“Universal herds can be described as organisms of energy and information“
Theme.
In this post we explain in a simplified manner the foundations of complexity, duality and system sciences, the disciplines which model reality with organic laws, describing all what exists as dual systems made of networks of energetic and informative ’cells’. Since they are the ‘larger’ philosophy of science in which the organic models of history and economics of this web are based.
— One is called mechanism. It considers all what exists a machine, including the human being, the Universe and of course machines. mechanism is the official philosophy of our technological civilization. It was developed initially by Galileo, whose real-life profession was that of an engineer of military devices, working for the princely salary of 1000 ducats a year for the Arsenal of Venice. Galileo was a mechanic, who started to philosophize about the Universe, departing from his job. Thus, he took the instruments of his work as the models for his cosmogony, in which the universe was compared no longer with a human organism but with a machine. Today mechanism is still the main philosophy of economics and Physics—the 2 sciences that manufacturemachines—not because mechanism is the truth of the Universe, but because machines gave power and power imposed those ideologies to the rest of mankind.
So scientists made of the machine the ‘idol of the human tribe’ that established our superiority over Nature and all organic philosophies of knowledge. Galileo’s idea that the Universe had to be observed with machines, telescopes, today evolved into cameras and clocks, today evolved into computers, instead of human senses, eyes and verbal words that describe time with past, present and future verbs, however degraded the mental organs of human beings to a secondary status. Soon, the Universe became modeled no longer as a complex organism but as a mechanism and man became an imperfect machine, (instead of considering machines imperfect organisms): ‘I should like you to consider that these functions (including passion, memory and imagination) follow from the mere arrangement of the machine’s organs every bit as naturally as the movements of a clock or other automaton follow from the arrangement of its counter-weights and wheels.’ (Descartes, Treatise on Man).It was a radical change in history of thought. Since mechanism created the world we live in. Because all other ideologies, capitalism, techno-utopias, even Marxism, come from mechanism, the belief in the machine as the measure of all things.
— The other great philosophy of the Universe is called organicism, as it considers all what exists an organism, the human being first, made to the image of the Universe also an organism, whose biological mind – the laws of organic science—we might call in mythic terms God. Organicism considers the machine also a primitive evolving organism that will become one when robots acquire Artificial Intelligence. Organicism was the dominant doctrine of mankind during most of our existence, till the Industrial Revolution changed the paradigm. But precisely, becausemachines are becoming ‘organic’, suddenly organicism has become all the rage – as engineers study biology to replicate organic systems in machines. And so, paradoxically, the III Millennium will witness the final victory of organicism over simplistic mechanism, as the Earth, Gaia and ‘her new inhabitants’; machines, become organic beings.
Indeed, it is only now in the XXI century when science and mathematics (fractals, non Euclidean and chaos theory) has reached a level of sophistication that allows us to return to an organic, more complex vision of the universe.
It is a revolution on the making by the sciences of complexity, systems sciences and duality which this web brings to social sciences, with the minimal mathematical rigor needeed to fully grasp its scientific principles and so we have to introduce some more complex concepts of time, energy and information that those used by physicists to fully grasp the organic paradigm from where Bio-economics and Bio-History, the 2 new disciplines explained in this web depart.
Energetic Bodies & informative brains.
Energy and information are the 2 primary elements of the Universe. Their properties and interactions studied by the science of complexity, are inverse: Energy is spatial, big, mobile, lineal, destructive, as bodies and weapons are; information is temporal, small cyclical, still, perceptive, creative, as brains and eyes are. In the graph the 2 primary elements of the Universe, energy and information, mix and evolve, till reaching the threshold of complexity that gave light atoms living properties and now it is about to give the same life properties to metal systems. In the graph, in biological and morphological terms, we can easily recognize the ‘bodies and heads’ of humans, animals or machines, because they have a clear morphology, which corresponds to that of generic energy and information.
Energy is lineal because the line is the shortest distance between 2 points; and so it is also the fastest energetic movement. Information has cyclical forms, because cycles store maximal information in minimal space.
For example, a human body and a machine body, a weapon, should not have anything in common; but if we observe the morphology of both, it is clear those morphologies correspond to the generic morphology of all energies: they are big, lineal systems that move in space.
So our limbs are lines extended in space like a ‘missile’. On the other hand, our eyes and brains are smaller and cyclical, like the cameras and chips that act as information organs in machines, ordering ‘bodies of metal’ with digital information. Let us consider the properties of those 2 elements, energy (bodies, fields) and information (particles, heads) and some of its species, in life and metal:
Moving Energy Reproductive Information
Lineal, spatial, big, moving Cyclical, temporal, small, rotating, still.
Formless, continuous, simple Form-ative, discontinuous, complex.
Field, body, male, weapon, Particle, head, female, coin, chip.
Iron, oxygen, carbon Gold, silver, nitrogen
Protein, lion, shark, death DNA, human, dolphin, life.
We could summarize the formal and functional differences between energy and information (organs) in a morphological equation:
Maximal Space = Energy = Minimal Form=body Vs Maximal form = Information = Minimal Spatial extension=head
For example, the chip becomes smaller as it evolves into a better brain. Every 2 years it doubles its capacity to think, as it dwindles in size. Such process follows a generic law of evolution I call the ‘Black hole Law’, which computer scientists know as the ‘Chip paradox’ or ‘Moore Law’: maximal informative capacity= minimal spatial extension.
The reason is obvious: to think, to calculate you have to communicate in-form-ation, forms between elements of any informative system. The smaller the brain, the faster the communication that takes place within that brain and the faster you can calculate and process information in a logic manner.
As a result of those morphologies we classify as energy or information organs not only carbon-life organisms, made of energy (bodies, food) and information (brains, eyes, senses, worlds), but also other beings and atomic species, even ‘deconstructed organs’. Since we can now recognize geometrically their energy or information organs. Some of those systems are mechanical, made of metal. Some are vital, made of carbon atoms. Yet all of them have a biological influence over us, provoking changes in the energy and information systems of mankind that we should control for our own benefit.
From these simple facts of universal morphology, applied to human beings and metal, we can classify ‘objects’ and human organs, as energetic, lineal systems, or as cyclical, informative systems that combine into complex organisms:
— Energy organs are lineal systems with minimal ‘form’ that kill, simplifying information into energy. Thus, a field of energy, released by a physical particle or an energetic weapon, such as a sword or a missile and a top predator, energetic animal, such as a lion, will have both lineal forms and kill, destroy the in-form-ation of their ‘preys’.
— In-form-ative organs create form and trans-form energy into languages that map out ‘reality’ with formal ‘bits’. Those bits are smaller symbols, which form images in the brain that represent reality and help to simulate reality ‘faster’, in ‘lesser space’, the ‘future’ cycles of reality, anticipating them. Then, according to those ‘logic’ simulations of the future, heads will move and direct energy bodies towards sources of energy and information. So any system that ‘gauges’, measures and reacts, is an informative organ, regardless of the specific language it uses to gauge reality. A chip measures with numbers reality, a man with words, an atom with electro-magnetic ‘bosons’; yet the 3 act-react to their measures. So they all are informative organs.
— Reproductive organs repeat informative and energetic organs, by absorbing energy and ‘imprinting’ it with its particular in-form-ation. Thus, human mothers and company-mothers of machines are both reproductive organs. Even the simplest particles of the Universe, quarks and electrons, absorb energy and emit new particles, small quarks and electrons, with the same form that the parental particle.
So in fact, we have come to the objective conclusion that all systems of the Universe have organic properties. Since even its simplest entities, quarks and electrons that form atoms do absorb energy, gauge information and reproduce, the 3 ‘properties’ of life. Thus, the Universe must be defined not as a mechanism but as a complex organic system, made of organic atoms, which can combine to create many different complex organisms, including company-mothers that reproduce machines, atoms that reproduce quarks, electrons and forces and mothers that reproduce kids. The difference between all those species is not one of ‘quality’ but of quantity and complexity of their organs of energy and information, which determine their survival chances and status as top predators of any ecosystem.
The functions of those ‘systems’ are also biological. Weapons are lineal, energetic forms that kill human, energetic bodies. Both compete in a war and the ‘metal-energy’ species wins and kills us, causing the biological process of death. So weapons are lethal, machines and should be repressed as we repress biological predators and killing virus. company-mothers also compete with human cultures for the control of mankind and the creation of a world madee to the image and likeness of its offspring of machines. Yet Mechanism affirms that machines are objects that do not influence or compete with humanity. So, if some ‘collateral effect’ happens, our death, or the ddestructionn of gaia, the life superorganism by machines, it must be blamed on humans.
This of course is false: the only difference between organisms and machines is that organisms possess both, a body and a head or particle of information. On the other hand, machines normally have only one of both elements in perpetual balance. They are either dominant in informative systems (computers, TVs), or energy systems (weapons, transports). As such they don’t switch behavior, becoming first informing heads and then moving bodies, as biological life does. . . till the arrival of robots. Thus, classic machines are predictable, reliable and their simplicity makes them efficient.
If a mechanism is a system that has only information and energy organs, an organism has both systems and so it is able to reproduce by combining its energy and information into a replica of itself. In that regard, the reproductive organism of machines is today the company-mother that reproduces them with the aid of informative metal (money) and machines (chips), energetic machines and human workers that act as catalysts and re=producers of those machines. And because we live all in a planet of limited resources, machines and life increasingly compete to reproduce the limited energy and information of this planet. So a series of vital relationships of symbiosis and predation between carbon-life and machines take place, despite the stubborn denial of ‘mechanism’, the ideology of scientists that make those machines.
Of course mechanism argues ‘ad eternal’ that computers will never be able to process information better than our brains, but the fact is they already do and that is why they displace workers. We can build computers that process the same information our brains process, encoded in numbers, with a few atoms of gold, while our brains need very complex masses of carbohydrates that move 3 million times slower than photonic chips do. The creators of intelligent computers are today the stars of scientific media. They are funded by the scions of ‘money and weapons’ of our society, Wall Street and DARPA, the robotic arm of the Pentagon. Sadly enough our economic ecosystem is interested in metallic brains more powerful than ours. Why? Because we have created a series of myths and ideologies, along the historic path of evolution of metal that justify the creation of all types of machines, according to the ethic values of our ‘Technological civilization’, which consider all machines positive to mankind regardless of their lethal use.
The change of paradigm, from a World in which man was the measure of all things, to a world in which the machine and its evolution became the engine of history, can be traced to the discovery of clocks and telescopes that made obsolete human eyes and verbal words, which had been till then our biological senses of space and time. They also brought about the ‘mechanist’ ideology of science that denies an organic Universe, built to the resemblance and likeness of man. Yet, in fact, a mechanism is a simplified organism.
Mechanism, as a philosophy of the Universe, is a simplification of the organic cosmos. Since a mechanism is just a deconstructed organism that has only energy or information organs; while Nature’s organisms are made with both, energetic systems (called bodies in Biology, machines in economics, and fields of forces in matter) and information systems (called heads in Biology,money in economics and atomic particles in matter).
Indeed, the Universe turns out to be dual, based in systems that can handle and switch, in ‘feed-back cycles’, between the arrow of energy and the arrow of information. This is the fundamental law of quantum physics, called the Principle of Complementarity between informative particles and energetic fields (so not single particles or pure fields of energy exist). In Biology it is called the Complementarity between heads/cellular nuclei of information and bodies/cells of energy, or between female, informative, perceptive beings and males, specialized energetic sub-species. Thus, most life systems have genders and all life systems have bodies with heads or cells with informative nuclei. Since heads without bodies or bodies without heads don’t exist as living species, according to the Complementarity Law.
Thus, classic machines need humans to reproduce and act as information or energetic systems, since they are incomplete beings. And so a symbiosis between classic machines and humans exist and it is beneficial to man, because it is based in the human, mental control of machines. Yet that symbiosis no longer holds as machines become, during the IV Cycle of the singularity, organic, autonomous robots which don’t require a human being to work and will be able to consume other machines. So robots compete with humans, as workers=reproducers of machines and consumers that use other machines: Workers in the age of the singularity are becoming obsolete to robots and software systems, in a process that is causing the biggest wave of unemployment since the creation of assembly lines in the 1920s.
Networks of cells of Energy and information, origin of complex superorganisms.
Thus, systems sciences recognizes as the fundamental evolutionary force of the Universe the survival capacity of groups, which determine an arrow of future that has evolved the organisms of reality from simple atoms into molecules into cells into organisms into societies.
What is an organism of information and energy? A herd of species related by networks of energy and information, that constantly transform energy and process it in a vital way. How individual species organize themselves into complex herds, that biology calls ecosystems or bodies, or organisms? Precisely through those physiological networks, the key to understand any organism, including human social organisms (nations, civilizations).
In the Universe there are many type or such social organisms. Since “energy never dies but eternally transforms itself”, organisms have an enormous variety of species and sizes, depending on what energy they process. What do they all have in common? All organisms are “societies”, organized by networks of Energy and Information.
The former is clearly the case in all the sciences from physics to biology, where a common phenomenon occurs: the existence of parallel groups of beings organized into a single regular formation. Molecules are made up of atoms and electronic networks; economies are made up of humans and machines; galaxies are composed of stars, which orbit rhythmically around a central knot, or black hole, of gravitational information. Human bodies are organized by cells controlled by the nervous system. A tree is a group of leaves, branches, and roots connected by a network of energy (salvia) and information (chemical particles).
Atoms share energy and information between them through electrons who finally shape ð orbitals that create molecules. Molecules grow and become DNA, which controls the cell. Cells then radiate until their density saturates the vital territory of the herd of cells. To improve in such small territory the Information and energy of each cell, the nervous-informative organs, and the energetic, blood organs appear. A new, more complex species -the animal, and the man- is born. Then humans increased in social size, forming a new macrocosm -the macrocosm of History and economics- where a lot of humans and machines organize themselves into societies, through words and digital information. The purpose of this web is to study such organisms; historic organisms (a social organism of humans), and economic ecosystems (a wave of products that interact with human beings), as organic systems; trying to design and improve them, from the perspective of the health of what is best for the survival of man, as the ruling species of that organism.
The structure of organisms
Let us to that aim, understand first the generic structure of a social organism, or ecosystem, parallel words that we will use constantly as synonymous. In fact there are four basic elements in all organic living systems:
1. Cellular units
2. Networks of energy or vital space
3. Networks of information
4. Networks that reproduce energy and information.
When we find those elements interconnected in a vital relationship, we talk of an “organic system”. We can see such organic systems as “bodies”, when all the cells are very close to each other, or as “ecosystems” of herds, when the cells are far away, and the networks are weak. We should not be cheated by the spatial appearance of the organism.
A herd of machines, a herd of insects, a human group is also an organic system, because it has cells, and networks, even if it does not seem to us a body. The fundamental reason we have not arrived earlier in science till Theory of Organisms, to the conclusion that the universe is made of such organic systems is the lack of relativism, the arrogance of man. Men have a hard time believing that things which are not like us, are able to intelligently process energy and information.
We are also unable to believe easily that microcosms and macrocosms are “species”. Yet an organic perception of macrocosms like galaxies or planets, and an organic perception of microcosms such as cells and atoms, is the most logical way of “unifying” our understanding of the entities of the Universe. We might see those herds very close together in which case we talk of bodies, or we might see them extended with a loose organization; then we talk of waves, societies or herds.
A verbal definition of superorganisms
A generic definition of an organism or ecosystem will help to clarify what we mean by a “vital universe”, composed of “universal organisms”. Let us take a template for a micro or macrocosmic organism (or ecosystem) that differs only in the specific energy or information we put into brackets. “A universal microcosmic or macrocosmic organism or ecosystem is a population of [name a particular species], related by networks of [name a language or force] information and networks of [name a kind of energy]”. Fill the gaps with a specific species, language/force and energy and you can define any network-organism in the universe:
- An atomic organism is a population of (electronic) energy and (nucleonic) information, related by networks of (gravitational) information and networks of (light) energy.
- A molecular organism is a population of atoms, related by networks of gravitational energy, and networks of electromagnetic information (orbitals, London forces, Van der Waals forces). 
- A “galactic organism” is a population of stars, related by networks of gravitational information, and networks of space-time energy. Their morphology is similar to that of an atom, where the nucleus is the black hole, and the stars the electronic orbitals.
- An “animal ecosystem” is a population of carbolife species, related by networks of light information, and networks of life energy (plants, prey).
- A human organism is a population of DNA cells, related by networks of genetic and nervous information and networks of energy-providing blood.
Historic superorganisms
Complexity, duality and Systems Science study the laws that define an efficient complex organism in physical space (particle/field systems), biological space (head/body systems) and Social space (informative leadership/working class). The importance of this new social science is that it draws from Nature teachings and so it has a set of laws that allow to design a perfect social organisms.
Indeed, its laws are based in the self-similarity of all complex systems, from galaxies to living beings, which are organized by networks of individual particles – cells, stars, atoms – communicated by flows of energy and information. So happens with human organisms (energetic, blood networks andd informative nervous networks) and social organisms (economical, energetic networks and informative, cultural and legal=political networks).
So we can use the sane definition to define the superorganisms of history and economics:
- A bio-historic organism is a population of humans, related by networks of verbal information and networks of carbolife energy.”
- A bio-economic organism, is a population of human workers/consumers and machines, related by networks of monetary and electronic information, and networks of roads and electric energy
The difference between both type of systems, a historic and an economic organism thus is clear when we consider that the ‘organic unit’ of the economic ecosystem is NOT contrary to belief a nation or civilization but a new organization, appeared recently with the beginning of the Industrial R=evolution, called the company-’mother’ whose function is to reproduce a product, overwhelmingly a machine, and then to evolve further and adapt the world to the existence of those machines, creating networks of energy and information for them (digital networks, electric networks, etc.) And this is the first big surprise of an organic model of history and economics: while History is undoubtedly the product of human endeavors, the economic ecosystem is ruled by company-mothers of machines, which follow a set of biological, evolutionary and organic laws independent of mankind; quite removed from the abstract jargon coined in the XVIII century, even before machines existed by classic economists’ like Mr. Adam Smith.
Both organic systems, Historic and economic organisms, survive within the same vital space, the Earth’s crust. What this means according to Theory of organisms is that there is between both a dual process of symbiotism and preying, by which sometimes machines compete with men in fields of labor (productivity laws that substitute workers with machines) and fields of war (where weapon-machines kill human beings). We express this with the concept of the Paradox of History.
Complex organisms
Let us now try an even higher level of complexity in our description of why organisms live and die and what motivates ther behavior.
The fundamental advance of XXI century science is the realization that the Universe is Complex, made of simplex parts that become an organic whole – and those parts are at least 3 in all systems, an informative center or head/particle, a reproductive body that recreates the information of the system and a field of energy or environment in which the system feeds.. And since all systems of the Universe have those 3 elements, complexity applies the same set of basic laws to all disciplines.
complexity in that sense is not different from classic science, which applies the same mathematical equations to all systems. However in complexity we believe that the Universe and all its parts are NOT modelled as a mechanism, a simplified ‘stage’ in the evolution of machines, but as organisms or parts of organisms (so machines function as enhanced human organs – a chip is a metalbrain, a camera a metal-eye and so on). In that regard, the philosophy of science sponsored by this web, as part of the science of complexity differs strongly from classic economists, which affirm that its discipline is a mathematical science.
The Jewish Physicist, Mr. Gell-mann, discoverer of the quark, lobbyied with the Nobel Prize Committee against an award to Economics. ‘What is next anthropology?’ – he said. The anecdote reflect the main sickness of our mechanist civilization – to despise all what is human, what is social, what is related to life. He calmed down however when he was told that the prize would be given by the Bank of Sweden only to mathematical models of economics. And yet because humans are biological beings and economics describes the activity of man, it must be first a biological science, which can also find patterns and mathematical laws as biology does.
Indeed, in complexity and systems theory we believe that all sciences can be explained with a series of laws that describe the organic structure of reality, made of networks of energy bites and information bits, which interact and evolve together, creating complex-organisms, departing from simple particles, which evolve into atoms, molecules, cells, organisms and societies. It follows that mankind’s goal is to evolve into a planetary organism, Gaia, in which we, human beings are the collective mind. This is the origin of the biological approach to economics and history in this web.
The facts behind Theory of Complexity are thus well known to all scientists: in the universe there is a constant tendency towards organization of individual species into herds. There are herds of atoms called molecules, herds of stars called galaxies, herds of humans called societies of History, or herds of machines called economies… Could we find certain rules and laws that explain all those herds and their behavior? Such is the aim of the Science of Complexity, called also Systems Theory or duality, because unlike ‘mechanicism’, the previous, rather primitive philosophy of the founding fathers of science, the Universe is NOT consideredto be a machine of energy, but a complex system made of dual networks=systems of energy and information.
Thus duality of energy and information, as opposed to ‘energetic monism’, the philosophy of ‘simple’ physicists, and Network or System, are the key words of this science.
And the main definition is that of a super-organism, which in simple terms can be described as:
‘A super-organism is a dual network of energetic and informative particles that constantly exchange energy and information between them:
∑ E <=> ∏ i’
Such simple definition is extremely powerful, because it allows to describe a multiplicity of beings. For example, your body is a cellular system with two main cellular networks of energy and information, which form your body and head.
A society or social organization is also a dual network, with an informative caste that rules and energetic body of workers.
In a closer look though, from one, the organism comes 2, the dual system of energy and information; and from 2 comes 3, a ternary system with 3 type of cells and networks, an energetic system, an informative system and one that combines both to reproduce the organism. And this kind of systems, is what we call a living organism.
Because some systems do not self-reproduce but need an external, reproductive catalyser, we often talk of duality instead of the Ternary principle.
Yet both concepts are equally important in the Universe, and specifically in the economic ecosystem that we study here, since machines are not self-reproductive sytems, hence they are not alive, but humans vitalize them reproducing them, and further on, one of the key elements of the Industrial R=evolution is the increasing self-reproductivity of machines, which is also one of the key ‘ideologies’ of capitalism, the absurd belief hold by companies, in control of most of the systems of power of our societies that humans MUST evove machines NOT mankind.
All this of course can be mathematized, and even though we shall not bring here the mathematics of complexity, we have written in our defintion what we call the ‘Generator equation’ or ‘Feed Back equation’ of complex systems. And it has 3 elements, the first element, ∑ E, describes a network of energetic particles the second element is the reproductive element that combines energy and information to reproduce the cells of the system, <=> and finally the third element is the informative network, ∏ i.
A key difference in those systems is now evident: energetic systems are herds loosely connected, and so we use a summatory system; informative networks are organic, complex networks in which each ‘neuron’ is connected with many other neurons and so the total number of connections is a power law or multiplicative law, reason why we use the symbol of multiplication. This is also the case in our organism (neurons are connected to many others, cells of a body are pegged to each other), and in societies, in which the upper classes of information are much more connected to each other than the individual cells of the mass, which have very few social connections.
This will be the case when we study the superorganisms of history and its upper castes in control of the languages of power of society (money, weapons and the law) who pray over a mass of unconnected, clueless misinformed sheeple. Yet in working societies (real democracies and non-corrupted love religions today mostly extinct) this is not the case – all cells of the body receive energy and information to survive as an efficient organism, since they cannot be obliged to obey with the force of metal but must believe in the wor(l)ds of wisdom of their leaders that cannot impose their will by force.
