It is proposed to integrate life and consciousness into physics through the concepts and mathematics of entropy and information theory; information inversely related to entropy. This proposal follows on the observation by Schrödinger that life functions through negative entropy. The implicate order of David Bohm, as the explicate order unfolds, can be conjectured as entropy flow. As a consequence, the appearance of negative entropy systems (life) would not be an anomalous event but intrinsic to cosmology and part of the dynamics of the universe starting from the Big Bang. This approach can be viewed as a variation of the anthropic principle that asks what entropic reality is consistent with life and consciousness. Further, this approach can be conceptualized as a physics centric interpretation of dual-aspect monism.
The entropy associated with human life would be high information entropy (Shannon entropy) corresponding to low Boltzmann entropy. A first approach would be the measurement of the information of negative entropy systems and to relate this measurement to the entropy found in the universe. Proposed calculations for the information entropy of human life, consciousness and human society are presented, as well as proposals for relating these estimates to measurements of entropy currently found in physics, providing a preliminary mathematical relation between physics, life, and consciousness.
Human consciousness creates information through language and thought. The information content of the internet is used as a proxy of the information (negative entropy) created by human consciousness; an estimate is provided. This value is then compared to an estimate of the entropy of the background radiation of the universe and the entropy of a solar mass black hole making the entropy of consciousness part of the physics. In addition, an analogy is made to white holes. Life can be conceptualized as an event horizon, with consciousness as the singularity in this structure comprising an information white hole.
Using this analogy, a dynamic can be conjectured - a consolidating field conceptually similar to gravity - driving an increase in complexity, creating information, life and consciousness. From the concepts developed and the basic estimates provided, the most significant prediction is the continued development of more complex life forms, the increased development and complexity of consciousness, and the creation of information on a cosmological scale. Consciousness would not be the sole result of natural selection, but would be the part of cosmological development based on a, at present, undefined field.
As consciousness (and life) creates information and as information is, by definition, intrinsically related to entropy. Consciousness and life must rationally be part of the physics of the universe.
All physical theory can be related to field theory. Matter appears as the consequence of field theory equations. Consciousness and life, by analogy must then be the result of field equations. The need then is to identify the field underlying complexity and the emergence of consciousness and life.
It could be postulated that it is a generational field, such as the electromagnetic field that generates photons.
There are unexplained phenomena in mathematics and physics, they include:
- Gödel's incompleteness theorems.
- Quantum superposition.
- Wave and particle duality.
- Suskind’s and Maldacena conjecture on the unity of ER Bridge and the EPR Pair.
- Consciousness.
- Life.
These phenomena appear on the surface to indicate some fundamental dynamic is yet to be explicitly developed in physics. This, as yet unnamed dynamic, has a self-reflective, enfolding and complexity increasing characteristic. Field Theory is the dominant explanatory method of physics. I would call this the conjectured field the Complementary field which would include aspects of self-reflection or duality.
There could be a relation between the self reflection found Gödel's theorem (using Cantor’s Slash) and the increasing complexity of life and consciousness. It seems conceivable that the mathematics of self-reflection found in Goedel’s theorem would lead to increased complexity.
This also seems consistent with Bohm’s concept of the unfolding Implicate reality.
There is also emerging mathematics that has self-reflective elements similar to elements of Goedel’s theorem Bohm’s conjectures.
Bohm & Hiley (1993) offer the implicate order as the solution to the issue of completeness related to quantum theory, “The essential features of the implicate order are, as we have seen, that the whole universe is in some way enfolded in everything and that each thing is enfolded in the whole” (p. 382).
The Bohm Implicate and explicate order could be conceptualized as a duality – “enfolded” - separated by a boundary and connected by a topological mapping, the explicate manifesting through a Born Rule type of mechanism:
P(a = λi | Ψ) = |(ei , Ψ)|2
(Logiurato & Smerzi 2012, p. 1804)
This conjecture does not say that consciousness is a quantum phenomenon, but that the consciousness problem is a reflection of the same fundamental dualism in reality, that is the basis of both consciousness and the wave/particle dualism found in quantum mechanics.
Chu spaces were developed as a tool for representing concurrency in programming where a computer system as “a pair of sets – the set of states that it can be in, and the set of events (occurrences of transitions) that can happen during it’s execution” Gupta (1994, p. 2).
Gupta (1994) provides the essential insight into a Chu space:
“A set of events, and a set of states each of which contains the history by being represented as a series of events” (p. 2).
Chu Spaces has been conjectured to offer a mathematical approach to duality and have already been extended to quantum mechanics. (Maruyama, 2017). This conjecture extends the possible relation of Chu Spaces to consciousness, life, and implicate order and explicate of David Bohm.
“Pratt [Pra92b] has observed a duality between time and information based on the intuitions behind event-state duality. Events are regarded as instantaneous, occurring at a particular time, and they add to the total accumulated information. Dually no information is accumulated in a state, which adds to the total amount of time that has passed…” Gupta (1994, p. 38).
A model has already been constructed representing quantum systems using Chu Spaces (Abramsky 2012).
“We show how quantum systems can be represented as Chu spaces…in such a way that the Chu morphisms correspond exactly to the physical meaningful symmetries of the system” (Abramsky 2012 abstract…we obtain a full and faithful functor from the groupoid of Hilbert spaces and their symmetries to Chu spaces” (Abramsky 2012 abstract).
It would appear to be reasonable to conjecture that a reflective mapping from two topological spaces separated by boundary may be the way forward for the mathematical modelling of dualism and consciousness.
Future research could develop a mathematical model (perhaps symmetries/conserved quantities) of the dynamics of negative entropy, gravity, stars, light, life, consciousness with a goal of developing an integrated cosmology in which consciousness is to the lowest entropy system (the highest information system).
This can be seen as teleological.
References
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