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The Star Larvae Hypothesis
Nature's Plan for Humankind
Part 1. Metabolic Metaphysics

Complexity and the Retrieval of Vitalism

The new science of complexity, or complex systems theory, retrieves the discarded doctrine of vitalism. It assigns to nature a capacity to self organize—to construct complex structures and processes spontaneously.

Science today is undergoing a peculiar revolution. It is backtracking. Scientists are reviving a way of thinking about nature that they previously had abandoned as unscientific.

Central among the old ideas fueling the new revolution is that of nature's inherent tendency to organize matter and energy into complex systems. Terms such as "self-organization," "emergence," "dissipative systems," "autopoesis," and various permutations of these populate the vocabulary of the new science, which is called complexity theory or complex systems theory. The new discipline cuts a wide swath, trying to account for every sort of complex system, from biological cells and planetary biospheres, to social and economic trends, and even to galaxies and beyond. Disregarding the categorical boundary that normally separates the organic world from the inorganic, complexity theorists propose that principles of spontaneous organization are fundamental to the general nature of the physical world. The web home page of the University of Michigan's Center for the Study of Complex Systems captures the interdisciplinary ambitions of the new science:

"The Center is based on the recognition that many different kinds of systems which include self-regulation, feedback, or adaptation in their dynamics, may have a common underlying structure despite their apparent differences. Moreover, these deep structural similarities can be exploited to transfer methods of analysis and understanding from one field to another. In addition to developing deeper understandings of specific systems, interdisciplinary approaches should help elucidate the general structure and behavior of complex systems and move us toward a deeper appreciation of the general nature of such systems."

Other institutions exploring the applications of complexity theory are the Santa Fe Institute and the ECCO Research Group in Brussels. An ambitious survey of the principles and applications of this new interdisciplinary approach can be found in Erich Jantsch's, Self Organizing Universe. Additional resources that describe the new discipline abound on the world wide web.

Complexity Theory Retrieves Vitalism

Complexity theorists in effect are reviving the old doctrine of vitalism, but extending its reach beyond biology. The doctrine of vitalism proposed that nature’s animate qualities stem from an occult "life energy," a force ostensibly transparent to scientific investigation. The new science of complexity does not propose that self-organizing complexity in nature is due to an occult form of energy, such as philosopher Henri Bergson's elan vital, but rather that nature simply possesses inherently the capacity to organize matter spontaneously into highly complex systems. Surely vitalism per se is a cardinal sin, or a least a serious intellectual faux pas, in the view of science. But no matter how many terms science coins to name the tendency of matter to self organize, offering each as being more scientific than its predecessors, the concept of the spontaneous organization of matter into complex systems remains mysterious. An occult life force and "self organization" are operationally indistinguishable concepts. The difference between them is one of metaphysical assumption; nature's self-organizing capacity constitutes a borderland shared by science and religion.

Science concerns itself with, among other things, causality—relations defined by cause and effect. Objects fall to the ground because gravity pulls them to the ground, or because gravity warps spacetime in a way such that objects will travel toward the ground, or because somehow or other something, call it gravity, causes objects to fall to the ground. This is the normal scientific view. Science does not say that the falling of objects being correlated statistically with the presence of gravity is just a coincidence. Events do not occur merely in patterns of correlation. Events occur because they are caused to occur. But if this is the case, then what can be made of a science of self-organization, which concedes that the most interesting structures in nature are not caused in the usual sense but, rather, cause themselves to come into being? They "self-organize."

Complexity theory, insofar as it grants the power to self-organize, to self-create, to natural processes, constitutes, if not a vitalism itself, then a kind of pantheism at least, in which nature's fecundity buzzes with divine self-causality. In his dealings with Moses, the God of western monotheism called his own name "I am that I am," laying claim to the power of self-organization. The Greek gods similarly were self-created; they were not products of any discernable causal chain. Complex systems are gods, then, and complexity theory is a brand of theology. It redefines in its own terms occurrences that in prescientific language were referred to as "miracles," namely, events of self organization. The rhetoric and formulas of complexity theory do little to dispel the prospect of miracles. The whole scientific discipline of complexity theory can be seen as a vitalist, pantheist mysticism with spontaneous or emergent self-organization filling in for the abandoned life force or entelechy of the older vitalist formulations. Complexity theory is science's bow to the miraculous, an ironic shift in sentiment, given the origins of modern science. (And the possibility of making inroads through this shared borderland are not lost on the Intelligent Design advocates who embrace complexity theory.)

During the European Enlightenment, rationalism, empiricism, and secularism collectively delivered to the Western mind an alternative worldview to that of church dogma. As a legacy of the Enlightenment, metaphysical concepts, such as soul and spirit, fell into disrepute among intellectuals. But these notions did not die. Beyond seminaries and houses of worship, philosophers of various stripes continued to argue for natural and supernatural processes that lent form to the expressions of nature. Even during, and as a reaction to, the Enlightenment, some philosophers, such as Hegel, argued against a strict materialism and for the notion of a formative spirit (of "the times" or a "national" spirit) that nudges the flow of historical events toward greater complexity (alternatively, toward "the good"). A list of cognates for this influence might include Henri Bergson's elan vital, Plato's metaphysical forms, Adam Smith's invisible hand, the Will of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Tielhard de Chardin's radial energy, Freud’s libido, Whitehead's Creativity, Reich's orgone, and Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields. Tao, chi, shakti, kundalini and similar concepts from Asian metaphysics illustrate the universality of the idea that nature possesses an innate anti-entropic capacity, an inherent capacity to organize its constituents and grow. Since modern complexity theory began its long gestation in the disciplines of general systems theory and cybernetics during the early years of computer/cognitive science, the metaphysical underground has been quaking and in places breaking the surface, spilling into the scientific laboratories.

Resurrected vitalist concepts, with technically polished names, such as "spontaneously self-organizing dissipative systems," that connote a scientific rigor, are disrupting the marketplace of ideas. Semi-adopted by science, they remain rooted in a metaphysics that is at odds with the established scientific model of the world. That is, they are at odds with, or at least seem resistant to, the venerable Second Law of Thermodynamics.

NEXT > Entropy: Nature's Preferred Direction?

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