Chapter 2
CIVILIZATIONS’ DEVELOPMENT LAWS
2.1. SYNERGETICS AND «THINKING SUBSTANCE» DEVELOPMENT
The order of protein life and its increasing complexity contradict the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that disorder (entropy) can only increase in a closed system. This is especially evident in the developing organisms, when the amount of information increases dramatically during morphogenesis. The evolutionary theory’s opponents believe that evolution and the Second Law of Thermodynamics cannot be correct at the same time, and the occurrence of the living (ordered) from the inanimate (disordered) is impossible in general.
However, according to the evolutionary theory’s supporters, developing systems are always open and exchange energy and substance with the environment, due to which the local ordering and self-organization processes take place. The Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger introduced the negative entropy concept, which living beings should receive from the environment in order to compensate the entropy’s growth, leading them to the thermodynamic equilibrium and, consequently, to death. He stated that an organism can «stay alive only by means of constant negative entropy’s extraction from the environment, which is itself something very positive… Negative entropy is what feeds the organism. Or, in order to express it in a less paradoxical way, what is essential in metabolism is the fact that the body manages to free itself from all that entropy that it has to produce while it is alive».
Later, Leon Nicolas Brillouin, the American physicist, introduced the term negentropy in his paper «Scientific Uncertainty and Information» (1964): «information itself is a negative contribution to entropy». Negentropy is opposed to entropy and expresses the material objects ordering.
E. Schrödinger in one of the last chapters of his book «What is Life? Physical Aspects of the Living Cell» pointed out the existence of two different mechanisms for the ordering phenomena: the statistical one that creates «order from disorder» and the new mechanism introduced by him, which creates «order from order». He stated: «We have the right to assume that the living matter obeys a new type of the physical law. Or should we call it nonphysical one, if not to say the super physical law?» At the same time, E. Schrödinger does not explain how order occurs in living systems. He states that if the «order from order» mechanism operates in the living substance, and the order is drawn from the environmental order, then the inanimate substance owes the order occurrence to the «order from disorder» principle.
However, the question arises: what is the origin of order in the environment? The fact of an open system and available external energy existence does not generate the order in the given system. Where does the specifi information that does not only deter entropy, but contributes to the strictly determined specifi order and complexity in the course of historical development come from, if, according to the increasing entropy law, simplifi ation and degradation should take place? Not just abstract information should prevent it, and specifi complex one, which may not occur spontaneously. Protein life is not degrading, but is getting more refi ed and complicated, which is impossible without the new specifi information that someone should create. It is logical to assume that the entropy overcoming in living organisms is performed by using information created by the intelligence.
Such an interdisciplinary scientific trend as synergetic, which studies natural phenomena and processes on the basis of the self-organization principles of systems consisting of subsystems, and new qualities self-generation, can provide a certain idea of the material intelligence’s occurrence. This process, despite its spontaneity, has a certain focus: there is an increase in various elementary and primitive forms and structures to complex and more advanced ones.
The following main empirical generalizations are at the basis of synergetic:
1. The Universe is a single self-developing system.
2. In the course of the Universe’s development, random factors are present, processes occur in terms of a definite uncertainty level. They are characteristic for all the levels of the world’s organization.
3. There is heredity in the Universe, the present and future depend on the past, but are not determined by it.
4. The world is dominated by laws, which are the selection principles. They distinguish a certain set of admissible states from possible virtual ones.
5. Selection allows the existence of bifurcation states in which it is impossible to predict the way of further development since the new channel is largely determined by factors out-of-control at the bifurcation point.
Judging from the synergetic principles, it is possible to develop an idea of the intelligence’s occurrence within the various material forms of matter’s self-development. The universal matter’s property is «reflection», manifested by the object of influence in the form of a response. Reflection is a philosophical category denoting the universal matter’s property, stating the fact that under certain conditions of interaction one material system reproduces certain aspects of another system interacting with it in its specific form. In this case, the reflection is either the new properties acquisition, or the certain reactions’ development, or the restructuring of the object that is being affected. A function occurs as the result of the multiple consolidations. A consolidated response to a frequently repeated influence is the reflection function.
The principle of reflection is characteristic for the matter at all levels of its organization and is the cornerstone of the materialist theory of cognition. Spontaneous development of the surrounding world occurs until the moment when material objects acquire the ability to think starting from the primitive responses to external stimuli formation to the information storage devices, the improvement of which can lead to the occurrence of intelligence, analytical abilities and adequate interaction with the environment. Then development takes on the features of awareness and controllability. Moreover, in addition to the passive adaptation to the changing external conditions, the former intelligence will consciously initiate further development of the surrounding world by planning and creating new materials and technologies in accordance with its needs.
Therefore, it is necessary to consider two stages in the spontaneous and self-organizing processes of the matter’s development – spontaneous (synergistic one) and managed by the developed intelligence’s one. Each of them has its fundamental features. On the initial stage there is a spontaneous complication of the physic-chemical structures until the initial intelligence’s occurrence capable of accumulating and analyzing information about the environment. On the second stage, the development of the material world is not a spontaneous one, but with the intelligent structures that carry out the activity aimed at their own life support. In this case, the environment changes already involuntarily. At this stage of development it is not the fortuity of the new material forms occurrence which will be observed but the design and expediency.
The possibility to use the information accumulated is the main factor of development. The intelligence carriers can be of different material nature. People used to associate thinking with the protein carriers of information inherent to all living beings on Earth. People have created artificially other information storage media on the basis of which the design of robots with artificial intelligence is carried on. Taking into consideration the fact that plasma represents the most part of the Universe matter’s main phase state according to modern concepts (the weight of about 99,9 %) it is logical to assume that the development of thinking matter took place and was improved on the basis of this form of the material world. It is established that the information transfer is an energetic process based on both the active substances and the receptive structures’ physic-chemical restructuring. Nowadays it is difficult to imagine the way of the information transmission and perception on the plasma level.
2.2. CIVILIZATION AS THE «THINKING SUBSTANCE’S» HIGHEST FORM OF DEVELOPMENT
The intellect occurred seeks to avoid the influence of the chaotic synergetic processes and manage its development. At the same