50. The origin of structure and order
Complexity alone does not create order. Without an organising principle, every new relation would increase the total complexity without stable patterns, identities or structures being able to arise.
Attractor Dynamics constitutes this organising principle. When new relations arise, they are continuously reorganised towards the most coherent and viable attractors in the landscape. New understandings do not replace previous understandings, but incorporate them as parts of larger wholes.
Order thus arises not through external direction, chance or physical accumulation alone. Order arises because relations are continuously reorganised towards ever more comprehensive understandings.
Attractor Dynamics is therefore not one mechanism among many in the EC/HE theory. It is the general organising principle that makes stable structure possible at all levels of reality.
The same principle organises particles into atoms, atoms into molecules, molecules into cells, cells into organisms, experiences into identities, people into cultures and insights into theories. Structure and order arise everywhere that relations are reorganised towards higher wholes.
Attractor Dynamics is therefore not merely the explanation of how order arises. It is the explanation of why order exists at all — one of the two fundamental laws of the theory. The other is the Emergence Circle/Experience Circle.
