The citizens of contemporary society are clearly divided by a great cleavage which announces itself everywhere, but has now taken form as State Premiers place broad bans on the ‘unvaxxed’, bayed on by most Australians. How are we to reconcile contradicting views when we find convincing experts on each side of any argument? We need only a starting point, and can attempt to locate the source of such division later. Let us set science as this starting point; more specifically the contradicting understandings of science.
On one hand science is understood to be at best reductionist, while on the other hand that reductionism is understood to be sufficient. The difference is subtle, but it is there. It lies between understanding the whole as either greater than the sum of the parts (as they are merely perceived), or equal to the sum of the parts. The later is a nominalist position which will render its adherents unable to percieve nor conceive of universals/abstract objects. The ‘three-body problem’ of Newtons classical physics illustrates this point; that is his equations perfectly predict motion where no more than two bodies are being studied. At this point statistics are often introduced into the picture, but far from bringing clarity, further conceal the fact that there is a remainder that cannot be fully dealt with.
Let us consider the non-reductionist stance by understanding that in the attempt to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws, that we fail to sufficiently capture various remainders which will act as ‘hidden forces’. Further the attempt to start from these laws and reconstruct parts of the universe will see these ‘hidden forces’ exert an effect (or effects) that disrupt the predicted unfolding of cause and effect. A university economics course required us to include “all else being equal” when comparing the effect of one variable upon a second if we wanted to get all the of marks available. It seemed like a throwaway line at the time, but is far from it. By keeping all other variables constant, we can observe/measure the effect upon one variable that is produced by altering a second variable; by changing the price we can see how sales quantity changes. In reality all such variables are interconnected, and changing one variable will effect all other variables to varying degrees, each of which will produce effects of their own. Thus we can generate useful but basic laws/principles, but which are dangerous to consider as fundamental/foundational. Again, statistics are useful but cannot eliminate the effect of ‘hidden forces’, nor take them fully into account in predictions.
“Chaos theory” was born out of Lorenz’s full realisation of this reality in the 70’s. He had created a weather forecast model which produced a printout. Wanting a second copy he inputed some initial printout conditions into his model and ran it again. The printout appeared identical until it began to diverge wildly after the 8th day. How had this happened? While the printer rounded to 3 decimal places, the model calculated with 6. This means that minute differences in initial conditions alone can render predictions worthless. This story was relayed to me by John Gribbin in his book ‘Deep Simplicity’ and perhaps the following line best sums up the extent of such a realisation - “simple laws, nonlinearity, sensitivity to initial conditions, and feedback are what make the world tick.”
The ‘butterfly effect’ of pop culture asserts that some apparently insignificant choices you make now, could have a huge impact later in life. Might they? And would that render prediction and discernment futile? How well can we predict the future, and how ought we go about it?
Whilst we understand that weather can be predicted with some accuracy up to 10 days ahead of time, the same can’t be said for other complex systems such as climate. Jordan Peterson explains that “you can’t predict the future. You can only predict parts of the future in an extremely limited way, for some purposes, for some span of time, and most often you don’t even know how long that span of time is.”
Hence contrivance is not possible, even as the world becomes increasingly intelligible to us. With weather systems we understand the possible range of outcomes and have some understanding of the probability of each. Further we understand that weather systems are localised, and would be naive to assume that they aren’t interconnected. Further it would be naive to assume that complex systems are not widely interconnected even when they appear disparate.
At worst contrivance will engage all these ‘hidden forces’ on the side of destruction in a way that not one in a million can diagnose. We have all heard the expression that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” At best an open approach can engage these same ‘hidden forces’ on the side of creation whereby serendipity is the result. We arrive at a place where unplanned, but fortunate outcomes abound. Perhaps we could say that the stairway to heaven is tiled with spontaneity. Contrivance is not possible either way, and one must either be humbled or embarrased.
You may have observed that the universe tends toward increasing disorder all on it’s own. Life in creating or even maintaining order appears as localised anti-entropy. The advance of science through prior centuries has allowed us to manipulate the world increasingly to our material advantage. At the same time we’ve lost the ability to perceive meaning in it. A full non-reductionist appreciation of science allows us to regain a participation with the world without losing that power of manipulation. It is this unifying principle of life that gives man a participating energy with nature.
What possibilities does such an appreciation of science afford? How ought we go about life when the only certainty is that what we don’t know is more important that what we do know. Perhaps one has begun to appreciate how such investigations can and will cross the lines of all disciplines and even enter into the religious realm. And all without great leaps of irrationality.
Before we do venture into other realms, let us remain in the highly scientific realms of physics and mathematics with Philip W. Anderson and Geroge Ellis.
“The behaviour of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, it turns out, is not to be understood in terms of a simple extrapolation of the properties of a few particles. Instead at each level of complexity, entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of the new behaviours requires research which I think is as fundamental in it’s nature as any other.” - Philip W. Anderson, 1971.
Anderson points out that following Newton there was a thrust in culture to explain everything as originating from the behaviour of fundamental particles called atoms, and that this was highly successful. However, there remained anomolies that the Newtonian frame did not explain. The aforementioned ‘three-body problem’ among them. A further shift came in learning that atoms were not fundamental (foundational) after all. They themselves consisted of parts; subatomic particles called electrons, neutrons and protons. This understanding gave rise to the realm of chemistry, which is no mere extrapolation of physics. This illustrates that we cannot extrapolate downward to an understanding of quantum physics, nor upward to understand the wealth and poverty of nations.
Each level of reality (and enquiry) must be regarded as important as any other, while observing that there is a relation (or hierarchy) between them. The levels have neighbours; most (but two) have one on each side. That is, chemistry can be understood as more elementary than physics, itself more elementary than biology, which can be understood to give rise to sociology. This ‘upward’ flow of information can be understood as emergence. That is new properties or behaviours emerge when the parts interact in a wider whole.
Years ago I saw a Facebook post marking an anniversary of Andrew Brietbart’s passing with a quote. He had stated that “politics is downstream of culture.” That quote set me to thinking that there may be more beyond emergence. Within sociology which is more elementary? Economics or politics? Politics or culture? Could there be a reversal of information somewhere within sociology? More than a reversal of information, a simultaneous flow of information in both an upward and downward direction? I already knew emergence was true, and I understood how it gave rise to different levels of complexity. This was not a question of either/or, but a question of both/and - both emergence and what I would come to understand as emanation.
I cannot remember how I came across George Ellis (a mathematics professor from the University of Cape Town), but I had recorded a couple quotes in a notebook, and now I had an immediate urge to re-read his material. I hunted around the ‘Reading’ folder on my laptop and found the revelant paper, and it was as if I was seeing it for the first time. I got busy with highlighter in hand.
“Structured systems such as computers constrain lower level interactions, and thereby paradoxically create new possibilities of complex behaviour.”
“Higher level logic drives lower level events.”
“The whole can shape the behaviour of the pieces in ways the pieces alone could never find by themselves.”
“Adaptive selection of goals in a feedback control system, thus combining both feedback control and adaptive selection.”
“Top down causation works by setting the constraints for lower level causation. Thus channeling lower level interactions while respecting lower level physics, which paradoxically creates new possibilities.”
I could understand all of this given my own experience. Top-down causation is extremely fragile because it is easy to disrupt downward information flow. That is to say that all the specifics matter, and therefore explains the frequency of machinery breakdowns. Consider the 2018 harvest - with just 500ha of a 5,500ha program to go, I had turned the harvester around at the end of a run, and 20m into the new run the header front shut off while the rotor was still running. I stopped and had a look to make sure rocks nor stumps were the cause of the issue. Next I thought the feeder sensor might be acting up and double checked the connection. I then knew there was no mechanical issue and should be able to carry on. I flicked the switch and got the front engaged. I continued harvesting, but turning around at the end of that run I encountered the same issue. However this time my screen was flashing all kinds of errors. It was asking me to to put my auger back in, open up the lids and so on, despite all such conditions already being met. I knew something was causing a number of sensors to fail. I now knew that the issue was purely electrical. I thought it would be possible to ignore the errors and continue harvesting, but the electronic system prevented me from engaging the mechanical systems. The harvester was out of action until a mechanic came out and replaced a malfunctioning sensor several hours later.
“Bottom up emergence by itself is strictly limited in terms of the complexity it can give rise to“, whereas “emergence of genuine complexity is characterised by a reversal of information flow from bottom-up to top-down.” Consider a pile of iron ore; it will not turn into steel (never mind a harvester) on its own accord, not even with the aid of many millennia. What is required are several levels of increasing logic, with each dependent upon and automatically in command of all the levels below.
To further this understanding of emanation, consider this descending list of higher level logic required to have the Internet on your computer or mobile phone:
8. Global network
7. Local network
6. Computer
5. Motherboard, memory banks
4. CPU, memory circuits
3. ALU, primary memory bus
2. Logic circuits, registers
1. Transistors, resistors, capacitors
0 Molecules
-1. Atoms
-2. Nucleaous
-3. Quarks
-4. Superstrings
And once you have the internet on your mobile, consider all the programming languages required to open a website. The lower level language (say JavaScript) creates new possibilities upon its conception which emerge as JavaScript frameworks over the course of decades. Each framework (such as React or Vue) provide the developer a higher level logic to command all the fundamental languages (and hardware) below automatically.
And thus “conception and execution are one and the same thing.” [Northrop Frye] But websites and nations (or religions) are very different indeed. Within sociology is it possible that such increasing levels of logic exist which allow the automatic control of all the lower levels subsumed into a hierarchy of cause and effect.
So whilst emergence can be described as deterministic, emanation is both highly fragile and highly dependent on human choice and action. We can consider that the choice of political system drives lower level economic events. And further that cultural choices drive the lower level political events. Further, the extent and quality of emergent properties is dependent upon the level from which they emanate - or cease to emanate. This begins to explain the divergent economic outcomes between the two countries in which I have lived (Zimbabwe and Australia).
This reciprocation of emergence and emanation between the various levels involved raises some questions. How do we differentiate between destructive and productive, and even more productive choices? Are these individual or societal choices? How do we distinguish a lower level choice from that at a higher level? Experience tells me that what libertarians and the collective accuse each other of is coercion.
