A Physical Principle of Universal Order. Jaime S. Carvalho
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must be excreted.
Mathematics is a purely abstract science but an essential tool to physics, particularly in gaining insight into the workings of internal structure that cannot be directly observed. It is indispensable to, but cannot replace, physics.
Yet, modern theoretical physics, and even research in physics, have been guided by mathematics alone. This situation is leading to the construction of an artificial mathematical world devoid of logic, which stands between us and reality. Like the philosophical thought in Plato’s time, the thought of modern fundamental physics is carrying us further away from the natural world.
Since we are a part of nature, we should also obey its laws. If so, our mysterious connection to nature—the causal relation— should be easier to reveal by studying the biological systems, which are low-energy systems, rather than the high-energy physical systems where everything happens too fast to be observed. Contrary to what would be expected, the operation of the universe may be easier to understand from the physics of biology.
An understandable universe
Although this work is mainly concerned with scientific concepts, we cannot ignore their philosophical and religious foundations, particularly in a topic concerning the understanding of the universe and our role in it. After all, these three disciplines should be considered not isolated branches of knowledge but phases in the continuous development of the human intellect. We cannot fully understand philosophy without religion, and science without the influence of both.
With language not yet developed and very limited thinking ability, our ancestors of 50,000 to 20,000 years ago were guided mostly by their perceptual and instinctual processes. The notion of self—of a person differentiated from nature—was lacking.
By their own experience, they “knew” that nature was in constant change—hotter and colder days, strong and weak winds, occasional storms, flowing rivers, growing and decaying trees, and the like—but had no inkling how this change came about. The elusive concept of change could not be grasped by our forebears and, therefore, the developing language was necessarily built on concepts of permanence.
Unable to understand the external world, they lived an existence of fear, not only of natural phenomena but of hunger, wild beasts, disease, and death. To mitigate these fears, they conceived of entities with super powers—living spirits inhabiting trees, mountains, and rivers—as the rulers of the planet. In times of need, they appealed to those illusory beings for help. As time went by, these concepts found their way into the tradition, leading to the first cultural era of superstition, remnants of which still exist today.
With language evolving and abstract thinking more generalized, the primitive, vaguely defined concept of living spirits was later replaced by a belief in extraterrestrial gods possessing supernatural powers—polytheism. But whereas the conception of spirits was put forth in a context of animism, the conception of gods was developed in a context of anthropomorphism. These humanized gods were the supervisors of the world and everything in it. To propitiate these beings and secure their favors, sacrifices were offered to them. As this belief spread into the culture, the number of gods expanded, eventually resulting in a hierarchical system of deities. The highly emotional idea of all-powerful gods was stabilized by the formation of a special priestly caste that sets itself up as the mediator between the people and the gods.
By 10,000 BC agriculture and stock breeding were well developed, and the guaranteed food supply changed the way of life from nomadic to urban. With urban living, language increased in importance, knowledge expanded faster than ever before, and leisure time was more readily available. Human activity was particularly intense in the eastern Mediterranean regions, Middle East, and India, in places where the soil was most productive.
By 1,000 BC conceptual thought could be expressed in script as well as speech, a social hierarchy was well established, but man continued to be a part of nature. Nevertheless, humans (presumably the Egyptian priesthood) became capable of achieving universal ideas, the most important one being the concept of a single universal god—monotheism. This single authority was the creator of the universe and of everything on earth, and an absolute ruler possessing limitless powers.
After 1,000 BC the material and economic conditions were improving, but their unfair distribution led to social unrest in a society where instinctive behavior was still predominant. The progressive degeneration of customs led the priesthood to develop the concept of a personal god, a god who protects, disposes, rewards, and punishes. God was always present within the individual, in a divine part of the brain called soul, which was considered to survive the death of the body. The old idea of spirits in nature was converted into spirits in human nature—conscious spirits. The tradition carried these concepts forward, ultimately leading to the creation of all the great monotheistic religions. To some extent, religious thought has influenced humans ever since.
With the teachings of monotheism, particularly the idea of guilt, man became aware of sharp divisions within himself—good and evil, reason and instinct, body and soul. He saw himself as a thinking person separated from nature—idea could be clearly distinguished from fact. The concept of “self” had finally been established. Humans could now concentrate their attention on the surrounding world.
By 600 BC, with man increasingly attracted to the novel field of thinking processes in his own nature, philosophical thought started appearing. With the advent of philosophy, the supernatural and mythical explanation of the origin of the natural world was challenged by rational explanations, which were still vague and diffuse but more related to the environment. Religious ideas, however, continued to underlie most of philosophic thought.
In philosophy, the idea of spirits and soul was replaced by a more refined but equally obscure one, that of mind. As first conceived around the fifth century BC, the mind was a material substance but finer and purer than the rest of matter. It was an independent, changeless entity where all knowledge and power resided.
Without any means of experimentation available to them, the philosophers of nature arrived at their conclusions either by close observation through the senses, by introspective “rational” thinking, or by a judicious combination of both. Some philosophers relied on their senses as a reliable instrument of inquiry, others relied more on the judgments of their own minds.
In a very simplified way, and after a few centuries of wild speculation regarding the nature of the world and our place in it, we can say that there was agreement among the philosophers that change was constantly occurring in nature—it could not be denied—but the process of change was interpreted differently: some view it as simply chaotic, others were able to see a principle of order beneath the chaos. These views were to characterize two distinct types of philosophic thought.
The most influential representative of the first type was Plato (428–327 BC). He rejected the ruthless world of the senses in favor of a transcendent world of permanent ideas. Mind was separated from the material world—a special type of dualism. For him, the static harmony of thought was reality and the confusion of the natural process was illusion. This dualistic-static thought, well fitted to religious concepts, was to survive until our days.
The best representative of the second type of thought was undoubtedly Heraclitus (535–475 BC) who explicitly stated that “everything is in flux,” like the constant flow of a river. He saw a special type of order in change, a continuous state of dynamic equilibrium, of which man was part. Change was conceived as the harmonic interplay between opposites—living and dying, heating and cooling, day and night. The opposition was not antagonistic but complementary: remove day and night goes too. Heraclitus’ thought was of the unitary-process type where nature and man formed a single changing whole, but his concept of change was too primitive and ill-defined to be convincing. Heraclitus influenced many other philosophers but with humans afraid of any kind of change, his ideas slowly became stagnant. It would take about a millennium for them to be revived.
It is interesting to note that the concept of a basic principle as the source and foundation of everything in nature had been present since the beginning of philosophy. It was first conceived in the static terms of a single material substance, such as water, and not in the process terms