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"When confronted with that which one cannot change or know the outcome of, one learns the necessity of virtue and the virtue of necessity." ... B.D.Morris as paraphrased by S.A.Roof.
This paper was inspired by a series of talks Eldon New (Captain Nemo) and I had concerning evolution, religion, and science. Our discussion culminated in a lively sharing of ideas when B.D.Morris (Colonel Kurtz) joined us at Dennis the Dreamer's estate in Shelby Forrest.
The setting of nature and Dennis' wonderful stone sculptures was idyllic. As a background to our discussions we listened to the sounds of Santana and "The Division Bell" by Pink Floyd. Nemo began the discussion with his concept of the world's religions nested logically within each other like Chinese balls with the more primitive central layers archetypically encompassing all the outer ones. Similarly evolution seems to begin with primitive order that variegates into the diverse speciation of the phylatic tree of life. Before continuing with the details of our discussion, however, I wish to first digress into some thoughts I have had recently about such matters.
I began ruminating about the great thinkers of evolution after reading "The Third Culture" by John Brockman [1]. I noticed that many of their arguments were a result of ideas comming from different levels and approaches. My own reductionist tendency led me to ponder the very beginings of space-time and what general organizing principles might allow evolution to proceed and cohere on all levels. Here are some of my thoughts prior to our night at the retreat. I reasoned that the most primal unifying force is gravity. It ties together all matter across incredible distances into one attractive universe. Without any other influences the universe would collapse into one mammoth black hole singularity. There had to be another prime principle that created distinctions, a separative principle. The ideal candidate appeared to be the Pauli Exclusion Principle of physics. Simply put, no two things can occupy the same space at the same time. Indeed one can philosophize that this is the essential nature of space i.e. space is the relation between objects which are separated by space of course.
This principle hints as to why electrons are organized around atomic nuclei into discrete shells and why electron shells are populated by oppositely paired quantum spins. Once one has reached this level of organization, the entire body of chemistry can be formulated. I do not have a sufficient understanding of particle physics to talk about the origins of subatomic particles other than to say that quantum fluctuations and virtual particle pairs probably interact via the exclusion principle to organize pure energy into masses which interact. The total mass energy of the universe appears to be perfectly balanced by the total negative gravitational energy.
A short while later I read a paper recommend by DeWayne Lafrain. It was titled "Pregeometric Modelling of the SpaceTime Phenomenology" by Cahill & Klinger. The authors attempt to develop a Heraclitean Quantum System with no classical structures in its axioms.
They use an algebra of random fluxes to study the relations between virtual interaction nodes. A spatial metric emerges naturally from this pre-geometric formulation. I was thrilled to note that the authors stated that an assumed intrinsic property of their algebra was an abstract form of the Pauli Exclusion Principle. This affirmed my initial intuitions about the beginnigs of the all. This property is is realized in their algebra as the anti-commuting property ( AB = -BA ).
I believe the math of quatum physics is rife with expressions which don't commute. Sequence order is an essential feature of Universe. This suggests a philosophical speculation about the role of time and entropy also.
Eldon and I had previously discussed the above paper with regard to Goedel's Theorem. My interpretation of Goedel's Theorem is that with any propositional symbolic system complex enough to be extensible, there can exist theorems which are true but unprovable. Myself and others have taken this to imply that holes exist in any system of thought. Eldon and I extend this to suggest that the landscape of logic extends to infinity with many differing islands of thought which may contradict each other and still be true.
This is the point at which I interrupted my reverie that night and stepped into the conversation. I pointed out that the logical landscape is divided into four domains - the known, the unknown, the knowable, and the unknowable. The knowable and the unknowable are antipodes within the domain of the unkown. The known is an island within an infinite sea of the unknown. It is the core upon which those interpenetrating balls of belief reach out into the unknown differentiating as they shape the knowable into the known. To this I added that the Pauli Exclusion Principle is in essence the principle of the excluded middle - Aristotelian logic i.e. A != ~A.
Might not this be at the heart of quantization in nature. The knowable fractured by sheaths of the un-knowable become realized as the known. The unknowable manifesting via time injects an inherent uncertainty into all quantum interactions. The whole must be fractally structured down to the tiniest quanta as a frothy process. Its Goedels all the way!
Not all of the above was explicitly said that night, but my mind was racing with these thoughts amidst multiple simultaneous conversations as is our style at times. Dennis the Dreamer was keeping it real with translations of what we said into human terms and talk about interpersonal relationships. Division Bells by Pink Floyd was aparticularly synchronous input from Deric. I next mentioned that the pre-geometric modeling concept with metric space as an emergent oder reminded me of Stuart Kauffmans work with random networks that evole into islands of order amidst chaos. Kauffman argues that life and evolution flourishes on the outside edge between order and chaos. This seems to be the link I was searching for between Big Bang Theory and Evolution. One of the inner balls in Nemo's Big T.O.E. theory. Colonel Kurtz interjected that that's what he'd been talking about since when! Nemo and I had to agree. Kurtz also suggested that the four dimensions of space-time were the four domains of the logical landscape. At least that what I think he said. Nemo and I both went silent as we pondered the ramifications. Deric has formulated so many of these ideas in compressed nuggets that we seem to always be rediscovering them at different times in different ways. Deric also reminded us to re-read his paper "The Blind Watchmaker's Braille".
I am quite sure I have left out much of what we said that night. Hopefully the rest of the gang can fill in the rest. S.A.R.
[1] "The Third Culture, Beyond the Scientific Revolution", by John Brockman includes interviews with Roger Penrose, Stuart kauffman, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Murray Gell-Mann.
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