The End of Certainty - From Being To Becoming
Complexity And Self-Organized Systems
The Newtonian mechanics was the model of classical science. In the classical science all the natural laws had an absolutely deterministic and descriptive character and defined the course and development of every phenomenon. The knowledge of these laws assured the human – observer the ability to understand not only the present but also the past and the future. In a deterministic and timeless universe, the arrow of time is nothing but a human illusion. Only the vision of the universe from the perspective of eternity ensures the truth of physical theories.
In the deterministic universe of the classical science, the order always creates disorder and never vice versa! The scientific dream of a united (applying on the microcosm as well as on the macrocosm) and objective (i.e. independent of the observer) description of the natural world, would become the nightmare of the contemporary physics in the beginning of the 20th century. The quantum description and interpretation of the microcosm, which is regarded as the fundamental level in which all the natural phenomena are raised and explained, requires a radical review of not only the classical description but also of the metaphysical preconditions of classical science.
The classical ideal in physics was to be able to predict with certainty the future development of a physical system. Newton’s mechanics led to the triumph of the deterministic vision of the natural processes: if we know the initial conditions of a dynamical system, then the solution of the differential motion equations would allow us to know in certainty not only the past but also the future of that system.
This, however, is not feasible for two reasons: a) it is not possible to have the initial conditions of the system in absolute accuracy and b) the analytical solution is not feasible for the great majority of the systems. As far as the first reason is concerned, we have to mention that after the discovery of the unstable systems, it became clear that very neighboring orbits (which, namely correspond to initial conditions and whose values may differ slightly) after a certain period of time are removed exponentially. In this notion, the orbit is actually an idealization, since it is never possible to know the initial conditions in “infinite” accuracy. According to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and Bohr’s principle of correspondence, the neutral and deterministic description of the microcosm is impossible: discontinuity and indeterminacy are inherent characteristics of microphysical phenomena and in order to describe them we have to integrate the observer within his own observations!
Ρrigozine believed that the laws of nature and those of physics are not given apriori, nor are they entailed logically. They evolve in the same way the various species evolve. Since things are becoming more multiple, bifurcations and aids occur and new laws appear. “How can you be talking about the laws of biology if there are no living systems?”
This proves the creativity of life. Each level of organization produces something fundamentally new, something that is not found in the constituents or the "parts" of the previous level. For example, in a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen there is no water. The mixture gets a new identity, which, in practice, sacrifices the "parts", hydrogen and oxygen. The only way to get the parts back is to ruin the water.
In other words, it was not obvious in the equations of quantum mechanics that a “quantum arrow of time” emerges. Prigogine notes that in the theory of relativity as well, time is irreversible and space and time are alternating mutually. This theory led to the formulation of the theory of Big-Bang, which in practice gives an irreversible sense to the history of the universe.
Prigogine’s first challenge concerns the phenomenon of irreversibility. The second challenge has to do with the sense of simplicity.
Since Democritus and Aristotle’s era, scientists believed that beneath the complexity of our world there should be simple objects and simple forces. Initially, scientists thought that the atoms are the simple structural stones. Later on, when it was discovered that the atoms consist of smaller parts, simple particles such as the proton and the electron became the structural stones. After that, when the quantum mechanics led to the unexpected discovery of an impressive world of particles at the subatomic level, the physicists invented the grand unified theory and began to look for the unique, simple power - the "superpower" which is supposed to have given birth to that number of interactions of elementary particles. Prigοgine points out that: “the idea of simplicity dissolves. Whichever direction we chose, there is complexity.”
Complexity is the key idea for the understanding of his theory. According to him, an organism is born, grows to its maturity and passes away, namely, it has a history… Both the classical Newtonian physics and the physics of the 20th century with quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity, are expressed by equations, which are symmetrical with respect to time, i.e. they are reversible and deterministic. In those theories there is no discrimination between the past and the future.
Thermodynamics, from approximately the half of the 19th century had posed the problem of the irreversible processes and the arrow of time. But the fundamentally nonlinear character of natural processes and the different behavior of natural systems, when they are away from the equilibrium state, were not yet recognized. The discovery, in the 19th century, of the non reversible time – in evolution and entropy - did not change the belief of the physicists that in the most basic levels of matter, time is reversible, while the irreversibility we can see around us is a kind of an illusion, as Einstein once pointed out.
As Prigogine mentions, “the study of systems away from the equilibrium state led me to the belief that this cannot be the right view. Irreversibility plays a constructive role. It creates a form. It creates human beings. How could our simple ignorance of the initial conditions be the reason for this? Our ignorance cannot be the reason we exist."
Prigogine goes on: “If we could raise the knowledge, i.e. create a computer powerful enough, in order to write equations for the motion of all reversible and probabilistic individual molecules that compose a system, then would our ignorance disappear, would the illusion of irreversibility remain vague, and would life, evolution, death and time itself disappear? This is weird.”
This time paradox resulted in the development of physical theories during Newton’s era and thereafter. Particularly the time paradox refers to the fact that while the classical equations are reversible with respect to time, from numerous physical data the arrow of time seems to exist.
So, the question raised by Prigogine is the following: Does the arrow of time arise simply as a result of a phenomenological approach to the natural processes or does it represent a fundamental element which we must incorporate in the descriptions of these processes?
The claim of Prigogine is summarized: “All laws of physics must be compatible to the existence of the arrow of time”. This means that the laws have to be redrafted in order firstly to contain the arrow of time (i.e. not to be symmetrical with respect to time) and secondly, the various levels of description can lead to the same future state.
The Role Of The Dispersing Structures And Of The Bifurcations.
According to the second law of thermodynamics, in an isolated system (i.e. which does not exchange matter and energy with its environment), the total entropy increases progressively, while the free energy decreases until the system reaches the equilibrium state, when its entropy acquires its maximum value. In thermodynamic equilibrium state, the system is homogeneous and idle. If we also suppose, as Clausius did, that the whole universe is an isolated system of gigantic dimensions, then, according to the second law, the progressive degradation of the energy, i.e. the maximization of entropy inevitably leads to the "heat death" of the universe.
In classical thermodynamics the arrow of time, i.e. the decay, the disorder and the death, is introduced. Classical thermodynamics referred to isolated and closed-linear systems.
However, how can we explain the “weird” behavior of the open systems? These systems are located far from the equilibrium state and continuously exchange matter and energy with their environment. They do not tend to a state of minimum free energy and maximum entropy, but, on the contrary, they use some energy inputs and fluctuations not only in order to maintain their structural stability but also in order to evolve towards new dynamical states.
The open thermodynamic systems are the rules, not the exception. Those systems contain not only the living organisms and the human societies, but also the greatest part of the “simpler” physicochemical systems. Prigogine proved that on conditions away from thermodynamic equilibrium state, the matter acquires new unexpected properties, organizes itself and produces complex structures from random fluctuations.
He will name these structures dissipative structures. Basically, we are talking about systems which consume energy. The dissipative structures are states which reflect their interaction with the environment, with which they interchange energy, sustained through an endless dynamic flow.
The simplest forms of dissipative structures are some rather simple physicochemical systems in which minimum disturbances and fluctuations in microscopic scale lead to the emergence of new unexpected macroscopic structures. The living systems are open systems, organization complexes that are far from the equilibrium state and Prigozine, as it is said, classifies them in the “dissipative structures.”
Prigozine mentions that these random (unpredictable) processes show that the open systems and therefore the greatest part of our universe are not mechanistic but random. He uses the idea of randomness in a more different manner than the other scientists do. For example, for Jacques Monod, author of the book “Chance and Necessity”, chance means a world governed blindly and implies a universe, which according to human terms, is meaningless, namely it is very close to the illogical world of existential philosophy.
However, for Prigozine, chance is a synonym for non-determinism, for spontaneity, for innovation and creativity. Prigozine’s universe is not far from being a living organism, just because it has got space for the random behavior. This allows the dissipative structures – which can be anything – from a chemical solution to a cloud, a brain or a human – to recreate themselves according to unpredictable models. These new models are usually caused by small changes or disturbances. These small changes or disturbances create an unpredictable type of behavior which challenges a mechanical interpretation of entropy, as well as a conventional interpretation of the arrow of time.
This way, the dissipative structures introduce continuous creativity in nature. This means that nature is not something stable, inert molecules that are governed only by impulses and attractions, but something energetic and alive. In those open systems, the matter is not isolated, but on the contrary it is rewarding, and correlative self - changing, with respect to the activities of the rest matter. In those “out of balance” systems, the minimum change can "destabilize" the system and bring about a result that has not been foreseen by the logic of linear equations.
Examples of dissipative structures
The key to the answer to the time paradox is located in the study of systems that are far from the equilibrium state. In systems like that self - organizing processes as well as dissipative structures are possible to come out.
In order to understand this meaning, at first we shall refer to a system which is located close to the equilibrium state, e.g. a pendulum with frictions. If we remove it from the equilibrium state, after a certain period of time it will return to the above state. However, in systems which are not far from the equilibrium state, there are bonds which do not allow them to return to the equilibrium state. Prigοgine mentions the ecosystem on the surface of the earth as an example of the above phenomenon. As the ecosystem gets the influence of the solar radiation, it is removed from the equilibrium state and it is lead to the creation of complex structures. “The important thing”, Prigοgine mentions, “has to do with the fact that away from the equilibrium state, when the system is disturbed, there is no guarantee that it will return again in its former condition. On the contrary, the system starts exploring new structures, new types of organization in space - time, which I named dispersing structures.”
Bifurcation: Window of divided routes
An important factor in the emergence of new structures is the contribution of fluctuations or disruptions, namely of sudden illusions that allow something new to appear, even there where the existence of entropy would exclude it. This happens because the dispersion structures are non linear systems, the order of which emerges from chaos. If we add only one fluctuation to other fluctuations, then this fluctuation will become so strong that it will manage to organize the whole system under a new model. These points are called by Prigogine Bifurcation points and they are points at which the deterministic description collapses and then the system follows one of the several possible Bifurcations of the road.
As an instant window into the whole, the strengthening of the bifurcations leads to order or chaos. In Prigogine's perception of things, the bifurcation – a word meaning Point of disunity or division – is a basic notion. The bifurcation in a system is a moment of critical importance when something as small as a single photon, a slight variation of the external temperature, a change in the density, or the fluttering of a butterfly in Hong Kong expands so much by repetition that a fork is created – and the system gets a new direction. As time goes by, the torrents of Bifurcation points makes the system either get fragmented resulting in chaos or stabilize a new behavior through a series of feedback loops (like self – abolition, cross catalysis and self – interception).
If a system that has gone through a Bifurcation gets stabilized by its feedback, it can resist to other changes for millions of years, until some new critical disorder enhances the feedback and creates a new Bifurcation point.
At its Bifurcation points, the option to “choose” between different types of order is actually offered to the system. The inner feedback of some choices is so complicated that there is basically an infinite amount of degrees of freedom. In other words, the order of the choice is so high that we are talking about chaos. Other Bifurcation points offer options where the coupling feedback creates a lower degree of freedom. These choices can make the system seem simple and normal.
This, however, is a fraud because the feedback in obviously simple orders, such as a solitonic wave, is also very complicated.
The pure effect of the Bifurcations in the evolution of the living cells was the creation of organic chemical reactions that have been created in a complex and stable manner in the cell environment. Prigogine by the notion “communication” means this exact creation of feedback loops. Towards such communication the system remains unharmed.
The Bifurcation points are landmarks in the evolution of the system and imprint its history. The historical record of the human Bifurcations is engraved on human fetuses. These undergo stages on which initially they look like fish, later like amphibians and finally like reptiles.
Thousands upon thousands of Bifurcation points that compose a vivid recounting of options, through which we evolved as a system from the initiative cell to our current being, can be found imprinted in all forms and processes – in our cell chemical reactions and in the form of our neural networks - that make us unique. In every Bifurcation point during the past of our system, there was a course in which there were several futures. By the repetition and the support that the system got, one future was chosen while the other possibilities disappeared forever. This way our Bifurcation points compose a map of non reversibility of time. The dynamic of the Bifurcation points reveals that the time is irreversible but it is able to make summaries. It also reveals that the movement of time is not measurable. Every decision made in a Bifurcation point contains a support to something small. Although causality works every time, the Bifurcation occurs unpredictably.
Prigogine points out that: “This mixture of necessity and chance composes the history of the universe.” It also composes the creativity of the universe. The capability of a system to reinforce a small change constitutes a creative lever. Only one bee which enters a beehive and interacts with thousand other bees can pull the beehive across the air by making small movements that indicate the location rich in pollen. The systems are also very sensitive near those parts which consist the crystallized "memory" of Bifurcations of the past. The nations evolved mainly due to Bifurcations which included heavy conflicts. As a result, they are very sensitive towards several types of information which reproduce those Bifurcations. A mere newspaper title can motivate a whole nation to go to war.
The role of the Bifurcations in the evolution of life.
The belief that the secret of the creativity of nature hides in the laws of unpredictability, chaos and time and not in the mechanistic laws of classical dynamics lies beneath Prigogine’s claims. He mentions as an example of the creativity of the chaos and of the non reversibility, their role in the emergence of life.
The dissipative structures arise as a result of processes in systems which are characterized as releasing systems, i.e. systems that show energy losses. In such systems, when they are away of the equilibrium state, interactions (long-range cοrrelatiοns), which have a long range and play a crucial role in creating new structures, take place. The appearance of life in our planet became possible through such natural processes.
Self – Organising And life
An example of self - organising is the appearance of currents and eddies in fluids where we can see billions of particles “cooperate.”
The matter is blind near the equilibrium state. However, far from the equilibrium state we have correlations of great range that are basic for the creation of new structures. Self organizing takes place because when we are far from the equilibrium state, the system has got lots of choices, of which, anthropomorphically talking, it selects one.
Self – organizing is closely connected to the phenomenon of life. The creation of complexity, which is necessary for the creation of life, is connected to the process of storing information in molecules of which the living cell is constituted. All living systems, either unicellular or multicellular organisms, are extremely complex systems compared to all the other species of the non living matter that exist in the Universe. Complexity is the result of effect processes, leading to systems with great organization, containing large information stocks. This organization of the molecules of a living organism, a result of accumulation of information, is what makes them able to produce useful work. The useful work involves both the fulfillment of basic biological processes, such as metabolism and reproduction, and the further increase in the information content that builds up in living systems. This last process is subject to the great chain of evolution of biological systems, this development is governed by the law of natural selection. The capability of reproduction, mutation and metabolism are necessary conditions for the latter.
A system which has got these properties automatically is able to take part in the “game” of natural selection and evolution. The natural selection leads in forms of organizing, which are more effective, leaving the less effective ones at the process of disappearing. This way, a form of organizing which is stabilized dynamically in a system out of the equilibrium state, will disappear, if a an improved form of organizing appears. In this sense, progress means constant amelioration of the operational efficiency of the biological systems.
A yet unsolved problem, associated to biological order is the way in which the transition from the molecular activity to the supermolecular order of the cell takes place. The biological order was usually considered as a natural condition which was created by enzymes playing a similar to the demon of Maxwell role, maintaining chemical differences in the system. However, today, it becomes understood that this role is ensured by the genetic information contained in the nucleic acids and is expressed by the creation of enzymes which ensure the perpetuation of life. The enzymes thus contribute to the prolongation of life and postpone death. Namely, life is not located out of the natural order, but appears as the ultimate form and expression of the self organizing processes.
Creative Chaos
By focusing on the role of chance and chaos at the creation of structure, Prigogine pictures a universe in which the objects are not defined as well as they are defined in classical or quantum physics.
In Prigogine’s universe the future cannot be defined because it is subject to chance, fluctuation, and support. This is characterized by Prigogine as the new “uncertainty principle”.
According to the famous uncertainty principle, which was expressed by Heisenberg, it is impossible to know in absolute accuracy the position and the momentum of any subatomic particle. Prigogine’s new uncertainty principle teaches us that beyond a boundary point of complexity, the systems are directed to unpredictable directions.
The systems lose their initial conditions and cannot obtain them again or reverse their course. Their inability to look back in time is an “entropy barrier”. The discovery of the entropy barrier is similar to Einstein’s discovery that the human beings and the messages cannot travel faster than light, namely, beyond the “light barrier”.
Prigogine’s uncertainty principle, just like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, is a damage against reductionism (raising all phenomena to simpler ones). But for Prigogine, this way of viewing nature does not reduce its capabilities, but it recognizes its creative possibilities.
Even when we see a system moving to chaos, points – situations, in which order emerges, appear in that system.
Similarly, inside chaos there are traces of a peculiar order. It is also possible that where the system has the shape of a stable system areas called “windows” or “islets” appear. These areas oscillate around a certain number of values. These islets of order, which are interposed into the areas of chaos, are called intennittencies. The importance of these “islets of order” is great because it indicates that there is a close relationship between order and chaos. The relationship between order and chaos must be due to a single process which is subject to the dynamics of nonlinear systems. Namely, there has to be a global chaotic attractor. Generally, the correlation between order and chaos is taken for granted and reflects a holistic concept for the operation of Nature.
Is Time Ahead Of The Being? The Pre – Universe
Two of the biggest questions that preoccupied philosophers and scientists of all time, are the following: a) does the world (the universe) have a beginning or is it infinite? b) does time have a beginning? It is proved that these questions are not independent of one another. The second one refers to the topological characteristics of time. The problem of the nature of time is connected to the above.
For Newton, time is absolute and independent of the history of the Universe. This abstention has now been rejected. Today we accept that the Universe was somehow created, namely it has got a starting point.
In this point Prigogine wonders: “However, how can we realize this starting point (of the time)? It seems more logical to me to suppose that the birth of our Universe is an event in the history of the world and as a result we owe to attribute to it (to the world) a time which comes before the birth of the Universe.”
But how does he mean this birth of the world? “This birth could have been similar to a change of phase which leads from a pre – Universe (that is also called “quantum gap” or “next universe”) to the Universe that is being observed and surrounds us.”
Prigogine goes further explaining the known theory of Big Bang: the Universe begun from a singularity, a point which enclosed all the mass and the energy of the current Universe. But we do not have a theory able to describe this point abnormality. However, many scientists consider the beginning of the history of the Universe, as the beginning of time.
Subsequently, Prigogine poses the question: “Does actually time have a defined beginning or is it infinite?” and he goes on: “We cannot support that we hold the definite answer, but our phrasing of the laws of Nature, through probabilities and not certainties, can contribute towards this direction. Our research will follow a different way of the one followed by other scientists. We suppose that the Big Bang is an eminently irreversible process. This irreversibility would occur as a result of the instability of the pre – Universe, an instability which is caused by the interactions between gravity and matter. Inside this perspective, the universe would have been created with the characteristic of instability. Meanings, which we have mentioned, as self – organizing, would likewise be applied in the early stages of the Universe”.
It is known that Einstein believed that the discrimination between the past and the future is an illusion because the equations of the, until then, known theories were symmetrical according to time. Κ.Godel extended this idea to the end, suggesting a cosmological model in which it was possible for someone to travel into his own past. Einstein, who was concerned a lot by this, eventually ended up in expressing his ideas on such an extreme thesis, supporting that it would oblige physicists reconsider their beliefs on the problem of non reversibility.
Hawking, on the other side, introducing the notion of the imaginary time, reached the point of expressing the belief that at the first stages of Big Bang, space and time could not be discriminated from one another and time obtained the characteristics of space. Prigogine, however supports that “time is eternal. We all have an age, our culture has an age, the Universe has an age, time, however, has neither a beginning nor an end.”
Namely, since the Being, the Existence is meaningful only from the moment the Universe started existing and since, according to Prigogine, time is eternal, then time came before the Being.
Einstein, by the General Theory of Relativity and the field equations, linked the measuring of space-time to the total amount of matter -energy of the universe, namely he showed that the geometry of space – time is affected by the matter – energy, and the moving of the material objects are defined by this geometry. The solution of the field equations, which was suggested by Einstein, matched to a static Universe, thus a universe without a history, according to the classical ideal, which contained the reversibility of the processes, and therefore, the symmetry towards the time of the past and the future. Later on, Friedmann and Lemaitre showed that such a universe is exceptionally unstable and it may be damaged by the slightest disturbance. Eventually, we have reached the acceptable standard model of the Big Bang, which is firmly supported by critical experimental data, such as the experimental verification of the law of Hubble and the background radiation of 2.7 K.
According to this model, as it is reported, the Big Bang began from a point defect, wherein the density and the curvature of space-time are infinite. The size scales involved in this history of the Universe, are measured according to the fundamental physical constants, i.e. the world gravitational constant G, the speed of light c, and Planck's constant h.
The elementary aggregates calculated by those constants are the following:
(1) Planck's length, which is 10 -33 cm.
(2) Planck's time, which is 10 -43 sec.
(3) Planck's energy, which corresponds to a temperature of 1 ~ 2 Kelvin grades.
(4) Planck's mass which is 10 -5 gr. It is huge compared to the mass of the elementary particles. (e.g. proton mass is 10 -23 gr)
During the first moments of the Universe’s life, what is called Planck epoch (or era), these orders of magnitude dominated. Ρrigοgine, considering that in that epoch the quantum processes, along with gravity, should play an important role, introduces, in that point, the necessity of quantization of gravity, and consequently of space – time. This attempt has not yet delivered the expected results.
Concerning the model of the inflationary universe, Prigogine underlines that “the results are very interesting. They show a possibility of an irreversible process that transforms gravity into matter. They also focus our attention on the pre – Universe, which would here be Minkowski’s vacuum, a starting point of irreversible transformations. We shall stress that this model does not describe a process of creation from the beginning. The quantum gap is already characterized by the universal constants, and hypothetically, we can attribute to these constants the values they have today.”
In an other point of his work, he writes: “the substantial point here is the fact that the birth of our Universe is not yet connected t