Long Argument Part 4
I clearly am struggling over some well-explored terrain, so along with trying to figure this out on my own, I am reading quite a few books on emergence, theory of complex systems, chaos theory, and the like.
Emergence seems to be a matter of complex systems that arise whose elements are simpler systems, and this cascading growth seems to be natural. If you want only the very basic stuff of reality, the primary elements that are not themselves systems of simpler elements, you get something like the Big Bang. Once that starts expanding and cooling you get the primary elements breaking apart (the hypothesized singular force, for example, breaking down into the four fundamental forces we know) and then the building of systems of those pieces. On the matter/energy side, for example, we have as primary particles the quarks and the leptons and the gauge bosons. At that point, systems (and emergence) begin. The first systems are quite simple: the proton and the neutron, for example. But they have properties quite different from the quarks that are the elements of each little system. And then protons, neutrons, and electrons, together with the forces, create atoms—a new emergent entity with quite different characteristics than its components. And these merge into stars and galaxies and processes result in novae (super and regular) with new systems emerging: the elements and chemical compounds.
Certain systems of these elements and chemical compounds work in such a way that under the right conditions life emerges: a new bunch of systems with properties that could not be predicted from the chemicals of which it is made.
Notice that the earlier systems hang on as they become elements in higher systems. A squirrel is living matter, but it is a system whose components are regular matter still subject to the laws of physics and chemistry. Even though the squirrel is alive and capable of motion, when it falls it follows the same trajectory as would a squirrel-shaped rock. Although new rules emerge (squirrels hide nuts), the old rules still hold (a squirrel falls under the influence of gravity).
Just now I realized that Douglas Hofstadter covered this ground long ago, and I read some of what he wrote—and what I read is undoubtedly influencing my thinking now. I stopped reading him because I felt an overweening self-regard from him, but probably it was simply envy and jealously. So I’m picking up again his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid and starting it again.
