LIFE AND SIMPLE SYSTEMS

Ron Cottam, Willy Ranson & Roger Vounckx

Abstract

            

This last decade has seen the publication of a very extensive literature describing, cataloguing and analyzing the emergence of complexity. This seems very strange. The creation of a complex assembly is comparatively easy – the really difficult job is to generate simplicity from it. So much is this the case, that the only context within which it takes place is that of life itself.

Although we naturally imagine life as a dynamic process rather than as a static structure, both of these aspects are critical to its survival. In this paper we consider the structural character to be a “snapshot” of life at any instant in its progress.

Continuously expanding multi-element assemblies finally lose their cohesion, and either split up into separate parts, or restructure themselves to redress their stability by generating a simplified umbrella level of operation. In large organisms this process may repeat itself, thus creating a multi-leveled self-correlating operational hierarchy. It is not at all obvious how the associated generation of simplicity is initiated, but it appears that such a self-correlating hierarchy is structurally equivalent to life.

Current analytical representations of living systems are curiously based on a primarily classical Newtonian view of nature. This unfortunately neglects to account for the integration of living multi-elemental assemblies into unified systems – the principal characteristic of life. We propose that Newtonian and quantum mechanical views of nature are complementary, and that the stable but fragmented Newtonian structure of life is complemented by the unifying processes of quantum mechanical entanglement.

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