To Live is to Flow…
Vitality in the 21st Century
vitality
/vʌɪˈtalɪti/
noun
the state of being strong and active; energy
the power giving continuance of life, present in all living things
“All living things must move and act in space to survive. When motion ceases, life ends” [1a] …
- Barbara Tversky
The Constructal Law [1], which was first published in 1995 by Adrian Bejan [2] — a Romanian-American world-leading thermodynamics physicist — was a revolutionary concept that began bridging the gap between physics and biology — just like Noble Prize-winning quantum physicist Erwin Schrodinger [3] had done in 1943–44 through his lectures and Book — What is Life? [4].
A universal concept that could be applied to physics, evolution, the natural world, technology, and social organisations.
The law states:
“for a finite flowing & moving system to endure (i.e. survive) over time, it must have the freedom to ‘morph’, ‘change’ & ‘move’ more and more easily”…[1]
In essence, it captured the notion that to live is to move and change.
A living system must evolve to provide easier and easier access to the currents that flow through it.
When the work of Adrian Bejan [2] and Erwin Schrodinger [3] are combined with the works of Philosophers Karl Popper[5] — Philosophy of Science & Mind [6], Martin Heidegger [7] — Meaning of “Being [8], Claude Shannon [9] — Information Theory [10], David Deutsch [11] — Theory of Knowledge [12], Prof. Karl Friston [13] — Free Energy Principle[14], Colonel John Boyd [15] — OODA Loop [16], Karl Weick [17]— Sensemaking [18], Jean-Louise Desalle’s [19] — Simplicity Theory [20], George Soros — Theory of Reflexivity [21], Olivia Hudson — Energy Expansion of Evolution [22], Geoffrey West — Super Linear Scaling [23], Melanie Moses — Metabolic Scaling [24] and Stuart Kauffman — The Adjacent Possible [25] you essentially end up with a synthesised observation:
“It is the flow of Information & energy and the interplay between the mind, body & environment through accumulating both explicit (abstraction) and tacit (interaction) knowledge & embracing The Adjacent Possible that enables living systems to minimise entropy (uncertainty) & energy, thereby providing an evolutionary pathway to navigate the complexity of reality”…
Could this be the foundation of embodied intelligence [26]?
What is Life, and what are these currents?
Schrödinger’s 1943 lecture and Book — What is Life? [4] — focused on one crucial question:
“How can the events in space and time which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism be accounted for by physics and chemistry?”
Alongside his transformational work on genetics, the book highlighted the importance of a living system’s ability to self-order in a world of chaos — essentially outlining how it fights the Second Law of Thermodynamics to create structure and information over time.
It was a clear departure from the dominant cultural narrative that had prevailed since the 16th Century on how we viewed Life — a shift from Humans as Machines — to — Humans as complex interdependent evolving living organic systems.
A return to a view of life that had existed for thousands of years through ancient wisdom, including Buddhism [27], Taoism [28], Taoism [29], and more recently through modern science, including the Theory of Relativity[30] and Quantum Mechanics [31] that saw matter not as passive or inert, but in a continuous dancing and vibrating motion — quanta of matter that were both waves and particles — wave-particles.
A return to Vitalism[32] that held the origin and phenomena of Life dependent on forces ( a soul, God(s), energy) and principles distinct from purely our chemical & physical form.
A shift from products of design to bodies of natural selection and evolution in a state of quantum entanglement[33] with the world.
A shift from machines with discrete parts with specific functions to parts with blurry boundaries, interconnections and interdependencies connected to our micro — miso — meta — worlds.
An observation that is so profound that it challenges our nature of being.
No longer were living systems compartmentalised, separated from their environments through an idealised conception.
They were beings — dynamic, interacting, evolving, navigating — responding to the environment.
An evolution of our consciousness from the Mental Structures[34] that had prevailed for the last 2,300 years to new forms of Integral being — one that balances the I with the We and recognises our interdependencies with all living systems.
Moving away from exerting power over nature as outlined in Philosopher Martin Heidegger’s 1954 book [35] on Technology — where living systems, including humans, were viewed as raw materials — a technological interpretation of being.
A shift to a world of complexity and flows of living systems.
A recognition of abundant embodied interdependent intelligent Life.
An emergent world envisioned by Jeremy Lent in his Book — The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanities Search for Meaning [36] begins to recognise our unfolding Reality.
Footnotes:
[1] Adrian Bejan & Constructal Law — https://mems.duke.edu/research/energy/bejan-constructal-law
[1a] — Barbara Tversky’s Remark at AI Debate 2 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFRY39ansJc
[2] Adrian Bejan — adrian-bejan
[3] Erwin Schrodinger — https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1933/schrodinger/biographical/
[4] What is Life? — https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/what-is-life/A876185F2DB06FF5C2CC67C9A60DAD7F
[5] Karl Popper — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/
[6] Karl Popper — Philosophy of Mind — https://www.pdcnet.org/scholarpdf/show?id=wcp14_1968_0001_0000_0025_0053&pdfname=wcp14_1968_0001_0000_0025_0053.pdf&file_type=pdf — and — Philosophy of Science — https://iep.utm.edu/pop-sci/
[7] Martin Heidegger — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/
[8] Being & Time — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDAyhsZ-Gs4
[9] Claude Shannon — https://www.itsoc.org/about/shannon
[10] How Claude Shannon Invented the Future — https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-claude-shannons-information-theory-invented-the-future-20201222/
[11] David Deutsch — https://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk
[12] David Deutsch on the infinite reach of knowledge — https://www.ted.com/talks/the_ted_interview_david_deutsch_on_the_infinite_reach_of_knowledge/transcript?language=en
[13] Prof. Karl Friston — https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/
[14] The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory? — https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn2787
[15] Col. John Boyd — https://www.colonelboyd.com/biography
[16] Decision Making, Top Gun Style — decision-making-top-gun-style
[17] Karl Weick — https://lsa.umich.edu/psych/people/emeriti-faculty/karlw.html
[18] Sensemaking in Organizations — book4988
[19] Jean-Louise Desalle — jld
[20] Simplicity Theory — https://simplicitytheory.telecom-paris.fr
[21] Soros: General Theory of Reflexivity — https://www.ft.com/content/0ca06172-bfe9-11de-aed2-00144feab49a
[22] Olivia Hudson — Energy Expansion of Evolution — A Grand New Theory of Life’s Evolution on Earth — https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/a-grand-unified-theory-for-life-on-earth/525648/
[23] Geoffrey West — Scale — https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/314049/scale-by-geoffrey-west/
[24] Melanie Moses — Metabolic Scaling — Melanie Moses on Metabolic Scaling in Biology & Computation — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY4xcJDPz4w
[25] Stuart Kauffman — The Adjacent Possible — Stuart Kauffman on Physics, Life, and The Adjacent Possible — watch
[26] The implausibility of intelligence explosion — https://medium.com/@francois.chollet/the-impossibility-of-intelligence-explosion-5be4a9eda6ec
[27] Buddhism — https://www.pbs.org/edens/thailand/buddhism.htm
[28] Taoism —https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/taoism/
[29] Daoism — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/daoism/
[30] Theory of Relativity — https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/what-relativity-einstein-s-mind-bending-theory-explained-ncna865496
[31] Quantum Mechanics — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm/
[32] Vitalism — https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/vitalism/v-1
[33] The Age of Entanglement — https://richardschutte.medium.com/the-age-of-entanglement-556de9318378
[34] Seeing Through the World — Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness — 02604027.2020.1832951
[35] Understanding Heidegger on Technology — On whether thinking can save us — https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/understanding-heidegger-on-technology
[36] The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanities Search for Meaning — https://www.jeremylent.com/the-patterning-instinct.html
