Symbiotic Cosmos: A different Look at Evolution

Preface

My contemplation of the world is based on a complementary vision and description of actions and processes. Our view of the world resembles the looks of a coin. We can only view one side at a given time but have to bear in mind that the other side is present as well. We can turn the coin around; we can view the other side but not both sides simultaneously. We can execute an action or not, but we cannot have action and no-action at the same time.

Even so both examples look similar, they differ in one important point: time. For the view at a coin, time does not matter, the coin does not change with time. The coin represents a Being in ancient Greek philosophy. On the contrary an action is dependent on time, on the moment the action is executed. A race cannot be repeated with exactly the same outcome. The race represents a Becoming in ancient Greek philosophy.

Both, the turning of a coin and the start of a race, represent a change, but the first one illustrates a reversible change, independent of time, the second one an irreversible change. The term change is common to Being and Becoming but effectuate a different cause-and-effect chain. In the first case cause and effect are invertible, always, in the second case they are not necessarily invertible, they might be in certain cases.

If a cause always results in the same effect, this cause-and-effect chain is called a physical law. In many cases this physical law is reversible and that is the basis for a known past. In real life there are different causes for one effect possible, luckily seldom, and these cases generate an unknown, an uncertain past. The deeper we look into the past, the more uncertain our knowledge becomes and this nescience accelerates like an avalanche and finally makes any prediction impossible.

Complementarity exists, whenever two possibilities are available. A simple one is doing something or not doing something, both possibilities are available (...as well as...), but at the same moment (time) only one option (either...or) can be executed. It can be easily seen that the reason for complementarity is time. I will try to explain, why time and complementarity and evolution and irreversibility mutually depend on each other and cannot be thought of independently.

Symbioses, especially mutualisms can explain the emergence of new characteristics and structures. So-called win-win situations can be found not only in biology, but in other fields as well. The objective of this essay is to show similarities in different fields, to explain evolution in general and to show that complementarity and evolution are a general characteristic of our cosmos. There are different sorts of evolution depending on the respective environment. The concept of symbioses is incompatible with a concept of conservation.

Again, there is a sort of complementarity that gives us a deep insight into the essence of complementarity. Nature, the world, our cosmos might be schizophrenic, might contain complementarities, but our description of it is expected to be clear, to be unambiguous. Complementarity could be the result of our own attempts to describe unambiguously an ambiguous world or cosmos. Hence sociology and psychology are as important for our contemplation as natural sciences. Physical laws only make sense within a given framework; they are relative.

It is most disturbing that some physical experiments are reversible, and some processes are irreversible, but nevertheless both are described as functions of time and we have no means to differentiate these two sorts of time. Probably that is the most confusing and puzzling mystery of mankind or at least of science and physics. One possibility to overcome this dilemma is to differentiate between regular spans of time in physics that can be represented as frequencies and contingent spans of life (time) that appear in evolution and can be seen as historic times. A physical frequency and a historic time are completely different and obscure our comprehension of evolution. Our cosmos has a past, has a history.

Important is the distinction between a time-dependent cosmos and a universe that is independent of time, where time and space are not defined. When we want to see both sides of a coin simultaneously, we have to put both sides beside each other and for this we need space. Space can therefore be considered as the dimension of simultaneousness; space is unthinkable without time and a finite speed of information.

My differentiation between cosmos and universe is more or less based on a differentiation between finiteness and infinity, between conceivable and inconceivable. The differentiation between conceivable and inconceivable allows a pragmatic approach to the term infinity based on numbers. If the smallest difference between numbers is 1, then a number X can be considered as infinite, when its reciprocal, 1/X, is not detectable.

We have to be aware that we observe our cosmos electromagnetically and electromagnetic measurements have a given resolution, a certain detectability. Applied to numbers it is easily seen that for any resolution 1/X there is always a number X + n for which the resolution 1/X is not sufficient. For this resolution 1/X the number X + n appears infinite, because the value n is arbitrary.

Even though I consider our cosmos as finite, it is apparently impossible to proof its consistency from within the system. That is one commonly accepted interpretation of Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorems. This corresponds to my remark that we cannot recall our own birth. For this an external witness is needed.

Antigua, February 2020

Contents

Part I – A scientific approach

Prologue

Cosmos and Universe

Physics and Cognition

Affinity and Inertia - Gravitation

Emergence

Recycling

Principle of Evolution

Symbiotic Cosmos

Conclusion

Part II – A sociological approach

Science and Religion

Born to doubt – damned to believe

Complementary Evolution

Geophysics and Cosmology

The recycled Time

Schizophrenia

Symbiosis

Epilogue

Bibliography

If you would judge, understand.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Part I

A scientific approach

Prologue

Evolution is by definition not an exact or an a priori science, a symbiotic cosmos therefore cannot be explained with eternal physical laws. This essay is meant to serve as a guideline for an emergent and evolutionary approach to comprehend our cosmos. The main hazard of physics is the cause-and-effect chain. The fact that one certain cause generates a certain effect is called a physical law, but this law is not necessarily reversible. A certain effect can arise from different causes (example of the wet road).

This fact creates an uncertainty of the past, a diffuse past. Most probably there was only one past, but we do not know and cannot know which one. The Doppler-effect used to call for the expansion of the universe is hence not the only explanation for an astronomical red shift (to be correct: blue shift, if the time arrow shows to the future) measured by astronomers. The cosmic background radiation might be deducted from a hyper-expansion of the early universe, but that is not the only possible explanation.

We all know that. We know that time is irreversible and we are stunned that some proceedings are reversible (physics) and some others are not (evolution). In search for (one) truth we very often disdain evolution, a conduct of wishful thinking that is a crucial part of religions. The religious roots of mankind, the roots that made mankind so successful, ultimately hinder our cognition. Already Paracelsus stated some 500 years ago: The dose makes the poison.

Wishful thinking misled sciences to believe in strict laws rather than in vague principles. An almighty God is the associated notion representing this concept. In particular cases this concept might be very helpful, but any generalisation can be dangerous.

During the last years CERN was able to increase energies (eV) further, but without any measurable results. The last success story at CERN was the confirmation of the Higg's boson, but this story is so strange that it needs quite some goodwill. The absence of further findings at CERN could be an argument against the Big Bang and a hint for an evolutionary and emergent cosmos.

Over centuries until today physicists are using the term energy to explain some sort of conservation that is the physical counterpart of mathematical equations. But energy is not an empirically measurable entity, energy is a purely calculated arbitrary value. Such an arbitrary value can neither be verified nor falsified, it is similar to the term God. Energy is not perceivable, only the effects it is causing and these effeccts are rather emergent than a priori.

A different look at evolution must be different in many ways. In several books I published in German, I tried to establish a General Principle of Evolution. A common view of evolution narrows the term evolution to biological evolution. Mostly, when people talk about life, they talk about biological life.

The term evolution became common in the 19th century following the ideas of Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck and Charles Darwin and was purely related to biology. Only late in the 20th century Richard Dawkins and Susan Blackmore (The Meme Machine) developed the idea of a cultural evolution and Friedrich Cramer established in his book Der Zeitbaum the criterion, that the cultural evolution is about a million times faster than the biological evolution.

This apparent slowness of the biological evolution prevented its detection until the 19th century, when time and age were seen in a different context than the bible purported. At