[Fis] the material power of immaterial things

[Howard Bloom]

 dear colleagues, let me know what you think of this.
 

This cosmos is an enigma wrapped in a mystery.  Among other things, it is replete withimmaterial forces that have power over material things.  Yes, immaterial forces.  Forces you and I can’t see.  What in the world do I mean?

At the very birth of the universe in a Big Bang 13.7 billionyears ago, the elementary particles to beat all elementary particles wereborn.  And they were born by the gazillions.  In a truly random universe when a gazillionthings are slammed into existence in the same instant, there should be a gazilliondifferent kinds of those things.  Butthere weren’t.  There were only thirtysix different kinds of quarks.  Born all atonce, simultaneously, all across the face of this fresh stuff called time andspace.  So this is not a randomuniverse.  Not at all.  It is regimented.  It is constrained.

How in the world could these regularities of quarks come tobe?  What was keeping the number of quarkforms to such an astonishingly low number? An immaterial disciplinarian.  Nota god.  But a form-shaper behind whatHerman Melville called the pasteboard mask of material reality.

Those first quarks gathered in groups of three, driven bysomething else immaterial—a communications, compulsion, and propulsion systemwe call attraction and repulsion.  Andwhere did these attraction and repulsion communiques operate?  In the empty space between the quarks.  And what did they consist of?  Nothing. No thing.  They were made up of whatAlbert Einstein called spooky action at a distance.  

Today’s particle physics has managed a workaround.  It says that particles are held together bysomething material, gluons.  In otherwords, every mystery comes down to a material particle.  Please. Give me a break.  Haven’t theyheard of the immaterial force called gravity?

After the birth of elementary particles came the mass danceof what science calls pressure waves, waves that crossed the face of the cosmoslike the waves that travel thousands of miles across the sea.  

Waves are far more mysterious than you might think.  In the ocean, water molecules circle up anddown.  When they circle up, they make thepeak of a wave.  When they circle down,they make a trough.  And when they circleback up, they make the peak of guess what? Yet another  wave. Yes, a wavewith another distinct identity.  Butaside from rock and rolling in place, those water molecules do not do anytraveling.  Yet something does travel. Animmaterial force grabbing hold of material things.

Let’s take it from the wave’s point of view.  You are a wave moving across the face of theAtlantic.  You have a distinct identity.  And yet every minute you are made up of adifferent team of water molecules.  Youare never made up of the same constituents from one instant to the next.  You are literally nothing.  You are no thing.  

And yet you are real as real can be.  You are so solid that when you come near theshore of Maine, a good surfer can position his board on your back and rideyou.  You are so solid that if I go outto the very tip of a rocky outcrop in Maine to get a better glimpse of you andI slip, you can smash me to smithereens. Yet, remember, you are not the same team of water molecules from oneinstant to the next.  You are nothing.  

You are a pattern grabbing hold of one fistful of thingsafter another.  You are a process.  Switching its team of things from moment tomoment.  Yet retaining an identity sopowerful it can kill me.  So what are you?  An immaterial procedure recruiting solidmaterial things.  Yes, an immaterial procedure.  An immaterial pattern.

Now let’s switch back to minutes after the birth of thecosmos.  You quarks have ganged togetherin threes.  One form of threesome makes aproton.  Another form of threesome makesa neutron.  In other words, from your threesomeness,from your social gathering of three quarks, something immaterial arises, ahigher property that can’t be predicted from mere quarkness.  It’s the ghostly identity we call proton orneutron.  And that emergent identity willbe the very essence of what we call material things.  It’s material as hell.  Yet, in a sense, it doesn’t exist.  It is a strange higher personality summonedfrom the nothingness by a trio of mere quarks. 

The higher personality of quark threesomes, like the wave,is nothing.  It is no thing.  And yet that higher identity stamps itselfinto being all over the universe.  Anidentical personality appearing everywhere at once.  The strange identity of a proton or aneutron.  Where does that higher identitycome from?  How does it come to be?  It is yet another example of the materialpower of immaterial things.

Cognitive scientist and literary theorist Bill Benzonrecalls an experience that helps explain the strange ghosts that are summonedinto existence by the social interaction of quark trios.  In addition to his science, Benzon is a jazzmusician.  He explains that when all fourmembers of his jazz quartet are grooving together, at a certain point somethinghigher arises, something with a personality all its own.  It is a melody no individual is playing but thatall four musicians can hear.  And insteadof performing to each other, these musical virtuosos now play to the melodythat no one of them is producing and that technically does not exist.  Another instance of the material power ofimmaterial things.

Which brings us back to another mystery of the earlyuniverse. Ten thousand years after the big bang, the cosmos is a thick soup ofparticles, particles in a bump-‘em car smash. Moving at superspeed, colliding with others of their kind, ricochetingoff those others and smashing into yet more fast-moving neighbors.  

Despite the explosive forces of those smash and bangs, theparticles participate in a common enterprise. First they squeeze together.  Thenthey move apart.  In the process they dowhat the water molecules of the Atlantic will someday do.  First they come together and make the peak ofone wave, then they pull apart and make a trough.  Then they come together again and make thepeak of yet another wave.  And thosewaves cross the face of the cosmos like a sound vibration crossing the face ofa cymbal.  They make one more thing thatdoes not exist—music.  In fact, music in avery low B flat.  Fifty seven octavesbelow middle C.

And what is that music? Another ghost-like reality bringing forth material things.  Or being brought forth by them.  Another hint at the power over matter ofimmaterial things.

For those of us in science there is a lesson.  Move beyond our obsession with particles.  Move beyond our slavish focus on materialthings.  Move beyond the science thatinsists that you can’t understand anything until you break it into bits.  The time has come for science to look up, notdown.  The time has come for science tostudy the mystery of the ephemeral, the mystery of the transcendent, themystery of form without substance, the mystery of immaterial things.


    On Friday, March 7, 2025 at 02:45:39 PM EST, Karl Javorszky <karl.javorszky at gmail.com> wrote:   

 Dear colleagues,
The slides presented today at Lou Kauffman's talks on topology are uploaded to ResearchGate.
The DOI is: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14429.12003
Karl_______________________________________________
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