The next step: Where is life headed?

There is a lot of talk of an endtime for the human race. The rapture, the singularity, the end of the Mayan calendar, massive cosmic collision, call it what you will. Regardless of the nature of this end-all event, or eschaton, the theme is clear amongst its many interpretations. It is believed by many that in the (near?) future the world as we know it will be unrecognizable.

This post will be somewhat a continuation of my last post, which outlined a fractal model of the universe.

In order to understand where we are headed, it is important to consider from whence we came, and more importantly to define what is meant by "we". It is rather egocentric to consider this future as a future concerning only human beings. Perhaps a more appropriate perspective would be to consider homo sapiens as merely a part of the ever-evolving entity that I will henceforth refer to as life. For the purposes of this essay, under the term "life" I include any form of organized energy.

In this sense, "life" can be used interchangeably with "enthalpy". Enthalpy is the opposite of entropy, or disorder. According to the laws of thermodynamics the overall entropy in the universe must always increase over time, although in smaller systems it may decrease. For example our computers may organize data on a hard disk plate, creating an increase in enthalpy - order - within the system of the hard drive, but the process of doing so releases heat and thus creates an overall increase in entropy within the universe as a whole. Right then...

Having defined my terms, I will trace life's evolutionary footsteps since the big bang:
*The actual times of these events are more or less irrelevant for my purposes - their order of appearance is what's important here

1) Planck time following the big bang: massive amounts of energy exist in a tiny amount of space. Energy and matter are interchangeable, with particle/antiparticle pairs coming in and out of existence. This is the first step: the ascent from energy to matter. This is the scale that theoretical physicists focus on.

2) As the universe cools and expands, subatomic particles come together to form atoms. Over time more and more complex - heavier - atoms are created via various stellar phenomena. This is the second step: the ascent from subatomic particles to atoms. This is the scale that particle physicists focus on. You can see a pattern forming here - each milestone of complexity coming together with others of its magnitude to form a higher order structure. Moving on..

3) As these atoms collect together, their very nature causes them to bond such that they form molecules - structures made up of two or more atoms. You guessed it, this is the third step: the ascent from atoms to molecules. This is the scale typically studied by chemists (my assignment of professions to these scales is for illustration purposes only and is intentionally vague). Keep in mind that as life evolves into organization of higher orders, the lower-order processes are all still occurring, but if you choose to focus on a given scale the workings of lower order scales can be implied. This is why modern chemistry for example can exist at all without having a complete understanding of, say, quantum mechanics. Of course, a more complete understanding of lower levels certainly sheds light onto higher levels, but we are able to explore phenomena at various scales simultaneously without our models of the lower scales being complete.

4) In the case of our planet earth, molecules began to grow more and more complex, as did their interactions. Amino acids - the building blocks of biological life - formed and, through some process - against all odds, some would say - cellular life came into being. This was a rather large leap in complexity: multitudes of different molecules working harmoniously to form one organized entity called a cell. Cellular life is also the first form of life that strives for self-preservation. Molecules are formed and destroyed constantly, but cellular life seems to do whatever it can to ensure its own survival, including reproducing in order to perpetuate its species. This is the fourth step: the ascent from molecular to cellular life. This is the scale that biologists - specifically bacteriologists - focus their studies upon.

5) After some time, groups of cells developed an altruism that allowed for them to work together to create multi-cellular life, or eukaryotes. Self-preservation became second to the survival of the group, and over time a eukaryotic life form would lose all of its original cells during its lifespan, but would remain the same overall structure and function due to the reproduction of its individual cells. This is the fifth step: the ascent from single-cell life to multi-cellular life. This is the scope of many scientific discourses, for this level of structure includes us homo sapiens as well.

Between each of these steps exists what I will refer to as an eschaton - an ascent from one order of complexity to a higher one. Each order of complexity, however, undergoes massive increases in complexity between eschatons. The fifth level is perhaps the most dramatic case: moving from structures as simple as a bi-cellular life form to a structure as mind-bogglingly complex as the human brain (no pun intended)!

What this model suggests is that in the future we will experience a similar leap to a higher-order complexity. In many cultures there is reference to cyclical time - history repeating itself. In that sense, history has repeated itself, and it certainly is cyclical but I would suggest that the analogy of an upward (for lack of a better direction) spiral would be more appropriate. The reason I choose the spiral is because with each revolution the amount of time between eschatons is smaller than the last. Also, the upward motion of the spiral represents the increase in complexity with each revolution.

Now, I said this would be related to fractals didn't I? Well, if this model has any truth to it, we will be experiencing the very same phenomena as the highest-order life form experienced at each preceding eschaton, but on a larger scale. The larger scale of things is why things manifest differently. On this scale each of the lower levels is present and thus the level of complexity is proportionately larger.

It is possible to take analogies from lower-order eschatons to make some vague predictions as to how our coming eschaton will manifest. For example, take the ascent from single-cell life to multi-cellular life. The single-celled organisms had to develop ways to communicate with each other and had to lose their self-serving behaviors in favor for altruistic ones in order to benefit the whole. If there is anything to be said about the way technology has shaped the world, it is that communication has become much easier and faster. Indeed, communications technologies are evolving at an accelerating rate, aided largely by the growth of the internet.

So, we've got communication in the works, but what about altruism? Why do we humans find it so difficult to see past ourselves and to work harmoniously with one another? It is clear that when two or more humans work together towards a common goal, there is a certain synergy and they function more effectively than the sum of each individual's efforts - it's no news that two heads are better than one. So what is lacking that would allow the human race as a whole to function as one cohesive unit of a higher-order complexity?

This is an age old question, and one upon which we can only speculate. I would suggest that a common goal is the answer. The problem today is that there are still individuals who lack the resources for even self preservation. On the individual level, each member of the species must have their needs met if they can be expected to expend energy towards a common goal for the species as a whole. Think of cellular life: how can a cell contribute to the well-being of the whole multi-cellular being if lacks the resources to function on an individual scale?

Now, if we must have a common goal, what should that goal look like? The sustainability of our species and - more importantly - our planet seems like a good place to start. Many of us are already on that track, however there are certainly those whose motives are more self serving. What's upsetting is that it's often those individuals who have a great excess of resources who exhibit the most hedonistic behavior.

To throw a sci-fi spin on things (if I haven't already!), consider how contact with an alien race would affect us. Having a race against which to define ourselves as a cohesive unit would certainly contribute to a sense of unity. These aliens could be malevolent, causing us to unite in a military sense, or benevolent, sharing their cosmic wisdom with us and stimulating our growth towards the eschaton.

All things considered, this is really all speculation, which is arguably valuable. At the very least, these things are interesting to consider and doing so is certainly a good mental exercise!

What I personally think is in store for us is related heavily to technology, specifically artificial intelligence...but I will cover this in detail in a later post! For now, I hope this has been as fun to read as it was to write.


"But wait! Hold the phone, Chris! Evolution is a random process! There is no purpose, no direction!"
Absolutely - evolution of complexity is certainly a very chaotic process with no predictable outcome, no absolute vector. One property is constant, however, and that is the fact that life tends to evolve into more and more complex structures. The details of how it gets there are chaotic and unpredictable, but those are irrelevant. What's important is that life becomes more complex over time.

The Universe as a Fractal

Today I will attempt to show that the universe in its entirety can be thought of as a fractal.









First off, we need to establish what a fractal is, and what this means for the universe. A simple example of a fractal would be the Sierpinski Triangle:



To make this triangle, we start with an equilateral triangle - a triangle whose sides are all equal in length, and angles are all 60 degrees. Within this triangle, we draw a smaller, upside-down triangle by connecting the midpoints of each of the original triangle's sides. We then have 4 smaller triangles that all interlock into the shape of one large triangle. We can repeat this process within each of the small triangles to create even more triangles. Indeed, we can do this infinitely.

Now, what's interesting about fractals - including this one - is that each triangle contains all of the information that the whole system does. Given a Sierpinski triangle that continues infinitely in both directions (increasing and decreasing in magnification), you can choose a triangle at any level of magnification and the formula to produce the rest is exactly the same. It doesn't matter where you choose to begin, you will always find the same pattern. This phenomenon is known as self-similarity.

But how does this apply to the universe? I will borrow a concept from Buddhist monk Thich Nat Han called interbeing to illustrate this idea:

Think about a wooden chair. You may look at it and say "this is a chair". The chair is, in fact, everything but a chair. Contained within the information of that chair is the information of the sun, which grew the tree that the chair was made from. The person who made the chair is also within the chair. The lumberjack who cut down the tree, as well as his breakfast that morning are in the chair. Indeed, everything in the universe is within that chair except for the chair itself. The chair is empty of a separate identity. The only way to define the chair is by describing everything but the chair. But then, things other than the chair - your desk, for example - contain the chair within them. But they are in the chair! This makes it difficult to come to a concrete definition of anything.

For those who are more technically inclined, on a smaller scale things are indeed intimately related. The phenomenon of quantum entanglement, where subatomic particles communicate at great distances instantaneously shows that information is indeed exchanged between particles on a level that is imperceptible to us. It has also been shown that shortly after the big bang everything in the universe was entangled.

So, within each piece of the universe exists all of the information of the universe as a whole. Does that sound familiar?

Of course, your chair certainly doesn't look like everything else - it looks like a chair. But the Sierpinski triangle is a simple example of a fractal. The Mandelbrot set, for example, exhibits vast complexity, and there are certainly perspectives of its visual representation that look nothing like the original. But they do represent the same formula, despite their different appearances. What I am suggesting is that the universe, in all its complexity and beauty is realized through a single fractal formula.

Fractal patterning is often found in nature, such as the growth patterns of ferns and other plants, as well as the human circulatory system. Recent studies even suggest that genetic code has a fractal nature.

















A fractal fern

Well, I hope that this has been informative. Later I will describe some further implications of a fractal model of the universe.