A Singular Universe of Many Singularities: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context

Abstract

Nature’s myriad complex systems—whether physical, biological or cultural—are mere islands of organization within increasingly disordered seas of surrounding chaos. Energy is a principal driver of the rising complexity of all such systems within the expanding, ever-changing Universe; indeed energy is as central to life, society, and machines as it is to stars and galaxies. Energy flow concentration—in contrast to information content and negentropy production—is a useful quantitative metric to gauge relative degree of complexity among widely diverse systems in the one and only Universe known. In particular, energy rate densities for human brains, society collectively, and our technical devices have now become numerically comparable as the most complex systems on Earth. Accelerating change is supported by a wealth of data, yet the approaching technological singularity of 21st century cultural evolution is neither more nor less significant than many other earlier singularities as physical and biological evolution proceeded along an undirectional and unpredictable path of more inclusive cosmic evolution, from big bang to humankind. Evolution, broadly construed, has become a powerful unifying concept in all of science, providing a comprehensive worldview for the new millennium—yet there is no reason to claim that the next evolutionary leap forward beyond sentient beings and their amazing gadgets will be any more important than the past emergence of increasingly intricate complex systems. Nor is new science (beyond non-equilibrium thermodynamics) necessarily needed to describe cosmic evolution’s interdisciplinary milestones at a deep and empirical level. Humans, our tools, and their impending messy interaction possibly mask a Platonic simplicity that undergirds the emergence and growth of complexity among the many varied systems in the material Universe, including galaxies, stars, planets, life, society, and machines.

Theodore Modis on Chaisson’s ‘‘A Singular Universe 206 of Many Singularities: Cultural Evolution 207 in a Cosmic Context’’

The concept of Φ_m is the best attempt at rigorously quantifying complexity that I have seen, albeit with shortcomings, e.g. no one will accept that bicycle riding is ten times more complex than violin playing or that a jet engine is 1000 times more complex than a mammalian organism! My attempt to quantify complexity (discussed in the second part of my essay) is only in relative terms and is based on data that may be subject to subjective judgment. Of course there must have also been some subjective estimates in Chaisson’s data, for example, in the calculation of Energy Rate Densities of hunter-gatherers, agriculturists, industrialists, etc., which may mask a leveling-off of the straight-line trend of the O data points in Fig. 20.3, similar to the visible leveling-off of the X data points. These leveling-offs are evidence that we are dealing with S-curves and combined with the acknowledged leveling-off of the two early curves in Fig. 20.2, reinforces the general conclusion that exponential trends of Phi are in fact early parts of S-curves.

Chaisson is being conservative. He modestly says that “I sense, but cannot prove, that information is another kind of energy” while he could have easily argued that information content is proportional to entropy which is equal to Q/T (heat over temperature), which IS energy. He also says that the drawn curve of the shaded area of Fig. 20.2 is the compound sum of multiple S-curves, but stops short of using S-curves to extrapolate it into the future. In fact he refrains from committing himself to any future eventuality one way or another. (One would have welcomed at least an educated guess from such an expert!)

Having spent most of my career with S-curves I can see in Chaisson’s Fig. 20.3 that the two “S-curves” depicted by the dashed and dotted lines determine the shape of the late part of the third “S-curve” labeled society on Fig. 20.2. Furthermore, these two curves in Fig. 20.3 have life cycles that become shorter with time (acceleration effect). Life cycles getting shorter is evidence for saturation. As I mention in my essay there is a fractal aspect to S-curves. A large-scale S-curve can be decomposed to smaller constituent S-curves the life cycles of which become shorter as we approach the ceiling of the envelope curve (see also publication http://www.growth-dynamics.com/articles/Fractal.pdf). I can then conjecture that the line labeled society in Fig. 20.2 is an S-curve that presently finds itself beyond its midpoint, i.e. experiences a progressive slowdown of its rate of growth. An imminent slowdown in the rate of growth of Phi (and complexity) corroborates a similar conclusion in my essay.