What causes complexity to increase in evolution?

Today’s Post

For the past several weeks we have been employing Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ to see how he uses it to examine the process of increased complexity which is at work in the evolution of the universe, even as it spills over into human life on this planet.
This week we will refocus this ‘lens’ onto the aspect of how it does so, by recognizing it as ‘energy’.

Human Evolution in a Universal Context

To get a better look at how the phenomenon of complexity is active in the human species, we need to first understand how it is active in the universe.  Since, as Teilhard asserts, the human is simply the latest product of evolution (at least on this planet), the roots of humanity must be in some way common with the roots of everything.

In his book, “The Phenomenon of Man”, Teilhard shows how evolution can be seen to always follow the same pattern everywhere in the universe as it rises from the simplicity of the first manifestation of featureless energy at the Big Bang to the complexity which can be seen today across its broad expanse.   In addition to the other ‘energies’ discovered by science; he adds one which is required for this ‘complexification’ to occur.  He maps this underlying energy into three different ‘vectors’.

First, he notes a component of this energy by which the granules of the ‘stuff of the universe’, even in their undifferentiated state at the ‘Big Bang’, have the potential of connecting with each other to form new granules.  Science is still discovering the ‘laws’ which govern how these interconnections take place, and as its scope of the universe expands, these laws expand with it.

Newton’s “Principia Mathematica” was one of the first attempts to articulate these laws.  Later, Einstein’s expansion of them into the realm or ‘relativity’ recognized Newton’s laws as ‘subsets’ of a much larger realm of mathematics.  Today, science struggles with how Einstein’s relativistic perspectives can be seen to square with the new insights which emerge in quantum theory.

Secondly, he notes that thus far, none of these laws address the scientifically uncovered phenomena of complexification.  While the Standard Model of Physics addresses the forces by which subatomic particles come together to result in the configurations seen in atoms, it does not address the source of the atom’s increased potential for future reconfiguration into the more complex configurations of molecules.

Science’s ability to understand the energies at work in the assembly of components from subcomponents increases daily.  Since it does not acknowledge that this assembly is accompanied by the potential for increased complexity, this force that Teilhard recognizes has been simply, up until now, ‘off the table’.  As a result, the absence of the most important process in the universe, that of complexification, renders the Standard Model of physics as ‘incomplete’.  Without such a process, the universe would have remained at its initial undifferentiated state.

This potential has only recently begun to creep back onto the table with the new approach seen in ‘Information Theory’.  This new branch of inquiry sees the ‘information’ contained in a particle of matter as the ‘instructions’ which define the potential of the particle to connect with other particles of the same order to result in a new particle (such as protons, neutrons and electrons uniting to become atoms).  Paul Davies in his book, “The 5th Miracle”, suggests the analogy of such information as the ‘software’ contained in the ‘hardware’ of matter.  In our example, the three components of the atom utilize this ‘software’ as ‘instructions’ for their unification from discrete components into unified products.

Davies is referring to the fact that the enriched ‘information’ or ‘software’ of such new ‘products’ of evolution endows the new product with increased potential for not only new structure and functionality, but for the eventual production of even more complex products (such as atoms grouping into molecules).  Thus, not only does the structure of the product become more complex, but so does its information.

Teilhard addresses this novel phenomenon, this new and enriched component of ‘information’ by which such union not only produces a new ‘offspring’, but one whose complexity has been increased from that of its ‘parent’.  In terms of Information Theory, the ‘complexity quotient’ of this new product can be seen in the increase in information resulting from the connections of the precedent components, such as the increased ‘information’ seen in the DNA molecule resulting from the combining of simpler molecules of amino acids.

Thirdly, Teilhard identifies the characteristic of this higher degree of information by which the new components are not only more complex themselves, but more capable of future unifications which result in still further increases in complexity.  In the example above, the DNA molecule is not only more complex in structure than its amino acid components, but this increased complexity also allows it an unprecedented power: to guide the RNA molecule in the production of proteins which provide energy to, and define the functionality of, future products: ‘cells’.   DNA therefore can be seen as an example of matter’s capability of ‘instructing itself to make itself’, a stunning step up the ladder of increasing complexity and evidence of the presence of Teilhard’s ‘energy of evolution’.

Thus, Teilhard recognizes a unique type of energy, one which powers this creative enterprise as the universe evolves: unification, complexification, and increased potential for further unification.  With the addition of this energy to the Standard Model of physics, the universe’s undoubted evolutionary increase in complexity becomes clearer.

Next Week

This week we moved from seeing how Teilhard’s seven measures of increasing complexity can be observed as active in the human species, to addressing the unique ‘energy of complexification’ by which it occurs.  We also saw that, although it has been ‘ground ruled’ from the ‘lens of physics’, Teilhard’s addition permits science to expand its field of view to address the entire universe.

Next week we will look a little more closely at how Teilhard’s recognition of the ‘energy of complexification’ can be distinguished among the clutter of science’s ‘energy of matter’.