Excerpt from the theory notebooks
It may be overly axiomatic to claim that Order defines things as what they are not, as much as it defines them as what they are. This is straightforward and obvious enough as to need little comment. Yet, as with any good axiom, it leads to other theories, and therein lie the complications. If it defines the what-is and what-is-not, where does that leave chaos, which ought to fill in the lines and skins of definition? Where is the room for anything other than order, when such a definition leaves so little space for anything but itself?
I believe that the matter to keep in mind is that a definition of a thing is not that thing. Consider a simple sphere, infinitely thin and empty within, entirely theoretical, compared to every equation needed to represent it. I could write those equations very simply, and even extrapolate from them a few interesting others based on peculiarities of unreal geometry. Yet none of this conjures up this impossible sphere; it is merely numbers on paper, and the thin smear of graphite across the surface of dried wood pulp has more reality than all those perfected numbers.
Nonetheless, there is a connection between the numbers and the reality. If a real, imperfect sphere appears, I may draw several conclusions about them, and define much of its nature to someone who cannot pick up something like this little glass bulb lying on my desk, through the appropriate numbers. With enough numbers and words, someone I have never spoken with, a thousand years from now, might be able to recreate another little glass bulb just like this one, so near its twin that even with more specialized tools we could not tell the two apart when laid next to each other. (I ignore, for the moment, the inevitable effects of time on the original. We assume a theoretical comparison, one against the other, each at the same age.)
If the reality can become numbers, and numbers reality again, where is the cold, sharp line between the two? I believe that is the fissure through which chaos seeps, and animates the inert. From numbers to physical representation requires conscious action. It may be a thousand actions spread across a thousand actors, worked through machines that click along doing what they were made to do without any deliberation of their own, but even so at some point those machines were made by someone to interpret the numbers. The collection of numbers was performed through action and intent, even if it was in making yet another machine that would discover them and pass them along. One may theorize an entire city of nothing but machinery, whirring along with analysis of the world and then recreation of it, moving between numbers and reality seamlessly, and yet somewhere someone has been the origin of all of this.
That is where the chaos hides when one attempts to reduce everything to order. It lies in decisions, even those decisions made with one intention that produce the opposite result. There is no perfect static state for the world, because perfection involves the true nature of things, and too many things have true natures that require motion and change. Too many things have natures set in opposition to other natures, and so any perfection of one must oppose the perfection of another. The immovable object and the irresisitable force cannot coexist.
Except perhaps they can, in a universe of so many worlds. The immovable object sits in one shadow, perfect. The irresistable force in another, rampaging all through its finite world, never stopped. If they cannot meet each other, does it matter that they cannot coexist? There they are, both perfectly true within their own spheres of reality or unreality.
And so it all comes down to context again, of which I never have enough...
I believe that the matter to keep in mind is that a definition of a thing is not that thing. Consider a simple sphere, infinitely thin and empty within, entirely theoretical, compared to every equation needed to represent it. I could write those equations very simply, and even extrapolate from them a few interesting others based on peculiarities of unreal geometry. Yet none of this conjures up this impossible sphere; it is merely numbers on paper, and the thin smear of graphite across the surface of dried wood pulp has more reality than all those perfected numbers.
Nonetheless, there is a connection between the numbers and the reality. If a real, imperfect sphere appears, I may draw several conclusions about them, and define much of its nature to someone who cannot pick up something like this little glass bulb lying on my desk, through the appropriate numbers. With enough numbers and words, someone I have never spoken with, a thousand years from now, might be able to recreate another little glass bulb just like this one, so near its twin that even with more specialized tools we could not tell the two apart when laid next to each other. (I ignore, for the moment, the inevitable effects of time on the original. We assume a theoretical comparison, one against the other, each at the same age.)
If the reality can become numbers, and numbers reality again, where is the cold, sharp line between the two? I believe that is the fissure through which chaos seeps, and animates the inert. From numbers to physical representation requires conscious action. It may be a thousand actions spread across a thousand actors, worked through machines that click along doing what they were made to do without any deliberation of their own, but even so at some point those machines were made by someone to interpret the numbers. The collection of numbers was performed through action and intent, even if it was in making yet another machine that would discover them and pass them along. One may theorize an entire city of nothing but machinery, whirring along with analysis of the world and then recreation of it, moving between numbers and reality seamlessly, and yet somewhere someone has been the origin of all of this.
That is where the chaos hides when one attempts to reduce everything to order. It lies in decisions, even those decisions made with one intention that produce the opposite result. There is no perfect static state for the world, because perfection involves the true nature of things, and too many things have true natures that require motion and change. Too many things have natures set in opposition to other natures, and so any perfection of one must oppose the perfection of another. The immovable object and the irresisitable force cannot coexist.
Except perhaps they can, in a universe of so many worlds. The immovable object sits in one shadow, perfect. The irresistable force in another, rampaging all through its finite world, never stopped. If they cannot meet each other, does it matter that they cannot coexist? There they are, both perfectly true within their own spheres of reality or unreality.
And so it all comes down to context again, of which I never have enough...