Chaos, order, ritual and rule boundedness.
It so happened that all natural phenomenon are governed by sets of rules that often keeps the entirety of the natural system intact and functional that humanity had found out to be rational, logical, and rule bound. Rules are adhered to and followed rigorously without exceptions and when exceptions are broken it often leads to a total collapse, or an establishment of a whole new order . When rules are strictly followed it is often how the statuesque is kept everything falls in its place and acts accordingly. It is these following of rules without exception and with the full detail that is what the Confucians call ritual conduct.
All rituals have formalities to be followed, movements and gestures to be conducted and rites to be performed and ultimately specialities to be conferred on to qualifications which will be expected to be acted according to qualifications in the system. Rituals in that sense are not confined to the grand occasional ceremonial functions, it is rather the everyday expected functions of the individual member of the system without exception or minimal exceptions for a normal functioning of the system as whole . This routine in other words is the following of the written and unwritten rules of the system. while rigorous rule following for stability of a system is common to both living and non living systems, the rules and rituals there off of the nonliving systems is often rigid and predictable with in a given parameters while the rituals and rules of the game even in a given parameters and defined circumstances are often complex, dynamic, contagious and indeterminate for a simple reason that life even in the most rudimentary form is intrinsically able to choose, imitate, counteract and choose its actions, and its actions could some times defy established rules even to the determent of its own interests. And above all else the actions of one member of system is either countered or complimented by any or all other members equally unpredictably. While there are mostly known choices in a fixed set of circumstances for non living things, for living things on the contrary the choices are mostly infinite and dependent on each acting entity’s choice even for a set of known and defined circumstances even for the simplest and smallest of them. Not only that each entities action is either complimented or negated by some or all of the other member entities in their system rather causing either a cascaded amplification and transformation of the system or negation and causing a catastrophic collapse of the whole. It is after all this intrinsic ability to defy established rules and act in defiance to established rules and rituals on every stage of the ladder when opportunity arises that lead it to climb to the zenith it finds itself, to day and to the many perils that left so much debris of its extinct branches along the path. life’s finding a new opportunity at every challenge it faced and every hill it had to climb and the same ability to choose and the unpredictability of its actions had indeed accorded it the awesome ways it had pushed itself, live and continue to thrive even in the unfathomable circumstances and transform itself in to forms and shapes beyond any thing can to date compute and resolve. life is and has been and perhaps may continue to be both an individual affair and cooperative endeavor right from its inception; as it is by chance of happenstance that a bacteria found engulfed by another that formed the first cyanobacteria of the fusion that solved the challenge of putting out more energy than is taken in. the fusion of two bacteria, two single celled bacteria in to a single entity comprising of two cooperative cellular entities that founded the corner stone of life as we know it.life is singular and cooperative from the outset and its survival depends on its ability to cooperate, whiteout which it wouldn’t have the ability and efficiency to produce more than it could take in. The genius of life started at this foundational efficacy and efficiency laid out by Cyanobacteria and the rest as they say is history in continuum.
On the way up the ladder of evolutionary growth cooperative, interactive interdependent connected and free acting and rule bounded and confined member kept on increasing some times in numbers and at other times in the degree of freedom of action and specialization kept on building effecting and affecting incalculable complexity life is known for. This eons long evolutionary process is often in exhibition as a microcosm by every individual life forms ritual of birth to death cellular actions and interactions in matters of days months and years depending on various attributes of the individual life form. All but as a result of the same ingenuity of producing more energy than is taken in by life and without which all life’s achievements including human being’s would have been impossible. in other words all life on our beloved earth and all great and not so great actions and interactions are mere results of this foundational bacterial smarts. talking about smarts even the so famed human brain is a system comprising of billions of neurons acting and interacting in consort which could do nothing or little to account for what the system is famed for individually. It is the product of these efficient billions of neurons the work to effect the marvel we call thinking and consciousness. An efficiency nothing could equal that humanity had to date discovered or made.
Rule boundedness and rituals are not therefore limited to human society but much deeper and intrinsic in nature, equally is the choice of action in living things ever since the first organic compound congealed and formed the so called “primordial soup” from the elements of carbon, hydrogen, Nitrogen, phosphorus and oxygen. From there on, there has been choice of action and choices were dependent on infinite variables that lead to the infinite possibilities and infinite permutations that lead to the awesome indeed infinite forms, shapes and contents that we came to witness. As choices of action presupposes motility, life’s freedom of choice of action is manifested in its freedom of movement, a movement that helped it move around barriers, climb hills, roll down hills, cross valleys think and make choices. After all it is only though motion that work is done as is stated in classical physics and it remains true all through and through no matter where and when and life’s one of the great inventions is motility with help of acquired efficiency producing surplus energy out from what it takes in and be able to perform work. In short perpetual work is what differentiates living thing from nonliving. when life ceases to perform work it is at rest and if it is at rest it is no more living.
The need to move is easy to understand because work could only be done ultimately by moving a mass through a distance even in micro and nano scales. just like in the macro physical definition and classical definition that could only be possible when there is surplus energy after internal needs are fulfilled and that is only achieved by life which can produce enough for its internal need and produce surplus. By the same token no life form of a kind is dependent and not independent either to achieve such level of efficiency and efficacy as indicated by division of labor and specialization from the out set. To perform what is for the greater good can only be accomplished by adding the extra surpluses in what is called cooperation and that is what building entails and is fundamentally and is understood by life very very early on or else none of what we pride ourselves on today could have come about. I would like to quote here from professor Peter M. Hofmann’s book Life’s Ratchet as it is written on page 101 paragraph 3 “ One of my recent graduate students Vekatesh Subba-Rao, likes to tell the following anecdote :He once listened to a talk by a visiting scientist about structures in liquid crystals. When Venktesh asked him the reason why these structures arise ,the scientist answered They minimize free energy”
It might have been presented in the book as anecdote here, but let me confess it is one of those statements that stuck in my memory and as time goes on still grows in meaning and significance explaining nature to me that i am glad to share it. Minimizing free energy is possible under limited circumstances in nonliving processes and phenomenons generated due to mostly landscape ,temperature and magnetic and electro magnetic variances to name a few; But for life it is one of its fundamentals in all situations, all circumstances at all times, because if it takes in, it always produced surplus and in minimizing the surplus it does work, move, think and create. etc. And without this surplus there would have been non of the great human and life’s achievements that exists to date and ever. it is for the revelation of this foundational knowledge and many more I remain always grateful to professor Peter H. Hofmann for writing the book and making it available for the likes of me to have access to.
As it often happens a need arises an opportunity strikes and need gets fulfilled and happy times roll. Bacteria bound to the deep vents of the ocean floor faced with challenges of getting some extra energy to get out of the deep vents stumbled upon a means to split water and got some extra electron charge beyond their need to consume for survival and started on building extra energy bank to propel them up to the surface of the ocean and using the same mechanism start splitting water by using sun light and start building the Global green revolution and evolution. life perhaps is the one and only efficient enough to produce more energy out than it takes in, and thanks to the pioneer of it all Cyanobacteria. Life owes bacteria a lot more but that stand as the Grandest of it all and perhaps responsible for our very existence. This ritual set forth by Cyanobacteria eons ago is still continuing without a hitch, while life is very much dependent on it or simply hadn’t come up with an alternative despite all the bravado of our genius, until such time yet again bacteria could possibly came up with an ingenious ways and disentangle us. There are signs on the horizon that it might as well do that. Perhaps one may ask why bacteria of all the intelligence out here in life? it is a numbers game. In it totality the number and mass of bacteria on our earth out paces all living mass and number by many folds and every bacteria has the freedom of choice and action to effect action and affect every other bacteria’s action which results in a mother of complexity of complexities that gives birth to novelties unimaginable and possibilities of the impossible.
Such systems that are beyond the reach of modern day and even future computational methods are often termed as complex. While the Universe is humongusly complex in its vastness in numbers and size, living things are equally complex microscopically du to the infinite population sizes with infinite choices and opportunities in its actions it comes up with and will come up with for the infinite ways it had been challenged and will get challenged. As the great scientist and mathematician Feynman stated in one of his lectures “there is ample at the bottom” as bacteria stands at bottom of cellular life there is indeed ample in mass, numbers and in deeds at this bottom though i dare say that this bottom is only a relative bottom as the ultimate bottom may be bottomless.
Complex systems are defined by a set of rules as and I shall illustrate how living things from the single celled to the most complex multi cellular human being, from the single living animate to the colony and single human being to the global community of humanity is bound by the rules of complexity as defined and formally entered in to agreement.
As some one might have read my blog it shall be remembered that I have tried to entertain the issue of complexity though be it in a limited and different scope. perhaps it is important that I had deviated in some forms and from what I had said then and that too should be taken in the same context of complexity as I to had the challenges of life and the infinite opportunity to choose from the infinite possible choices as resilience of life dictates or else. That said and leaving that to those who are interested to find out I will turn your attention and mine to the issue here and now .
complex systems as stated by professor Scott E, Page on his book “understanding Complexity “ at the great courses series have four defining attributes
1)The system comprises interconnected members.
2) The memberships of the system are diverse,
3) The relations ships are dynamic adaptive and robust
4) They exhibit an emergent property or a total collapse of the system as has been understood and known.
It is perhaps an unprecedented opportunity to examine and understand complexity in real time as it emerge overwhelm and cause a total collapse of the multifaceted global order in ways and manners no one yet can tell how it will proceed and end. For any keen observer there can be no better opportune real time scenario than to observe and see how every point reiterated in the afore mentioned book fall to draw the full picture of complexity.
Emergent properties arise once as a mere accidents without a never for told and never foreseen causes and perhaps not even repeated in a lab setting after the fact for the conditions and variables either couldn’t be known or arrived at by any known computational methods. When the genie is out of the box as they say can’t be put back in the bottle as time travel in to the past isn’t, it is worth it a while to note that emergent phenomena are simply non reversible likewise. COVID 19 had emerged without a known and unknowable cause and is written in history permanently and can’t be erased perhaps like many and all life forms. Every happenstance in history is a time etched immutable record despite its current or past reality of existence or erasure.
A stage is set and the game is being played, a game between COVID 19, and humans, between humans and other humans, between COVID 19 and COVID 19, between human immune cells and COVID19 etc. All in all like all games and like non it is a game of wits, numbers, agility, speed and resilience some wins some of the times and others win some other times; like all games all players pay even spectators and bystanders are not spared yet the champion gets all the prize of winning at the end.We had paid our dues and outwitted all players along our way here despite some formidable challenges by many and all species who equally paid dearly. perhaps It is a given that we will come out as champions of this game like always, but the only unknown is how much are we going to pay and how long will this game last. Like all complex interacting systems the exponential degree of freedom of action for every acting part or node makes prediction and prophesy a mere outcome of stochastic mathematical calculations with considerable margin of error to be called prediction, forecasting or prophesy than a simple educated guess.
The diversity and ever growing rate of motility of the entities and lives affected yet again beyond any computational genius human or machine can definitely and authoritatively say and compute leave alone tell how and when each of these interacting diverse entities act and interact and at times counteract to protect its individual, group and the whole’s interests and survival. As challenging entities and scenarios emerge so does solutions, and life itself is a living testimony to that as it had lived through thousands of such emergent challenges in its eons long survival and resilience. This is not to say that humanity shouldn’t act or simply let nature take care of it itself, but rather to play our part as we too are part of life and perhaps not as unchallenged masters of it all. It is perhaps important to acknowledge that we have partners in the fight in our cells and others at the bottom of life’s ladder of beings and somehow somewhere someone will by mere accident or ingenuity will stumble upon a solution like all times past. That is the beauty and opportunity in infinite diversity where the impossible could only be possible. Such has been the evolution of life where the possibility of the impossible had always been ample and emergence of realities of form and contents mind bogglingly common place.
Ayele Teklemariam
Continuum @ Cybernatian 