Complexity

In ancient days philosophers imagined that if you dropped an object from a high point on a ship that the difference (in distance) between where the object landed on the ship’s deck and a point immediately below the dropping point would reveal the direction and speed of the ship: it didn’t! (assuming there was no change in the ships velocity - no acceleration)

The discovery of that helped bring us the Heliocentric solar system by showing that if falling objects moved with a ship then things on the Earth might move with it, even if it were in orbit around the sun.

Nowadays we are told that an object which is dropped shares a common velocity with the ship and so, if there is no acceleration of the ship, lands as if it had fallen straight down.

Einstein calls it Relativity and says that, depending on you veiw point, or frame of reference, that the object can usually be seen to fall at an angle if you are not onboard the ship.
However, we know that the ship is on a spinning ball, orbiting a sun - why doesn't that effect where the object falls?

Einstein also tells us that the Mass of an object approaches infinity as its speed approaches that of light. However, since Einstein insist that speed is relative, and hence the object can only know its speed in relation to other objects, how, then, does an object know when it is approaching the speed of light?

It would seem that both questions can simply be answered by a common solution - that objects which are within the same gravitational frame adopt the values of that frame and hence are relative to it.
So the Earth is within the sun’s ‘frame’ and we are within the Earth’s.

This strikes me as a rather appealing concept because it seems to echo so many other ‘systems’
Protons, neutrons and electrons live within the ’frame’ of atoms, atoms within the frame of molecules etc. A more familiar set of ‘frames within frames’ might be - the frame of a person, within the frame of a group, within the frame of a country. Essentially we see that complexity emerges as we travel up the hierarchy of the frames.

I suppose I ought to make a greater effort to explain the central concept which is that there are a series of levels which fit within increasingly higher levels - pretty much like a series of Russian Dolls.

Each higher levels contain all that was within the lower level (and quite possibly all lower levels) but adds an extra layer of complexity. A simple example used earlier is particles within atoms within molecules within matter.

The laws that effect particles, at first sight, would seem to offer little info about the laws that effect atoms and the same for the laws that effect atoms to molecules and molecules to matter.

Yet chemistry springs from the Periodic Table which is simply a guide to the stacking of electrons and through Chemistry we may one day master the manifold mysteries of molecules and the ultimate mystery of how life arises, more properly emerges, from the next level of complexity that molecules bestow.

To return to the ship and the falling object - the level of complexity although staggering to us is still fairly simple to the Universe.
So long as you are in the same 'frame' as the boat then the object lands where it would if the boat were not moving - it is the boat that changes position.

However, once you step outside the frame then things are much less predictable and you have entered a higher level with more complexity. Since many apparent laws are simply statistical probabilities then you seem to have changed a law merely by adopting a different frame of reference.
In other words you have increased the number of different possible outcomes and so added complexity.

One of the most important things to consider is, that if this were to be so, then galaxies would have extra complexity above that of the solar systems they contain and so could not be properly understood until the properties of this extra complexity could be successfully inferred.

Surely it is about time we let Einstein’s hints percolate through Newton’s Universe so that we can begin to see that unlike a machine which is merely a sum of its parts, ‘Life the Universe and Everything’ is an ever expanding miracle, growing in wonder and complexity with every new level!

Whether or not you believe in a Creator there is certainly far more to the Universe than a Big Bang and random chance.

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I’ve been unwell for several weeks, seems like years, and particularly so for the last week or two.
I’m only mentioning this because I want anyone who reads my recent ‘stuff’ to realise that it is crude and unpolished because I was simply writing what came into my head - to get it out there - and I intend to polish it when I’m feeling better and have the time.

For instance in the piece above it seems likely I meant ‘inertial frame’ rather than ‘gravitational frame’ but I hope that the central concept of the Universe growing, almost like a living thing, manages to shine through.

The idea that the Universe might have started out as something in nothing has long been a favourite of mine - my real concern was simply how many varieties of something were needed.
In my discussions with Mystic it seemed that two would be sufficient:
Yin and Yang perhaps... a Universe of greys with poles of purity where the White and the Black refused to compromise?

Whatever, it is only recently that it has struck me that modern science appears to take too much for granted. It appears to compartmentalise without realising that by doing so it misses the big picture.
Somehow so many of us seem to have come to believe that we are much more than we are and so have become much less than we could be.

We plant food but something beyond our comprehension makes it grow; the little army of workers inside the cells that interpret the DNA and assemble the ingredients.
What good a blueprint if there is nothing to follow it?

This ’take it all for granted’ attitude has allowed us to take our Mother Earth for granted, worse to see her as our property and to only show any concern when things that we do effect her so badly that it in turn has a detrimental effect on us!
How can we, as a collective of people who claim to be Human, look ourselves in the mirror?

To return to the theme of growing - I have realised that however the Universe came to be that it has properties which we do not understand and perhaps worse do not even consider.

If the Universe is somehow composed of Ying and Yang, Black and White, noughts and ones or whatever where does the complexity come from?
It can only come from the 'nothing' that these two basic elements exist in! The varying pattern of black and white have different effects on the ‘Nothing’ within which they exist.
SO when we think of empty space as nothing maybe we miss the key to everything.

Could a Universe be made up of simply two things?
A computer Universe can be made of two things; ones and noughts.
Somehow from the ‘word patterns’ of ‘bits’ almost anything can be created in a ‘electronic reality’ - but do they mean anything without someone or something to interpret them?

It’s not until the data is projected onto our senses - giving visual representation to the eyes or an audio sound field etc. - that the electronic world starts to come to life.
So the ‘electronic universe’ may exist in the computer but only takes on life through us!

However, can we be sure that the ‘real’ universe is not just a more immersive projection of data onto our sense?
The answer is that it doesn’t really matter because the reality we live in has rules and consequences for us. As we all know sometimes these 'consequence' can be very unpleasant and occasionally they can be wonderful.
So, Whether or not it is ‘real’ - we all exist appear to exist in it and be effected and affected by it!

Consequently, doing things that have a detrimental effect on our collective reality has a detrimental effect on us all!

So we should consider why we allow the continued pollution of a sick mother - if your mother was lying ill in a hospital bed with breathing problems and gang of chain smoking doctors filled the room would you object?

Lets save the planet, take care of our Mother as she deserves and start to see that whatever we are we exist in something we cannot understand because to us it is ‘Nothing’!

Yet it is a Nothing that allows particles to become atoms, atom to become molecules, molecules to become planets, planets to become solar systems and go on to become galaxies.

If we cannot even understand the importance of our own mother then what hope of understanding the Universe?

Intead of smashing things and creating ever more powerful weapons wouldn't it be better to start fixing things and learning to love?

If we ever want to understand what the Nothing is that everything exists in we must first acknowledge it.
Look for what emerges with each new level.

Perhaps start to see all the steps and levels which bring the complexity neccesary to create a God!