planetary Tao mind

Below, the Ocean - the planet's only inhabitant, organic, sentient, unimaginably powerful, profoundly indifferent to humanity. Above, the space station set from Earth, pathetically hovering over Solaris in an attempt to fathom some of the oceans mysteries, to tap a little of its knowledge. Newest arrival at the station is Kelvin, psychologist, principal character of a science fiction novel which has all the makings of a classic. This station is all but deserted, its crew reduced to a couple of half-crazed, furtive creatures, who are men of high repute among their fellow scientists. Are there but the three of them on board? Kelvin soon finds out, or thinks he does, when he is visited in the middle of the night by a lady bearing an uncanny resemblance to his long dead wife.
This is a dense and profound book, a parable and a thriller written at several levels and yielding more at each examination, yet it remains extremely readable throughout.

logical causal Tao

LOGIC IS A POOR MODEL OF CAUSE AND EFFECT

We use the same words to talk about logical sequences and about sequences of cause and effect. We say "If Euclid's definitions and postulates are accepted, then two triangles having three sides of the one equal to thee sides of the other are equal each to each." And we say, "If the temperature falls below 0°C, then the water begins to become ice."
But the if…then of logic in the syllogism is very different from the if…then of cause and effect.
In a computer, which works by cause and effect, with one transistor, triggering another, the sequences of cause and effect are used to simulate logic. Thirty years ago, we sued to ask: Can a computer simulate all the processes of logic? The answer was yes, but the question was surely wrong. We should have asked: Can logic simulate all sequences of cause and effect? And the answer would have been no.
When the sequences of cause and effect become circular (or more complex than circular), then the description or mapping of those sequences onto timeless logic becomes self-contradictory. Paradoxes are generated that pure logic cannot tolerate. An ordinary buzzer circuit will serve as an example, a single instance of the apparent paradoxes generated in a million cases of homeostasis throughout biology. The buzzer circuit 

is so rigged that current will pass around the circuit when the armature makes contact with the electrode at A. But the passage of current activates the electromagnet that will draw the armature away, breaking the contact at A. The current will then cease to pass around the circuit, the electromagnet will become inactive, and the armature will return to make contact at A and so repeat the cycle.

If we spell out this cycle onto a causal sequence, we get the following:
If contact is made at A, then the magnet is activated.
If the magnet is activated, then contact at A is broken.
If contact at A is broken, then the magnet is inactivated.
If magnet is inactivated, than contact is made.
The sequence is perfectly satisfactory provided it is clearly understood that the if…then junctures are casual. But the bad pun that would move the ifs and thens over into the world of logic will create havoc:
If the contact is made, then the contact is broken.
If P, then not P.
The if…then of causality contains time, but the if…then of logic is timeless. It follows that logic is an incomplete model of causality.

toward the center of Tao

totally Tao

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

quite Tao

not - Tao

Complex Tao level 0: Synergetic Tao

In searching new methodologies for complex systems which could overcome the difficulties of the classical ones, at physical level 0  Hermann Haken has developed the Synergetics method (from greek "working together"), created in the 70s-80s years in the field of quantum laser theory, specifically to explain the coherence of the emitted radiation, namely how photons into the laser cavity interact all together in a spatio-temporal way to form the high coherence  characteristic of the output laser radiation.
The laser radiation has two peculiar characteristics: the first is its monochromaticity, that is the light emission has a narrow wavelength (one-colored), the second is its coherence, as clear to anyone have seen a laser beam.

While the former is easily explained in terms of electron transitions between higher energy levels to lower, producing a photon energy very definite, the second can not be explained by the characteristics of the emission of photons in the laser cavity, which should emit independently of each other, and then incoherently.

This application example clarifies some key concepts used in Synergetics in a qualitative way. In the gas lasers the emitting atoms are locked in a tube with the ends of the semi-reflective mirrors that act as resonator for the emitted light. The mirrors are designed in order to reflect light in the axial direction often enough so that the corresponding wave remains for a long time within the device and can interact strongly with the atoms through the phenomenon of stimulated emission.

The atoms are excited from the outside, eg by a light pump source. After being excited, each atom can spontaneously emit a trace of light. In the usual case of a lamp, these tracks of light are emitted independently of each other incoherently, and the amplitudes are distributed as a Gaussian. When the pump intensity is increased beyond a critical value, called laser threshold, where it starts the population inversion - or when there are more electrons in higher energy levels than on the fundamental - the current state gives way to a single wave with amplitude stability on which the fluctuations of small amplitude and phase overlap. The pump intensity acts as control parameter. At its critical value, the old state becomes unstable. The emerging coherent wave acts as a order parameter that through stimulated emission forces the electrons of the gas molecules to emit light in a coherent way. This action by the order parameter over single parts of the system has been called by Haken enslavement principle. In this case it can be seen that from 10¹⁸ degrees of freedom, in which any of the 10¹⁸ atoms in the cavity emit independently of each other, and therefore the total sum is incoherent, one switch to a single degree of freedom, the coherent laser mode over thresholdl. If the pump power is still increased may appear further instabilities and a variety of temporal patterns, but even spatio-temporal, such chaotic laser light or very short laser pulses. The laser threshold, where stimulated emission occurs, show typical characteristics of a phase transition of a system  out of thermal equilibrium, such critical damping, critical fluctuations and simmetry breaking.

The high laser coherence is therefore a cooperative effect of self-organization, and the synergetic method of the enslavement principle between order parameters and the  slaved subsystems gives the relationship between macroscopic and microscopic parameters of the complex system.

Haken has expanded in subsequent years the calculation model for synergetic to a range of disciplines from chemistry to biology to economics to the study of brain and cognitive sciences and, more generally, to any form of self-organization in complex systems that exhibit an emergent behavior. Synergetics therefore stands as a new authentic methodology to address Complexity.

 In the Haken words:

"The systems under experimental or theoretical consideration I sistemi in esame sperimentale o teorico are subject to control parameters which can be fixed from the external or generated in part from the system itself. An example for an external control parameter is the absorbed power in a gas laser by the injected electrical current. An example for a internal generated control parameter are the hormones in the human body or the neurotransmitters in the brain. When the control parameters reach some specific critical values the system may become instable and to adopt a new macroscopic state. Close to these instability points, a new set of collective variables may be identified: the order parameters. They have, at least generally, a low dimensional dynamic and characterized the macroscopic system. Since the cooperation of the single parts allows the existence of order parameters which in turn determine the bahavior of the individual partsi, we speak of circular causality. According to the enslavement principle, the order parameters determine the bahavior of the individual parts, the enslaved subsystems, which can be still subjected to fluctuations. At a critical point, a single order parameter may be subjected to a non-equilibrium transition phase (bifurcation), with simmetry breaking,  with a  slowing down of critical fluctuations. 
Synergetic ha several links to other disciplines, such complexity theory"

In general, the abused term synergy may indicate a cooperative effect of reinforcement/stabilization among different internal processes of the system, or among certain internal and other external to the system.

In the  figure, for example, the two recursive closed processe red e blue are coupled by a third process which may habe synergetic effects, making a new three processes set which may have different qualities from those of the individual processes.