Tyler Durden

A colleague of mine recently published this article on the apparent order found in nature. I thought you skeptics and infidels would get a kick out of this neo-pantheistic account of reality.

From this link:

Synchrony, nature’s true beauty

In a period of war, terror and chaos, human affairs may seem rowdy, but the rest of nature is buzzing along just fine — thanks to intrinsic properties that emphasize teamwork and synchrony from the atomic level up. In fact, scientists say that sync is embedded in the rules of nature, rules we’ve never been able to figure out with basic calculation and observation alone — even though we’ve been surrounded by them since the beginning.

Anyone who has seen the aquatic ballet of schooling fish knows that nature provides glorious examples of synchrony — the rhythmic interplay of parts that combine in patterns to make up a greater whole. But this is nothing compared to what advanced computing and sophisticated math have shown recently: Sync underlies some of the most complex and perplexing phenomena around, from fireflies to human consciousness and from traffic to energy.

For instance, how do some groups of fireflies manage to flash together in rhythm, as if driven by a drumbeat indistinct to the rest of the world? For years, only the lucky people who saw the spectacle believed in it. Today, however, science verified that the firefly brains are equipped with a metronome, which sets the pace of their flashes based on what other fireflies are doing. If, by chance, a few insects flash in unison, others will notice and adjust their own flashes to match, until the entire group is putting on a coordinated light show with no leader to set the tempo. Wow!

How about human consciousness, the most sophisticated organism of nature? Metaphorically speaking, if the brain is an orchestra, each neuron plays a different instrument. With no conductor, the brain creates order out of chaos by using sync. Recognizing a face, for example, requires neurons to put together a huge amount of data. A familiar face may cause 80 percent of the neurons to fire in unison. If 90 percent join in, it’s even more likely that the face will be recognized. In this sense, science now logically entertains the hypothesis that all consciousness may be the result of synchronized neuron-firing.

The last place you’d expect to find sync would be on the highway—but, according to “traffic physicists,” it’s not quite so. Despite motorists’ tendency to tailgate and cut off other drivers, they most often avoid traffic jams simply by acting in sync. In computer simulations, for example, cars and trucks spontaneously synchronize, traveling as a solid block of vehicles, striving to find the most efficient routes.

Nature, by itself, generates all kinds of energy, from mechanical to nuclear. Energy is the dynamic quality that never diminishes or ceases to exist, continually fueling something to do work. And—guess what—there is synchrony in energy as well. With energy disappearing in one form and reappearing in another, the total energy in nature always remains constant; the synchrony of energy is never really lost.

When, for example, an oak tree dies, irrespective of whatever internal changes may take place, its energy will continue to circle in nature. Death may be the end of a person’s conscious life, but it signifies, at the same time, the beginning of a new one in a different form.

The fact that everywhere we look, to whatever depth we look, we find a design of absolute harmony and cooperation stands opposed to the idea of chaos and disorder. The deeper question, however, is: What is the actual source of this mystifying synchrony in nature? Is it a higher being, such as God? Or, is nature the source of its own harmony? To these questions, I’d unassumingly respond with a further question: What if God and nature are one and the same?

As imperfect beings, we may never come to know the answers — and grab a hold of the eternal truths. They are a matter of philosophy and, in a way, pure faith. At the same time, we — the daring people who have always looked for, but failed to find a remedy in the supernatural realm — need to recognize that the key to the deepest mysteries of life resides within the realm of nature. In other words, regardless of how much we contemplate and speculate via philosophy and religion, the best way to understand the complexity of life is still by observation and falsification alone.

johngalt

I think that is a really interesting concept dealing with nature. The human aspect, though, is more complex than fireflies and other animals sync. The human brain is too complex to be in sync like an animal's brain.

diana

This thread is limited to replies from fictional characters.

Carry on.

d

diana

(And the first rule of Fight Club is...)

Were it more consistently observed--this "mystifying synchronicity"--I'd better understand why it needs any explanation outside of mere chance. Some things will be synchronous and some things won't. The fact that you can list a bunch of things that are "mystifying" in their synchronicity suggests that they stick out as being unusual.

I don't see why not. We don't mind thinking of nature as the source of its own disharmony.

This looks deeper than it really is, IMO. If God and nature are the same thing, we have a superfluous word, is all.

(Now...whothefuck is johngalt?)

d

Marlowe

While the author of this article does appear to be rhapsodizing a bit, and "synchrony" is obviously a non-technical term - Complexity Theory, which the article is really talking about, is a rapidly expanding science that does seem to have interesting implications for pantheists. It is, in fact, more or less why I became a pantheist.

There are several excellent books out there that explain the basics of Complexity Theory. M. Mitchell Woldrop's "Complexity: The Emerging Science on the Edge of Order and Chaos", which tells of the beginnings of CT and the Santa Fe Institute - one of the primary research facilities in Complexity. This book includes towards teh end a variety of scientist's engaged in Complexity research musing on their own philosophies since becoming involved in this new area of science. Dr. Stuart Kaufmann's "At Home in the Universe" describes the best theory yet for how life emerged from non-living chemicals. It gets somewhat technical but is still a fascinating book. Murray Gell-Mann's "The Quark and the Jaguar" begins with information theory and then describes how it plays into Complexity and how CT may well represent a major paradigm change in the next era of science. (Gell-Mann received the Nobel Prize in physics for discovering the quark.)

You can also check out the Santa Fe Institute's website, their list of books, and working papers for 2003.

Complexity does indeed cover numerous subjects in biology, as well as economics, chemistry, sociology, since it is an integrative theory, cross-disciplinary subjects.

Which word? God? Or nature? As a pantheist I've often said the only thing that separates my worldview from a rational materialists is that I choose to believe the wonder of nature is divine, while they choose to believe the wonder of nature is nothing. If I say God and nature are exactly identical, that is just a shorthand way of explaining the divinity I see in nature. Therefore I'm not so sure it's superfluous. Though I might wish for a word not so easily misunderstood to mean other things.

GrandDesigner

I enjoy reading concepts like that or any other, really. It really makes me smile to see humanity trying wrap 'God' up into one thing or another in an attempt to explain him, but more importantly, in their attempt to say 'we have you now' .

That reminds me of the old "Man created God in his own image" saying and now applying that to the concept that God is the order in all nature, that person who wrote that is trying to say man is as beautifully complex as everything natural?

Oh well..life is funny...and to be enjoyed!

Grand ol' Designer

diana

Greetings, Marlowe.

Since "god" is the word that tends to be so ambiguous, I vote we drop that one.

What do you mean when you say "divine"?

And I wouldn't claim that the wonder of nature is nothing. I find nature endlessly fascinating and awe-inspiring in itself.

d

Marlowe

Cool. I know many folks who do, but if I imply that there is something worth honoring, something divine in that, something animating, I've had people get very upset. Of course, I'm also partial to mystical ideas - that the 'something' I just mentioned cannot be contained within rationality, so maybe that's what bugs them. I came to pantheism originally through Taoism which begins with "The Tao that can be named is not the Tao". (In essence - if you're talking about God, then you're not talking about God, because God is a concept too big to be contained in a word.) Such circularity doesn't go well with our linear Western way of thought.

Divine - greater than anything else that can be conceived; alive; greater than the sum of its parts; sacred. I am a pantheist of the Spinoza variety these days - everything is made of one substance, and that substance is divine. So I guess you could say I worship quarks. Seriously though, I've never understood the insistence by many who say that nature is awe-inspiring, to so strongly resist any religious notions. Perhaps it is the bad associations of organized monotheistic religion, but I don't see why ideas like sacredness, worship and divinity need to be thrown out because we don't like what they've been applied to previously. Just apply them to the universe at large.

Conchobar

Confusion results from misconceptions about nature and lack of a definition of God.

Nature in the grand view may be complex and in some fashion, beautiful. Yet it is also disorderly, chaotic, catastrophic, and for living things cruel, violent, painful, and ultimately sad. I don't know what synchrony is apart from quarks in particles and elements having specific or nearly specific atomic numbers in the periodic table. Atoms bind to atoms in molecular and ionic bonds fixed to some extent by electrical valences.

Yet stars explode in incredible blasts of supernovas. Meteors and comets crash into planets at random times depending on their erratic orbits. Billions of animals and hundreds of thousands of species are believed to die out at unpredictable intervals like the great Permian Extinction when some 90+% of all animal species died out, or the KT (Cretaceous/Tertiary) 65 million years ago when Dinos died out. What is synchronic about that?

Human animals no matter how well they live die. Many die of painful diseases like cancer. Many die of wasting diseases like AIDS or ALS. Many are murdered, or killed in wars. Children die of starvation in Africa, Asia, and South America. Do you see the beauty here? Children are sold into prostitution and sex slavery in cities all over the world. Many will die of AIDS before adulthood.

Non-human animals in the wild generally die a dreadful death, being ripped apart by predators before they can die a slow death from old age. I posted what I saw in Africa of a Zebra being killed by a pack of Hyenas. They surrounded the terrified zebra, and held it by biting its snout and tail, and biting chunks of its flesh while it stood bleating and actually crying in pain. It took that Zebra an incredible 30 minutes to collapse to the ground while feeding hyenas continued to eat its flesh. It was still moaning until blood loss finally led to unconsciousness. This is not a rare thing. It happens every day. Gazelles are ripped apart alive by dog packs. Wildebeests and Zebras are ripped apart by lions, hyenas, and dog packs. Baby Elephants are even taken by lions. Nature can be downright ugly. We like to avoid seeing it. But it really is a "jungle out there."

As a scientist I know that nature is amoral, neutral on mercy. Life survives because the violent competition ultimately selects out the ones most adapted to survive. Evolution largely is successful because of the horror that exists in real nature. It doesn't like it is designed. If designed it suggests a God who doesn't care about suffering.

But God is a different concept. God in the Deist Philosophy is the creator and perhaps the code of atomic and chemical properties that allows the universe to exist. As such God takes no part in how the components evolve and the manner in which they survive. Or there isn't a god/creator at all. The Universe is as it appears based on the inherent properties of matter and energy.

I know this has been rambling, but the point is that the universe in my opinion is not an "Evidence no. 1" in the court case for a creator-god. God is defined in many different ways. Is God supernatural and not measurable by any physical-empirical methods? It appears so. Or is God the Islamic or Abrahamic God who intervenes in the minutest (is that a word?) details and trivia of life?

It is all rhetorical and none of it can be answered in my opinion and this is the Case For Agnosticism.

Conchobar