It is likely that many visitors to this Site will have transferred from the Devolve! Site. They (you) may be looking for answers to, or at least thoughts on, social questions like: "How do we start to create a more pluralist society?"; "How do we devolve power from the centre and get at least some of it to the people?"; "How do people, for their part, start to take on responsibility?" For these are the things that Devolve! is known to be about, and which most of their Site is about.

What they (you) may not expect is a dose of metaphysics. However, since all things are connected to all things, a quick glance at a background map of the universe may after all be helpful before exploring some definite topics. In particular it may give some context to various key concepts or principles which pop up again and again in the course of our journey.

Since some may feel that metaphysics is a word not even to be mentioned in polite company, it may be helpful to start with a definition. Metaphysics: description of the universe at the most general level, of which physical description of the outside of the universe - science - is a sub-set.

The outline sketch that follows may be judged "wrong" in varying degree. It will be amended by fresh inputs over time. However, if a negative reaction leads the critic to check out and set down their own assumptions about the world, then this section will have served its purpose.

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OUR UNIVERSE - SOME FEATURES

I

The universe is complete to itself, by definition. It needs no external levers or agents to operate it or motivate it.

II

The universe, like everything in it, has an inside and an outside. The outside is how it is observed (when there are any observers around) as a system, thing, bundle of energy, etc. The view from 'the centre' is still a view of the outside of the universe. The inside is how it experiences itself, knows itself, suffers itself, enjoys itself - just as all its parts do: atoms, stones, creatures, ourselves, cultures, gaias and so on.

III

As the most complex entity, the universe experiences itself with more complexity, more completeness, than any of its parts - just as our experience of ourselves is far more complex, more 'alive' than the self-experience of (say) a stone, which 'only' experiences its tensions and vibrations [or so we think].

IV

As the most complex, the most complete thing, the universe is majestic, wonderful, magical and wise. It knows and suffers everything about itself, including its great tensions. It is a moot point for humans, being just wise enough to dimly know it, whether or not to label such a complete being 'God'. Either way, it's not unreasonable to honour such a complexity, rather than make comments like: "It's only a machine." or "God is elsewhere." [The big theological divide is not between believers and unbelievers, as is generally supposed. Rather it is between the great souled and the narrow horizoned, the out-reaching and the defensive, on both sides of the debate about religion. Or, as Nietzsche would put it: between those who can say "Yes" to this universe, this life, and those who say "No! I do not want this world of pain."]

V

The universe has structure. This means that it is not 'anything goes': filling at once and everywhere every possibility of being and not being. Rather, there are certain nodes, relationships, vibrations, spaces,etc which are 'permitted', stable, resonant, etc. [A total everything would be nothing.]

VI

The universe is probablistic. This means that it does its thing with fuzzy interactions, fuzzy logic, fuzzy energy and fuzzy everything else.

VII

However, since there is always a main probability for any element or interaction, the universe is mainly logical and definite. This is helpful for human [and other?] brains which have evolved logical thinking as a tool for (among other things) mapping it/thinking about it. It is even more helpful in that the chair you are about to sit on will probably be there!

VIII

However again, the minor probability of the contradictory or paradoxical outcome always exists, even at the lower 'mechanical' levels of reality - like how can light be both a wave and particles? When we come to the big complex issues of life - like how can war be both heroic and obscene? - the paradoxical nature of the universe shows up again and again. This means that the first axiom of all logical reasoning: "A cannot be both B and not B" does not hold for our universe. [It can be shown that David Hume's criticism of induction, which so freaked Karl Popper and others, can be extended to deduction also.]

IX

The universe self-creates. As Aristotle long since pointed out, 'things' in a dynamic relationship (affecting each other) at once create a new greater 'thing', a new reality, which is more than the sum of its parts. Now those first mentioned 'things' are themselves created by the dynamic relationship of still smaller or lesser 'things' ... and so on and so on. Thus the universe creates itself out of no-thing: a fantastic cascade of ever more complex and wonderful relationships: the miracle of creation mentioned earlier.

X

The universe also un-creates. The other side of the above coin is that when a dynamic relationship ceases, then the higher, the more complex entity which is (was) that relationship is un-created, dies. So the twin miracle of un-creation is also part of the majesty of the universe. Under certain circumstances the universe could un-create itself completely. [Compared to this account, conventional wisdom today accepts that only certain things - like trees, people - are real (perhaps because you can touch them?) and other more complex things - forests, cultures - don't 'really' exist: they are just collective names for a lot of trees/people/whatever. (Thus the cultricide of many native peoples was not really a form of genocide provided the individuals continued to exist, albeit as cultural debris.) In short, reductionist thinking can never see the wood for the trees. It is worth noting that the downgrading of Aristotle in favour of Plato in the early Middle Ages laid the foundations for modern reductionist science.]

XI

The universe contains - perhaps is - a whole raft of tensions, or polarities, between opposites. One of the most significant of these is the tension between energy and form. At one level these are deadly enemies. Form always seeks to contain, to freeze, energy. Energy always seeks to annihilate form. This principle is as evident in society as it is in physics. The tension between the bureaucrat, the mandarin, the organiser and the anarchist, the nihilist, the liberator is ever present. More generally, the ruling system fears the mob as raw energy; the humble people experience the system as oppressive form. Note that the total triumph of form would herald a 'dead' universe; the total triumph of energy an annihilated one.

XII

Despite this tension, it is on the interface between these polarities that it all happens. So in another sense energy and form are partners, needing each other. [The paradox will be no surprise to us now.] Matter, usually thought of as the stuff of the universe, can be seen as quivering energy harnessed by form, or as form informed by energy. In procreation, the male is attracted to the form of the female, the female to the energy of the male. So the creative interface, which applies to other polarities or tensions also, is itself an important property of the universe. Just two examples should do for now. The 'action zone' of the silicon chip, which has made the whole ICT revolution possible, is an incredibly thin layer on the interface between 'p' doped and 'n' doped silicon. The bohemian quarters in old cities, with their ferment of artistic, literary and social creativity, grew up on the interface between respectable, boring, disciplined, resource-rich middle class districts and impoverished, wild, rebellious, fragmented lumpen class districts... [Later, an attempt will be made to explore a dynamic polarity/interface which drives much animal, including human, behaviour.]

XIII

We already noted that the universe is not 'anything goes'. Mae West was wrong: you can have too much (or too little) of a good thing. Aristotle had the concept of the Golden Mean. Ivan Illich has developed this into the very powerful concept tool of the two thresholds. [Its power will become apparent when we come on to economic and social questions.] The two thresholds idea can be taken as describing another important property of the universe. Because our universe is structured, nodal (see V above), only certain orbits or distances are stable for electrons, planets, social space* etc [*e.g. see Jack Parsons: 'Population vs Liberty']. But because it is also fuzzy there is normally a range within which things can happen, work, exist - bounded by the upper and lower thresholds for the given parameter. In the case of Planet Earth (under its present ecology) it has been pointed out - by the proponents of Gaia theory - that the Oxygen in our atmosphere (presently around 21%) has fairly close survival thresholds for most inhabitants: below about 19% mammals would struggle to breathe, while above 23% even wet grass would burn, making much of the planet a tinderbox.

XIV

Another important property of our high complexity universe can be summed up in the phrase: "Every means strives to become an end." Life itself is an outcome of this principle, which needs a slightly less skimpy treatment.

In a physical sense the activity of the universe is driven by Intropy (the opposite of Entropy) as 'high potency' energy tries to disperse and drives physical/chemical reactions in the process. (Much as high level water can scour river beds or turn water wheels as it strives to 'find its level'.) So the high complexity molecules being formed wherever life is imminent are initially only tools, only the means by which Intropy seeks to reduce itself. But 'every means strives to become an end' so these complexes leap at any opportunity to perpetuate themselves, replicate themselves, attain immortality. [It is a debate beyond this summary whether life incidence is statistical, blind, opportunistic or whether there is wisdom input through the inside of the universe (see II above).]

So life is born. And it doesn't stop there! Richard Dawkins, in 'The Blind Watchmaker', gives an unproven but very plausible example of this principle. He argues that about three billion years ago, in the very hot and rigorous conditions then enveloping the earth, silicon chain based life molecules were at first better able to handle the conditions than those based on carbon chains. But as every chemist knows, the carbon chain is far more flexible and stable than the silicon one. And so our silicon cousins, no doubt adapting to changing conditions, began using carbon chains as 'add-ons', as auxilliaries, as means to survival. But 'every means ....' so Dawkins surmises a coup at some stage, with carbon based creatures (our direct ancestors) taking over. The rest, as they say, is history. Now, says Dawkins, we have created silicon based thinking tools with computation powers far beyond our own, as a means to our present goals. He puts the wicked thought that these add-ons may gain enough autonomy to serve their own ends, then master us or dispense with us ... silicon's three billion year revenge!

The means into ends principle has very serious implications in human interactions, which may be tackled in more depth later on. Two examples will do for now. Money, which was supposed to be just a means of exchange, now has us all in thrall: in some senses regulating the planet to the end of the fastest possible growth, i.e. reproduction of itself. (As Norman O Brown has argued: "capital breeds".) Certainly the old maxim "man is the measure of all things" should now be rendered "money is the measure of all things". The news is just as bad for would-be social engineers. You may help to set up a political movement or party fired by the very highest ideals, whether liberal-democratic, communistic, ecological or whatever. In no time at all (historically speaking) this means towards utopia becomes a being in its own right: a self-perpetuating machine serving its own ends - notably staying in power regardless of the original ideals. Think of a few cases? In a narrow sense, Trotsky's dictum of "permanent revolution" was correct. It may be noted in passing that the means into ends principle also applies to religious movements and institutions.

[As a tailpiece, what of Devolve!? Structured to be low-key, tolerant, amateur, non-power seeking - more a think tank and network of friends than a movement: it might be thought more likely to peter out/dissolve (hopefully having made a contribution to the flow of ideas) than become a monster. However, it is not immune from the patterns of the universe.]

XV

The last property of the universe to be listed here should be obvious from all the above: there is no such thing as metaphor. Or, to put it another way, everything is a metaphor: the patterns (don't let's say laws) of the universe are universal to all its levels of complexity.

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THE MISSING BITS?

So what's missing? Perhaps three different categories: -

A

There are a number of features of the known universe that will be noted on our journey as important in understanding how systems (including social systems) work, yet which have not been included above. This will be because they have been judged (perhaps wrongly) either as sub-categories of one of the above principles or as not strictly metaphysics (i.e. they can be contained within normal physical description). Two examples would be the open systems/closed systems distinction (with applications from economics to ecology to social history) and the progress of evolution from hardware to software.

B

At the other extreme, there will be aspects of the metaphysics of our universe where we can't attempt an answer or description because we don't even know the question!! Not much more to say on this, except that there is doubtless urgent work to be done by the inhabitants of a planet in crisis - and that Devolve! exists to throw ideas around against a background of saving/improving the future.

C

In between these cases, there may be issues of fundamental metaphysics affecting both our existence and our conduct of affairs, where we do know the question, yet the answer is not yet clear - the jury is still out. Arguably the most definite and urgent of these can be posed in the form: "Is the universe moral or amoral?" with its attendant begging for definition and context. In human social affairs the moral (technical term normative) question is never far away. No journey of discovery can avoid it, as will be seen. At this general level one must once again mention Friedrich Nietzsche as the pioneer who has at least surmounted the foothills of this mountain.