The Complex Easter Egg [draft]

Orchids in Amber

October lights loosened a gilded scream,

The smash of leaves long past regret of green

Mulch of a memory, drilled with driving chill

As wild winds beat the birches on the hill.

The shingle shackled to the Western shore

Slides under tides a tired sunset tore

Whipped waves cutting the calm like hay

Wrenching the Winter ships in a greying bay.

From furthest banks the moonbeams drop as bones

Splintered and sliced against uncaring stones

The nails of night have kneaded Earth like dough

Grinding the meadow grasses into snow.

A year falls silently when no one's there

Hushed from the hedgerows in the withering air

An intimate decay severs each song

A moment's hesitation - then it's gone.

I was trying to find a metaphor for cyclical cosmology, a metaphor set for impermanence, with a year winding down and the natural processes and rhythms shifting to a point of decay ready for rebirth (with the additional mournful element of being the only observer). I wanted to apply this to the universe at large, through the medium of Romantic poetry. Orchids are traditionally associated with fertility and with beauty. Amber, of course, is the fossilized resin of ancient trees, associated with The Sun1 , or as the Greek historian Niceas said2 , drops of "sweat" congealed as the Sun sank below the horizon into the waves. The Sun thus preserving life mimics the idea of a year wheel, popular in Indo-European mythology3 .

I've been interested for a while in alternatives to the Big Bang/heat death cosmological model where the universe is given a definite beginning and an end as thermodynamic equilibrium is re-established with the widespread death of stars and cosmic cooling. Herman Bondi and Thomas Gold came up with a theory4 that there was no big-bang, and that as the universe expands according to a constant new particles of matter are continually created to fill up the gaps so the universe's average density remains the same, in tandem with the rate of expansion, so the 'steady-state' universe has no beginning of end, despite the expansion. They suggest that the new matter injects negative entropy. Fred Hoyle went further with this idea5, suggesting a 'creation field'6 that carries negative energy, compensating for the positive energy of the created matter, thus avoiding a violation of the Law of Conservation.

This theory seems to fall down in that data from radio telescopes looking billions of light years away (and thus back in time) suggests that the universe looked very different in other epochs to how it does now. Also there's black body radiation7 to factor in (at about three degrees above absolute zero), generally assumed to be the fading remnant of the energy released at the birth of the cosmos.

Additionally, both Paul Frampton and Roger Penrose have enticing models of which I go with the latter I think. The former assumes a form of dark energy ('phantom energy') exists possessing negative kinetic energy which will result in a Big Rip (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip#Overview), but I think the idea of dark energy is better explained altogether by a modified form of general relativity8 , much as DE has become a popular science buzz-term, and I prefer reading f(R) gravity theories9 where one can explain cosmic acceleration by extra gravitational radiation instead of requiring these somewhat contrived DE fields. Penrose suggests, in a fabulous book titled Cycles of Time, that the universe expands through infinite cycles where a future timelike infinity (expressed in the Minkowski spacetime diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_diagram#/media/File:Penrose_diagram.svg) of each previous iteration becomes the singularity Big-bang of the next iteration as the conformal boundary of one spacetime is 'attached' to the next after rescaling of the conformal map, squashing it down to a spacelike hypersurface (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformal_map). He seems to suggest both proton and electron decay10 also, as all massive particles vanish from existence, moving so far apart that they cannot annihilate with other particles, much as neither phenomena can be observed currently11 .

Interestingly, there's the idea in pre-Christian thought of the 'eternal return'12, popular with Friedrich Nietzsche and with Eastern Philosophy, which is quite an optimistic perspective, but which, taken at that level, seems a little compensatory (as it was in Nietzsche's case with his 'amor fati'13).

I'm generally of the opinion, tangentially speaking, that the universe is non-deterministic14, i.e. it doesn't operate on clockwork/computational/Newtonian principles so much as probabilistic, nonlinear ones. I extend this time invariance to consciousness as well. Here's something I wrote the other day, just a hypothesis I could expand upon:

My own explanatory perspective was of tentatively considering the validity of there existing a symbiotic relationship (or hybrid parallel process) of determined autopoiesis15 (near-fundamental cellular selforganization), the conditions for which were instigated in proto-formation during the Planck epoch, and now complemented by the orchestrated objective reduction16 'quantum mind’ of Penrose, in entanglement, where the phenomena of consciousness exerts a balancing free decision-making process atop, or indeed against, in disharmony, the developing motions of evolution. Ideally, the process could be made to work in harmony, and that’s one area I think is tied to form and certainly mindful will, an ontological necessity being beauty in that body's form17. I am advocating for an Aristotelian non-Christian ‘anthropic’ principle18 cosmologically, a ‘biotonic’ principle19, and I include all sentient animal life in that, not just humans.

I envisage the mind as akin to a severed nerve ending, an unfinished refining and dismantling process in partial non-equilibrium20, whereupon the dual symmetrical alignment of the pi-bond electrons oscillating within the fractal geometric pathways of those cytoskeletal structures of the brain space21 and the form around it complement to limited, dissipating22 efficiency the entangled spin motions drawn from across the exterior universe in an interaction that develops the form by regression, pushing the unified development out in bifurcated23 nonlinearity, and allowing for the process of increasing complexity, the latter controlled by that proto-formational blueprint mechanism, and away from the frontier of time24, thus allowing for further evolutionary sophistication and forefront adaptation. A modern development of Hans Driesch's vitalism25 .

A soft determinism26, with this catalytic adaptive 'promontory', i.e. consciousness, continually shedding, and reconstituting itself, functioning as a contact for two asymmetric sub-systems at once, or one larger system, much as conscious linguistic awareness of this activity, and consciously directed will and focus are, I intuit, a hindrance more so even than an irrelevance, as with most dogmatically rational thought in general, and one that may push the non-equilibrium balance27 into random chaos, whilst progressing us bodily in spacetime, therefore accelerating our thermodynamic destruction, much as it makes no sense now in our historical evolutionary condition to be without consciousness, as without the awareness that manifests as product of it, time is effectively ended, despite, paradoxically, physical motion remaining.

In other words, the more this is thought out and analysed and not simply experienced in clear mindfulness, the more the energetic thrust of this transcendent cosmic motion that is life28 is impeded. Consciousness may be a near superfluous bonus, more than a primary gift, much as it is in some way necessary, for the moment, until greater biological cohesion is achieved and, one could speculate further, a resonant psychogenic29 awareness made attainable that is, so far, far beyond our reach of comprehension, an awareness through which this system can be experienced for what it really is.

Will consciousness be out evolved as an adaptation that has served its purpose? What will it evolve into?

A Poem & Article by Benjamin Power

References:

1 Michael R. Collings, Gemlore: An Introduction to Precious and Semi-Precious Stones, 2009, p. 20.

2 Pliny, Natural History, Book 37, Translated by D.E.Eichholz (1962).

3 C. Scott Littleton (1973). The New Comparative Mythology: An Anthropological Assessment of the Theories of Georges Dumézil. University of California Press. p. 34.

4 Bondi, Hermann; Gold, Thomas (1948). "The Steady-State Theory of the Expanding Universe". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 108 (3): 252.

5 Hoyle, F.; Burbidge, G.; Narlikar, J. V. (1993). "A quasi-steady state cosmological model with creation of matter". The Astrophysical Journal. 410: 437–457.

6 Coles, P. "Inflationary Universe". NED. NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database.

7 Weinberg, Steven (1972). Gravitation and Cosmology. John Whitney & Sons. pp. 463–464.

8 Joyce, Austin; Lombriser, Lucas; Schmidt, Fabian (2016). "Dark Energy vs. Modified Gravity". Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science. 66 (1): 95.

9 Tsujikawa, Shinji (2007). "Matter density perturbations and effective gravitational constant in modified gravity models of dark energy". Physical Review D. 76 (2): 023514.

10 E. P. Wigner, Proc. Am. Philos. Soc. 93, 521 (1949); Proc. Natl.Ac'ad. Sci. (U. S.) 38, 449 (1952).

11 Bajc, Borut; Hisano, Junji; Kuwahara, Takumi; Omura, Yuji (2016). "Threshold corrections to dimension-six proton decay operators in non-minimal SUSY SU(5) GUTs". Nuclear Physics B. 910: 1.

12 Nietzsche, Friedrich (1911). Ecce Homo. Translated by Anthony M. Ludovici. Macmillan. p. 96.

13 Nietzsche, Friedrich (1967) [1908]. "Ecce Homo". Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Translated by Kaufmann, Walter. p. 714.

14 Prigogine, Ilya; Stengers, Isabelle (1997). The End of Certainty. The Free Press; Prigogine I, (papers and interviews) Is future given?, World Scientific, 2003; de Koninck, Charles (2008). "The philosophy of Sir Arthur Eddington and The problem of indeterminism". The Writings of Charles de Koninck. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.

15 Maturana, H. R.; Varela, F. J. (1991-08-31). Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Springer Science & Business Media.

16 Hameroff, Stuart; Penrose, Roger (2014). "Reply to seven commentaries on "Consciousness in the universe: Review of the 'Orch OR' theory"". Physics of Life Reviews. 11 (1): 94–100.

17 Hay, David Ramsay, First Principles of Symmetrical Beauty, Blackwood (1846); Hay, David Ramsay, The Natural Principle of Beauty, as developed in the Human Figure, Blackwood (1852); Mainzer, K. (1996). Symmetries of Nature: A Handbook for Philosophy of Nature and Science. de Gruyter.

18 Schombert, James. "Anthropic principle". Department of Physics at University of Oregon. 19 Pais, A. (1967). "Symmetries and Reflections. Scientific Essays. Eugene P. Wigner. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1967. 288 pp., illus". Science. 157 (3791): 911.

20 Pokrovskii, Vladimir (2020). Thermodynamics of Complex Systems: Principles and applications. IOP Publishing, Bristol, UK.

21 Craddock, Travis J. A.; St. George, Marc; Freedman, Holly; Barakat, Khaled H.; Damaraju, Sambasivarao; Hameroff, Stuart; Tuszynski, Jack A. (25 June 2012). "Computational Predictions of Volatile Anesthetic Interactions with the Microtubule Cytoskeleton: Implications for Side Effects of General Anesthesia". PLOS ONE. 7 (6): e37251.

22 England, Jeremy L. (4 November 2015). "Dissipative adaptation in driven self-assembly". Nature Nanotechnology. 10 (11): 919–923.

23 Gutzwiller, Martin C. (1990). Chaos in Classical and Quantum Mechanics. New York: Springer-Verlag.

24 Penrose, Roger (2004). The road to reality: a complete guide to the laws of the universe. London: Jonathan Cape. pp. 686–734.

25 Driesch, H. (1908). The Science and Philosophy of the Organism: The Gifford Lectures delivered before the University of Aberdeen in the Year 1907 and 1908 (2 vols.). London: Adam and Charles Black; Driesch, H. (1914). The History and Theory of Vitalism. (C. K. Ogden, trans.) London: Macmillan.

26 Weinberg, Steven (2011-02-10). "The Universes We Still Don't Know". The New York Review of Books. Vol. 58, no. 2.

27 H. Packard, Norman (1988). "Adaptation Toward the Edge of Chaos". University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, Center for Complex Systems Research.

28 Müller, Gerd B.; Newman, Stuart A., eds. (2003). Origination of Organismal Form. Bradford; Longo, Giuseppe; Montévil, Maël (2012-01-01). "Randomness Increases Order in Biological Evolution". In Dinneen, Michael J.; Khoussainov, Bakhadyr; Nies, André (eds.). Computation, Physics and Beyond. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 7160. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. pp. 289–308; Quastler, H. (1964) The Emergence of Biological Organization. Yale University Press.

29 Campbell, Joseph F. (2009). "Psychohistory: Creating a New Discipline". Journal of Psychohistory. 37 (1): 2–26; The evolution of psyche and society – deMause's explanatory chapter of The Emotional Life of Nations.