Emergent Theory
Over the past several months I have been studying something known as emergent theory. I first stumbled upon the theory all by myself, when I was pondering the miracles of the universe and how crazy it is that these miracles have happened. I initially pondered three miracles: The "emergence" of the universe, the "emergence" of life, and the "emergence" of humankind. Each one of these I considered utterly absurd to have come about by random chance (my discountenance of Darwin's theory of evolution will come at a later time, as I have much to say about that subject). Thus these three phenomenon were "miracles" to me, in other words, they seemed to be supernatural occurrences which on even very light inspection broke the laws of the universe which we know to be true, in that a high level of organization had come out of "chaos" (in effect violating the laws of entropy).
The creation of the universe is obviously different then the latter two miracles, in that it had first had to precede the second two miracles (and, as well, the second had to precede the third), and thus it was the beginning of everything. If that isn't a miracle, I don't know what is!
It is almost too mind-boggling to even think what came before this creation of the universe, and I propose you think and conquer this counterintuitive conundrum by adopting your thinking as thus: there was nothing before the creation of the universe because the creation of the universe itself BEGAN both space and time. In other words, there was no such thing as space or time before the creation of the universe, and thus there could be NOTHING before it in a temporal or spatial sense. Again, Einstein's theories confirm that the very fabric underlying the universe's structure is the space-time continuum.
Development of Einstein's general theory of relativity led to the cosmological development of the concept of the "Big Bang" in the mid-20th century. I admit, although I believe in creation (in the religious sense), I subscribe whole-heartedly to Big Bang theory after much study about it. But what exactly "banged?" And that, my friends, is what leads me to label this creation of our universe, a "miracle." What is a miracle is that first, something had to bang, and second, even if there did exist that particular something, that something still had to bang in order for the universe to come about. It is postulated that the something was something known as a singularity event. Imagine the entire universe compressed into a size less than the period at the end of this sentence. Pretty dense, huh? I mean dense in terms of zillions of kilograms of matter compressed into a infinitesimal volume! Singularity events also occur when a star collapses into a black hole due to progressively decreasing mass (in the form of radiation, like our sun) being overrun by the forces of gravity. The gravitational effects become so enormous that not even light can escape!! More mass then gets sucked into the black hole, it gets more and more compressed as the gravitational effects increase (since the force of gravity is simply a "warping" of the space-time continuum from the prescence of matter), and thus it continues in a big cycle until it becomes a singularity! When a singularity occurs, space-time itself breaks down, along with all of the laws of physics. We thus really have no clue what happens at or inside a singularity.
The Big Bang was a singularity event, thus all of the laws of nature and time and space itself were created when the bang happened! WHY though did it happen!! The universe seemed to emerge, and that my friends, is the 1st miracle. (The intracacies of this miracle of the Big Bang will have to be explained in another blog....).
Not only did the universe happen for unbeknowest reasons, but then LIFE emerged. Obviously in between this many things happened (Galaxies, starts, planets, and a unique planet called Earth formed) but here I will only be discussing the 3 biggest miracles. Part of the miracle of life is the conditions which have had to occur in order for life to even come about! Astounding! But again, I do not believe in macroevolution as a cause for creation of life or humankind (again, an argument for another time, but even so, Darwin didn't even know what a cell was when he developed his theory, let alone the workings of intricate biochemical machines! Can you say OUTDATED?) Thus I am coming from a different viewpoint. But whether you believe in macroevolution or not, the debated "fact" that evolutionary forces even led to life on earth can still be deemed a miracle. Conditions had to be perfect for even the first prokaryotic cells to have come together from simple molecules to become ORGANIZED. Many people think the forces of nature along with the "tincture of time" allow this to be possible, but even if it is possible, given nature's laws, it is still highly improbable (and thus the fact that it happened could be considered a "miracle"). Even with sufficient time, the complexity of even a simple bacteria is still almost unbelievable for nature to construct. Especially when so many mechanisms of the first cells had to be developed simultaneously (i.e. nutrient-gathering, metabolism, excretion). Take away any of these abilities and you don't have life! But, if nature did do this, then obviously it is one of the mysterious "miracles" which I speak of, given the extremely improbable chance that macromolecules could come together to produce a living thing.
Not only did life come about, but somehow it continued to become more complex and highly ordered. Which brings us to our 3rd miracle. Not only did life continue up and up the ladder (again, multiple highly improbable events continued to occur) and then stop at lower mammals, somehow it led to the development of man! Perhaps the greatest miracle of all? And even the multiple "special abilities" which make us human are almost unfathomable. The development of the mind, the spirit, and our incredible bodies (which I study everyday of my life as a doctor). Such a highly ordered state, beginning with the Big Bang. Not only did humankind come about with the ability to think and feel, we became institutors of the creation of even more highly organized structures (civilization, technology, and religion).
These 3 miracles had been on my mind for so long, but I did not know that other scientists had thought of this too, until I ran into EMERGENT THEORY. I actually initially came upon emergent theory when I had asked for an ant farm for this past Christmas. I hadn't any pets, and I thought they would be cool to watch. Little did I know that these little insects would help me discover this new theory and its ramifications.
Each ant is about as dumb as a rock. It has a minimal amount of neuronal tissue in its brain and can't really make decisions for itself (not really any free will I guess you could say). Each individual ant simply follows genetic mathematical algorithms based on its senses (bumping into things and smelling scents left by other ants). But ant colonies are absolutely amazing entities. As a colony, the ants (plural) can solve complex geometrical problems! They can figure out the shortest distance from the colony to a specific food source, and even more baffling, they place dead ants in a "graveyard" and garbage in a "trash heap," with the distances maximized so the graveyard is at the farthest point from both the colony AND the trash heap! They seem to "solve" a geometric problem. As well, each ant has a specific "job" in the colony, whether it be food-gatherer, gravedigger, soldier, etc. The key and the mystery about all of this, is that NO ONE ant dictates to the other ants what they should be doing (in fact, the queen of the colony does absolutely nothing except lay eggs). It just HAPPENS! Each ant just goes about bumping into things and following scent trails of other ants, and they end up creating this entire living and breathing city, with workers doing different tasks to help sustain the colony, and as a whole, solving problems! Each ant is just plain stupid, whereas the colony is an intelligent entity in itself. This kind of artificial intelligence emerged in much the same way as our first three miracles.
Welcome to emergent theory, where the end result is indeed greater than the sum of its parts! I had pondered these things on my own, how the universe, life, and humankind had emerged, yet I had not realized that there was a whole science behind this, and that there were many more examples of this emergence in the universe (although the example of the ants is more a sub-field of emergent theory, that of emergent intelligence)! Currently I am reading several different books on emergence, and one of them is really interesting (peep The Emergence of Everything) in that it basically takes the "3 biggest emergences" which I had described, and breaks it down into 28 different emergences since the beginning of our universe (from the big bang, to stars, planets, metabolism, cells, animals, mammals, primates, humans, language, philosophy, and science and religion, with many more intermediate steps).
One of the most amazing of these emergences is the human brain. Like the ant colony, how do a bunch of neuronal cells create the mind? Each neuron has absolutely no intelligence whatsoever, but compile billions of them into highly organized networks, and all of a sudden I'm writing this article! In fact, scientists have tried to duplicate this natural model artificially in the form of neural nets. Imagine each computer is akin to a neuron. Network enough computers together, and the emergence of the tasks that the network can do is far beyond the sum of all the computers put together. Synergistic effects dominate in these systems.
The point to drive home (this is important), is that there is no pacemaker to these systems. They are not "top-down" systems like countries, where the government or king controls and dictates things to be done. They are "bottom-up" systems in which higher order emerges from simple entities. Is this simply a natural phenomenon, a way that nature had figured out to go against the grain of entropy? Perhaps, but I subscribe to them as miracles. While emergent theory is relatively new, emergence has been happening since the beginning of time.
The creation of the universe is obviously different then the latter two miracles, in that it had first had to precede the second two miracles (and, as well, the second had to precede the third), and thus it was the beginning of everything. If that isn't a miracle, I don't know what is!
It is almost too mind-boggling to even think what came before this creation of the universe, and I propose you think and conquer this counterintuitive conundrum by adopting your thinking as thus: there was nothing before the creation of the universe because the creation of the universe itself BEGAN both space and time. In other words, there was no such thing as space or time before the creation of the universe, and thus there could be NOTHING before it in a temporal or spatial sense. Again, Einstein's theories confirm that the very fabric underlying the universe's structure is the space-time continuum.
Development of Einstein's general theory of relativity led to the cosmological development of the concept of the "Big Bang" in the mid-20th century. I admit, although I believe in creation (in the religious sense), I subscribe whole-heartedly to Big Bang theory after much study about it. But what exactly "banged?" And that, my friends, is what leads me to label this creation of our universe, a "miracle." What is a miracle is that first, something had to bang, and second, even if there did exist that particular something, that something still had to bang in order for the universe to come about. It is postulated that the something was something known as a singularity event. Imagine the entire universe compressed into a size less than the period at the end of this sentence. Pretty dense, huh? I mean dense in terms of zillions of kilograms of matter compressed into a infinitesimal volume! Singularity events also occur when a star collapses into a black hole due to progressively decreasing mass (in the form of radiation, like our sun) being overrun by the forces of gravity. The gravitational effects become so enormous that not even light can escape!! More mass then gets sucked into the black hole, it gets more and more compressed as the gravitational effects increase (since the force of gravity is simply a "warping" of the space-time continuum from the prescence of matter), and thus it continues in a big cycle until it becomes a singularity! When a singularity occurs, space-time itself breaks down, along with all of the laws of physics. We thus really have no clue what happens at or inside a singularity.
The Big Bang was a singularity event, thus all of the laws of nature and time and space itself were created when the bang happened! WHY though did it happen!! The universe seemed to emerge, and that my friends, is the 1st miracle. (The intracacies of this miracle of the Big Bang will have to be explained in another blog....).
Not only did the universe happen for unbeknowest reasons, but then LIFE emerged. Obviously in between this many things happened (Galaxies, starts, planets, and a unique planet called Earth formed) but here I will only be discussing the 3 biggest miracles. Part of the miracle of life is the conditions which have had to occur in order for life to even come about! Astounding! But again, I do not believe in macroevolution as a cause for creation of life or humankind (again, an argument for another time, but even so, Darwin didn't even know what a cell was when he developed his theory, let alone the workings of intricate biochemical machines! Can you say OUTDATED?) Thus I am coming from a different viewpoint. But whether you believe in macroevolution or not, the debated "fact" that evolutionary forces even led to life on earth can still be deemed a miracle. Conditions had to be perfect for even the first prokaryotic cells to have come together from simple molecules to become ORGANIZED. Many people think the forces of nature along with the "tincture of time" allow this to be possible, but even if it is possible, given nature's laws, it is still highly improbable (and thus the fact that it happened could be considered a "miracle"). Even with sufficient time, the complexity of even a simple bacteria is still almost unbelievable for nature to construct. Especially when so many mechanisms of the first cells had to be developed simultaneously (i.e. nutrient-gathering, metabolism, excretion). Take away any of these abilities and you don't have life! But, if nature did do this, then obviously it is one of the mysterious "miracles" which I speak of, given the extremely improbable chance that macromolecules could come together to produce a living thing.
Not only did life come about, but somehow it continued to become more complex and highly ordered. Which brings us to our 3rd miracle. Not only did life continue up and up the ladder (again, multiple highly improbable events continued to occur) and then stop at lower mammals, somehow it led to the development of man! Perhaps the greatest miracle of all? And even the multiple "special abilities" which make us human are almost unfathomable. The development of the mind, the spirit, and our incredible bodies (which I study everyday of my life as a doctor). Such a highly ordered state, beginning with the Big Bang. Not only did humankind come about with the ability to think and feel, we became institutors of the creation of even more highly organized structures (civilization, technology, and religion).
These 3 miracles had been on my mind for so long, but I did not know that other scientists had thought of this too, until I ran into EMERGENT THEORY. I actually initially came upon emergent theory when I had asked for an ant farm for this past Christmas. I hadn't any pets, and I thought they would be cool to watch. Little did I know that these little insects would help me discover this new theory and its ramifications.
Each ant is about as dumb as a rock. It has a minimal amount of neuronal tissue in its brain and can't really make decisions for itself (not really any free will I guess you could say). Each individual ant simply follows genetic mathematical algorithms based on its senses (bumping into things and smelling scents left by other ants). But ant colonies are absolutely amazing entities. As a colony, the ants (plural) can solve complex geometrical problems! They can figure out the shortest distance from the colony to a specific food source, and even more baffling, they place dead ants in a "graveyard" and garbage in a "trash heap," with the distances maximized so the graveyard is at the farthest point from both the colony AND the trash heap! They seem to "solve" a geometric problem. As well, each ant has a specific "job" in the colony, whether it be food-gatherer, gravedigger, soldier, etc. The key and the mystery about all of this, is that NO ONE ant dictates to the other ants what they should be doing (in fact, the queen of the colony does absolutely nothing except lay eggs). It just HAPPENS! Each ant just goes about bumping into things and following scent trails of other ants, and they end up creating this entire living and breathing city, with workers doing different tasks to help sustain the colony, and as a whole, solving problems! Each ant is just plain stupid, whereas the colony is an intelligent entity in itself. This kind of artificial intelligence emerged in much the same way as our first three miracles.
Welcome to emergent theory, where the end result is indeed greater than the sum of its parts! I had pondered these things on my own, how the universe, life, and humankind had emerged, yet I had not realized that there was a whole science behind this, and that there were many more examples of this emergence in the universe (although the example of the ants is more a sub-field of emergent theory, that of emergent intelligence)! Currently I am reading several different books on emergence, and one of them is really interesting (peep The Emergence of Everything) in that it basically takes the "3 biggest emergences" which I had described, and breaks it down into 28 different emergences since the beginning of our universe (from the big bang, to stars, planets, metabolism, cells, animals, mammals, primates, humans, language, philosophy, and science and religion, with many more intermediate steps).
One of the most amazing of these emergences is the human brain. Like the ant colony, how do a bunch of neuronal cells create the mind? Each neuron has absolutely no intelligence whatsoever, but compile billions of them into highly organized networks, and all of a sudden I'm writing this article! In fact, scientists have tried to duplicate this natural model artificially in the form of neural nets. Imagine each computer is akin to a neuron. Network enough computers together, and the emergence of the tasks that the network can do is far beyond the sum of all the computers put together. Synergistic effects dominate in these systems.
The point to drive home (this is important), is that there is no pacemaker to these systems. They are not "top-down" systems like countries, where the government or king controls and dictates things to be done. They are "bottom-up" systems in which higher order emerges from simple entities. Is this simply a natural phenomenon, a way that nature had figured out to go against the grain of entropy? Perhaps, but I subscribe to them as miracles. While emergent theory is relatively new, emergence has been happening since the beginning of time.
posted by J-Mart @ 8:28 PM
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