Series:
Essay #7:
Synopsis:
Causation
Symmetry
The truth of a complex system is in the whole, and it’s a vision of symmetrical beauty
Here’s where we are in this series, Causation. Complexity kills materialist theories of causation (that is, mechanistic and probabilistic theories). Materialist theories work fine with simple, domesticated systems in laboratory conditions, segregated from the rest of the world. Once the outside world enters the lab, though, everything gets messed up. Complexity is feral (too big, too interrelated, too random) and materialist causation can’t see through it.
When looking at complexity, foundational image is the key. If I’m seeing reality through a materialist frame, then I divide the universe into two categories: material particles and physical laws of nature. I see the universe as particles bouncing off and combining with one another according to physical laws. I imagine that if I could just track all the particles, all the time, then I would understand everything.
Complexity confounds my materialist image: my mechanical chains of causation keep getting broken by randomness, or drifting off into the unknown of infinite variables, and my probabilities hang in thin air unattached to anything real (see Probability). Said Freeman Dyson:
“The big problems -- the evolution of the universe as a whole, the origin of life, the nature of human consciousness, and the evolution of the earth’s climate -- cannot be understood by reducing them to elementary particles and molecules” (from Dreams of Earth and Sky).
Hence the first half of my thesis: To understand the truth of a complex system, I need an image of the whole. I must see the complex system as a holistic being with its own organization and self-regulation. I study the whole looking for a symmetry, a pattern that shows its essential nature. More Freeman Dyson:
A pattern can “arise out of complicated structures, where the details don’t matter, but the structure as a whole has a well recognizable behavior like the laws of evolution in biology, you can’t write down an equation for evolution but you know what it means... they’re some sort of abstraction arising out of the multitude of facts” (Interview June 25, 2014 distributed on Youtube by “Closer to Truth”).
In general, our causal theories for complex systems will be pattern and story-based, like the story of evolution. Patterns and stories don’t give precise answers and they’re not overly concerned with details (unlike mechanical and probabilistic causation), instead, they give insight into the essential nature of a whole system.
But how do I know if my pattern is real? I start by feeling it. I have an aesthetic sense of completeness, rightness, beauty. Hence the second half of my thesis: Beauty tells me I’m seeing truth. In fact, the aesthetic is a very human and very legitimate way to approach reality. What is Ockham’s Razor if not aesthetic? When two theories explain the same reality, but one theory is simple while the other a mishmash, I choose the simple theory for aesthetic reasons-- beauty goes to truth.
Einstein once said, “I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.” Einstein used visions, like chasing a beam of light, that he knew in his gut to be right. From the vision, he articulated theories which he expressed in mathematics, and which we later verified through experiment. Here’s the order of events: vision --> feeling --> math --> experiential proof. The vision is a feeling that the pieces fit in the whole, that they align in some symmetrical and beautiful way. Next comes the mathematics to check whether the vision is internally consistent, that is, logically symmetrical. If the pieces are symmetrical, we believe they map to reality. Symmetry of mind corresponds with symmetry of material world. Experiential proof finally seals the deal, or not.
People have always believed that symmetry is a fundamental property of nature. It’s why math has an equal sign, and why ≠ gave me nausea in high school. An equal sign shows symmetry between the left and the right sides of the equation. Einstein’s famous equation, e=mc2, means that the relationship between energy on the left side, and mass on the right, never changes, even though matter can change into energy and energy to matter. The equation never changes, and the total amount of mass and energy stays the same.
The battle rages whether symmetry and math alone, without experimental verification, can be reliable science. Probably not, because science (by definition) requires observational evidence. A scientist (who identifies as such) will limit his vision to a narrow slice of reality-- the material and observable. He’ll exclude everything else as woo-woo magic. Which is fine. An identity is a social construct made in the eyes of others. If our scientist wants that identity, he toes the line. If he wants to understand more, he goes woo-woo.
Reality is thick. I need more perspectives to see more of it, and per William James, perspectives aren’t exclusive. A perspective can be correct within its boundaries without excluding others.
“A Beethoven string quartet is truly, as someone has said, a scraping of horses’ tails on cats’ bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms; but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description. Just so a thoroughgoing interpretation of the world in terms of mechanical sequence is compatible with its being interpreted teleologically, for the mechanism itself may be designed” (From Will to Believe, essay: Sentiment of Rationality).
For my part, I believe that truth and beauty go together. Because patterns and symmetry are beautiful, they’re a legitimate way to see the truth of a complex system, that is, one way among others to get at the truth of it. They give insight into the essential nature of a complex system, a partial glimpse of the Aristotelian form that holds it together. Truth is written into the code of the universe and it’s symmetrical and beautiful.
Essays in this Series, Causation: