resisters of entropy; in fact, virtually all earthly order that we can discover, from veins of
iron ore to the sunflower’s wondrous head, stemmed originally from the activity of
living, sentient and/or self-aware beings. Nevertheless, science has always claimed, so
long as these factors operate in the physical realm, they cannot abrogate the physical law
of increasing entropy: Disorder will inevitably increase as the world heads towards a state
of universal equilibrium, of total undifferentiation.7
In the latter part of the twentieth century, an eclectic mathematician named
Mandelbrot discovered a principle which transforms our whole conception of the nature
of order. He showed that order can exist on many levels simultaneously, leading to a far
greater complexity and richness than is immediately apparent. In the case of a tree, for
example, or our network of blood vessels, there are primary branches (e.g. the trunk or
aorta) which constitute the main structure. These then diverge into smaller branches,
which diverge further into yet smaller branches until at last the smallest branchings of the
main network diverge into yet finer organs (leaves or capillaries) extending into a further
range of ever-smaller branchings (leaf veins or fine capillaries), and so on; no end can be
found to the ever-finer network (which at a certain point is differentiated into structural
flow tendencies rather than actual boundaried vessels). Analogous structures whose
complexity is equal to the complexity of the whole structure can be discovered at any
scale of such phenomena. These kind of structures are said to be ‘self-similar’ and to
possess a ‘fractal order’ because parts or fractions can be found which are similar to the
whole.
This kind of structure has some surprising results. Measurements of the total
length of a tree’s branchings or of our blood vessels, for example, vary widely with the
scale used in measuring. If only the chief branches are taken into account, a certain value
is found; including each stage of successively finer vessels or branches results in the total
measurement growing significantly by a multiple of the previous, rougher estimation.
This process never nears or reaches a progressive or ultimate limit; every increase of
scale produces a great extension of the measurable length.
It is as if a globe, country map, local map, surveyor’s wheel, snail’s path and
grain-by-grain count were used successively to measure the total length of a coastline.
Because of the infinitely variegated nature of such a boundary, as the scale of
measurement decreases, more complex details, resulting in radically increasing
measurements of the total length, are revealed.8 This is why it is difficult, faced with an
unidentified and unfamiliar fragment of a map, to identify its scale; there is an analogous
structure and complexity at every level. A coastline can be said to be arbitrarily, or even
infinitely large, depending upon the manner of its measurement.
Order is thus not merely linearly quantitative in nature; it has dimension and
depth, as well. Thermodynamics concerns itself with only one aspect of the world’s
order, that reflected in and manifesting its energy distribution. In deeply ordered systems,
7
It must be said that, through their capacity to accelerate the rate of chemical combination, all forms of life
are considered by classical science to increase physical entropy faster than what would happen in the same
environment if they were absent; this is a very condition of their existence.
8
There are constructions to demonstrate this effect; one of the simplest is the following. Take an equilateral
triangle and place small equilateral triangles, each one-third as large as the original triangle, centred on all
of its sides. To each protruding triangle side of the resulting figure, add triangles one-third the size of the
last ones added. Continue ad infinitum.
including fractal ones, a finitely entropical energy distribution may possess a
disproportionately great subtle or deep order, perceptible in the qualitative character it
engenders (let us say, in a feather) and manifesting through layers of successively more
finely inlayed order.
Is it possible for a deeply ordered system to generate net thermodynamic order?
Or is its order present in some other way?
At the level of the structural-formative influences of living being, the diminishing
scale of successive layers of order − of, say, the branches of a tree or the venus-arterial
system − is by definition greater than the increasing quantity of branches. Were this not
so, an infinite mass and volume of substance would be involved. Because the physical
quantity of ordered substance remains finitely bounded, there is also a finite limit to the
entropic consequences of the fine order here. While it can order substances at fine levels
hitherto unimaginable, and thus give new structure to the earth (visible in the humus layer
with its remarkable harmonizing qualities and affinity for taking water up into its deep
structure, but also in its capacity to hold and make available to plants the minerals needed
for their growth), living substance can thus not breach physical entropy.
A new element arises through animal consciousness, which infuses physical
substance with a new quality of sensitivity to the cosmic and airy realms. This becomes
apparent in soil that has been either worked by earthworms or properly manured; indeed,
even where leguminous plants – which also have the capacity to take up and fix airy
substance into the soil, and which have a certain animal-sentient character9 – have been
grown.
In addition, the cry of an animal − the warning cry of a seagull or a jackall’s
hunting cry − may result in an ordering of behaviour disproportionate to the energy
involved in the cry: the whole flock or pack may wheel about, fall into formation, etc.
Still, animals must employ physical reactions to obtain social order, and their activity
thus remains subject to thermodynamic laws, being fully expressed in the physical realm.
Non-physical order manifests for the first time at the level of human creativity.
The contribution of the human being is to infuse substances with a higher, an inner motif
or order. Artistically treated substance bears a quality of order and even inner warmth
that enters into the physical matter itself. A symphony, both in its creation and in its
performance, contains order beyond that contained in the physical substance of ink on
paper or tones in space. The harmonics of a symphony play themselves out over the
course of the whole piece, in each individual movement, in each section, in each phrase,
in each bar, in each moment (between the tones), between the individual instruments,
within the tone produced by a given instrument, in the vibrating parts of the instrument or
the room, in the very structure of these materials10, and so on.
There is an implicit order, a dimension of order beyond the physical domain,
inherent in and potentially accessible through all human creativity and communication.
This is also true of the human body and the substances it bears and then sheds – though
less so of human faeces, which is what passes through without having actually been taken
9
Leguminous plants are typically capable of a certain degree of movement and sensitive response to the
environment (as seen e.g. in the climbing tendrils of peas and beans), have a tendency towards forming
inner, air-bearing organs (e.g. the pods) and have a strong relationship to nitrogen, otherwise typical of the
animal world.
10
A violin’s tone thus improves by being played upon over many years and not with age alone.
up into the realm of the human being’s creative activity. Human remains have thus
always been considered holy in nature; they are infused with a higher order, having borne
and been transformed by an ego presence.
Such humanly generated increases in order are essentially non-thermodynamic in
nature. There is not an increased potential for generating physical energy in the motif-
bearing substance of the human organism or in a musical composition; nonetheless, an
enhanced state of order has been established therein. Thermodynamic order, which
represents the potential for world-evolution in a physical sense; is thus progressively
transformed into inner order, which could also be called informational order, in the sense
of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who spoke of the inward direction of the world, its
‘inscape’, as opposed to its outer revelation or countenance.
This level of order defies entropic limits, being outside the limits of
thermodynamics’ domain.
Thus we see that the organic life of the plant world brings structure and harmony
into physical-material substance, the sentient existence of the animal world makes it
sensitive and the human being infuses it with order. These qualities are brought about in
the outer physical material, in matter itself, however. This matter eventually returns to the
larger physical world through processes of decay, etc. The qualities it bears is not – or at
least not immediately – lost when the outer form decays. This provides a path to the
transformation of the very ground of the physical world’s being; its matter is
progressively taken up, harmonized, made sensitive, permeated with a higher order, and
returned to it.
The whole earth is thus being transformed into a bearer of a higher order,
informed with structure, sensitivity and motif. Through human existence in particular,
beyond its purely material existence, the earth is receiving an identity as the bearer of a
higher order – an inscape.
Conclusion
The once scientifically accepted and justified view of the world being ruled by
conservation, causality and chance is being replaced by a comprehension of a world of
metamorphosis, sensitivity and motif or inner order. These latter elements indeed
originate from and are borne down from higher realms than the physical, but take hold of
and transform the physical realm into an expression of their qualities. Our naïve sense of
the world as one involved in constant transformation, infused with sensitivity and imbued
with order is no illusion. It is a true picture of a level of reality accessible to immediate
experience but hitherto resistant to analytic description; a level of reality now gradually
being recognized and accessible to such description as science progresses beyond its
early, in their own right equally naïve conceptions of the world.