Emergence also occurs when everything is in motion.
A vast accumulation of molecules can together form an apple. It is an emergent interpretation of particles, atoms, molecules – and all the way up to the experience of the apple. Both the molecules and the apple are in the same motion when the apple falls from the tree. They form an emergent whole.
Inside the apple, the molecules have their own motion, the atoms theirs, etc. In short, everything is in motion. Even mountains are in motion, it only happens very slowly in the outer, and all movement inside the molecules and atoms of the mountain we do not see, but it is there.
These movements have their laws. They are mental, abstract, like everything else in the universe. They are simple and are the only ones that control the development of the whole universe at all levels and for all categories (the abstract, material and subjective).
They are called «complexity laws» and were discovered in the 1960s and 70s. At that time, they were often called the «laws of chaos».
These are the most important:
- Attractors: When something is «big and strong», it dominates over what is «smaller and weaker». The most potent, most likely idea of what something is, wins. It masks alternative interpretations. An example is language. When everyone in a country speaks a specific language, everyone born into the country has a strong tendency to speak the language as well.
- The butterfly effect: If there are no strong attractors in an area, even a tiny event or idea can develop into an attractor, which gradually gains an increasing effect, often through feedback loops.
- Feedback loops: You have probably heard the howl when the sound from the speakers on a stage is picked up by the microphones, which then send the sound to the speakers again. When the result of a process feeds back to the same process, there can be a violent reinforcement so that everything runs wild.
- Fractals and holism: Things look about the same at all scales. The forces and the laws that form the patterns are the same everywhere. The branching of nerve cells in a brain is thus similar to the branching of the outlet of a river – which in turn is equivalent to structures in the universe. Only the surroundings tell us that we are talking about very different things.
The complexity mechanisms create all the dynamics in the universe. All development of anything, at all levels, in all situations, can and must be understood by these laws.
They are just as valid for ideas as for ocean currents, economics, humour, weather, psychology, school classes, music and traffic jams. Everything.
Countless phenomena in this world might appear incomprehensible but may be easily understood with these fundamental laws.
The world is thus deterministic, but we shall see in
point 11 that free will is present simultaneously.
Okay, that was the world, but what about you?
