Metaphysical Musing
Been thinking about networks, complexity, and deconstruction lately, but I haven't gotten my shit together to say anything meaningful about these things. Instead, I will just (embarassingly, but maybe it's food for thought?) jot down what I scribbled in the back of my book the other day when I was waiting for an appointment.
The Enlightenment clockwork universe and Kepler’s perfect polyhedrons are out; complexity is the way forward.
Looking at this poinsettia leaf I am in awe of how evenly its veins are spaced. I wonder how it works out that way. Each blind cell of the plant can’t know, in centimeters, where to start the next vein, and yet they begin at regular intervals. On each leaf, almost the same spacing. How does nature measure itself, without being able to comprehend its own composition?*
Nature does not count in integers. It doesn’t measure itself in ones, twos, threes. It measures by changes in time and by thresholds of chemicals – all, always, in the context of something else. A growing leaf doesn’t parcel out 10,000 cells between veins; rather, a new vein forms when there is a certain concentration of X, far enough away from the source of Y, whose presence will be noted by the tumbler clicks of molecular signals in space and in time: in concentration-time.
How does a fly’s eye know “seven”? It can’t - but the cells all holding hands can sense who they are, what they are, where they are. They settle themselves as their context (matrix, other cells, various signals) defines them. They don’t know from “seven” or “four millimolar” - they know “enough”, “not enough”, and “more than enough”.
Nature’s numbers are irrational (pi, phi, e). Never to be pinned down they dance forever into infinity and out of that madness order grows.
It’s conceivable to me that pure numbers might not even exist except in our human conception of mathematics.
Light, time, cells, nature . . . we think we know how something works but then we look a little closer and realize we have no idea. Only now, with our new knowledge, can we even see the shape of our ignorance.
*P.S. No ID comments necessary, por favor. My whole point is about how nature orders itself based on emergent behaviours. Always look for the most simple explanation. Always try to see the underpinnings of things, the basic rules. More on this at some point.
The Enlightenment clockwork universe and Kepler’s perfect polyhedrons are out; complexity is the way forward.
Looking at this poinsettia leaf I am in awe of how evenly its veins are spaced. I wonder how it works out that way. Each blind cell of the plant can’t know, in centimeters, where to start the next vein, and yet they begin at regular intervals. On each leaf, almost the same spacing. How does nature measure itself, without being able to comprehend its own composition?*
Nature does not count in integers. It doesn’t measure itself in ones, twos, threes. It measures by changes in time and by thresholds of chemicals – all, always, in the context of something else. A growing leaf doesn’t parcel out 10,000 cells between veins; rather, a new vein forms when there is a certain concentration of X, far enough away from the source of Y, whose presence will be noted by the tumbler clicks of molecular signals in space and in time: in concentration-time.
How does a fly’s eye know “seven”? It can’t - but the cells all holding hands can sense who they are, what they are, where they are. They settle themselves as their context (matrix, other cells, various signals) defines them. They don’t know from “seven” or “four millimolar” - they know “enough”, “not enough”, and “more than enough”.
Nature’s numbers are irrational (pi, phi, e). Never to be pinned down they dance forever into infinity and out of that madness order grows.
It’s conceivable to me that pure numbers might not even exist except in our human conception of mathematics.
Light, time, cells, nature . . . we think we know how something works but then we look a little closer and realize we have no idea. Only now, with our new knowledge, can we even see the shape of our ignorance.
*P.S. No ID comments necessary, por favor. My whole point is about how nature orders itself based on emergent behaviours. Always look for the most simple explanation. Always try to see the underpinnings of things, the basic rules. More on this at some point.
posted by Joolya at
9:00 PM
1 Comments:
i like. this is something that I think everyone can agree on. Pure numbers in nature don't exist except on the very surface (number of petals on a flower, number of bases in DNA, etc...)
More knowledge only generates more questions.
All quite reasonable. And, if I may say so, not quite novel.
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