Poster Presentation Version
The INTEGRITY PAPERS UIU Group ceptualinstitute.com
of
TUCSON II - "Toward a Science of Consciousness"
April, 1996
"Man might just do what the apes can't ... impose a reason for life ... on life."
Lorraine Hansbury
FIRE WITHOUT ~ FIRE WITHIN
"Cogito ergo sum" :: "I think, therefore I am"
Rene Descartes
Pretty words. An effort to distill the essence of Being into the fewest simplest clearest words possible.
I perceive my presence in the universe ... confirming and affirming my
existence.
But, "what" I am - whatever qualities and essences may or may not be expressed - requires that I "Be", before I can act out the characteristics of "what-ness", of "Being". And, what is "thought" and "thinking" and how much thought is necessary to qualify and admit to this thing we recognize as "am-ness"? Is one flicker of perception sufficient? Are several moments of self-consciousness necessary? Or thousands? Can one singular moment of recognition in the vast ocean of temporal oblivion be satisfactory? And even then, "am" in comparison to what else? To Think and to Be requires not just my own (or any extant's) presence, but an environment of continuous consistent interaction. An environment that sends back information, that confirms and reinforces co-existence. If all of that ceases, "I" cease. And it makes no difference if "I" disappear, or the environment does ... the result is identical; existence truly being what the theologian Martin Buber called: the "I-Thou". Each "self" is nothing without an "other"... force or sentience. Self-consciousness alone is not sufficient to confirm "existence".
Imagine a universe that was totally empty except for a self-present cognizant YOU. Floating in a light-less sound-less empty nothing. Eyes opened, eyes closed, motionless or moving, you would exist in a total, vibrationless emptiness. Nothing you did would be discernably different from anything else, because there would be no way to gauge anything. Your "lifespace" would be devoid of gravitational reference, of impulse, or of "experience".
What "usefulness" then would self-consciousness serve? Exclusive of other "presences", it would serve no purpose. To find a meaningful answer to this reasonable question, though, we should be prompted to look carefully at all the situations where something responds to something-else. And, we must include all possibilities. From the "responsiveness" of a human, to that of simpler organisms, even down to the "responsiveness" of subatomic particles; from nations responding to nations, to planet Earth's response to its moon, to Gaia's response to itself. Do life forms with less developed brains have a self-referenced ability to encounter and interact? Of course. Do particles and force fields encounter and interact? Absolutely. "Self-consciousness", in its broadest interpretation, is pertinent for all extants that endure in environments where encounters involve the maintenance and reinforcement of being. Self consciousness is useful in situations where having it and embodying it makes a difference from not. And that infers all of existence. This is the first foremost fundamental characteristic quality that is extancy. It is the singular characteristic that "Integrity - Understanding the Integral Universe" focuses on and explores in detail. We will come to appreciate that we were intuitively aware of this notion all the time ... because we are living embodiments of it ... but we will now embrace it as part of our conscious awareness.
A person or a world or a single atom or a self-relevant electromagnetic wave fluctuation or a balanced "singularity", floating alone in a vast expanse of an otherwise empty volume, is beyond the limit of our present understanding of Existence. That situation would be an unreferencable Solitude... an "existence"in and of itself which would forever be beyond our ken, somewhere on the other side of the conditions that we truly mean and leave unspoken when we think of and share the seminal idea and cept: "existence". Here, on the near side of Creation are the only phenomena we are capable of dealing with or making reference to. The near-side conditions being: the continually occurring sweep of interactions where changes occur and processes happen. Where/when ... because of how things are made/constructed ... "event interactions" result ... exhibiting responses and alterations.
Let's take a moment to understand what this characteristic is about by looking at some example situations. A complex machine - like a satellite hurtling through space - has no independent reason to maintain itself. Its existence is pertinent only to its maker/sender, not itself, so it is of no self-relevant concern if it collides with a planet or comet or whatever, or even whether or not it senses the immanency of such calamitous encounters with its environment, supposing it had the capacity to make flight adjustments and could avoid catastrophe. It did not create itself by any spontaneous build up of internally coordinated processes. It's functional abilities did not arise out of any response to an event or situation. It's limited functions and "identity" are defined by causes "external" to itself: human intellect.
By contrast, complex holistic self consciousness arises as the naturally built up capacity of an extant to process information from its surroundings. Progressively built up from simpler components (including all prior levels of constructive ability), it requires the ongoing ability to encounter, gather, retain, process and evaluate information relative to "self" (whether in complex or rudimentary forms, such as experiencing "pain", or, force gradients like a push or pull: negative imbalances that represent a distancing from some safe kinetic stasis), and an ability to respond, to re-adjust to the imbalance, and regain smooth ongoing functioning. Self-consciousness needs "environment" to evaluate the status of its own being; a convocation of others which define themselves by interactive process.
We see a bird swoop down from the clouds. It heads toward a tree...then a branch...it flares its wings just at the right instant...it's talons reach out...clutch a branch...and embrace it as it stiffens it's upper legs to absorb the impact...sweeps it's wings against the momentum...and furls them ...and begins to balance on that branch...and continues to survey where it is...where food...or it's nest...might be. All accomplished while it's heart beats and it digests it's recent meal; some of thousands of simultaneous subtle maneuvers behaviors and reactions accomplished by a very self-conscious being. The bird does not "operate" through the sky and then crash to the ground. It constantly senses itself in it's surroundings and keeps itself safe, using a panorama of information it takes in and readjusts itself to deal with. This is what life does. But these abilities, these skills, have to be grounded in some previous functioning of constituents, because those "behaviors" may only manifest themselves as life when enough components amass and relative information pathways are established to permit a higher integration of activity.
"Am-ness", on whatever level you want to imagine, requires that an extant have the ability to continue and maintain coherency of its innate qualities by successful adjustment to potentially wide ranges of interactions. Up to whatever event might be beyond the skill or structural ability of the "am" to cope with. When we think on those kinds of extreme experience it doesn't matter whether we consider an atomic nucleus being stripped of it's surrounding electrons, a vase shattered by a hammer, an animal electrocuted by a high intensity fence, a corporation dismantled by creditors, a planet de-stabilized by tidal force interactions with its moon, a spiral galaxy deformed by collision with another spiral giant, or any similar situation you can think of....if what a thing "was" prior to an encounter no longer remains essentially present after an encounter...then that "am-ness" no longer exists. It has been destroyed. It has been rendered "extinct". Possibly: evolved. Even...transformed. With a panorama of possibilities that staggers, awes and humbles. Annihilation and metamorphosis co-present as siblings in the vastness of Everything. Persistence and continuity being the hallmark of existence, no matter what techniques or processes are engaged to accomplish it.
Said in another way, "am-ness" - the continuation of being - needs qualities that fall in between the conditional extremes of "nothing to interact with" versus "too much to interact with", between "void" and "immensity", between "lack of existential support" and "overpowering destruction".
Let's put this into the realm of human experience. At sometime in a human being's life the cognitively felt question "why?" occurs to the mind. The one question which is as much a statement of immense declaration as it is a reaching out for knowledge lacking at a given moment. It is the one word~sentiment which acknowledges: "I am not alone. The world around me is more than myself and more than I can explain. There is "existence" that persists without me. Humans are privileged on our planet by being one of the first species to so completely act on this sentient cognition ... and embark on it's abstract resolution (more than figuring out "why" a prey is escaping our pursuit ... by its scurrying down a crevasse too small for us to follow). We are different from our fellow creatures, not in form or functioning but in "capacity", for extending the universal drive - to engage and suffuse the universe. We have the ability to encounter the rest of existence and appreciate the connections that go beyond our immediate and local experiences. We can extrapolate and find relevance beyond here-and-now, appreciating and holistically interpreting everyplace-everywhen-everyhow. We truly are at one with the momentous force behind existence, constructed of the same bits and pieces and relationships that make up all things "not-ourselves". We are not only "in" the universe, we are part "of" it. We are concurrent with existence and all the ramifications of existence. We are not separate outsiders examining something that is alien and foreign. We are one of the spawns of Creation which can know that we are this Creation. So when we look at Creation - the Universe - we are looking at ourselves, no matter what we explore or incorporatingly learn by intention or encounter through chance. What is of special note is that we have arrived at a point when we can ponder on the meaning of meaning, concern ourselves with the act of concern, wonder about wondering, and think on the why of why. We can look at the whole montage of creation and seek its "idea", its seminal essence.
We are born as part of a universe of experience. Our form and our consciousness are comprised of the bits and pieces and forces of the most minute components of creation, and we have existed - as those components - through the most dynamic and titanic events that ever were, are, or will be. At the very least, we have existed through those moments and in those places that temperatures and physical densities were nearly infinite. Where the plasma-soup of energy-matter was so extreme, that what we are made of at this moment, was yet to exist because everything was so collapsed that there was no room - no environment - to exist in, in the form (atomic structuring) that we discern ourselves now to be.
And yet, even there, interactions, relationships and dynamics existed. There were causes and effects. On such a coherent and consistent scale that everything that was about to be formed would do so, such that the structures being made would be the same - of the same family - throughout ALL of creation. A relative handful of types of 'things' would automatically come into being...throughout that infant universe...no matter where or when they formed. Because the rules...the relationship pre-conditions...were 'already' there...in the fabric of space/time/energy.
This, too, was experience. Every extant present at that occasion affected and responded to an environmental panorama which it was part and parcel of. A dynamic interlinked flow of energy, information, and experience.
And here and now, bringing to bear on this subject the fullest extent of our conscious awareness, we must begin by realizing that the source of our knowledge is only through this dynamic called experience - and the accretion and correlation of experiences - retained, stored and used - as information.
By way of reference, the universe must necessarily be made of forces and particles that by their very dynamics are already the precursors to life. Particles, atoms, etc, are already self-containing functioning units that do nothing else except maintain their form/functions while constantly encountering forces/objects in their environment. The power and fire of life grows from within. The universe is organized so that life is a natural extension of non-life. It flows from the least of existence and expresses itself in all the forms and levels attainable. It is the slow and steady build up of complexity and history. And it is the daily expression that each regenerating form displays in its activities from moment to moment. Individuals or species or supernovas. We are all "creation".
But "creation" shows such a bewildering array of events and transactions, some so seemingly antithetical in qualities or dynamic ranges, that it almost appears that there couldn't possibly be any "connection" between them all. In point of fact there is. There must be. If no other recognition guides our mentality, we must never lose sight of the fact that the great enormity of behaviors in the universe bespeak a fundamental "sameness" that permits the comfortable co-existence of all of these things in one location, the Universe, in the first place. An underlying "compatibility" is required. The search for it is what humanity is partially embarked on as part of "what we do" in the world. The search for it ... is the purpose of these writings.
But how do we describe these perceptive understandings in terms both at once new and meaningful? What topic affords a "better" reference, if any? Religion? Psychology? ... or physiology, or chemistry, or physics, or philosophy, or sociology, or etymology, or relativity, or language patterns, or dreams, or entropy-negentropy, or purpose, or communication, or information capacity, or systems analysis, or integrity, or security, or meaning of meaning, or empathy, or homeostasis, or praeself, or body language, or sensation, or duality, or symmetry, or singularity, or emotion, or capacity for objectivity, or evolution, or prophesy, or comedy/tragedy, or humanity, or capacity for action recumbent in construction, or resultant action reliant on viable interactions, or transformation of inanimate to animate, or collective unconscious, or enculturation, or decision processes, or phantom limbs, or ....
Do we begin with music? With visuality? With convolutions on the surface of the great conundrum? Waves upon waves, in a dance of holo-graphic moments ... extraordinarily profuse and embellished? With the fact that nothing "new" exists because experience is singular within a life-time and is experienced only in unique framework; that incorporation of information is so instantaneous that familiarity is equatable with identity; that our experiences today are different only in type but not in kind from any human being who ever lived; and that, in fact, there might be nothing historically new to experience which has not already been experienced or sensed by someone/something else?
In extensive and densely interconnected environments several relationships and processes are happening at once. Einsteinian "equivalence" expresses that above all else, existence is a flux of transitioning. Things - energy, space and time - are in a constant dance where myriad components, aspects, and factors can and do translate and transcribe myriad forms of information. Scientists of the past 200 years have focussed their efforts on analyzing and understanding the "what" that is going on in all these processes. Chemists, biologist and other large-domain explorers have concentrated on events bounded by those experiential extremes. Physicists in particular work at the boundaries per se... at the limits of energy exchange: Absolute Zero, at one extreme, and energy expressed at the speed of light...if not beyond, at the other. Temperatures without limit.
Absolute Zero we intuitively understand. A "basement", a temperature terra firma, a no-where-else-to-go primal state of atomic dynamic structure. Above that, Einstein handed us an equal and potentially firm sort of ceiling, the speed of light. A velocity which stays permanently fixed, for anyone and anything. A maximum speed for the transmission and transference of energy. Except. In its simplest form, his equation "E=mc²" indicates a velocity of quite a different sort.
If we look at the equation again, but examine it as a true "rate of process", rather than the astounding enough perception that matter equals energy ... and that the equivalence is a "quantity" expressed as an extraordinarily large, but fixed, value (c²) ... then the "rate" of that translation of energy into matter (or vice-versa) is truly at an exponential speed, c times c. Not only do the corresponding "quantity-values" transcribe into the other "exponentially", but the "speed of translation" can also be inferred to be happening at that "rate". The translation or transfer happens not in a linear uniform time scale or restricted by velocity "c", but in a measure of temporal scales multiplied time each other. According to two separate "time coordinates" measured in comparison to each other.
For the everyday world we experience, this exponential value appears as interesting but impractical information. So far. There has been some theoretical inquiry done to explore phenomena which might be faster than the relativistic speed of light. Certain Doppler wave frequency shifts (when the phase-density of waves increase or decrease in regard to the comparative positions and velocities of a source and a receiver) have been measured which indicate that some masses have been or are travelling at speeds in excess of the speed of light. Especially out at the edges of the visible Universe where we are observing things as they were billions of years ago.
At the very least, an adjustment in how we interpret these things might need to be found in order to accommodate why velocities in excess of "c" are even showing up in experimental results. Faster than light velocities run counter to contemporary understandings of the behavior limits of matter and energy, and has yet to be satisfactorily explained. Some theories propose Tachyons, particles of matter that are imagined to travel no slower than the speed of light, in an effort to form a possible explanation of this and other phenomenon. It is obvious that some accommodation needs to be made. Either specifying conditions that permit velocities higher than c to exist, or readjusting our interpretation of the Doppler Shift. Even exceptions to rules need to be accounted for.
Regarding space, matter and energy per se, there are similar theories attempting to deal with the concept of "extraordinary compression (i.e., translation)" of energy and information. In current scientific vogue is String and Super-string Theory...ideas which postulate the extraordinary compression of energy and matter into spatial regions so infinitely small that time and space are compressed also....so much so that any Einsteinian constraints are disregarded entirely for some phases of existence. Some current Cosmologists (Smoot, et al.) postulate that during the first "seconds" and "hours" and "years" (assuming there is or was some environmental frame to make these words meaningful) the physical "space" (volume) of the Universe itself expanded at rates wholly in excess of the speed of light. It is postulated that the expansion of "space" into the geometric volume that we experience it as, was not initially limited by a velocity limit.
It is presumed that energy/matter self-defined its own presence, established its own functional environment as it was expanding and decompressing from its incubating Singularity cocoon. "Space" is assumed not to exist on its own. It came into "being" as a corollary quality pertinent to energy/matter. These theorists conceptually maintain a "time normal" standard (the one we experience, and in which c is uniform), and express the expansion of the Universe within the first few "fractions of a standard "second"" as being far in excess of the usual measure of the speed of light. The occurrence was at a "time" in the process when only high energy existed, not matter. Material-form came only after the first 10-43 "second", when energy had "cooled" sufficiently for matter to congeal and coagulate out of the heat of Creation.
First: nothing. Then: extraordinary something. Then: moderate most everything (in very simple forms)...sub-atomic particles, atomic particles...etc., in random combinations. Afterwards, as cooling continued and space provided "elbow room", the Universe became the place we know of today. Beyond the extremes of "no interaction" and "too much interaction" there developed the middle latitude of existence, where stable dynamic continuance of forms is the hallmark of "being". Whether it is on the scale of nano-seconds for subatomic particles, or cosmic millennia for the galaxies, or minutes, hours, days, years, centuries, and eons, for biological and geological forms...there is always a duration of dynamic stability.
It is this "dynamic stability" that I have chosen to explore and evaluate. Because it is a phenomena relevant to everything that exists. It is the one pandemic concept of universal functioning that embraces all the mathematics, all the energetics, all the behavioral patternings, all the singularly distinct components, all the intricately interconnected processes, all ideas, beliefs and perceptions. All constants, regimens and gradients. All transferences and transmissions. All relevance and relativity and mechanics...both quantum and celestial.
I have chosen the name "Integrity" principle to refer to this universally applicable process of "dynamic stability". Each field of study may have it's own terminology for this activity, but they are all essentially the same function, merely considered apropos to each focus of discussion. Quantum plateaus, homeostasis, international balance of trade, econiches, the Laws of Thermodynamics (eg, an action produces an "equal" re-action), dynamic equilibrium, steady-states, stable social order, are some of the terms used.
Integrity is the ability of an extant, whether atom, animal or cosmic star, to participate in a range of interactions and still maintain a continuity of form or ƒfunction or development. Integrity, as we are capable of recognizing it, must be broad enough to embrace such examples as :
1) Primal universal construct: a stable proton existing for the entire life of the universe, 2)Metamorphosis: a caterpillar which transfigures into a moth or butterfly (being a singular organic life form which undergoes drastic alterations of its structure in order to deal with different environments, or bio-metabolism, or need-objectives pertinent to its survival as a holistic organism), 3)Maturation: as an organism (such as ourselves) matures through several distinct states or forms of body structure (subtle nuances effecting profound changes) while remaining essentially "individual" and uniquely the same, and, 4)Evolution: that occurs as organisms and astronomically integral systems interact successfully to a wide variety of encounters on many levels...external environment, random fluctuations in bio-metabolism and genetic sequencing, internal plasma dynamics and quantum states, and so on, where a chain of regenerating-creation can produce wholly different life forms or stellar constructs...while relying on an unbroken lineage of reproduction-that-permits-alterations. Integrity is a kinetic stability, it is simultaneously content and process acting in relationship with extended environments. And it is not just the most common or favored states, but extends as a lattitude range to all pre-transformation limits.
The types can be tentatively organized :
atomic
/
A) constructively integral
\
high energy/minimum localization stellar evolution
viral
molecular
/B) procreative
\
biologic
social/commercial
The transition organization between A and B is probably the viral form. For all the above types of organization there is strong dependence on the entropy and temperatures of innate construction and ny external environment. The fundamental forces which bind a system into a coherent self maintaining whole must be energetically compatible with the energy of any external environment. Typically, complexity arises at the lower end of the temperature scale. Complexity is also typically a result of localized (versus generic) entropy.
A very special perspective must predominate here. It is that successful survival is a result of no one singular distinct process. Relevant to how a thing or organism is made, the integral continuation of its being is the result of how that construction can behave in regard to a vast spectrum of forces, affects and relationships. An orchestration of actions and reactions dealing with not only the Integrity of the entity or organism itself, but with the Integrity of all its sub-processing parts with itself ... and itself as a nested part of the larger populations or environments which it is a member of.
That is, we can recognize Integrity processes relative to quarks, then of neutrons protons and electrons, then of atoms, then of molecules, then of molecular process cycles, then of cells, then of cellular aggregations, then of organisms, then of biological familial groupings, then of social groups or even economic interactions. Likewise, under alternate energy circumstances, we can imagine quantities and temperature situations where the Integrity sequence extends from sub-atomic to atomic to the panorama of cosmic forms...galaxies, black holes, stars and comets et al.
We need to keep all of this in mind, and more. We must be diligently aware that "environment" cannot be limited to those things that are only external to some nebulously defined boundary called "integral entity". Behavior and Integrity and survival - no matter what the construction is like - require a latitude of activities that relate to internal and external phenomena in order to assure continuation of being, each level having its own "internal" and its own "external". Each level having or not an immediate affect on the levels nested on either side of its Integrity bound, but always having the potential to inter-affect each other through present pathways of energy and information exchange. Always present and always active. Each working in regards to its own stability, and yet, interdependently affecting the dynamic stabilities of everything else. One relationship; many mechanisms.
Something is going on here. Something as powerful as the 4 fundamental forces which we have observed. A comparable dynamic of some sort that works in concert with them. It maybe as simple as some factor of how those forces already ƒfunction, a factor they already have in common, which we may already be familiar with. It may be an aspect totally new. At the very least we can start defining Integrity according to the idea of "range" which this discussion opened with: the capacity to interact poised predominantly between too little information/energy and too much information/energy. I therefore offer you a brief quote from "Discussion of the Four Plane Universe Conundrum", ©1973, my first paper setting the guidelines and seminal ideas needed to cope with this most ambitious project :
"For any system with some definable material construction, its information capacity is the maximum information load before disruption occurs due to excessive internal forces. At the point that adjustable parameters of space/time also reach their limits. Information Load is that amount of codified and uncodified energy that a system can contain and still retain its capacity for elastic form retention. Sub-system noise is also included, but unless transmission channels exist which might permit amplification thereby inducing structural disordering, it plays a minimal role in any calculations."
"Integrity is kinetic stability and is measured in terms of information load for any given system construction. For a given system (closed), information capacity is set at 1 (one), with information load varying from greater than zero to one, [0 < I.L. 1]. Integrity is also arbitrarily set with values ranging from zero to one, 0 to 1. Integrity maximizes between zero and maximum information load. Stable operating can plateau or hold anywhere in that range."
Note: This diagram "instinctively" "maximizes" Integrity in the normal visual sense. However, the final diagram form is more accurately inverted, as maximization of "potential" (to handle information) at a stability plateau "minimum". {Weibel Distribution}.
"Information requirement (to maximize Integrity) is the absolute value of Integrity at (x) minus actual IL/IC .... (IL/IC)x - (IL/IC)a = IR. If (IL/IC)a > (IL/IC)x, then the rate at which IR decreases in the natural log of internal pressure. If (IL/IC)a < (IL/IC)x, then the rate is due to differential pressure plus available external energy. External energy affects both rates, but when it does not exist or is negligible, for (IL/IC)a >(IL/IC)x, the rate at which IR decreases is "ln(jekt)"."
"A system ceases its original mode of functioning (disrupts, becomes extinct, dies, or transforms) when the slope of the graph - the rate of moving from one Integrity configuration to another - exceeds a specified value which is determined by a prorated total time shift and the conditional time change capability limits of the system involved. That is, if construction does not warrant it, adjustive adaptation will not occur. Integrity is always considered in regard to the time at which Integrity is required for the system, and is therefore grounded in the capabilities of its construction."
Please don't bother trying to evaluate or remember the academic language. Its essence comes down to this: An extant's Integrity depends on how much information/energy it can hold and use as well as how fast it can (or needs to) process information/energy. I can drink a ton of water .. one glassful at a time. Putting a fire hose in my mouth probably isn't a good way to satisfy my thirst.
On closer examination the above curve will display local plateaus which smooth out into the larger curve as more and more factors come into play. Transitionings between stable nodes are sometimes seen as progressing according to the well know S-curve of statistics and thermodynamics.
An important related problem, which researchers in many fields are already trying to cope with is "complexity", the grand exploration of what processes exist which drive complex systems into existence. Except for the minimal situation of quantum base state values found in atomic structure, where energy plateaus can hold constant for near infinite lengths of time, everything else should be subject to Entropy...the seemingly constant and persistent dispersion, distribution and dilution of energy. A "downhill" anti-complexity gradient that seems impossible to counter. And yet, we are here. Life is here. Complexity a in spite of the "rule" of entropy degradation.
Some real and potent process has enabled the arising of life. We have not yet pinpointed any new or different "force". So, what now? Do we continue to look for something new and different to explain it? Or is there another option? I suggest that we re-look at what we already know. It might be possible to reorganize known forces and processes into a better scenario and collage. We might be able to use what we already know to explain negentropic complexity. We can re-examine and restructure the languages and concepts we already use to arrive at an appreciation for aspects and relationships we might not have been cognizant of before, yet were always there.
The proposal that I offer is that the universe uses the entropy process only as a general rule. That is, localized entropy regions are definable which had and have the net effect -- in context to even larger domain considerations -- of creating systems of negentropic organization and behavior. Complexity, life, and all the blending of known behaviors and evolved processes have arisen from simple applications and orchestrations of the primary fundamental forces...in synchrony with multiple applications of entropy ... ƒfunctioning in closely defined regions.
This possibility truly intrigues me, because I believe in the idea of a Unified Field Theory, a Grand Unified Theory ... spoken of using the phrase Theory of Everything. Such a Theory of Everything was originally spawned through the efforts of physicists and mathematicians to explain, unify and coordinate the four distinct forces that have been discerned which affect and produce the simple behaviors of matter and energy: Gravity, Electro-Magnetism, the Strong Nuclear Force, and the Weak Nuclear Force.
This is no small or mean task in and of itself, not entirely accomplished as of this writing. But those chosen title-phrases can be understood in a more ambitious and broader way, and be no less valid or accurately meaningful. If we look at all the knowledge we have accumulated along the way in this great adventure of Life and Creation, the simple truth makes itself more and more apparent. There is a Uniformity to all this co-existence which goes beyond any topically parochial understandings. All our behaviors, our belief structures, our social institutions, our survival skills, our interpersonal actions, our transcendental concepts, all of this and more ... exist and are made up of all we have come to understand about the primal extants in the universe. We are what we are made of and more. Principally, whatever the quarks and strange matter are, that is what we are too. Our behaviors are necessarily derived from that level of existence. All our somatic biology and all our Spiritual cognitions.
After I give a thorough discussion of some of my basic concepts and their comparison to historically previous paradigms I will come back to "complexity" and "entropy"; I will eventually describe an expanded frame of reference that includes strange and extraordinary ranges for several different kinds of "probabilities"...probabilities that could be the source for encouraging and nurturing complexity - and life, rather than denying it. Before I do, it is important to explain a new way to understand "information"... how we experience it and how we talk about it.
We come into the world neither self made nor self designed. Neither do we bring with us specific cognitive knowledge. All that we "know" is acquired during our stay. All that we "are" therefore is the combination of prior evolutionary developments plus the energy and information which our developed form has the capacity to retain and act on ... the environmental universe we experience. We are the product of evolutionary information formed and amassed over eons, plus the information which is local to our individual life spans. Every encounter we have impacts our current Integrity and survival, which in turn foundationally impacts the potential Integrity and survival of our offspring (and everything that they have the potential to encounter).
So, where do we begin coordinating this massive amount of innate and acquired information, both pre-extant and potential? How do we organize into a coherent schema all that we begin with - once biological processes create us as autonomous individuals separate from others in time and place - plus all we have acquisitionally learned of this "place of existence" - the Universe? We start with the recognition that all existence requires a mutual compatibility in order not to destroy itself just by the mere interaction of its several parts. We proceed by organizing every piece of knowledge and information we have gained so far. We go one step further by even recognizing that our perceptions and models and ideas were conditionally molded by a long sequence of local subjective interactions. This means two things. First, local encounters and random languages have been used to describe things. Therefore, we should be prepared to re-evaluate gained knowledge as parochial. Not "wrong", mind you, but narrow in their original development. We should be prepared to re-analyze how specific concepts came to be and we must be open enough to discard old verbiage and replace it with new and broader encompassing words and ideas. We should be savvy enough to evaluate how our most analytical languages are structured (especially the language called mathematics) and perceive all the functional nuances and implications, re-organizing and redefining as we go along.
Second, and most critically, we must always invoke the assumption that everything that once existed, exists now, or can exist in the future ... must be valid. Every idea, every material extant, every relationship, every action, every thought, everything must have its place in the schema of a total holistic embrace. The most moral deed, the most heinous crime, the most inconsequential event, the most apparent and the most subtle anything must have its place in the archive of being. Even what we take for granted ... the a priori's of existence ... things, relationships, etc that we cannot find anything more fundamental to explain their presence, must all blend into coherence. It is not enough for mathematicians to describe whole systems which allow commutivity operations (where two or more things can interact in any sequence and the outcome will be the same; abc = bac = cba... etc.), and whole systems which are non-commutative (where different sequences give different results; ab ba). Choosing conditional "opposites" is not satisfactory by itself. The new perspective must be able to describe all recognized "opposites", such as commutivity and non-commutivity, and treat them as co-existing simultaneously, explaining the conditional proprieties of why and where and how.
This is not a paradox. Mutually exclusive events exist within broader environments which allow each and either and both to exist. It cannot be any other way. It is what we experience. We experience up versus down, hot versus cold, silence versus sound, presence versus absence, et al, et al. The only difference is conditions, points of view, frames of reference, times of occurrence. We must be able to justify why 10 different people can look at some event or system and come up with 10 different reasonable explanations for what is going on ... each of them viable and valid. An opposite is not eternally precluded just because one of them exists. Everything has its time. Everything has its place. Given additional information or having it reorganized in a slightly different ways moves us from a Ptolemaic universe to a Copernican one. Given an infinite amount of time, an infinite amount of monkeys, and an infinite number of typewriters that they can peck away at or an infinite number of sheaves of paper to write on ... eventually one of them will write all the works of Shakespeare. In truth, we didn't have to wait an infinite amount of time to see it happen. It only took 15 billion years, and a few million monkeys, and one of them ... named Shakespeare ... to do it.
A Unified Field Theory, a valid and complete Theory of Everything, cannot by condition exclude anything known to exist....even varieties of infinity. Behaviors, events, conditions, relationships, things and non-things, material and immaterial ... if we cannot conceptually embrace it all then we fall short of what is possible. If we envision extending the reach of our minds to embrace everything retainable or considerable, and more, then such an achievement must press the limits of our expectations. I believe it is eminently possible to achieve an expansive understanding of the universe and existence but we must change our existing and narrow anthropomorphic points of view to do so.
It is of passing interest that we can even look to fundamental religious perceptions (though this exposition is by no stretch of the imagination a work of spiritual precepts) to support the philosophical applications of information and Integrity to science and mathematics. In the beginning (as is written) was the Word. Not a "thing", not a "force" - nothing tangible. In the beginning was Conceptual Essence - word. An information. If we can take this creation imagery at face value among other cultural creation stories, we are informed about the most important quality of existence. That everything which has come into being is related to or is in some way or another information. Time, space, mass, energy, forces, intangible relationships, in fact anything and everything that exists (as we are aware of them or not) has an intrinsic quality of information which can be imparted or exchanged or interacted with.
Boundary conditions determine any separation and distinctiveness. But a boundary is also a binder of co-presence, a blending link joining two or more domains and presences, even things on either side of a Gödel Boundary which ostensibly separates known from unknown. I take this observation to be valid for all things, whether physically real, conceptually perceived, or idealistically modeled in language and thought. At the core of all phenomena - and as a window for coordinating everything - we can denote that energy, space, time, relationships and in truth, all that is, can be reduced to information. The thrust of this study then is to organize information. To find out the forms it can take and the ways that it transforms and expresses itself in phenomena and behavior, in fact and in potential, in performance and in idealizations. Our mathematics must mirror, reflect and mimic everything that we observe, especially the relationships called environments, boundaries, equalities , and, identities. I am proposing that mathematics can not only describe the behaviors of environments that it models but that core structures of mathematics itself embody the qualities which are "environment". All the dimensions and content of existence.
This notion serves us well as an exploring species as we examine, learn about and coordinate the qualities and phenomena of our universe. It gives us a foundation for acknowledging that this most likely is the one essential quality which cuts across all seeming differences we perceive in the universe, no matter how diverse things appear. The universe can be perceived as a vast exposition of Information and all events and dynamics are part and parcel of a holistic flux of information forms in constant transition, motion, transcription, translation, interaction - a dynamicly thriving interplay.
As we approach the closing days of the twentieth century we have the opportunity of reviewing and reorganizing a vast amount of knowledge compiled in a wide array of fields. We have millennia of history, philosophy, science, experience and human discourse to depend upon. We have our mere presence, which points to thousands of generations of ancestors who conveyed to succeeding generations the information which enabled successful survival (and the environmental circumstances which supported continuation). We have schools and laboratories and research facilities all over the planet rife with new discoveries each and every day adding to the assemblage of that knowledge.
Those things are undeniably all connected... by their mere presence and existence. The challenge is to discover a way of translating all the diversity of terms and knowledge accumulated into a distillate: that characteristic of extancy, of behavior, of relationship which underscores them and unites them together. "Four Plane Universe Conundrum" (1973) and "Understanding the Integral Universe" (1992,1995) present the notion of INTEGRITY as a paradigm which can achieve that holistic embracing goal. "Integrity" (1995), "Integrity: Getting Past Goedel" (1995), "Conscious Continuum" (1995), [also: "Maxwell's Demon = Turing Machine" (1997)] are synopses of the ideas broached there, with a stress on new mathematical notions in the language of Mathematics. The author has found it necessary to alter and improve some mathematical grammar and definitions in order to express and example INTEGRITY which is defined and supported by the relational dynamics of information flow in the universe.
Integrity (as meant in these discussions) is everything as conventionally defined by usage, it is a "quality of being complete; sound, unimpaired, whole". Indeed, it is that, but dynamically it is more. It is persistence and presence in extended environments. Things or systems or organizations are integrally distinct in relation to the rest of existence, yet this implies that wholeness needs else in order to be determined and defined and in fact, truly complete. It also implies the presence of appropriate information interaction processes which can achieve that end. Regardless of form. Regardless of structure. Which brings us directly to the topic of this excellently considered Conference.
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All of existence is: transaction of information.
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And all transaction of information is Consciousness.
***************************************© 1996 Tucson II
April, 1996
THE INTEGRITY PAPERS (LINKS TO CEPTUAL READINGS)
GENRE WORKS (OTHER WRITERS)
POETICS
MINDWAYS (LINKS TO GLOBAL THINKERS)
"NON-FRACTAL COMPLEXITY" (Order the Videotape)
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