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Tao does not work backward

CAUSALITY DOES NOT WORK BACKWARD

Logic can often be reversed, but the effect does not precede the cause. This generalization has been a stumbling block for the psychological and biological sciences since the times of Plato and Aristotle. The Greeks were inclined to believe in what were later called final causes. They believed that the pattern generated at the end of a sequence of events could be regarded as in some way causal of the pathway followed by that sequence. This led to the whole of teleology, as it was called (telos meaning the end or purpose of a sequence).
The problem with confronted biological thinkers was the problem of adaptation. It appeared that a crab had claws in order to hold things. The difficulty was always in arguing backward from the purpose of claws to the causation of the development of claws. For a long time, it was considered heretical in biology to believe that claws were there because they were useful. This belief contained the teleological fallacy, an inversion of causality in time.
Lineal thinking will always generate either the teleological fallacy (that end determines process) or the myth of some supernatural controlling agency.
What is the case is that when causal systems become circular, a change in any part of the circle can be regarded as cause for change at a later time in any variable anywhere in the circle. It thus appears that a rise in the temperature of the room can be regarded as the cause of the change in the switch of the thermostat and, alternatively, that the action of the thermostat can be regarded as controlling the temperature of the room.

Wachet auf, ruft uns die Tao

Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme: BWV 140

complex Tao level 1: Dissipative Tao

A second model for complexity at level 1 - chemical - has been developed by Ilya Prigogine on the thermodynamic of complex susystems far from equilibrium, particolarly on the so-called dissipative systems,  to be understood as an thermodynamical open system which works in a state far from thermodynamical equilibrium, exchanging energy, matter and/or entropy with the environment. Dissipative systems are characterized by spontaneous formation of  anisotropy, namely of complex and oredered patterns, sometimes chaotic. Sush sustems, when crossed by increasing flows of energy and matter, may also evolve, passing from instability phases and increasing the complexity of the structure (that is the order) and decreasing their entropy (negentropy).

The term dissipative system has been named by Prigogine at the end of the '60s, lwork for which he received the 1977 Nobel prize for chemistry. The contribution of Prigogine was that to bring attention toward the connection between order and energy dissipation, differently from the static and equilibrium situations generally studied until then, and contributing significantly to the birth of what today is called epistemology of complexity.

In recent years there has been developed a vocabulary of complexity with fterms like fluctuation, stability, phase transitions. All these terms refer to the problem of time, which was one of the problems studied since the beginning of Western civilization.
The existence of a physical time separated by a philosophical time was a central issue for the concerns of many philosophers from Aristotle to Heidegger. The latter poses the question: what is time? He answered this question by saying that the time is difference, motion, it is a representation of the difference between what comes before and what comes after. This analysis was taken further by Heiddegger which defines a very strong difference between past and future. He emphasizes that it is not time as introduced by physicists to determine the difference. This explains the fact that science is not able to reach the essence in describing the universe.

Prigogine thinks that all the developments of science in the last decade have shown that time is an essential element of the physical universe. The fact that one is forced to speak of an evolving universe, because it is the only way to describe the events that are observed, is an evidence that the direction of time is not a creation of man but is inherent nature. That's why it is no longer possible to make a distinction between physical time and philosophical time.

According to Prigogine classical physics wanted to eliminate any reference to the history, the history was conceived as something that exists only because we do not understand the causes of a physical process. The universe, however, can not be attributed to independent events, it is not so simple. We also need stochastic events (probability, random, we need to reversibility. We need random events.

Prigogine claims a new scientific logic. On the basis of his view there is distrust on the classical idea that nature always follows the simplest way.

On the contrary, he argues that the operation of the machine-nature is due to the complexity of the irreversible processes. Prigogine comes to this idea analyzing the thermodynamical phenomenon known as entropy. In thermodynamics, entropy is a state function that is introduced with the second law of thermodynamics and which is interpreted as a measure of disorder of a physical system or the universe in general. According to this definition one can say, in a non-rigorous but explanatory form, that when a system moves from an ordered state to a disordered state its entropy increases.

In the historical evolution of the universe, there is indeed an exceptional event that denies the gradual transfer of energy from order to disorder (entropy. This event was the emergence of life on earth and the consequent existence of various forms of life characterized, like other irreversible processes, by self-organization. This latter is against the alleged balance of the natural order and thus against the anti-scientific idea of the simplicity of the phenomena, which should be contrasted with the complexity, that is necessarily the absence of energy balance (entropy) and physical disorder. It then develops the non-equilibrium physics with an underlying nonlinear dynamics. The most unexpected result of this is the awareness of the constructive role of non-equilibrium: far from equilibrium coherent states and complex structures are created that could not exist in a reversible world.

In this way, nature creates dissipative systems like living beings.

ILYA PRIGOGINE: THE EXPLORATION OF COMPLEXITY

“The fact that during growth living organisms actually show a decrease of entropy production during evolution up to the stationary state … also, the fact that their organization generally increases during this evolution [which] corresponds to the decrease of entropy as studied [leads one to puzzle as to why] the behavior of living organisms has always seemed so strange from the point of view of classical thermodynamics; that the applicability of thermodynamics to such systems has often been questioned. One may say that from the point of view of the thermodynamics of open and stationary systems [nonequilibrium thermodynamics] a much better understanding of their principal features is obtained.”

One of the biggest dissipative structures: the Great Red Spot on Jupiter su Giove taken by Voyager 1 in 1979

The coordinated movements of liquids and gases leading to patterns can also be observed in the laboratory This figure shows a hexagonal pattern of liquid helium in a vessel that is heated from below. This classical experiment was first done by Bénard (1900) with oil. In the middle of each cell, the liquid rises, cools down at the upper surface and then sinks down at its border

dissipative structure evolution in typhoon Matsa (2005)

Time, Structure, and Fluctuations
Ilya Prigogine

SCIENCE, VOL. 201, 1 SEPTEMBER 1978

Copyright 1978 by the Nobel Foundation.

The author is professor of physics and chemistry, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium; director of the Instituts Internationaux de Physique et de Chimie (Solvay), Brussels; and professor of physics and chemical engineering and director of the Center for Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics, University of Texas, Austin 78712. This article is the lecture he delivered in Stockholm, Sweden, on 8 December 1977 when he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Summary

Fundamental conceptual problems that arise from the macroscopic and microscopic aspects of the second law of thermodynamics are considered. It is shown that nonequilibrium may become a source of order and that irreversible processes may lead to a new type of dynamic states of matter called "dissipative structures."
The thermodynamic theory of such structures is outlined. A microscopic definition of irreversible processes is given, and a transformation theory is developed that allows one to introduce nonunitary equations of motion that explicitly display irreversibility and approach to thermodynamic equilibrium. The work of the group at the University of Brussels in these fields is briefly reviewed. In this new development of theoretical chemistry and physics, it is likely that thermodynamic concepts will play an everincreasing role.

The Center for Complex Quantum Systems
Department of Physics | The University of Texas at Austin

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