Attractors do not compete for dominance through power, but through understanding. An attractor grows stronger as it incorporates more relations, experiences and previous understandings into itself. Each time a higher understanding arises, several underlying understandings are compressed into one new whole.
A high attractor is therefore simultaneously a heavy attractor. Height and weight represent two sides of the same phenomenon. The higher an attractor lies in the emergence tree, the more understanding it has incorporated, and the greater organising force it acquires over the underlying structures.
At the same time no attractor exists in isolation. Every attractor is part of a network of relations with other attractors. An attractor’s strength is therefore determined not only by how much understanding it contains, but also by how strongly it is supported by the rest of the attractor landscape.
An attractor that incorporates much understanding but has weak support from surrounding attractors will be unstable. An attractor with strong support but a low degree of understanding will be limited by its position in the emergence tree. Stable dominance arises only when a high degree of incorporated understanding is combined with strong relational support.
Attractor strength is thus an interplay between compression and relational support. Compression expresses how much understanding the attractor has incorporated. Relational support expresses how strongly the rest of the attractor landscape confirms and reinforces this understanding.
The same dynamic is found at all levels of the emergence chain. Atoms are organised into molecules, molecules into cells, cells into organisms, experiences into identities, people into cultures, insights into theories. In each case a higher understanding arises that incorporates and organises the underlying structures into a larger whole. Attractor Dynamics is not one mechanism among many — it is the very organisational principle behind all stable organisation at all levels of reality.
The law consists of two complementary conditions:
- An attractor must incorporate sufficient understanding to represent a higher whole.
- This understanding must simultaneously be supported by the surrounding attractor landscape.
Neither height alone nor support alone is sufficient. It is only when both conditions point in the same direction that an attractor achieves lasting dominance.
This law explains not only why new attractors arise, but also why certain ones remain as stable organising principles over long periods of time, while others disappear again.
