Boston Common

  When first reading The Turning Point at least a decade ago – struck by how much Fritjof Capra mirrors the teachings of the Buddha. Following, excerpts from this book shared with friend Dr. Cody Masek two years ago. Capra offers basic, scientific principles about the fundamental nature of life and the most effective means of changing our perceptions, truly transcendent and directly applicable to developing mindfulness along the Buddha’s path (and ours) toward enlightenment.

Excerpts from

The Turning Point

by Fritjof Capr

The Turning Point, Science, Society, and the Rising Culture, Fritjof Capra; Bantam Books, published by arrangement with Simon and Schuster; Simon & Schuster edition published March 1982; Copyright 1982 by Fritjof Capra.

The Systems View of Life – Page 268 and ff.  (emphasis added)

Machines and Organisms

  The first obvious difference between machines and organisms is the fact that machines are constructed, whereas organisms grow. This fundamental difference means that the understanding of organisms must be process-oriented. For example, it is impossible to convey an accurate picture of a cell by means of static drawings or by describing the cell in terms of static forms. Cells, like all living systems, have to be understood in terms of processes reflecting the system’s dynamic organization.

  . . . Although the organism as a whole exhibits well-defined regularities and behavior patterns, the relationships between its parts are not rigidly determined. . . This order is achieved by coordinating activities that do not rigidly constrain the parts but leave room for variation and flexibility, and it is this flexibility that enables living organisms to adapt to new circumstances.

Page 269 – Recalling Lipton’s view “Change your perceptions, change your biology.  Note this is “Pre-Lipton” by maybe twenty years.

  The nonlinear interconnectedness of living organisms indicate that the conven­tional attempts of biomedical science to associate diseases with single causes are highly problematic. Moreover, it shows the fallacy of “genetic determinism,” the belief that various physical or mental features of an individual organism are “controlled” or “dictated” by its genetic makeup. The systems view makes it clear that genes do not uniquely determine the functioning of an organism as cogs and wheels determine the working of a clock. Rather, genes are integral parts of an ordered whole and thus conform to its systemic organization.

Systems View: Self-organization / Self Renewal / Self Transcendence

  The internal plasticity and flexibility of living systems, whose functioning is con­trolled by dynamic relations rather than rigid mechanical structures, gives rise to a number of characteristic properties that can be seen as different aspects of the same dynamic principle—the principle of self-organization. A living system is a self-organizing system, which means that its order in structure and function is not imposed by the environment but is established by the system itself. Self-organizing systems exhibit a certain degree of autonomy, for example, they tend to establish their size according to internal principles of organization, independent of environ­mental influences. This does not mean that living systems are isolated from their environment; on the contrary, they interact with it continually, but this interaction does not determine their organization. The two principle dynamic phenomena of self-organization are self-renewal—the ability of living systems continuously to renew and recycle their components while maintaining the integrity of their overall structure—and self-transcendence [love this one!! – dfs] the ability to reach out creatively beyond physical and mental boundaries in the processes of learning, development, and evolution.

some really good stuff on next few pages. . .

Systems View - continuing at bottom of page 269

  The relative autonomy of self-organizing systems sheds new light on the age-old philosophical question of free will. From the systems point of view, both determinism and freedom are relative concepts. To the extent that a system is autonomous from its environment, it is free; to the extent that it depends on it through continuous interaction, its activity will be shaped by environmental influences. The relative autonomy of organ­isms usually increases with their complexity, and it reaches its culmination in human beings.

  The relative concept of free will seems to be consistent with the views of mystical traditions that exhort their followers to transcend the notion of an isolated self and become aware that we are inseparable parts of the cosmos in which we are embedded. The goal of these traditions is to shed all ego sensations completely and, in mystical experience, merge with the totality of the cosmos. Once such a state is reached, the question of free will seems to lose its meaning. If I am the universe, there can be no “outside” influences and all my actions will be spontaneous and free. From the point of view of mystics, therefore, the notion of free will is relative, limited and—as they would say—illusory, like all other concepts we use in our rational descriptions of reality.

Systems View of Life . . . top of p. 271 – mid-paragraph

  The stability of self-organizing systems is utterly dynamic and must not be confused with equilibrium. It consists in maintaining the same overall structure in spite of ongoing changes and replacements of its components. A cell, for example, according to Weiss, “retains its identity far more conservatively and remains far more similar to itself from moment to moment, as well as to any other cell of the same strain, than one could ever predict from knowing only about its inventory of molecules, macromolecules, and organelles which is subject to incessant change, reshuffling and milling of its popula­tion.”  The same is true for human organisms. We replace all our cells, except for those in the brain, within a few years, yet we have no trouble recognizing our friends even after long periods of separation. Such is the dynamic stability of self-organizing systems.

  Phenomena of self-organization is not limited to living matter but occurs also in certain chemical systems . . . [discussion of this follows] . . . Dissipative chemical struc­tures display the dynamics of self-organization in its simplest form, exhibiting most of the phenomena characteristic of life—self-renewal, adaptation, evolution, and even primitive forms of “mental” processes. The only reason why they are not considered alive is that they do not reproduce or form cells. These intriguing systems thus represent a link between animate and inanimate matter. Whether they are called living organisms or not is, ultimately, a matter of convention.

Self Renewal - the Systems View of Life – bottom p. 271

  Self-renewal is an essential aspect of self-organizing systems. Whereas a machine is constructed to produce a specific product or to carry out a specific task intended by its designer, an organism is primarily engaged in renewing itself; cells are breaking down and building up structures, tissues and organs are replacing their cells in continuing cycles. . . the overall pattern of the organism is preserved, and this remarkable ability of self-maintenance persists under a variety of circumstances, including changing environ­mental conditions and many kinds of interference.

  . . . The other side (of species adaptation to environmental changes through genetic mutations) is the creative development of new structures and functions without any environmental pressure, which is a manifestation of the potential for self-transcen­dence that is inherent in all living organisms.

Note: Capra discusses self-transcendence at length. There’s a really clear synthesizing of “The Systems View” in the film, Mind Walk, produced by another Capra – Bernt.

  Here’s another shot at Capra’s “Systems View of Life” from Bernt Capra’s film, Mind Walk” – the woman physicist, Sonia to the poet and politician:  Self-renewing ~ Self Transcending – living forms possess an inherent tendency to reach out and create new forms; will go on exploring whether they need to or not – will surprise themselves – creating beauty. . . Each to the other, they co-evolve.” This encourages the poet some­what.  And the politician says, “I’ve got it. We evolve with the planet, not on the planet.”  Now “going back to the beginning of all this:

p. 90

Mass is nothing but a form of energy

  The concepts of space and time are so basic for our description of natural phe­nomena that their radical modification in relativity theory entailed a modification of the whole framework we use in physics to describe nature. The most important con­sequence of the new relativistic framework has been the realization that mass is nothing but a form of energy. Even an object at rest has energy storied in its mass, and that relation between the two is given by Einstein’s famous equation E = mc², c being the speed of light.

  Once it is seen to be a form of energy, mass is no longer required to be indestruc­tible, but can be transformed into other forms of energy. This happens continually in the collision processes of high-energy physics, in which material particles are created and destroyed, their masses being transformed into energy and motion and vice versa. The collisions of subatomic particles are our main tool for studying their prop­erties, and the relation between mass and energy is essential for their description. The equivalence of mass and energy has been verified innumerable times and physi­cists have become completely familiar with it—so familiar, in fact, that they measure the masses of particles in the corresponding energy units.

Mass seen as bundles of energy

  The discovery that mass is a form of energy has had a profound influence on our picture of matter and has forced us to modify our concept of a particle in an essential way. In modern physics, mass is no longer associated with a material substance, and hence particles are not seen as consisting of any basic “stuff,” but as bundles of energy. Energy, however, is associated with activity, with processes, and this implies that the nature of subatomic particles is intrinsically dynamic. To understand this better we must remember that these particles can be conceived only in relativistic terms, that is, in terms of a framework where space and time are fused into a four-dimensional contin­uum. In such a framework the particles can no longer be pictured as small billiard balls, or small grains of sand.

The being of matter and its activity cannot be separated . . .

  These images are inappropriate not only because they represent particles as separate objects, but also because they are static, three-dimensional images. Subatomic particles must be conceived as four-dimensional entities in space-time. Their forms have to be understood dynamically, as forms in space and time. Particles are dynamic patterns, patterns of activity which have a space aspect and a time aspect. Their space aspect makes them appear as objects with a certain mass, their time aspect as processes involving the equivalent energy. Thus the being of matter and its activity cannot be separated, they are but different aspects of the same space-time reality.

Force (energy) and matter seen to have common origin
in dynamic patterns of particles

  The relativistic view of matter has drastically affected not only our conception of particles, but also our picture of the forces between these particles. In a relativistic description of particle interactions, the forces between the particles—their mutual attraction or repulsion—are pictured as the exchange of other particles. This concept is very difficult to visualize, but it is needed for an understanding of subatomic pheno­­­­­­­­­­­mena. It links the forces between constituents of matter to the properties of other constituents of matter, and thus unifies the two concepts, force and matter, which had seemed to be fundamentally different in Newtonian physics. Both force and matter are now seen to have their common origin in the dynamic patterns that we call particles. These energy patterns of the subatomic world form the stable nuclear, atomic, and molecular structures which build up matter and give it its macroscopic solid aspect, thus making us believe that it is made of some material substance. At the macroscopic level this notion of substance is a useful approximation, but at the atomic level it no longer makes sense. Atoms consist of particles, and these particles are not made of any material stuff. When we observe them we never see any substance; what we observe are dynamic patterns continually changing into one another – the continuous dance of energy.

There is only the dance

  The two basic theories of modern physics have thus transcended the principal aspects of the Cartesian world view and of Newtonian physics. Quantum theory has shown that subatomic particles are not isolated grains of matter but are probability patterns, inter­connections in an inseparable cosmic web that includes human observers and their consciousness. Relativity theory has made the cosmic web come alive, so to speak, by revealing its intrinsically dynamic character; by showing that its activity is the very essence of its being. In modern physics, the image of the universe as a machine has been transcended by a view of it as one indivisible, dynamic whole whose parts are essentially interrelated and can be understood only as patterns of a cosmic process. At the sub­atomic level the interrelations and interactions between the parts of the whole are more fundamental than the parts themselves. There is motion but there are, ultimately, no moving objects; there is activity but there are no actors. There are no dancers, there is only the dance.

(from dfs) – Forgive this intrusion, but couldn’t resist:

[There is only the dance, another expression of the profound law] . . .

As within pure lapis lazuli a golden image in made apparent,
so the World-honored One in the great assembly
expounds the meaning of the profound law. – Chapter One, The Lotus Sutra, “Introductory”

S-matrix theory – p. 92

  . . . At present there are two different kinds of “quantum-relativistic” theories in particle physics that have been successful in different areas. . . S-matrix theory is more relevant to the theme of this book, since it has deep implications for science as a whole.

A philosophy of nature

  The philosophical foundation of S-matrix theory is known as the bootstrap approach. Geoffrey Chew proposed it in the early 1960s, and he and other physicists have used it to develop a comprehensive theory of strongly interacting particles, together with a more general philosophy of nature. According to the bootstrap philosophy, nature cannot be reduced to fundamental entities, like fundamental building blocks of matter, but has to be understood entirely through self-consistency. All of physics has to follow uniquely from the requirement that its components be consistent with one another and with themselves.This idea constitutes a radical departure from the traditional spirit of basic research in physics which had always been bent on finding the fundamental constituents of matter. At the same time it is the culmination of the conception of the material world as an interconnected web of relations that emerged from quantum theory. The boot­strap philosophy not only abandons the idea of fundamental building blocks of matter, but accepts no fundamental entities whatsoever—no fundamental constants, laws, or equations. The universe is seen as a dynamic web of interrelated events. None of the properties of any part of this web is fundamental, they all follow from the properties of the other parts, and the overall consistency of their interrelations determines the structure of the entire web.

Following next – One of the most profound systems of Western thought, raising it to the level of Buddhist or Taoist philosophy.

p. 93

  The fact that the bootstrap approach does not accept any fundamental entities makes it, in my opinion, one of the most profound systems of Western thought, raising it to the level of Buddhist or Taoist philosophy. At the same time it is a very difficult approach to physics, one that has been pursued by only a small minority of physicists. The bootstrap philosophy is too foreign to traditional ways of thinking to be seriously appreciated yet, and this lack of appreciation extends also to S-matrix theory. It is curious that although the basic concepts of the theory are used by all particle physicist whenever they analyze the results of particle collisions and compare them to their theoretical predictions, not a single Nobel prize has so far been awarded to any of the outstanding physicists who con­tributed to the development of S-matrix theory over the past two decades.

Properties of particles determined by methods of observation

  In the framework of S-matrix theory, the bootstrap approach attempts to derive all properties of particles and their interactions uniquely from the requirement of self-consistency. The only “fundamental” laws accepted are a few very general principles that are required by the methods of observation and are essential parts of the scientific framework. All other aspects of particle physics are expected to emerge as a necessary consequence of self-consistency. If this approach can be carried out successfully, the philosophical implications will be very profound. The fact that all the properties of particles are determined by principles closely related to the methods of observation would mean that the basic structures of the material world are determined, ultimately, by the way we look at this world, that the observed patterns of matter are reflections of patterns of mind.

From Hui-neng’s Enlightenment, Here and Now:

The core of the mind now comprehends that the outer world is but a manifestation of one's own mind, and this understanding becomes a massive liberation. In enlighten­ment the eye of wisdom is opened to an intuition of the heart of being, a perfected vision tran­scending all dualities, the self-realization of our real selves.

More on Particles and the Bootstrap Theory

p. 94

  The picture of subatomic particles that emerges from the bootstrap theory can be summed up in the provocative phrase:  Every particle consists of all other particles.

  It must not be imagined, however, that each of them contains all the others in a classical, static sense.  Subatomic particles are not separate entities but interrelated energy patterns in an ongoing dynamic process.  These patterns do not “contain” one another but rather “involve” one another in a way that can be given a precise mathematical meaning but cannot easily be expressed in words.