Dear David:
No symmetry ever started diminishing.
Take care,Otto
From: Dave Kirkland <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2017 7:01 PM
Subject: Re: [Fis] WHY WE ARE HERE? ...AN UNPLEASANT ANSWER?!
Dear Arturo Tozzi and FISersThank you for your very interesting ideas. For me
they raise more questions:Why did the number of cosmic symmetries ever start
diminishing?Could the whole process be eternally cyclical?I like your
respectful use of capital letters.My mind boggles.Best rgdsDavid
On 24 Feb 2017, at 15:24, [email protected] wrote:
Dear FISers, hi! A possible novel discussion (if you like it, of course!):
A SYMMETRY-BASED ACCOUNT OF LIFE AND EVOLUTION
After the Big Bang, a gradual increase inthermodynamic entropy is occurring in
our Universe (Ellwanger, 2012). Because of the relationships between
entropyand symmetries (Roldán et al., 2014), thenumber of cosmic symmetries,
the highest possible at the very start, is decliningas time passes. Here the
evolution ofliving beings comes into play. Life is aspace-limited increase of
energy and complexity, and therefore ofsymmetries. The evolution
proceedstowards more complex systems (Chaisson, 2010), until more advanced
forms oflife able to artificially increase the symmetries of the world.
Indeed, the human brains’ cognitive abilitiesnot just think objects and events
more complex than the physical ones existingin Nature, but build highly
symmetric crafts too. For example, human beings can watch a roughstone,
imagine an amygdala and build it from the same stone. Humankind is able,
through its ability to manipulatetools and technology, to produce objects (and
ideas, i.e., equations) with complexitylevels higher than the objects and
systems encompassed in the pre-existingphysical world. Therefore, human
beingsare naturally built by evolution in order to increase the number of
environmentalsymmetries. This is in touch with recentclaims, suggesting that
the brain is equipped with a number of functional and anatomicaldimensions
higher than the 3D environment (Peters et al., 2017). Intentionality, typical
of the living beingsand in particular of the human mind, may be seen as a
mechanism able toincrease symmetries. As Dante Alighieristated (Hell, XXVI,
118-120), “you were notmade to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and
knowledge”. In touch with Spencer’s (1860) and Tyler’s (1881)claims, it looks
like evolutionary mechanisms tend to achieve increases in
environmentalcomplexity, and therefore symmetries (Tozzi and Peters, 2017).
Life is produced in our Universe in order torestore the initial lost
symmetries. Atthe beginning of life, increases in symmetries are just local,
e.g., they arerelated to the environmental niches where the living beings are
placed. However, in long timescales, they might beextended to the whole
Universe. Forexample, Homo sapiens, in just 250.000 years, has been able to
build the Large HadronCollider, where artificial physical processes make an
effort to approximate theinitial symmetric state of the Universe. Therefore,
life is a sort of gauge field (Sengupta et al., 2016), e.g.,a combination of
forces and fields that try to counterbalance and restore, invery long
timescales, the original cosmic symmetries, lost after the Big Bang. Due to
physical issues, the “homeostatic” cosmicgauge field must be continuous, e.g.,
life must stand, proliferate and increasein complexity over very long
timescales. This is the reason why every living being has an innate tendency
towardsself-preservation and proliferation. With the death, continuity is
broken. This talks in favor of intelligentlife scattered everywhere in the
Universe: if a few species get extinct, othersmight continue to proliferate and
evolve in remote planets, in order to pursuethe goal of the final symmetric
restoration. In touch with long timescales’ requirements,it must be kept into
account that life has been set up after a long gestation:a childbearing which
encompasses the cosmic birth of fermions, then atoms, thenstars able to produce
the more sophisticated matter (metals) required formolecular life. A
symmetry-based framework gives rise to two oppositefeelings, by our standpoint
of human beings. On one side, we achieve the final answer to long-standing
questions: “why are we here?”, “Why does the evolution act in such a way?”, an
answer that reliefsour most important concerns and gives us a sense;on the
other side, however, this framework does not give us any hope: we arejust
micro-systems programmed in order to contribute to restore a partially“broken”
macro-system. And, in case wesucceed in restoring, through our mathematical
abstract thoughts andcraftsmanship, the initial symmetries, we are nevertheless
doomed to die:indeed, the environment equipped with the starting symmetries
does not allowthe presence of life. REFERENCES1) Chaisson EJ. 2010. Energy
Rate Density as a Complexity Metric and Evolutionary Driver. Complexity, v 16,
p 27, 2011; DOI:10.1002/cplx.20323.2) Ellwanger U. 2012. From the
Universe to theElementary Particles. A FirstIntroduction to Cosmology and the
Fundamental Interactions. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. ISBN
978-3-642-24374-5.3) Peters JF, Ramanna S, Tozzi A, Inan E. 2017.
Frontiers Hum Neurosci. BOLD-independent computational entropy assesses
functional donut-likestructures in brain fMRI image.
doi:10.3389/fnhum.2017.00038. 4) Sengupta B, Tozzi A, Coray GK, Douglas
PK, Friston KJ.2016. Towards a Neuronal GaugeTheory. PLOS Biology 14 (3):
e1002400.doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002400.5) Spencer H. 1860. System of
SyntheticPhilosophy. 6) Roldán E, Martínez IA, Parrondo JMR, PetrovD.
2014. Universalfeatures in the energetics of symmetry breaking. Nat. Phys. 10,
457–461.7) Tozzi A, Peters JF. 2017. Towards Topological Mechanisms
Underlying Experience Acquisition andTransmission in the Human Brain.
J.F.Integr. psych. behav. doi:10.1007/s12124-017-9380-z8) Tyler EB. 1881.
Anthropology: an Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilization.
Arturo TozziAA Professor Physics, University North TexasPediatrician ASL
Na2Nord, ItalyComput Intell Lab, University
Manitobahttp://arturotozzi.webnode.it/
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