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.
