The Ingenious Mind of Nature: Deciphering the Patterns of Man, Society, and the Universe PDF
Preview The Ingenious Mind of Nature: Deciphering the Patterns of Man, Society, and the Universe
The Ingenious Mind of Nature Deciphering the Patterns of Man, Society, and the Universe The Ingenious Mind of Nature Deciphering the Patterns of Man, Society, and the Universe GEORGE M. HALL SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, LLC Library of Congress Cataloglng-tn-Publlcatlon Data Ha II, George M. The tngentous mtnd of nature : dectphertng the patterns of. man, soctety, and the untverse I George M. Hall. p. CM. Includes btbltographtcal references and tndex. ISBN 978-0-306-45571-1 ISBN 978-1-4899-6020-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-6020-7 1. Sctence--Mtscellanea. 2. Soctal sctences--Mtscellanea. I. Tttle. 0173.H185 1997 003--dc21 96-45673 CIP Figure 1 and image used on all chapter-opening pages, Negative #320446, courtesy of the Department of Library Services, American Museum of Natural History. Figures 8, 33 (nuclear cloud), 52, and 57 courtesy of the National Archives. Figure 19, Photo #61608-H, courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. Figure 29 courtesy of the Bettmann Archive. Figure 35 courtesy of American Airlines and the Tucson Air Museum Foundation of Pima County. Figure 38 courtesy of Dr. Sherwood Casjens, University of Utah Medical Center. The passage on p. 150 from What Is Life?: The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell by Erwin Schrodinger and Issac Newton's notes in Figure 36 from a photograph in Never at Rest: A Biography of Issac Newton by RichardS. Westfall are reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press. The passage on p. 63 from Never Call Retreat by Bruce Catton (©1965 Bruce Catton) is reprinted with the permission of Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Ada is a registered trademark of the United States Department of Defense. IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Inc. Tinkertoy is a registered trademark of Hasbro, Inc. ISBN 978-0-306-45571-1 © 1997 George M. Hall Originally published by Plenum Publishing Corporation, New York in 1997 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1997 10 9 8 7 6 54 3 2 1 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher For my teachers, especially Sister Mary Frances, Order of Saint Benedict, Linton Hall, Virginia Nature is thought immersed in matter. - AMOS BRONSON ALCOTI The source of this book goes back 46 years to a biology class at Lowell High School in San Francisco. The first and second semesters were divided into botanical and z9ological studies, respectively. In the second semester, the course was organized by phyla to emphasize the evolution of various organs and physi ological processes. It became apparent to me that by the time we reached the humble earthworm, all of the human organs and processes, except the skeleton (and liver), had been developed, at least in rudimentary form. Evolution from that point forward was an improvement on these mechanics rather than a radical departure from them. I had no way of figuring out why, but the question lodged itself in my mind and would not let loose. vii viii 0 THE INGENIOUS MIND OF NATURE Four years later, I asked my professor of thermodynamics at West Point to explain the meaning of entropy. He said that it was something readily measured but difficult to visualize. He then offered an analogy wherein low entropy was like an artillery piece with all of the shells piled neatly and ready for use, while high entropy meant the shells were laying about helter-skelter. In other words, he was saying that entropy was an inverse function of a useful arrangement. As this explanation was intended as an analogy, I never dreamed of taking it literally. The matter rested this way for nearly 20 years. The necessary insight came with an unrelated inquiry into the nature of energy in 1973. To make a long story short, I came to sense that entropy was literally a function of arrangement, and therefore dynamic inorganic systems could be understood as a kind of computer program. This led, in late 1973, to the wider assumption that physical genetics and organic pathology, especially cancer, were an extension of this model. The critical moment is described in the text. Still, the state of computer science, and the budding disciplines of chaos science, catastro phe theory, and complexity theory, had not reached the point where this thesis could be hammered out in sufficient detail and linked to current thinking, at least not to the degree to warrant serious consideration. During the next 15 years, I published a number of studies in military and defense theory and became involved in computer science on a full-time basis, publishing books and articles in that field too. This work provided the necessary background to proceed with this book. In preparing an early manuscript, it dawned on me that the principles governing genetics and evolution applied figuratively to all systems, and so the argu ment expanded from the biological to a more comprehensive reach, though it took five years to write it. This leaves the question of just how much of the argument of this book is mine, and how much is the property of others. I can truthfully say that the only original idea is the thesis itself, which is stated in a single sentence near the beginning of the book. At that, Sir Isaac Newton postulated the same idea, at least PREFACE 0 ix in part, and published it in 1704 as part of his Opticks. Every thing else is a matter of linking that central idea to known phenomena as a matter of logical derivation. Also, because of differences among definitions in various disciplines that basi cally described the same idea, I was more or less forced to develop a modified glossary, then point out how it could be linked to other terins extant. That, too, has a hint of originality to it, yet only as mere semantics. One last point. The presentation of a new concept always raises the question of just how far it should be developed before running it up the flagpole, so to speak. There is no easy answer to that question. The goal is to present a convincing argument, but differ ent readers will react at different rates. Closely related to this question is the matter of proportionality between abstract and physical systems on the one hand, and psychical and sociological systems on the other. The focus of the book, as the name of the concept-physiogenesis-suggests, is on physical systems. The purposes of including other types of systems is to demonstrate the symmetry or universality of the concept, not to apply it with equal depth. Moreover, such application would easily quadruple the length of the book on the grounds that sociological systems, and the mind, are considerably more complex than physical systems. 0 0 0 I am indebted to Professor Sherwood Casjens at the Univer sity of Utah Medical Center for providing the micrograph of the T-4 bacteriophage, and to Mrs. Kirsten Oftedahl, the curator at the Pima Air & Space Museum (Tucson, Arizona), for the photograph of the DC-3 aircraft. I also wish to thank Mrs. Polin Lei, at the University of Arizona Medical College library, for locating selected material related to physiology. At Plenum Press, I wish to thank my editor Melicca McCormick for bearing with what perforce was a difficult manuscript. Lastly, I acknowledge the detailed, often overlooked work of the production editor, Arun Das, for seeing the manu script through to print. PART I. LAY OF THE LAND 1. Concept 3 2. Categories, Structure, and Factors 27 3. Mechanics 47 4. Derivations and Applications 71 PART II. HISTORY 5. Roots among the Physical Sciences 93 6. Insight from the Social Sciences 109 xi xii D THE INGENIOUS MIND OF NATURE PART III. ABSTRACT SYSTEMS 7. Truth, Logic, and Communications 131 8. Automation and Computer Science 149 9. Military Science and Game Theory 167 PART IV. PHYSICAL SYSTEMS 10. Physics and Chemistry 185 11. Engineering 204 12. Physiology and Genetics 222 13. Pathology 244 14. Blueprint of Evolution 264 PART V. SOCIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS 15. The Psyche, Marriage, and Organizational Behavior 283 16. Economics 307 17. Nations and Government 326 18. International Relations and War 341 19. Ethics, Theology, and Jurisprudence 357 Epilogue 375 Glossary 379 Appendix A. Experiments, Models, Meta-Analyses 387 Appendix B. Comparative Systems 397 Notes 407 Selected Reading 431 Index 435
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