…Titled the “law of increasing functional information,” it holds that evolving systems, biological and non-biological, always form from numerous interacting building blocks like atoms or cells, and that processes exist – such as cellular mutation – that generate many different configurations. Evolution occurs, it holds, when these various configurations are subject to selection for useful functions.
“We have well-documented laws that describe such everyday phenomena as forces, motions, gravity, electricity and magnetism and energy,” Hazen said. “But these laws do not, individually or collectively, describe or explain why the universe keeps getting more diverse and complex at scales of atoms, molecules, minerals and more.”
In stars, for instance, just two elements – hydrogen and helium – were the main ingredients in the first stellar generation following the Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago that initiated the universe.
That first generation of stars, in the thermonuclear fusion caldrons at their cores, forged about 20 heavier elements such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen that were blasted into space when they exploded at the end of their life cycles. The subsequent generation of stars that formed from the remnants of the prior generation then similarly forged almost 100 more elements.
Here is the abstract from the paper:
Physical laws—such as the laws of motion, gravity, electromagnetism, and thermodynamics—codify the general behavior of varied macroscopic natural systems across space and time. We propose that an additional, hitherto-unarticulated law is required to characterize familiar macroscopic phenomena of our complex, evolving universe. An important feature of the classical laws of physics is the conceptual equivalence of specific characteristics shared by an extensive, seemingly diverse body of natural phenomena. Identifying potential equivalencies among disparate phenomena—for example, falling apples and orbiting moons or hot objects and compressed springs—has been instrumental in advancing the scientific understanding of our world through the articulation of laws of nature. A pervasive wonder of the natural world is the evolution of varied systems, including stars, minerals, atmospheres, and life. These evolving systems appear to be conceptually equivalent in that they display three notable attributes: 1) They form from numerous components that have the potential to adopt combinatorially vast numbers of different configurations; 2) processes exist that generate numerous different configurations; and 3) configurations are preferentially selected based on function. We identify universal concepts of selection—static persistence, dynamic persistence, and novelty generation—that underpin function and drive systems to evolve through the exchange of information between the environment and the system. Accordingly, we propose a “law of increasing functional information”: The functional information of a system will increase (i.e., the system will evolve) if many different configurations of the system undergo selection for one or more functions.
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Well, well, well, I like that highlighted sentence. That is precisely what FIML does. FIML practice affords partners numerous opportunities to examine and analyze how their communications actually function, and from that choose or learn how to improve their communicational and psychological functions, how to optimize them. FIML is an acronym that stands for Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistics. Function or functionality is not just a buzz word. It describes an active dynamic process which, for sentient beings, is the stuff of experience. In this sense awareness and experience along with functionality can be understood as primary components of the universe and everything we know. Karma also describes a process of conscious functionality, each bit of which has consequence. It describes a dynamic, dramatic reality of being and becoming and is best not understood merely as a judgement of reality. ABN
American Buddhist Net 