Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

ENFORMATIONISM

A philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be the 21st century successor to the ancient worldviews of Materialism and Idealism. An Update from Bronze Age to Information Age. It's also a Theory – of – Everything that covers, not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love.

  Post 134.  June 16, 2024

  Synchrony : Chaos, Time, and Order

     Evolution of Physical & Mental Harmonies

Emergence, as a natural phenomenon, is controversial⁷, since it has implications for the evolution of Life from inanimate Matter, and of Consciousness from Gray Matter. For some thinkers, the discontinuous appearance of Life from Non-life, seems to defy the laws of gradual evolution. In its “strong” form, it seems to imply Creation from nothing. But that’s not what Strogatz has found in his studies. The novelties of evolution only seem to appear from nowhere, because we can’t keep track of all the moving parts in a complex & chaotic system of low-level fragments. Scientists have labeled those leaps from one physical form (state) to another, as “Phase Transitions”⁸. For example, liquid water is the most common phase of H2O (two gases), but as the temperature drops, those molecules will suddenly transform from a liquid into a solid : ice. The chemical restructuring occurs so quickly that the intermediate steps cannot be traced. Even though the material components, hydrogen & oxygen, are the same, as a whole the system has completely different structural & physical properties. The only thing that has changed, though, is physical interrelationships, such as inter-molecular attractions. Likewise, a rise in energy input will result in another transformation : from wet, flowing liquid to dry, floating gas. Physical features of the new emergent phase, as a holistic system, are different from those of the pre-emergent elements alone. Water is fluid, but Ice is rigid (high pressure), and Vapor is aethereal (low pressure).

Speaking of trans-formations, Strogatz describes the physical form of Chaos as Fractal⁹. When graphed on a computer, the mathematics of chaos is visually displayed as fractal image, a type of geometric figure in which each element has the same statistical character, and a self-similar shape, but the patterns are repeated at progressively smaller scales, vanishing toward infinity. {Image at right} The repetition is an indication of feedback loops in math. So, Fractals are graphical representations of essential Chaos principles : Recursion ; Self-Organization ; Self-Similarity ; Interconnectedness ; and Feedback Loops. In the Ed Lorenz equations underlying the Butterfly Effect, the physical system is completely deterministic, but inherently unpredictable. And, as illustrated in the spiraling, down the drain, Fractal diagrams, fixed initial settings when set into motion, always evolve to cycle around Strange Attractors¹⁰ ─ as-if by gravity, but there is no Mass at the center of revolution, only Math. Which may be the sign of a meta-physical (mathematical) principle.

In mathematical Biology, Life has been found to evolve (emerge) on the cusp between order & chaos, ‘tween structure & freedom. Moreover, Life is an emergent holistic system, in which the aggregation of constituent components has novel characteristics beyond those of the elements. This feature is usually summarized as : “the whole is more than the parts”. For example a symphony orchestra is more synchronized than a rag-tag street band, playing syncopated Jazz. In natural systems, that collective coordination is known as “synchrony”. But in human culture it’s known as “harmony”. That’s a sign of artistic Freedom within physical Determinism.  

7. Creative Emergence :
   The role of emergence in the creation of conscious-ness has been debated for over a century, but it remains unresolved. In particular there is controversy over the claim that a “strong” or radical form of emergence is required to explain phenomenal consciousness.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7304239/

8. Phase Transitions :
   In chemistry, thermo-dynamics, and other related fields like physics and biology, a phase transition (or phase change) is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. . . . . .  This can be a discontinuous change; for example, a liquid may become gas upon heating to its boiling point, resulting in an abrupt change in volume.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_transition

9. Fractals :
  Fractals and Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics, where chaos theory is focusing on the study of chaos—states of dynamical systems whose apparently random states of disorder and irregularities are often governed by deterministic laws that are highly sensi-tive to initial conditions.
https://fractalerts.com/blog/fractals-and-chaos-theory

10. Strange Attractors :
   In the mathematical field of dynamical systems, an attractor is a set of states toward which a system tends to evolve. . . . An attractor can be a point, a finite set of points, a curve, a manifold, or even a complicated set with a fractal structure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor

Note – In the Fractal image above, the Attractor is at the center of the spiral, but the end-point is at Infinity.

Emergence of
Phase Transitions

End of Blog Post 134

Fractals go on forever