How can the energy which causes complexity to increase in evolution be understood?
oday’s Post
For the past several weeks we have been employing Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ by seeing his insights into the action of evolution as it raises the complexity of the universe. Last week we looked at his recognition of the agency of this process as an ‘energy’, manifested in three fundamental ‘vectors’.
This week we will take a closer look at how these three vectors work together.
The Convergent Spiral of Universal Evolution
Teilhard uses the graphic of a convergent spiral to show how these three vectors cooperate in raising the complexity of the universe in all phases of universal evolution. Figure 1 shows this spiral with the three vectors mapped into it.
Figure 1. The Convergent Spiral of Evolution
The first vector, A, maps the ‘forward’ direction of an evolving particle, as the result of the unification among its components which resulted in a new particle. In our example of the atom last week, three relatively simple components, neutrons, electrons, and protons, unite into a new, unique, and more complex component, the ‘atom’. In this step, three simpler particles reconfigure themselves into approximately one hundred eighty new and more complex entities.
The second vector, B, is a measure of the ‘upward’ direction: the increase in complexity which results from this unification. As we have seen, the atom, as a unique entity, enjoys hundreds of thousands of modes of interactions with other atoms in their reconfigurations into molecules.
The third vector, C, represents the resultant component’s ’inward’ potential for further unification and ‘complexification’, and is inversely proportional to the distance from the vertical ‘axis’ of the spiral.
This third vector causes the spiral to ‘converge’. Its ‘convergence’ suggests that as a product increases in complexity, it becomes increasingly responsive to the energy which draws it forward and upward. Its increased ‘instruction set’ endows it with an increase in both modes of activity and modes of interaction.
Teilhard simply takes note that such a triad of energies, which he refers to as “tangential’ (A), ‘vertical’ (B) and ‘radial’ (C) can be seen to be active in every step of evolution from the ‘Big Bang’ to the human person. As he explains in the “Phenomenon”
“In each particular element energy is divided into two distinct components: a tangential energy which links the element with all others of the same order (that is to say, of the same complexity and the same centricity) as itself; and a radial energy which draws it towards ever greater complexity and centricity- in other words: forwards.”
The third vertical vector, ‘upwards’ is assumed in the aspect of ‘greater complexity’.
The seven characteristics of complexity he identifies are manifestations of the many ways in which this complexity can be seen to increase. The three ‘vectors’ identify the modes of energy by which they do so.
A very simple example of this tri-vectored evolutionary activity can be seen in the Standard Model of Physics. We have seen how electrons, protons, and neutrons can unite to become atoms, which are clearly more complex, and therefore higher on Teilhard’s axis than their constituents. The few (three) types of ‘the stuff of the universe’ represented by electrons, protons and neutrons become the many (approximately 180) types found in atoms, reflecting the increase in possible configurations of atomic connections over those of their few subatomic components. The increased complexity of atoms can be seen not only in their increased structural complexity, but more importantly in their increased potential for future connectivity (‘information’).
Further, this potential in turn enables the emergence of a still larger set of products which are not only more complex but whose potential for increased interconnection is increased: molecules. Thus, three subatomic particles become hundreds of atoms resulting hundreds of thousands of molecules.
In such successive ‘trips around the spiral’ we can see the incredibly simple components of electron, proton and neutron eventually reorganizing into atoms, then into an infinitude of molecules which reorganize themselves into even higher levels of complexity. An example of the result of such ‘complexification’ can be seen in the DNA molecule, the main building block of the even more complex cell.
The cell, without doubt, presents an evolutionary component astronomically more complex than its critical DNA molecule. DNA itself, even by today’s standards, offers an example of complexity which science is still in the process of understanding.
How can the human person, itself yet another bewildering product of evolution, be seen by this same ‘lens?
Next Week
This week we saw how Teilhard fits his insight of an ‘energy of evolution’ into three components which recur throughout the evolution of the universe, playing the same roles with different but ever more complex modes of causality.
Next week we will continue to track these modes as they lead to ever newer manifestations of complexity, such as can be found in the ‘consciousness’ of the human person.