A Physical Principle of Universal Order. Jaime S. Carvalho

physical chemist and Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003) became fully convinced of the existence of irreversibility in nature. He recognized that the arrow of time was essential to the existence of biological systems, which contain highly organized irreversible structures. Prigogine knew that time irreversibility was a fundamental property of nature but its cause escaped him. The glory of unveiling the mystery of irreversibility was to belong to Lancelot Whyte.

      The inclusion of irreversibility changes our view of nature. The future is no longer given. It unfolds continuously out of the present. Our world is in continuous construction ruled by a simple tendency embedded in natural structure. In unitary thought, there is no cause behind irreversibility, such as a physical field or force imposed on structure from without. There is just a one-way tendency to symmetry inherent in structure itself.

      The development process is continuous, but its continuity—in the form of orderly change—is only realizable when local circumstances permit. In the limiting case when change vanishes, approached only towards the absolute zero temperature, the form of process becomes the perfect symmetry of a static pattern.

      In complex systems such as organisms, development is accompanied by mutual adjustment of the parts of the system, of organism and environment. The organism adapts to its environment. Furthermore, development is self-facilitated. The structural patterns that facilitate the symmetry tendency of the field tend to be retained, while those that distort it tend to be eliminated selectively. In this way, a gradual increase of mutual conformity between organism and environment is achieved. All of this activity contributes to the one-way direction of development.

      By envisaging a new notion of time—a local time expressed as a temporal relation of succession—Lancelot Whyte has put forward the foundations of the simplest and most general physical theory that can be conceived at present time. Contrary to all available theories, the unitary theory applies to all realms. When fully developed physically and mathematically, the final unitary theory, if confirmed, may prove to be the ultimate general theory. So far, it appears to describe in a veridical way some of the most obvious secrets of nature. The dynamic process of our world, recognized by the Greek philosophers over two thousand years ago, has finally been scientifically explained.

      Order and disorder

      Besides his idea on the energetics of evolution, Ludwig Boltzmann also had his own interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics. For him, entropy was disorder. But how can entropy, a degraded form of energy, be conceived as disorder?

      During development of thermodynamic theory, it was explicitly recognized that the kinetic energy of the random motion of molecules in a gas was thermal energy. By modelling gas molecules as colliding billiard balls in a box, Boltzmann noted that with each collision, groups of molecules moving at the same speed and in the same direction became increasingly disordered, leading to a final state of macroscopic uniformity and maximum microscopic disorder or maximal entropy. Heat was considered to be a disordered form of energy, or entropy.

      Since gases consist of a very large number of molecules in rapid motion, the velocity of each molecule can only be measured in a purely statistical sense. Gas properties, particularly when in thermal equilibrium, must be characterized in terms of probabilities of various molecular states. The entropy law is simply the result of the fact that in a medium of mechanically colliding particles, disordered states are the most probable. The measurement of the "heat" of a given gas is nothing more than a statistical measurement of the motions (collisions) of the individual particles that make up the gas. This was Boltzmann’s statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics.

      The concept of entropy, therefore, only applies to statistical systems with a very large number of entities in a state of disorder. In other words, it applies only where molecular structure or molecular patterns can be neglected. In a fundamental analysis, it never applies exactly to the real world, a world of formative processes in which order increases.

      In simplifying terms, thermodynamics considers energy as disembodied from matter–energy flows. And in complex systems, it is from the flow of energy all the way to heat that order is extracted. Being the science of heat, thermodynamics emphasizes disordered processes. Ordered processes—the negative-entropy concept of Heisenberg—were taken to be secondary and were relatively neglected.

      Unitary theory sees things differently. There is no energy disembodied from matter. Energy is embodied in structure, which is considered to be a system of relations, all asymmetrical, and constantly changing to more symmetrical forms. Under this conception, order comes from this process of continuous change. Symmetry (the unitary equivalent of heat, so to speak) is not considered to be disorder but a special form of order. When symmetrical form is achieved, structure becomes stable and it is in this stable form that structure can be observed. Contrary to classical thermodynamics, the new unitary theory emphasizes ordered processes.

      But the existence of a universal order does not assure the permanence of harmony. There is also disorder in our world. Our fate is unknown. Car accidents happen at every minute, new wars pop up almost every week, tornados and hurricanes are common. In effect, the world we inhabit appears more one of disorder than one of order. How does unitary science explain this apparent contradiction?

      The unitary theory only asserts that there is an orderly tendency in our universe; it does not exclude the existence of disorder, which is evident in our daily lives. But this mixture of order and disorder is not interpreted as the opposition of two principles, the common view in Greek philosophy. Rather, general order and local disorder coexist in nature. This local disorder is no more than what we call circumstance or chance. And we cannot escape from its inexorable grip. Circumstance, however, is not necessarily wholly evil.

      In the unitary view, there is only one general tendency in the universe—tendency of structure to symmetry or order. And it is from this single orderly tendency that all existent stable structures—all the variety of species on earth—were formed. Nature could not be more economical. But in the absence of the insight provided by unitary science, this profound economy or conservatism of nature was interpreted by classical science as conservation of matter and energy.

      Contrary to tendency, circumstance is unpredictable, random, and arbitrary. It bears no necessary relation to the system whose fate it determines. And it presents itself in various degrees of intensity. When too severe, the clash between chance and the existent order may be destructive—and disorder occurs. But when less severe, circumstance may not destroy a system but simply modifies it. And when tendency and circumstance work in balance, they are the source of novelty. The novel forms maintain the same orderly tendency in a new structural pattern.