Constructive Creativity and Leadership. Part 7. LO27967 -- Bifurcation

From: Don Dwiggins (dond@advancedmp.com)
Date: 03/11/02


Replying to LO27748 --

A reaction to At's answer to Leo in LO27748:
> http://www.learning-org.com/graphics/LO27748_2_cladofrac.gif
> In this cladogram both time and complexity increase from top to bottom up
> to the present. For a digestive increase in quantities we draw the lines
> sloping away from the vertical time axis while for a bifurcative increase
> in qualities we draw the lines sloping back to the vertical time axis.
> Even though we use the same information as in figure 1, the outcome is
> startling different in figure 2. In figure 1 the complexifying lineage is
> the thickening straight line going down to the right, but in figure 2 it
> is the thickening zig-zag pattern going down in the centre. This is the
> visual representation of Goethe's concept "Steigerung".

In addition to putting time and complexity on parallel vertical axes, you
also (implicitly) put quantities and qualities on parallel horizontal
axes. Suppose we did a different diagram, with quantities and qualities
shown as two curves plotted against time, and with bifurcations marked as
milestones; what would it show? Would the quantities and qualities vary
linearly inversely, so that the two curves are mirror images, or is there
a more complex relationship? (This is getting away from the
time-complexity point, of course; it just seems interesting to me.)

Back to the time-complexity parallelism: this seems to imply that the
complexity of the universe is increasing over time, along with the total
entropy (which makes sense if the associator between them is entropy
production, and also seems to match what I've read of the emerging picture
of the history of the universe). I wonder how this would strike most
physicists?

Regards to all,

-- 
Don Dwiggins                    "Solvitur Ambulando"
d.l.dwiggins@computer.org

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