."The Energy of Existence"

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The Double-Pathway

As far as where all-important 'energy' comes from, which builds into the complexities we call 'life', there is only one source - but which energizes the phenomena of life and living-experience via two pathways.

This is a very important idea to grasp ... the double pathway ( 1972, 1999).  

The bulk of the mechanism which empowers living systems originates in its usable form with the electron clouds and layers of individual atoms.  These clouds share common energy plateaus, and so, are competent to exchange and share compatible qualities and information, as their electrical charges and magnetic fields interact.  Essentially, these are the dominant parts of how atoms 'communicate' with each other.  These simple blendings and changes of force can be thought of as how atoms and electron clouds 'feel' their environment, and so 'respond' in compatible ways.

It is here where the fundamental relationships of 'universe' produce the wellspring of energy-in-motion. It happens in combination with the primal unit of the universe .. light .. which comes into being traveling with one speed: "fast".  As atoms organize from smaller components, there are several fundamental forces which coordinate with each other and with light.  They produce atoms which have inherent energies and momentums that are capable of potential interactions.  These energies of 'potential performance' are contained partially in their inner nuclear masses but moreover, for our purposes here, in the ways electrons can and may move in orbital clouds around the central masses of atomic particles.

The First path of the energy of life comes from the intrinsic 'spontaneous' motions and 'orbital' energies of the electron clouds (which can exist in different configurations for different possible atoms).  There are rules to how they all work, but that you can learn about elsewhere.   The main thing to know is that the outer edge electrons of atoms have limited degrees of freedom by which they may exist in alternativet energy levels, depending on the amount of light energy they contain. After that, electrons tend to move in paths comfortable with the amount of energy they carry ... be it around one atomic nucleus, or several, or many.

When atoms meet, these "always energized" electrons can encounter pathways that allow them to move  comfortably around more than one atom.  That is, compatible electron pathways and energy levels can adjust and coordinate together.  It is this innate ability that makes up the essential First path which enables atoms to form molecules. 

When the conditions are present for these electrons to circumnavigate two or more atoms on a continual basis, this binds atoms into unified and communicating coordinations we call molecules.  As long as the momentum of passing atoms can be constrained by the electrons ... like two ice skaters which move past each other within the limits of where their arms and grip can grab on and hold each other in an embrace .. then they will form molecules.  The atoms have a momentum and distribution space.   The electrons have a momentum and distribution space.  And when those spaces intersect in a compatible ways, complex formations arise.

All individual atoms have the potential to behave and interact this way, even under the sparcest of condition.  In fact, these interactions and communications among electron clouds that coordinate to produce living systems tend to happen most and best at the lower and cooler end of the universe's scale of possible energies (approximately 400^oK to 800^oK). They can happen on Earth, they can happen by encounters in the depths of space.  Even the quieter corners of our entire universe, then, are home to the development of the fundmental molecules of life.  It happens in places where the linear momentums of atomic motion are slow enough to coordinate with the angular momentums of orbital electron clouds.

The important Second path of the energy of life happens when so many atoms accumulate in a region that the force of gravity of accumulated nuclear masses overwhelms the electromagnetic interactions of the electrons alone. The result of this is: stars. 

Stars are the furnaces where atoms are imposed together in such close quarters that they literally force simple nuclei together and others to break apart, coupling and uncoupling the electron clouds along the way also.  In the process, vast amount of nuclear binding and electron binding energies are released as all these changes take place.  As these energies mix and bind and break in every increasing amounts, violent energy releases occur.  It is this form of released light and electrons and energy - say, from our particular star, the sun - that bathes over, among and through the slower and 'cooler' atoms and molecules.  This flood of energy helps move the intrinsic interactions of molecules along, encouraging the total processes of life.  

Life and complexity:     One source, two paths.     One source, two paths.

Sunlight provides extra energy and nutrition that comes into these many-formed systems.  Atoms first have the inate ability to form and break bonds - the higher assemblies called molecules - which are the result of exchanges of - communications of - electrons among atoms.  The pre-existing potential for electrons to be in higher energy states - absorb and hold on to some extra amount of energy - is the most crucial capacity.   A sun then provides additional energy, filling and saturating additional energy states for these atoms and molecules to be in.  It has also been discovered recently that far beneath the ocean surfaces, away from sunlight and photosynthesis, that life thrives on the energy supplied near vents that release heat form the Earth's core.  Here the heat bath and energy bath is termed chemosynthesis.  These energy-pumps prompt all the bits and pieces and processes that connect and interconnect, unconnect and reconnect, build, breakdown and re-build again, creating organic life from components. 

Eventually, all these 'internal' communication activities are mirrored on even larger scales by all sorts of external interaction communications. Involvements with companion other life forms. Involvements with companion same life forms.  This becomes nature, society and the relations of life.  As we know from experience, existence doesn't include just one form of living organism.  It includes so many that it can be mind boggling to consciously think of them all - but it is not impossible.   And, the awe inspiring enormity of it all can't stop us from recognizing the uniformity and shared processes.  Essentially, Complexity arises with ever increasing communications among the matter and energies of existence, all conditional on the ability to encounter extra energy and not be broken by it. 

One way of talking about communication and increased sharing is to say that energy and matter have the open capacity to improve and expand where and how they exist ... where and how their 'behavior spaces' (sometimes called 'gaussian bubbles', sometimes called 'lifespace') increase.  When there are increased ways-of-behaving, scientists sometimes call this an increase in the degrees-of-freedom.  Sometimes it is referred to as an increase in 'entropy'.  It used to be rigidly reasoned that if things spread out - like taking all the particles of a star and spreading them out thinly around space, then there isn't enough consolidated energy to get things done.  That is, there are not enough particles bumping around to transfer or release energy and so allow work to be done.  In the above discussion of complexity building, that general interpretation of entropy has a place, but there is a contrasting process that's present.  Small local spreadings of particles and energy .. local entropy increases .. say, of electrons .. seem to also foster consolidation - of atoms into molecules and molecules into metabolisms and metabolisms into organisms and so on.  And with each 'coordination' come increases in the behavior spaces of the member energies and parts.  Instead of being limited to one atom or molecule, an electron can potentially course its way through a swarm of interconnecting systems, gaining and giving energy along the way, and maybe even finding its way back to some relative initial 'starting place'.  It's 'behavior space' is very much larger than if it was restricted to the region around one atomic nucleus.  It has a "higher-entropy" ('increased eigenspaces' for those more math inclined) compared to its single-atom distribution space.

In this view, it is 'improved distribution' and increased connectedness (through access toother locations) which helps enable coordinated behaviors. This is the essence of First Path.  Second Path, in parallel, is the conventional perception of entropy and work ... but with a twist.   The reason that Second Path promotes work accomplish- ment is not the surface definition of 'neg-entropy' ... distribution consolidation (anti 'entropy') ... but rather that fact that the time required until a particle can interact with another particle has been 'reduced ... there is shorter duration until some 'next' encounter.  The time-connectedness has been improved.

On the face of it, thinking of 'entropy' as a monolithic process, then it could look like a simple case of  'diffusion vs consolidation'.  The understandable conclusion had been drawn that ... in the absense of external energy, no 'work' can be accomplished and life cannot exist, because energy seemed to be always dissipating and draining into an equal smoothness.

But we have two native qualities that counter this vision.  The first is the intrinsic momentums of light and of assembled particles, an undeniable source.  The second is the most primal of fundamental forces:  Gravity.   Gravity 'negentropically' consolidates energy and entities.  It improves the ability to get-to and respond-with other energies/entities through time, just the same as spatial diffusion and increased 'distribution space' allow individual energy/particles to have more encounters through space.

When poised in the regions where the several 'behavior spaces' overlap - both Paths together contribute to life and ever improving conscious dynamics.

 

Why the integrity paradigm of plural entropies and dynamic qualities of healthy 'behavior spaces'?
     (excerpted from a personal letter to J Kutyra, Feb 1999)

"The universe is a complex complicated but 'singular' entity. Everything in it is someway and somehow 'connected- with' and/or 'compatible-with' everything else. And I do mean everything else.

Even if things seem to be outrageously different or unassociated, there must be some connection and relation. Like the disparity between quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. Like the behavior of any single atom, and something that you did in your own life today.

If we posit descriptive or behavioral novelty and uniqueness every time we look up and down the levels of  the heirarchy of assemblies (the thesis of novel 'emergence' developed in standard complexity theory), then we'd have to posit that there is no guaranteed "association". Totally unique and isolated independent relationships could pop into existence anywhere and anytime.  Our math equations shouldn't necessarily work with the same applicability in particle physics or molecular statistics or biological speciation studies if that were the case.   But they do.

Even if new qualitative characteristics do necessarily arise in these transitions to new levels, something else - something inherent and shared - persists across these alternative frames-of-reference. It just doesn't seem to be otherwise.

So the task, it seemed to me, was to look at what information we already had, and then pose the elements (ideas, relationships, functions, etc) and factors in some new way, so that we could over come semantic and symbolic specialization, and recognize an alternative view where the compatibility and similarities shine through, first and foremost. "Relativity" on the grandest scale. Every system or type of organization or whatever, were assumed to be sample enactments of one singular framework of behavior. The trick is to recognize the relational dynamics even in the diversity of mechanisms.

And, I assumed the universe isn't in the business of deception. Whatever this model was, it had to be so pervasive as to be in plain sight all the time. I mean, that was the original criteria, right? Everywhere, everything?!?

As a student in the 1960's I was heading into biology/medicine (mini c.v.:that was shortcircuited but I retained the way of thinking). The catch phrase at the time wasn't "complexity", but rather, "how do you take physics models (aka 'simplicity'/rigor) and end up with biology models (aka 'diversity'/openness)"?

Everyone was headed in the direction of looking for fields and forces and mathematical rules. 

I went the other way ... I went looking for 'similar behaviors'... regardless of the fields and forces and mathematical rules.

Example: you and I can become 'behaviorally bound' (complex) by tying us up with a rope, but having us play a game of catch, by sitting in the same movie theater on the same night, by buying and selling things between each
other, by connecting us through the internet, and on and on. The mechanisms don't make a never-mind. But it is quite possible that all these mechanisms share a similar characteristic that can confine us into a 'complexity'. In ways that have only limited connection with fractal mathematics.

The net net net factor is "communication". Some aspect is shared in a recursive and ongoing manner. That is the thing underscoring even fields forces and mathematical rules. It is the characteristic that other researchers saw, but casually set aside in deference to figuring out the specifics of those fields and rules.

The reason that fractal complexity is so special is not "emergence". The reason we see beautiful complexity come out of 'simple' equations, is because the functions were designed to be 'self-communicators'. Take a formula. Include in it some factor. Call it "n". Do the number crunching and get a result. Make a map of the original number versus the result number. Take the result number and make it the new "n" of the equation. Repeat the process. Over and over and over. "Unanticipated" patterns will 'emerge'. Extraordinary!!

All valid. All true. BUT. The heart of the process is the information transposed back and forth again in massive iterations. Mathematical locuses 'communicating' with each other recursively. Generating complex (bound) relations (behaviors, enactments).

From that point, well long before actually, since I pre-date fractal complexity, I got into looking at the what, why, where and how of 'communication'. Early on (1972) I hit on the idea of a gaussian model, but one which could have a variety of interpretations. I never did like the notion of "maximization" of anything ... since that runs contrary to healthy behavior spaces (Lewin; "life space" (1935). Systems have to have the capacity and ability to get and give energy/information. Commerce, communication, etc all require a health state somewhere more than "empty" and quite less than "saturated". After that, we go on to figuring out 'tendencies' displayed by the interactions of these "gaussian bubbles" of existence.

Systems require functional guidelines to work under and open degrees of freedom in order to survive through any style or number of encounters. 

And that's it in a proverbial nutshell. Everything else is neat and interesting detail ... and ... understanding our place in the midst of it all ... the meaning of being alive, each and together, physically and spiritually.  Including the notion that dimensional spacetime is the primal presence of "communication".   I tend to look at existence as being an unavoidable continuum, counter to the popular scientific view that it must be quantum. The very nature of "unbrokenness" implies connection - communication. Whether we're always open to appreciating the nature and source of it all or not. "

Long before "complexity" became a formal science it was recognized and appreciated by other thinkers.  Bogdanov (J.Mikes - CI/Genre) came up with the concept of Tectology early in the 20th century. Pattee, Elsasser, Slobodkin, Dyson and others too, inquired to resolve the question. There is no singular voice which can claim sole insight or expressiveness about it, but maybe this short piece by Buckminster Fuller says it in a deep and heart-known way, even as I've tried to describe the techniques.

Open to other views.  Other ways to explore wonderment/reality.

from Critical Path by Buckminster Fuller (1981, St Martin's Press, New York) (read by JNR 22 Jan 1999)

" Nobody is born a specialist. Every child is born with comprehensive interest, asking the most comprehensively logical and relevant questions.

Pointing to the logs burning in the fireplace, one child asked me, "What is fire?"   I answered, "Fire is the Sun unwinding from the tree's log. The Earth revolves as the radiation from the Sun's flame reaches the revolving Earth. By photosynthesis the green buds and leaves of the tree convert the Sun radiation into hydrocarbon molecules, which form into the bio-cells of the green, outer, cambium layer of the tree. ... The tree's ... roots spread out into the ground to anchor the tree and get water. Each year the new, outer-layer, green tree cone revolves 365 turns, and every year the tree grows its new tender-green, bio-cell cone layer just under the bark and over the accumulating cones of previous years. Each ring of the many rings of the saw-cut log is one year's Sun-energy impoundment. So the fire is the many-years-of-Sun-flame-winding now unwinding from the tree. When the log pop-sparks, it is letting go a very sunny day long ago, and doing so in a hurry."

Conventually educated grown-ups rarely know how to answer such questions. They're all too specialized. "

Fortunately ... we can learn.

   Feb 1999        
CI IntegrationGroup  

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References:

    Mikes, John. 1997. Tectology, the ideas of Bogdanov. ceptualinstitute.com/genre/jmikes.htm
    Odum, Howard. 1983. 'Systems Ecology', Wiley, New York.
    . 1972, Four Plane Universe Conundrum. 1992, 'Understanding the Integral Universe'.
    Fuller, Buckminster. 1981. 'Critical Path', St.Martin's Press, New York

 

                  

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