1. Introduction

2. The Measurement Problem, Irreversiblity and The Universality of Theories

3. The 1st Law of Thermodynamics, Perpetual Motion, and the Denial of Dualist Interactionism

4. The 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics as Universal Entailments and the Question of Fundamentality in Physics

5. Fundamental Physics Is the Physics of Evolution

5.2. The 4th Law of Thermodynamics and How It ‘Makes the World’

This section begins expanding on the fundamentality of the 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics as universal ontological and epistemological entailments with a some brief historical highlights from their classical origins where we look to revive components of their significance often lost or watered down in their more recent characterizations. This is followed with a short review of Boltzmann’s (failed) attempt to reduce the 2nd Law to a stochastic collision function, and the calamitous misconstrual of the 2nd Law as a “law of disorder” that followed. And finally growing out of this context the 4th Law of Thermodynamics and the universal ordering imperative derived from it that provides the universal basis for the generative opportunistic evolutionary ordering and differentiation (complexification) that is the known universe is discussed and explicated.

5.2.1. Simple Classical Demonstrations of the Ontic Fundamentality of the 1st Law of Thermodynamics

The received view in the first half of the 19th century, notably at complete odds with ordinary everyday experience, was that heat (then “the caloric”) was a conserved substance. The error of this idea was challenged when Davies, rubbing ice cubes together to produce heat from friction to melt them, Rumford producing heat wtih the boring of cannon barrels (and the duller the boring bit the more), and Mayer brought the temperature of a jar of water up by shaking it. Mayer’s paper on this, effectively what they all showed, namely the equivalence of mechanical energy and heat (that heat could be produced by performing mechanical work) was firmly rejected by the academy. It was Joule who, after many rejections himself, was finally able to convince at least key players in the establishment with his now famous paddle wheel experiment [65] (Figure 2), and this put down a solid foundation for what became the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, or the law of energy conservation.

Other experiments on the equivalence of heat and other forms of energy (e.g., chemical, electrical) confirmed what the 1st Law says which is that all real world processes consist of transformations of one form of energy into another (e.g, mechanical, chemical, electrical or heat) and that the total quantity of energy is always conserved. The law, as we have noted, was completed in the 20th century with Einstein’s [16] demonstration that mass (matter) is also a form of energy (E = mc² ), making the law the universal conservation of mass-energy. The deep and universal symmetry that sits behind the 1st Law gives ample reason for its designation as the “1st Law” because without such a symmetry, namely universal time-translation symmetry there could be no other laws all. Although as we have seen, it is demonstrated and quantified in very simple falsifiable experiments a posteriori, understood deeply enough, it is simply put, no less than an a priori universal entailment, or first principle on which the existence of the entire manifest world and our perception of it depends. It is the symmetry out of and through which the processually constituted existence of the entire manifest universe has and continues to evolve into being—fully inclusive as an ontic entailment without exception of all the processual things like acts of measurement, the ability to take measurements, or observations (cognitive acts), or epistemic acts of any kind, and agents like us who do it and recursively explicate it. Without time-translation symmetry, non of these things, as we discussed above in more detail would be possible. It is truly fundamental in this sense. Reference the Clausius [66] statement here expressing the law:

“The energy of the universe is constant”

Falsifiable test of first and last resort: Produce a perpetual motion machine of the first kind (violating the conservation of mass-energy).

5.2.2. The Universal Entailment of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics Necessarily (Although Unintentionally) Demonstrated by Joule’s Classic Experiment

Looking now again at Figure 2 in a different way allows us to make some additional insights to further build out and illustrate some of the main points we have introduced earlier. In particular, Joule’s experiment, a demonstration or empirical proof (a falsifiable quantitive demonstration) of the1st Law, in this case the equivalence of mechanical energy and heat, is an act of measurement with a simple but ingenious measuring device (joules/Kelvins). What is notable here, but was not noted by Joule is that the experiment also demonstrates (or “proves” if you will) in the same sense as the 1st or depends on, that is fully entails the 2nd Law too. Significantly, although in the air, the 2nd Law had not been identified at this time but regardless it is shown here unavoidably and straightforwardly (although, again, not noticed) with Joule’s demonstration of the 1st Law which, again, it entirely depends on. This allows us to highlight and illustrate the act of measurement discussed in the first section of this paper, and fact that it is unavoidably an irreversible, that is entropy producing process, following from the out-of-equilibrium initial conditions in this case set up by Joule, but driven by 2nd Law forcing.

Further, to give this unavoidable physical meaning, the change in entropy that (per the Carnot-Clausius inequality or “balance equation” of the 2nd Law) must always be

∆S ≥ 0

(1)

where ∆S = 0 corresponds to the final equilibrium state of the system when the weight has stopped falling and the paddle wheel has consequently ceased to turn, can be quantified straightforwardly measured with the same degree of accuracy as Joules’ measure of the energy by the classical thermodynamic method

∆S = ∆Q/T (J/K)

(2)

It may be worth noting, but not with the significance of the fundamental entailment we have shown here for the 2nd Law, that Joule’s thermometer (or any generalized measuring device) at the same time depends on the The Zeroth law, the transitivity of equilbrium states (viz. if A is in thermal equilibrium with B and B is in thermal equilibrium with C then C will be in thermal equilibrium with A). This law which with a proper understanding of the 2nd Law can in fact be derived from it and is therefore not at all a law or fundamental law in the way the 1st and 2nd Laws are. Likewise the 3rd Law which importantly, but simply provides that the quantity of entropy can be expressed on an absolutle scale where the entropy of perfectly crystalline substances is zero at zero Kelvins (-273.15C, -459.67F). Of course, again, having a scale for conducting uniform measurements only has meaning if an act of measurement can otherwise occur and this entails the 1st and 2nd Laws.

5.2.3. Recovering the Classical Active (Forceful) End-Directed Nature of the Second Law from Historical Dilution

The time-translation symmetry or conservation expressed by the 1st Law gives us a starting place for building an evolutionary, that is fundamental, processual physics—the ontic fundamentality, out of and through which the manifest world has evolved or come into being. As noted above, this symmetry, the conservation of energy (mass-energy) gives us the time-translation symmetry entailed, that is nomologically necessitated, by such an evolution. Left to this symmetry alone, however, there is no reason or cause for anything to happen at all. There is no reason to not be left with a Parmenidian static reality. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, entailed as we have shown in the act of measurement, however, provides the reason. The 1st Law gives is the ontological what that this processualism minimally consists of, but the 2nd Law tells us why there is any processualism at all. The laws are universally mutually entailed in and every process there is. If the 1st Law is “persistence” then the 2nd Law is “change” for It is with the 2nd Law that active, that is causal, universal end-directed behavior comes into the world [11,12].

The causally active (forceful) end-directed behavior of the 2nd Law and the deep and fundamental universal nature of it has been obfuscated in many theoretical rephrasings since it was first recognized by the early classical thermodynamicists in the 19th century (see [16[). Most prominent among these is Boltzmann’s attempt to save the static causally closed mechanical world view by attempting to reduce the 2nd Law to to a stochastic collision function (next section below) and then it is fair to say Shannon’s unfortunate use of the term “entropy’ for a completely non-physical quantity in “information theory” (a practice which has only increased in recent years) would be next. Beyond this, thermodynamics is often taught, for reasons (often hidden) under the impress of the hegemony of first classical and then statistical mechanics, in a way that hides the active, and most essential part of what the law is. For example, it is entirely ordinary for physics texts to give the 2nd Law in either of the two following ways, the first due to Clausius [67] and the second due to Planck [68]

Heat can never pass from a colder to a warmer body without some other changes, connected therein occurring at the same time

It is impossible to construct an engine which will work in a complete cycle, and produce no effect except the raising of a weight and the cooling of a heat reservoir

Both of these pioneers in physics did write these things but clearly there is nothing in these statements about the active, forceful or end-directed nature of the 2nd Law. They are both statements about what cannot happen not about things that do. Both are particular versions of the impossibility of perpetual motion (of the 2nd kind) and that is it. They are not, in fact, statements of the 2nd Law.

5.2.3.1. What Did Clausius and Planck Really Say?

Contrary to the fact that both of these statements are represented as statements of the 2nd Law by Clausius and Planck, neither of them presented them as such, and both of them clearly said so. By 1775, the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris had already made a statement that they “would no longer accept or deal with proposals concerning perpetual motion” [69]. It was generally agreed that it was impossible. What both Clausius and then Planck (who cited Clausius regarding it) did was to take the prohibition of perpetual motion stated this way (as perpetual motion of the 2nd kind) as an axiom in order, in Planck’s words to “deduce (a statement of) the 2nd Law from it” [68], or In different terms, as a test of falsifiability. A good part of Planck’s 1903 opus Treatise on Thermodynamics is then spent on one experimental test after another to try and falsify it (which of course he could not do). At the end he deduced what he calls “the most general statement of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics” which he gives as:

Every physical or chemical process in nature takes place in such a way as to increase the sum of the entropies of all the bodies taking place in the process

The universal (“every physical or chemcal process in nature”) and the active, end-directed (“in such a way as to”) nature of the law is clearly seen here. Clausius’s effectively similar concluding statement of the 2nd Law (coupled in his paper with his universal statement of the first law above) is;

The entropy of the universe strives to a maximum

It should be noted that in most current texts as a consequence of the hegemony of Boltzman’s probabilistic definition of the 2nd Law one finds the misleading revisionist substitution of Clausius’ word “strives” with the word “tends”, but in the original Clausiuis the word is “strives” (the German word “strebt”)[66]. In his Seventh Memoir [70] as elsewhere he reinforces this clearly again

heat accordingly incessantly strives to pass from warmer to colder bodies

5.2.3.1. Carnot, Disequilibrium, Re-Equilibration and the Motive Power of the 2nd Law

Finally, to underscore the impelling force or active end-directed nature of the 2nd Law as clearly understood and expressed in the theoretical work of the early pioneers of classical thermodynamics, one can hardly leave out Carnot considered by many to be the modern founder of thermodynamics and the one who actually discovered the 2nd Law. Although he had the conservation wrong (the equivalence of mechanical energy and heat had not yet been established) and it took Clausius, who coined the term “entropy” to articulate the 2nd Law correctly, Carnot [71] clearly grasped the fundamental substance of it. Most substantively for our discussion here is that it was his search for the physical basis for the motive power, or impelling force that powered the steam engine that got him there. And it was the 2nd Law, put simply, that was the answer to his question. These things like the general idea of how to build a steam engine, at least in general do of course seem so obvious in hindsight that to the instrumentalist not worth wondering about. The way to build and operate a steam engine, very roughly, is to first heat some water with a wood fire or coal to produce steam under pressure. Then provide a pathway for the steam to flow under pressure through some pipes where it moves some pistons, and the heat is dispelled at a lower temperature. To the instrumentalist that is basically how a steam engine works, and that is all you really need to know. For Carnot, however, this only begged the question.

He understood that the motive power cannot come from the conservation per se (for him erroneously “the caloric” but for us “energy”) because, simply put it is conserved, but what he observed rather was that it came from the distribution of it. The potential for motive power, he recognized, always depends on the disequilibrium of the conservation, and it was in the spontaneous re-equilibration of this distribution that he found the motive force. Further, comparing the “fall of heat” to the fall of water that drives a water wheel in a mill, he noted that the magnitude of the force was determined by the “height of the fall” (or temperature difference in the case of heat), or the extent of the disequilibrium between the source and the sink. Again, although it was Clausius who really put it together correctly and named and created the term “entropy”¹⁵, it is fair to say that what Carnot had discovered was the 2nd Law, and the fundamental forceful, active, end-directed nature of it. Not of course simply the motive force that drives the steam engine, but what universally drives all processes in the manifest world —the symmetry-seeking behavior of the 2nd Law and the “striving” towards an end state of maximum entropy of Clausius.

It has utility to note that in framing his statement of what would be the 2nd Law as Carnot does, not in terms of entropy per se (a term not yet coined), but in terms of the forced minimization of a potential, or the re-equilibration of (in the case of the steam engine an intentional) disequlibrium in the conservation, what he has done here really is flip the sign of the entropy. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say it was Clausius who later flipped the sign for reasons it has never seemed quite clear. Maxwell [29,72] himself and Tait (as Maxwell tells it) both urged Clausius to change the sign but to no avail. They certainly felt, and it is hard not to agree, that it would have been easier for people to understand the concept if Clausius had done so (as a measure of a quantity that decreases with the reduction of potential rather than increases), but, in any case any (correct) statement of the 2nd Law can also be stated as the minimization of the potential (disequilibrium) of the conservation or equivalently as the maximization of the entropy.

5.2.3. Boltzmann and the 2nd Law as a Law of Disorder

The forceful active end-driven (time-asymmetric) nature of the 2nd Law presented a direct threat to the “dead” reversible ontic reductionism of the mechanical world view. Boltzmann tried to meet this challenge by reducing the 2nd Law to a mechanical stochastic collision function. The 2nd Law on this view became nothing but the probabilistic consequence of randomly colliding classical (reversible) mechanical particles. Boltzmann took his lead from Maxwell who had used probability calculus to develop a kinetic theory of gases with a “colliding billiard ball” model (the molecules in an ideal gas taken as perfectly elastic spheres acting on each other only during impact).

Observing Maxwell’s results, Boltzmann noted that with each collision any non-equilibrium velocity distribution (groups of molecules moving at the same speed and in the same direction) would become increasingly disordered (moving less and less at the same speed or in the same direction) leading to a final state of macroscopic uniformity and microscopic disorder, corresponding to the state of maximum thermodynamic equilibrium. From this, he argued, the 2nd Law could be reduced to the fact that in a world of mechanically colliding reversible particles disordered states are simply way more probable. Due to the fact that there are so many more possible disordered states than ordered ones, he argued, the system (or universe) will almost always be found either in a state of maximum disorder, the macrostate with the greatest number of accessible microstates, such as a gas in a box at equilibrium, or else moving towards it making transitions from disorder to order “infinitely improbable” [73].

Molecules, Boltzmann wrote

moving at the same speed and in the same direction is the most improbable case conceivable…an infinitely improbable configuration of energy….

This view, or Boltzmann’s attempted reduction of the 2nd Law to a stochastic collision function, as we will show momentariiy, is readily falsified but despite this fact the view of the 2nd Law as a “law of disorder” became unfortunately fully entrenched across the disciplines from physics to biology, social and cognitive theory and evolutionary theory writ large or small. It puts, as we have shown, what is purported to be physics at complete odds with the entire self-evidencing nature of universal evolution from its beginning which is characterized by the generative progressive evolutionary production of increasingly more highly ordered, and differentiated states. From Boltzmann’s perspective universal evolution becomes the origin and development of one more infinitely improbable state after another.

If there was a previous paradigmatic belief in the dualistic Cartesian (res extensia/res cognito or mind/matter) or Kantian cuts (life/physics) before this then Boltzmann’s apparent reduction of the 2nd Law to a “law of disorder” was taken to fully support it now. In evolutionary theory we see statements from leading Darwinian theorists convinced by this view as a matter of fact. Ronald Fisher [74] one of the paramount figures of neo-Darwinism establishment wrote “[e]ntropy changes lead to progressive disorganization…while evolutionary changes lead to progressively higher organization,” while Levins and Lewontin [75] unequivocally assert “organic evolution to be the negation of physical evolution”. After stating “entropy…is simply disorder” and that according to the 2nd Law “things run down”, Dennett [76], in support of his magic (extra-physical) “selfish-algorithm”/computationalist theory of mind (cognition), defines living things as things that “defy” the 2nd Law of thermodynamics. Then, very currently, Friston [77], promoting his own non-physical syntactical or information-theoretical account of cognition (“mind”) describes living systems a systems that “somehow manage to violate” the 2nd Law.

To be clear moving on, no argument is advanced here about the clear heuristic utility of statistical methods in physics or anywhere else, but Boltzmann’s universal claim to have reduced the 2nd Law to a stochastic collision function and the infinite improbability of spontaneous ordering erroneously and fundamentally conflates a limited heuristic model with ontology. It makes the profound mistake of claiming to reduce the latter to the former, a very deeply misleading mistake that in this case is not simply wrong, but actually upside down. Beyond being effectively falsified by the entire universal evolutionary record which shows progressive opportunistic ordering to increasingly more highly macroscopically ordered and differentiated states as fundamental and generic, it is easily falsified any and every day by repeatable simple physical experiments.

Figure 3 shows two time frames from the now classic Benard cell experiment done in our lab some years ago where a viscous liquid (silicone oil) is held between a uniform heat source below and the cooler air above (sink)[12]. As first well-shown by Carnot (above) the disequilibrium, in this case the temperature difference between the source and the sink creates a potential with a force F the magnitude of which is determined by the steepness of the gradient between them (the extent of disquilibrium or Carnot’s terms “the height of the fall”). When F is below a critical threshold (a) the system is in the disordered or “Boltzmann regime”, appears macroscopically smooth and homogenous and the flow of heat from source to sink is by the disordered stochastic micro-collisions between its molecular components. As soon as F is increased above a critical threshold level (b), however, macroscopic order (“macro”) is selected from microscopic disorder (“micro”) breaking the spatio-temporal symmetry of the disordered regime as hundreds of milliions of molecules begin moving collectively together. This immediately falsifies Boltzmann’s claim that the production of order from disorder (molecules “moving at the same speed in the same direction”) is infinitely improbable, but rather occurs opportunistically and spontaneously with a probability of one (deterministically) each and every time, and as soon as, F reaches the critical threshold [12,13]. This opportunistic ordering that underlies the entire evolution of the universe as we know it follows directly as we unpack further below from the 4th Law.

5.2.6. The 4th Law of Thermodynamics and the Universal Basis for Evolutionary Ordering

In developing a fundamental theory of universal evolution we have with the time-translation symmetry or conservation identified by the 1st Law of Thermodynamics the “what” out of and through which everything that subsequently processually comes into being is constituted. With the mass-energy displacements of the conservation driven by the forceful symmetry-seeking (time-asymmetric) behavior of the 2nd Law we are given the “why” anything happens at all and the processual nature of it. As much as these deep and powerful laws give us, however, this still leaves the opportunistic ordering that is the hallmark not just of the nature and evolution of life but of the entire visible universe from its early relatively homogeneous origin to the progressively increasing more highly-ordered, differentiating complexifying world that we find ourselves in today a mystery. We have discussed at some length the variety of ways this property, or the lack of its explanation or imagined negation of it by physics has been used to support a dualistic metaphysics with a list of magical (extra-physical) “makers”, agents, or agency to account for it. We have also shown how any and why all of these accounts or theories, by their own definitions, must necessarily fail as a consequence of (but not limited to) the ontic constraints or entailments of the 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics (the impossibility of perpetual motion of the first and second kind).

5.2.6.1. Looking for the Universality That Solves the Mystery

Herein, however, is the generally construed problem. Empirically we start with the self-evidencing fact (meaning unavoidable by observation) of a visible universe characterized by the progressive generative production of increasingly more highly ordered and differentiated states. However, even understanding that Boltzmann’s attempt to reduce the 2nd Law to a stochastic collision function (atoms or molecules “moving at the same speed and in the same direction…is infinitely improbable”) is falsified, the most widespread view of the 2nd Law following from general classical assumptions (including Carnot’s idea about re-establishment of equilibrium) still seems problematic. It mandates energy distributions spreading out from more concentrated to less concentrated distributions, from systems with fewer degrees of freedom, or a lesser number of accessible microstates for a given macrostate, to distributions with a greater number of accessible microstates. This is directly opposite to what we see with the autocatakinesis of spontaneous ordering which arises opportunistically at symmetry breaking events initializing new levels of order characterized by the progressive and radical reduction in accessible microstates—to states further, and further away from equilibrium and of higher energy concentrations. Clearly, given that this is an unavoidable fundamental universal proccess, there must be a fundamental universal account of it. We still need an account of what this irreducible universality is. Solving this mystery was what launched our work some three and a half decades ago.

5.2.6.2. The Autocatakinesis of Level-Building as the Causal (Force-Driven) Production of Processual Constraints

Like the 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics the universality we are looking for here is clearly entirely level-independent. In fact, most significantly, this irreduciblity (to some single particular level) is just because what we are looking for is in fact the causal basis for why there are any levels at all, or why there is any level-building at all in the first place. The production of spontaneous ordering, the process of autocatakinesis, each and every time it occurs is the production of a new macroscopic level, a macroscopically causal (force-driven) level that comes into being and exists by causally selecting, channelling, controlling as a set of processual constraints, the degrees of freedom or accessible microstates of its components. It is these constitutive relations that literally define the state or entity as an entity distinct or differentiated from its surrounds and as a higher state of order. The production/origin and development or evolution of all such systems thus shows structural, and behavioral isomorphisms with a generic minimal ontology symmetric over transformations of scale that identifies them as members of the broad level-independent class of systems called “autocatakinetic” (ACK) systems¹⁶. An ACK system is:

a system that maintains its “self” as an entity constituted and empirically traceable to a set of nonlinear (circularly causal) relations (constitutive relations)

through the breakdown of environmental potentials (non-equilbrium mass-energy distributions) in the continuous coordinated motion of its components [13,30]

Figure 4 shows a schematic of the minimal ontology of a canonical ACK system that defines the class. The of scope of the class is fully universal ranging from clusters of galaxies, galaxies, stars and their evolution, all living systems from single cells to ecosystems to the planetary scale (e.g, the ‘population of one” we have already discussed), to meso and smaller scale abiotic systems such as tornadoes and dust devils and experimental ones such as the BC we have already pointed to regarding Boltzmann’s claim about the supposed infinite improbability of order. In most general terms, the entire evolving universe is made up of, and the coming into being of, increasingly nested levels of such systems and their differentiated exudes.

Figure 4. A schematic of a canonical autocatakinetic (ACK) system. E^I (source) is an out of equilbrium region (volume) of E^II (sink) the gradient between them constituting a potential with a force F₁ the magnitude of which is determined by the steepness of the gradient. ΔE^I is the flow of energy at the input or drain on the potential which is transformed into entropy ΔS at the output. E^III is the internal (“on board”) potential carried in the constitutive relations of the system by virtue of its distance from equilibrium acting back with a force F₂ to amplify or maintain the input. (From auto-“self” + cata “down” + kinetic “of the motion of material bodies and the forces and energy associated therewith”) [11,13].

Figure 4. A schematic of a canonical autocatakinetic (ACK) system. E^I (source) is an out of equilbrium region (volume) of E^II (sink) the gradient between them constituting a potential with a force F₁ the magnitude of which is determined by the steepness of the gradient. ΔE^I is the flow of energy at the input or drain on the potential which is transformed into entropy ΔS at the output. E^III is the internal (“on board”) potential carried in the constitutive relations of the system by virtue of its distance from equilibrium acting back with a force F₂ to amplify or maintain the input. (From auto-“self” + cata “down” + kinetic “of the motion of material bodies and the forces and energy associated therewith”) [11,13].

5.2.6.3. The Split Balance Equation of the 2nd Law and the Causally Problematic Idea of “Evaders” Fighting Against Physical Law

By the middle of the last century it was widely known (e.g., Haldane [78], Bertalannfy [79], Schroedinger [80], and later Prigogine [81] to name a few) that living things did not violate the 2nd Law of thermodynamics stricto sensu. As long as they consumed/dissipated enough potential (energy gradient), “food”, or “negentropy”, to use Shroedinger’s term, so as to produce enough entropy to compensate for their own internal entropy reduction or ordering the net change in entropy would still be positive and the 2nd Law, again, stricto sensu, would not be violated. The Carnot-Clausius inequality (or “balance equation” of the 2nd Law) as Bertalanffy [79] showed under the rubric of “open systems” and Prigogine [81] later showed under the rubric of “dissipative structures” could be thus split into two terms:

∆S_e + ∆S_i ≥ 0

(3)

where the first term is a measure of the change in entropy due to the “negentropy”, disequilibrium, or the potential on which the system “feeds” and is imported into the system, and the second term is the entropy produced by the system and dissipated into the environment as a consequence of the system’s ordering (its constitutive autocatakinetic relations) and departure from equilibrium (ΔE^I and ΔS respectively in Figure 4).

This is clearly an important point, but theoretically contextualized as it was as an explanation for how life, in Schroedinger’s [80] terms “evades the decay to equilibrium” has been unfortunately causally misleading at best. This theoretical framing, and in-kind declarations, for example, that an organism “avoids the rapid decay to…equilibrium” by feeding on “negentopy” as we will show puts the causality upside down and obscures the universal nature of it. It still has living things (and all ACK systems by extension) as a result of some autonomous internal unidentified telos or ad hoc Kantian “natural purpose” inside them, fighting against the laws of physics rather than just the other way around. It casts all the increasingly more concentrated, differentiated and more highly-ordered states that have progressively populated the universe all as “evaders” of physical law. In any case, at best it leaves the physical question of the universal ordering that characterizes the world completely begged and unanswered, but at worst it has been extremely causally misleading.

Even though Bertalanffy was one of the first to recognize that given the split balance equation (3) such states were “permitted” to exist without violating the 2nd Law stricto sensu, he still, along with Schroedinger, showing the impress of Boltzmann, viewed them as systems that “maintain themselves..(in a state of)..fantastic improbability” [82].¹⁷ The central problem, then, still remained, namely why is the reality of our world/the universe, including us and our measuring devices fundamentally characterized, or made up of systems that universally seem to “defy” or “evade” what are taken to be the laws of physics? What was “most in need of explanation,” as Nobel Laureate Konrad Lorenz [83] put it, “is that in apparent contradiction to the laws of probability…(the universe) seems to develop from…the more probable to the less probable, from systems of lower order to systems of higher order.” Each of these pioneers in science from the middle of the last century was clearly bothered by this fundamental problem and each in their way imagined there was likely to be a then unknown fundamental law to solve it. “We must be prepared to find a new physical law” wrote Schroedinger [80], “prevailing (in these cases). Or are we to (imagine it a) non-physical, not to say super-physical law?”. Roughly a half century later we now have the law. And it is the 4th Law of Thermodynamics. An explication of the law and the path that gets us to it are shown in the next sections.

5.2.6.4. Coupling Probability One with a Deeper Look at the Balance Equation of the 2nd Law Is the Game Changer That Flips the Entire Theoretical Script

The structural, and behavioral isomorphisms or symmetry over transformations of scale we see with the autocatakinetics of spontaneous universal ordering suggests, if not already demonstrates in advance that we are clearly seeing the operation of a universal law. At the historical point where trail-blazers like Schrodinger, Bertalanffy, and later Prigogine (who underscored order can arise “far from equilibrium” but never was able to give a reason why it should) left the law frustratingly begged [6]. With the Benard case (Figure 2) we have shown very literally (and can show over and over) that the production of spontaneous order from disorder rather than being “infiinitely improbable” per Boltzmann, or “fantastically improbable’ as the otherwise prescient Bertalanffy (and of course many others) held, occurs opportunistically every time, that is deterministically with a probability of one as soon as it gets the chance. Looking at this seriously for the remarkable thing it shows, it turns the whole theoretical notion of the “infinite improbability” of spontaneous ordering completely upside down, literally flipping the entire theoretical script.

If we then take this script flipping seriously (and how can we not?) this compells us to do the conceputal or theoretical transformation all the way through, and this takes us to some very dramatic realizations. That is, if we get rid of our paradigmatic preconceptions about what the split balance equation of the 2nd Law is supposed to explain and instead turn the causal structure upside down so that it corrresponds to things we actually see in repeatable physical experiments and observations we are immediately given some illuminating insights. More specifically, the theoretical assumption or causal structure that gets flipped is the demonstrably false belief that we are dealing with infinitely improbable states that causally (forcefully) use the disequilibrium (negentropy, potential, motive force) or ∆S_e term to “evade” the laws of physics in their own (extra-physical) service (the second term ∆S_i). This then instead is replaced with a theoretical causal structure that is effectively its opposite. So, now, instead, the second term ∆S_i (the ordered state) is taken as the law-driven causal (forceful) consequent or manifestation of the first ∆S_e (the disequilibrium, potential, gradient or motive force) rather than the other way around.

5.2.6.5. The 4th Law of Thermodynamics (LMEP) and Derivation of the Universal Ordering Principle

This, to be sure, does not yet explicitly give us the law that explains this symmetry-breaking behavior or the selection of macro from micro that characterizes spontaneous ordering. By implication, however, it gives is a very strong indication of what the form or shape of it must be, and this takes us back again to the Carnot-Clausius inequality or the split balance equation of the 2nd Law to put a light on something that Bertalanffy, Schroedinger, and Prigogine, and others from their perspective at that time (how such states can persist without violating the 2nd Law), explicitly did not see. The illuminating insight that puts us within palpable reach of the law we are seeking is thus not the point made by Bertalanffy, Schroedinger and Prigogine that ordered flows are permitted to exist as long as they produce enough entropy to compensate for their internal entropy production. It is instead that by virtue (by ontic necessity) of the split balance equation with the symmetry-breaking selection of macro from micro (spontaneous ordering, the production of an ACK system) the rate of entropy production must always go up. That is, the more order produced the greater the rate of entropy production is going to be. This fact or universality, symmetric under all transformations of scale or location, is not in itself anything new at all, or something that has to be proved or demonstrated in and of itself because it is already given. It is, once again, universally given by the balance equation of the 2nd Law itself and its entailments. It is, however, a script-flipping or paradigm-inverting view of what it actually means, what the real significance of it really is, and thus what the underlying explicating law might be.

More specifically, the light that this “right-side up” way of looking at this, inspired not by paradigmatic causal misconceptions but instead by repeatable experimental and other empirical observations, is that it gives us a previously missed universality, or isomorphism applying to all, that is the entire class, of macro (order) from micro (disorder) processes (flow). Pulling the implications of all this a little further together, we have noted that the origin and production of ordered macro from disordered micro flow (the production of an ACK system) is a process of selection, more particularly, the selection of one path vs. another. And this then begs the question Bertalanffy, Schroedinger and Prigogine never asked specifically about paths and rates, and it is “which paths out of available paths will a system (the universe) take to get to equilibrium (maximize the entropy or minimize the potential)?” The 2nd Law alone, of course, says nothing about rates or path selection at all. All it says is that all natural processes proceed so as to increase the entropy. This then takes us immediately to the 4th Law of Thermodynamics, or the Law Of Maximum Entropy Producton (LMEP)[6,12,13,23,30,53,60,84,85], which answers the question and thereby solves the mystery of progressive universal ordering. It says:

A system (the universe or any arbitrary out of equilibrium subsystem volume within it) will select the path or assembly of paths out of available paths that minimizes the potential or maximizes the entropy at the fastest possible rate given the constraints

The 4th Law, as is clear, says nothing about spontaneous ordering per se but when combined with the causal insight regarding the split balance equation of the 2nd Law we have already understood from above, the derivation of the universal ordering principle is easy to do. In particular,

IF the 4th Law of Thermodynamics (the world selects paths…fastest rate etc.)

AND IF ordered flow produces entropy faster than disordered flow (as it must given the split balance equation of the 2nd Law)

THEN the world (the universe or subvolume within it) can be expected to select/ produce order from disorder whenever and a soon as it gets the chance

By thus providing a universal causal (forceful) account of the progressive opportunistic ordering or level-building differentiation that characterizes the evolution and development of the visible universe the 4th Law dramatically expands the explanatory scope of thermodynamics and evolutionary theory at the same time. Like the 1st and 2nd Laws, the 4th Law is entirely level-independent applying to all ranges, near and far from equilibrium all the way up and down, but most significantly explains why there is any level building at all. Additionally, like the 1st and 2nd Laws, the 4th Law meets the most rigorous standards possible in scientific or physical theory. That is, like either of them, it is subject to Popperian [40] falsifiability by simple reproducible physical experiments using classical thermodynamic tools and methods, and on the question of “elegance”, or ontological parsimony (“Occam’s Razor”) it clearly takes a very big game-changing leap accounting for universal evolutionary ordering and all that it includes while at the same time eliminating an almost immeasurable amount of excess (imaginary) ontology or special purpose devices (every and all ad hoc “magic makers”) across the disciplines. Finally, it scores the highest possible marks by the Lakatosian [86] measures of “sophisticated falsificationism”¹⁸[29]¹⁹.

5.2.6.6. The Generics of Selection, Constraint Creation, Macroscopic Causal Closure and the Expansion of Dissipative Dimensions

The origin or “birth” of an ACK, its “entification”, when it becomes a new macroscopic more highly ordered flow structure distinguishable from its environment by virtue of its constitutive relations always, as noted, universally begins with a symmetry-breaking event [60]. From the moment this symmetry break occurrs, through the full extent of an ACK’s evolutionary growth, development, differentiation and eventual “death” we are witnessing a process of selection [53]. That is, as previously discussed, an initially discontinuous and then progressive selection of some vastly reduced number of accessible microstates M₂ (the ordered ACK flow structure) from some much vastly larger number of accessible microstates M₁ (the dis- or less-ordered prior regime) following the 4th Law. ACK systems, as “things” that achieve their identity through flow, thus in each case have a “life” beginning with an origin event (the discontinuous symmetry-breaking event), then growth and development over that “life”, decline or senenscence and then “death” (e.g., the death of a main sequence star in a supernova explosion, late-stage senescence and collapse in generalized ecosystem succession, the collapse of civilizations, senescence and death as usually understood in living systems at the organismic level as some of any number of examples).

The legend with Figure 3 highlights the fact that with the selection of macro from micro and the symmetry breaking that defines it the intrinsic spatio-temporal dimensions of the system (the universe or subvolume within it) are dramatically increased [11,13,23]. This is an ontological point. The origin and development of such a system literally, meaning measurably, and by orders of magnitude, increases the spatiotemporal dimensions or extent of that system. This is an absolutely fundamental point in the understanding of how such order building functions²⁰ (a term I use advisedly here) in the progressive generative evolution of the universe as a consequence of 4th Law path selection. The non-trivial formal relation between symmetry breaking and the differentiation and the extension of spatiotemporal dimensions in a system should not be missed. When a physical symmetry breaking occurs in a system it means it has lost its invariance under some number of transformations, and this, in turn, by definition, means it has become more differentiated. Likewise this quite literally means its spatiotemporal dimensions have been, also by definition, variously extended, and in a processual universe this identically means the extension of its dissipative dimensions or surfaces has occurred.

Understanding this puts a light on how the evolutionary development of increasingly more highly ordered states functions as increasing levels of causal (forceful) constraints to increase the rate of dissipation that the Carnot-Clausius inequality requires in such cases and the 4th Law as path selection universally explains. Returning to the BC experiment allows us to easily and directly observe exactly how this works, and how significant this process of spatiotemporal expansion is in evolutionary ordering. First let me underscore what we are interested in and will look at is the evolutionary process of spontaneous ordering beginning with the symmetry breaking event and through the main part of its evolutionary “life”. Unfortunately, this is exactly what is left out of typical earlier mentions of the BC as an example of a spontaneously ordered or self-organizing system where we are presented with a stock photo of the static final end state of fairy regularly arranged hexagonal cells artificially maintained in a laboratory. Remarkably, what is left out of the discussion or illustration is what actually happens during the process of its evolution that gets it there. With the whole process effectively left out the largest part of the theoretical and evolutionary substance of the experiment is missed.

So, first, the progressive selection, that is the reduction, of accessible microstates that occurs with the origin and evolution of an ACK system (M₁ to M₂) is, by definition, from a different view but identically the progressive production by selection of a set of constraints that in a circularly causal fashion causally (forcefully) controls/selects/determines the microcomponents. The structure of the system, the constitutive relations that define it are the constraints [10,30,60]. The system is a circularly causal (forceful) set of macroscopic constraints, that comes into being from the time of the original symmetry-breaking event, as a differentiation from, or through and out of its immediate environment and then continues to grow and develop during the course of its “lifetime”. It is by virtue of this circularly causal ACK force structure, that the system refines and amplifies component control, and typically component production, through a process of continued progressive specification or differentiation.

Figure 3 (a) takes us back to the disordered regime where the heat flow from source to sink is accomplished by the stochastic collisions of components with intrinsic spaciotemporal dimensions defined by mean free path distances and relaxation times (of the order of 10^-8 centimeters and 10^-15 seconds). From a strict Boltzmannian causally closed or micromechanical account this regime, that is simply the stochastic or incoherent probabalistic collisions of the components, this is where the system should stay. To the contrary however, the point of emphasis here is that it is precisely the intrinsic causal limit or causal closure of the spacio-temporal dimensions of this regime (generalized conduction, diffusion) that make it an extremely inefficient or slow way to move energy and thus leads to its instability. Where the disequilibrium, or gradient is steep enough, the simple mechanistic side-side or “horizontal” dynamics of stochastic collisions defining this regime (where all causal or forceful relations between components are ontically reduced to efficient cause) itself becomes an actual severe and forceful barrier or limit to equilibration. The symmetry-breaking that characterizes the origin of an ACK system, or macro from micro path selection following the 4th Law is the causal (forceful) breaking of that barrier so as to access otherwise in inaccessible spatiotemporal dimensions and consequently (identically) dimensionally expand the system’s dissipative surfaces. ACK systems, in effect, are self-amplifying developing, evolving differentiating sinks that function in that regard.

To motivate a feel for just how dramatic the scale change, and concomitant expansion of dissipative surfaces is in these transitions if, as in the Figure 3 legend, the BC molecular or micro mode to macro ordered transition (10^-8 centimeters and 10^-15 seconds in the disordered regime to centimeters and seconds in the ordered regime) is scaled (very roughly of course) to human size then the macro ordered regime would be many times greater than the circumference of the Earth persisting over time scales greater than the 4.5 years of Earth’s evolution. This is a remarkable ontological point to ponder.

Beyond this, the first thing that is typically not appreciated when the BC system is viewed simply as a stationary unchanging, static end state is that what happens with the “origin event” is actually a multiple origin event. That is, the occurrence, not just of one but of a large population of multiple orgin or symmetry-breaking events each arising as an individual separate ACK system. Initially each, referring back to our discussion above, is a “population of one” which then quickly becomes a member of a population of many as multiple separate origin events occur, although initially with no causal relation between them. Figure 5 shows a time slice from the BC experiment right after the minimal threshold of F has been crossed and two individual origin events have occurred and two initially independent cells consequent on 4th Law macro from micro selection come into being (are “born”). Each, at this point as an individual self-amplifying sink, is an evolving differentiating force structure or set of top-down level of macroscopic constraints acting back with an internal force to amplify the gain (F₂ in Figure 4) through increasing forceful control of its components in the expansion of its dissipative surfaces.

Box Essay (Figure 6) details how this generative process of constraint creation happens. That is, it shows how macrocausality or circularly causal “downward causation” arises spontaneously as a consequence of the 4th Law and progressive path selection in the proccessual evolutionary differentiation of the system. When F₁ in Figure 6 is increased above the critical minimum level it results in the average amplitude of stochastic fluctuations increasing above the minimum amplitude required to puncture the dissipation barrier and tilt the force structure of the system in a way that, in a macrosopic circularly causal fashion, differentiates the force structure further establishing autocatakinetic closure to initiate the process of autocatakinesis. The process is completely scale invariant and fundamental to the progressive production of more highly-ordered systems in the generative or creative evolutionary development of the universe (e.g., the collapse of interstellar clouds and the “birth” of main sequence stars).

Here, in the particular case of the BC experiment the “seeding” of the origin event or symmetry breaking begins, when, as discussed, F₁ is increased above a minimal level. When this happens the average amplitude of the fluctuations (or “parcels” of fluid) rises above the minimum level, but in addition, since density varies inversely with temperature, it further tilts the force structure by creating a positive upward buoyancy force F₂ that causally (forcefully) drives the parcel upward. IFF but as soon as any macroscopic parcel (fluctuation) carries heat faster than it is dissipated by the stochastic collisions of the disordered regime making up its surrounds, following the 4th Law, macro is selected from micro by rate, the symmetry of the force structure is broken, then it further differentiates to establish autocatakinetic closure and an ACK system which continues as a self-amplifying sink in its own expansive evolution and development (see Figure 6 legend) is “born”. The process of internal differentiation of its force structure is identical to the production of selective constraints that macroscopically and progressively (forcefully) controls the degrees of freedom of the components internal to the system.

Although selection of macro from micro is itself deterministic (it happens opportunistically with a probability of one by virtue of the 4th Law) it works on the stochastic or indeterminate disordered behavior of the components. This macro determinacy/micro indeterminacy relationship is also entirely level-independent and fundamental to the creative or generative evolutionary behavior that characterizes the observable universe. In the case of the BC it means that while it is known that symmetry breaking ordering will occur as soon as F₁ increases above the minimal threshold and the system will rapidly spawn a population of cells until the entire system is full, due to the stochasticity of the fluctuations it cannot be known exactly which fluctuation will happen to get there first, second, third and so on. That they will not get there at exactly the same time and consequent on things like “founder advantage” (the earlier ones will have a competitive advantage, e.g., for size) the initial population will be highly varied. This can be seen clearly in Figure 3 (b) where at this stage in the evolution of the system the now crowded population of cells shows high variability which then with the progressive reduction of accessible microstates, largely gets eliminated over the evolution of the system. This process of “progressive determinism”, or “progressive mechanization, or what Bertalanffy [82] called “equifinality” in developmental biology, is seen clearly in the BC system as 4th Law selection takes the system from the stochastic incoherent collisions of the disordered regime through macro from micro symmetry breaking to a “population explosion” with high variability to a relatively highly uniform widely known late stage of hexagonal cells where “conformity rules

Figure 7 shows the new level of selection that occurs in the BC “ecosystem” (the dish, single-molecule fluid, and gradient) after it fills with initially independent cells. It shows the universality in this simple single-molecule fluid system of complex developmental behavior grounded in the 4th Law usually reserved for or taken to be the sole property of living things. In particular, after the system fills with initially separate cells (Figure 5), generalized “Malthusian closure” (= ACK closure) conditions occur as the growing cells start to forcefully impinge on each other effectively competing for fixed resources (gradient/potential) within the finite spatiotemporal limitations of the system. Selection is now no longer simply between micro and macro but now between the cells themselves—we have a new level of selection. Figure 7 shows three of the most generic kinds of behavior we find universally in spontaneous evolutionary ordering, development and differentiation, namely, spontaneous fission, competitive exclusion, and subsumption.

In particular, A1➞A2 and B1➞B2 show spontaneous fission as two cells divide to become four, and C1➞C2 and D1➞D2 show competitive exclusion and subsumption as four cells become two. Due to generalized surface/volume (S/V) allometry (surface increases as the square and volume increases as the cube) the input and output of the system (ΔE^I and ΔS respectively in Figure 4) depends crucially on the extent of its surfaces, a measure of its differentiation relative to the volume it occupies. Thus as each cell grows ceterus paribus its internal forces decline (e.g, surface tension, F₃ in Figure 6) and its efficiency as a transport path (viz., here the specific heat transport and specific entropy production) decreases making it unstable at a critical path-selection tipping point or critical threshold where symmetry breaking by fissioning and differentiation into two more efficient cells increases the rate. Whereas in the fissioning case increased size (without additional internal differentiation) at the tipping point, becomes a liability, in the case of competitive exclusion and subsumption the size of a bigger cell vs. a much smaller one, where the bigger cell is not at the tipping point, works as an advantage and the smaller cell loses out to the larger size with much stronger forces and rates.

5.2.5.7. The 4th Law and Life and Intelligence from First Principles

The 4th Law²¹ gives us the fundamental explication and account of the progressive, opportunistic generative ordering and differentiation (complexification) that characterizes universal evolution or the processual generative ontology of the universe with life and its evolution as an intelligible level-dependent processual manifestation. With this universal evolutionary embedding the central problems with Darwinian evolutionary theory outlined in Section 5.1 are each and every one of them, as the reader will have seen, dissolved. In, particular, the fecundity principle or the active, end-directed “striving” of living things to “fill out the economy of nature” and the “struggle for existence” that follows, the supposed sine qua non of the living, is rather than an extra-physically (“magic”) property “breathed into” living things or dualistically assumed unexplained ad hoc by which they somehow fight against the laws of physics is instead seen as an entirely generic special case manifestation of the opportunistic universal ordering and differentiation (complexification) that follows directly and causally (forcefully) from them [12.13].

Malthusian closure and the consequent “struggle for existence” under fecundity principle pressure leading to the selection of the fittest variants is likewise a special case of this same entirely universally generic process. In particular, the selection of internal microstates, components and component relations processually entailed with ACK causal closure and the consequent progressive production of constraints on those components under 4th Law forcing (e.g., Figure 7 for the generic abiotic case/exemplar). Darwinian “natural selection” is thus readily subsumed as a special case of 4th Law forcing and generic ACK microstate/component selection/production where the ACK system is replicative (an ACK system with component replication)²² (for further discussion see [53]).

Likewise, as we have seen both the issues of the directed or progressive and generative nature of evolution and the problem of the population of one are generically folded into 4th Law universal ordering. With this fundamental (universal) theoretical grounding established we are in good position to circle back and address in more detail the specific evolutionary nature of terrestrial life and intelligence (cognition or “mind”) or more generally the epistemic dimension of the world, the dimension typically dualistically separated by the generalized measurement problem and all the various “cuts” from Parmenides through Descartes, Kant, Heisenberg and onward that brought us into this paper in the beginning. If we are to have a fundamental physical theory, which is to say as is promoted here, a processual universal evolutionary theory or coherent processual ontology then the epistemic part of the world cannot sit outside the world (as an illusion or not) as it did for Parmenides and heirs and must be included in causal explicable intelligible terms within it. Put in terms of the generalized case of measurement, it must be able to include the thing being measured, the act or measurement, the result of the measurement and last but not least the intentional epistemic agent (“observer”) performing the act. And, following Planck (as above) to put this in very simple (but not reducible to) very simple terms it must do this without invoking perpetual motion (of either kind). Elaborating how this works is the content of this final section of the paper.

5.2.5.7.1 Level-Independent Universal Law Acts on Level-Dependent Initial Conditions

The largest part of this paper has been focussed on the fundamental level-independent laws of thermodynamics, and paritcularly how the 4th Law, in irreducible concert with the 1st and 2nd, provides the universal basis, or first principle ontic or causal account of universal evolutionary ordering [6,10,11,23,60,88]. The fundamentality of these laws, as discussed above, is grounded in the fact that they not only operate across all levels and scales, but most significantly in the case of the 4th explains why there are any levels, level-building, or any macroscopic ordering or differentiation to begin with. Here in this final section of the paper, building out from this theoretical ground, we effectively do the inverse of what we have done in the earlier parts of the paper and focus on the level-dependent properties of life and cognition that causally account for them and their differentiation as particular, individuated (“special cases”) in, out of, and through the general process of universal evolution following from universal law [53].

Level-independent universal law acts on level-dependent initial conditions consisting of level-dependent micro components and their accessible level-dependent component relations or constraints that have been previously processually evolutionarily produced (call the current level of observation the “focal set”). This evolutionarily produced focal set of level-dependent initial conditions then becomes the new ground or “material cause” for the next stage or macroscopic level, the next particular, differentiated or special case in the processual process of progressive, generative universal ordering. In this section, where we address the nature of life and intelligence or cognition (the epistemic act) we bring all the causal and explanatory force of the 4th Law and the entailments of the 1st and 2nd Laws with us but then focus on the level-dependent special case properties (constraints) that distinguishes living and cognitive systems as living and cognizing — what their evolutionary function is—that is why life and cognition and how they formally distinguish themselves,, viz. minimal and necessary (the IFF) conditions that define them [14,89,90].

5.2.5.7.2 Epistemic Ordering and the Fundamental Nature of Life and Cognition

Nailing this down a bit further, we have shown how 4th Law universal ordering subsumes the fecundity principle as a special case higher-ordered differentiation or manifestation. If we look at the statement of the principle further however we can immediately see, if we take the language literally, how the “special” or the level-dependent dynamics breaks out. It is in the words “striving” (as in “striving to fill out the economy of nature”) and the “struggle” (as in the “struggle for existence”) and the intentionality they express [89,90]. Now in this paper we have already noted intentionality-loaded words such as Clausius’ “striving” and his underlying understanding or sense of the active end-directed nature of the 2nd Law, where it is used metaphorically for 2nd Law forcing vs. the Darwinian case where it is certainly not, and here we need be very careful with our words. At the same time as we do want to soundly reject causally-closed onto bottom-level reductionism (where macrocausality is denied) what we do want to stringently reject is the illegitimate (magical, extra-physical) ad hoc smuggling of false causal or teleological terms. This is after all is just what onto reductionists are metaphysically forced to do (e.g., all the “cuts” we have discussed) and precisely what we deny and what, as has been shown, 1st and 2nd law entailments forbid.

“Intentionality” is a deeply substantive word expressing a property of behavior that is more often than not explicitly ignored (unmentioned) but at the same time widely simply assumed or smuggled in ad hoc unexplained or else if explicitly recognized typically taken to be outside the reach of the supposed physical world and therefore assigned to the other side of various dualist cuts as typically an immaterial “mental” property of (Cartesian) “minds” (res cogitans). Viewed this way, that is from within the broken framework of Cartesian metaphysics the “problem of intentionality”, what it is ontologically to the world and what the basis for its epistemic or semantic content is, has dominated discourse across many disciplines. Sayre [91] has called it the most challenging and fundamental problem for cognitive science today [89], but it is the same problem that sits at the core of every other discourse by whatever name that deals with, or depends on, the epistemic dimension of the world (e.g., psychology, philosophy of mind and theories of consciousness, cognitive neuroscience, the social sciences, theories of culture, biology and evolutionary theory, and as we have seen, although not typically acknowledged as such certainly physics too).

There are two, but intimately connected, main components in the discourse on intentionality growing largely out of the late 19th century work of Brentano [92], and these are the ideas of directedness towards, and that this directedness towards be distinguished or determined by semantic content, or meaning (“aboutness”). Despite the importance of Brentano’s work, it was grounded in Cartesian metaphysics and postulates, where an autonomous “mind” (the Cartesian self) is left in the end perceiving itself (the “Cartesian circle”) with no principled way in or out, and as a result largely voices from within the Cartesian echo-chamber. The vast majority of theories of perception (“indirect perception”) even today still begin with tributaries from these postulates where perception and cognition are taken to be of and about mental states rather than of and about the world. The most widespread view, still largely present today, is thus that “meaning always involves human intentionality [and] intentionality is primarily a property of mental states” ([93]. But if the world, excluding human “minds” is entirely meaningless (there is no meaning in the world) then there is no way human minds (or any other living thing) can have epistemic (or semantic) relations with it.

We know, as we have shown, for a multiplicity of reasons, but with 1st and 2nd Law entailments being more than sufficient, why such an incommensurable view cannot hold (Cartesian interactionism). The bottom quite literally fundamentally falls out from under the ground of modern science on this issue alone since every human discourse (including physics) is itself an instantiation of the epistemic act (or epistemic dimension) and characterized by intentionality. It re-capitulates the Problem of Parmenides of which the generalized measurement problem we began with is just a specific unavoidable example.

5.2.5.7.2.1 The Behaviorally Level-Dependent Defining Property of Life Is Its Intentionality

Beyond this is the undeniable empirical fact that life itself and its evolution on which the intentionality of humans is itself parasitic as a higher-ordered evolutionary differentiation is an epistemic process [11,24,89,90]. We have already broken the epistemic act out of its Cartesian box in Section 4 with its 1st and 2nd Law entailments. Here we need to do the same for intentionality, that is decontaminating it from the idea of “ends-in-mind” or confinement to (immaterial) human mental states. Expanding on Brentano then, and removing the incommensurable Cartesian “mentalism” more typically associated with it, intentionality is defined as end-directed behavior prospectively controlled or determined by meaning or information about (or semantic content)[10,14,90]. Along with the universal (level-independent) entailments of the 1st, 2nd, and 4th Laws, intentionality is the fundamental (although in this case level-dependent first principle) entailment required to cross the Parmenidean cut and each and every one of its heirs from Descartes, through Kant to Heisenberg, and we see it first in universal evolutionary ordering with the origin and evolution of life where it becomes the defining property that separates the living from non-living.

Unpacking this distinction further, all systems displaying intentionality (and thus all cognitive, intelligent or epistemic systems) are end-directed systems (ACK systems in particular), but not all end-directed systems or ACK systems possess the processual property of intentionality [14,90],. We do not (unless we are panpsychists) invoke intentionality to causally explain the flow of heat down a temperature gradient from hotter to a cooler, or the flow of a water down a slope from higher to lower, or the “selfish” self-amplifying heterostatic behavior of abiotic ACK systems such as tornadoes, dust devils, hurricanes, main sequence stars, or experimental Benard cells because their behavior is both driven and causally determined by local potentials and laws [13,93]. In dramatic contrast, however, when we observe the behavior of any living thing from the simplest bacterium or prokaryote say moving up a chemical or temperature gradient (chemotaxis, thermotaxis) (e.g.,[95,96]) or eukaryotes of any, all, and every kind we see their behavior go in directions that are causally different, often completely opposite than processes that causally follow from mass-energy forcing of local physical potentials [10,13,14].

Behaviorally, then the difference is quite clear. Non-living end-directed systems are “slaves” or captives to their local gradients or potentials, e.g., remove the local potential or gradient in any and all cases and the system “dies” (heat stops flowing at equilibrium, water does not flow down a slope if there is no slope, Benard cells dissapear if the heat source is removed, and a main sequence star “dies” when all the hydrogen is burned). In contrast, when the local potential is removed from a living ACK system (e.g, a food source is depleted) its behavior is typically quite different, or as noted above, even directly opposite to that determined by local potentials. It may go temporarily dormant, or actually increase its activity (its “striving” using that word advisedly) as it seeks, oftentimes initially randomly, new spatio-temporally discontinuously located potentials to feed on or otherwise connect to. Living systems, in other words, constitute their ACK over times and distances that are arbitrary with respect to local potentials using their stored or “on-board” potential (E_III in Figure 4) and meaning (information about) to access otherwise inaccessible spatio-temporally located potentials and dimensions of dissipative space [13]. In short, they exhibit end-directed behavior prospectively controlled or determined by meaning or information (about)²³. They exhibit intentionality [11,14,90]. The connection of this property and its processually inherrently self-amplifying access to otherwise inaccessible spatio-temporal dimensions of dissipative space and its direct relation to 4th Law path selection (discussed further below) should not escape the reader. Here, however, we need to ground this further in two very important and also (level-dependent) fundamental ways.

5.2.5.7.2.2 Universal 1st Law Time-Translation Symmetry and the Physical (Level-Dependent) Basis For Meaning, Information, or “Aboutness”

It is all well and good to say that the end-directed behavior of living things towards their intentional ends is prospectively controlled or determined by meaning or information but it is not at all given ontologically where this information is and thus how an epistemic connection can be made with it given the Cartesian, or physical onto-reductionistic assumptions inherent in orthodox and most widely held views of intentionality, perception, cognition, or the philosophy of mind still remarkably prevalent today. In fact, it is one of the central issues central to the “problem of intentionality” in most of these discourses. Given the ontic reductionistic physics assumed by most of them, if the reduction is taken literally (and sometimes it is and sometimes it is not) it is, of course, more than a problem it is an impossibility since ontologically it begins with the generalized Parmenidean cut, or Cartesian circle. “Mind”, as previously discussed, in a physical world reduced to reversible causally closed “meaningless particles” has no way of epistemically connecting to an outside world. Meaning or information on this view as we have already pointed out becomes something created ab initio in “minds” in a process of mental operations or computations not something existing “out there” in the world²⁴.

The “problem of intentionality” is in fact not a problem with intentionality per se it is actually only a problem that follows from of the assumptions of Cartesianism and the Cartesian or generalized Parmenidean cut. We have already shown how 1st and 2nd Law entailments cross levels and irrefutably (viz., else make us a perpetual motion machine) show the ontic unity of the otherwise imagined two sides (the active or agential epistemic “side” on the one hand, and the ontically and causally impoverished “physical world” or side on the other). The 4th Law, as we have seen not only crosses all cuts but shows why rather such incommensurable dualist cuts are instead rather than incommensurable cuts actually fully commensurable higher-ordered differentiations in the causally driven process of universal ordering. Coupled with the generic relational, self-referencing, and self-amplifying circular causality of ACK systems the 4th Law gives us, in different terms, the agential or motivated heterostatic (other directedness or directedness towards) behavior of which the epistemic act is a differentiation [90,97]. But, what is still missing is literally what the ontology of information is and hence what this epistemic relationship is, by what and how is it constituted? In short, what is the physical basis or ontology of meaning, information or “aboutness”?

We return to first principle entailments for the answer which has already been foreshadowed in Section 4, in particular, the deep and powerful universal time-translation symmetry of the 1st Law. We noted that without 1st Law symmetry there could be no act of measurement, no measurable quantities, no epistemic act, and, in fact, no projectable predicates of any kind at all. We already thus know that any epistemic act at all entails the 1st Law. We of course know that it also entails 2nd Law asymmetry and of course importantly the 4th Law. But the latter two laws are specificaly about change (viz., in the first case why it hapens at all, and in the second why it happens the way it does) so they cannot be what we are looking for here. We are looking not looking for change per se but macroscopic observables that capture the nomological relation between persistence and change of the distal objects of intention with respect to the proximal or local position of an epistemic agent. If we look a little further at the implications of the 1st Law we see, remarkably, the answer is already given.

Living things are embedded in ambient energy gradients or non-equilibrium distributions of energy and their respective flows, e.g., optical, mechanical, an chemical, which typically include numerous different kinds of gradients other than what they use to power their intentional acts [13,99]. As a consequence of 1st Law time-translation symmetry lawful and invariant relations exist between these ambient energy flows and their sources, and it is precisely because of this invariance that they lawfully carry information about distal sources for the prospective determination or control of an epistemic agent’s intentional ends (e.g, chemotaxis, phototaxis, thermotaxis, and haptics). This deceivingly simple (in hindsight of course) insight dramatically deepens our understanding of 1st Law time-translation symmetry by recognizing an additional feature that inheres in it that is often unrecognized [10,11,90].

More specifically It takes the understanding that without this symmetry there could be no laws of physics, no acts of measurement, or epistemic act of any kind (an understanding of which we credited first most generally to Leibniz) and takes it (literally) to another higher level. Namely, it provides the ontic ground for the property of carrying meaning and “information about”, a first principle requirement, that affords both the possibility and more importantly the opportunity for intentionality or epistemic ordering to occur. It answers the question of what the physical basis for the epistemic (that is meaningful, or semantic) relational connection living things have with the world that enables them to seek and intentionally locate and establish paths to spatio-temporally discontinuosly located potentials to use and dissipate in the constitution of their autocatakinesis [13].

In a universe causally driven by the opportunistic physics of 4th Law ordering it is hard not to appreciate the role that 1st Law symmetry plays by providing the ontic opportunity for intentionality, that is, end-directed behavior determined by meaning, or most generally the epistemic act, cognition, or the time-asymmetry processual act of knowing. From the productive, generative view of the 4th Law it provides a new higher-ordered self-amplifying and differentiating process of novel path production and selection for finding and connecting otherwise discontinuously located potentials recursively generating more ordering and differentiation with the property of increasing more knowledge over time of how to amplify the process of doing so [24]. In short, a dramatically new self-amplifying way of increasing by increasing orders of magnitude the extension and progressive expansion of the spatiotemporal dissipative dimensions of the universe where the condition occurs. It reveals the evolution of life on/of Earth and the progressive opportunistic evolutionary ordering that characterizes it as an epistemic process from its origins [10,11,23,24,89,90]. The origin of life and the origin of the epistemic act or cognition are one and the same, a special case (level-dependent) evolutionary higher-ordered manifestation (product) of generative level-independent universal law.

The minimal but sufficient (IFF) test according to which we can identify from a behavioral/processual point of view (by watching what it does) whether a system is alive and consequently because their defining properties are dentical, know at the same time if it is a cognitive (an “intelligent”) system or not can be seen at this point as straight forward. Namely, observing a system from an external behavioral point of view IFF it displays intentionality (if it behaves arbitrarily with respect to local potentials and instead coordinates its end-directed behavior over times and distances so as to seek, find, access and connect with/to non-local spatiotemporally discontinuously located potentials) then it is a living/cognitive system [89].

5.2.5.7.3 Rate-Independent Constraints (RICs) And Replicative Ordering - A First Principles Systems Theoretical Look At Life And Cognition

The previous section which looked at at life/cognition behaviorally is essentially a look from the outside, what it is and what it does, minimally defined, that processually distinguishes it or evolutionarily establishes its identity and its function in and as a product of universal ordering. This final section is a look at the inside because to effect the remarkable symmetry-breaking behavior that living/cognitive systems accomplish that from the view of the 4th Law effectively repeatedly punctures an otherwise stringent spatiotemporal barrier to universal dissipative ordering requires a very particularly differentiated minimal ontology, set of internal constraints, and systems logic. Living (and thus cognitive) systems at a minimum must first be ACK systems. This we should already know. Without the 4th Law driven self-amplifying, reflexive (circularly causal) irreversible generics of autocatakinesis there could be no life or cognition [10,23]. The minimal ontology and relational generics of ACK systems as we have shown is an entailment or primitive, or first principle, we must thus begin with (Figure 4).

So here we start with the fact that ACK systems are evolving differentiating force structures that do so in a reflexive process of component/microstate selection through processual constraint production and consequent further reflexive differentiation (Section 5.2.6.6). Generically they are thus component selecting, producing, differentiating systems (e.g, see Figure 7 for the Benard cell example, or nucleosynthesis inside stars) driven and governed by 4th Law path selection. From a systems-theoretical point of view, living/cognitive things (processes) take this process of differentiation, component selection and production one very big distinguishing symmetry-breaking process further. In particular, living/cognitive systems are replicative systems, a term we introduced in Section 5.1.325. They produce components by replication. Further to this property is that this component replication process is seeded with stochasticity, or variation (the degree itself selectively macroscopically determined). This allows, again within selective limits, for a creative component in this process, that is the generation of new or novel “things” or structural differentiations (e.g.,“perceptual sensors”) that afford the ability using physical information carried in the invariant properties of ambient energy distributions to search, find, and access new and otherwise unaccessed unknown potentials.

In addition to minimally being an ACK system, and a replicative one, there is on further or irreducible ontic primitive to the minimal systems logic of the level-dependent minimal ontology or constitutive ACK relations of living/cognitive things that makes the behavioral property that defines them possible that is that gives them the behavioral ability to act arbitrarily with respect to local potentials possible. And this is an arbitrary function in the replicative component production process, or more specifically a set of internal rate-independent constraints (RICs). More particularly, formally or generically defined, RICs are a set of internal constraints that are discrete, sequential and rate-independent relative to the rest of the ACK cycle. The order of the sequences, like the words on this page (an example of an evolutionarily later higher-ordered case), or the sequence of base pairs in a DNA string, is thermodynamically arbitrary relative to the rate at which they are “written” and “read” [13,90,100](e.g., the amount of ATP needed to replicate a DNA string of the same length is the same regardless of the sequence).

Highlighting now “written’ and “read”, while stressing the importance of these very particular kind of constraints as an irreducible component or ontic primitive of the systems logic of living/cognitive things we need to underscore everything already said in Section 5.1.3 (The Myth of the Selfish Replicator). Allowing, as we did above, that it is reasonable to see RICs as kind of minimal algorithmic code (as symbol strings, or syntactic constraints) it is crucially important here to underscore again that imparting agency or intentionality to these otherwise extremely evolutionarily important kind of constraints is absolutely denied a priori. It is exactly their inertness, relative thermodynamic arbitrariness, or rate-independence on which their function entirely depends. By themselves RICs have no meaning, or function at all except within the replicative reflexive (circularly causal) 4th Law driven act of the ACK cycle that “reads” them and “writes” them. RICs are an irreducible component of the IFF minimal ontology that constitutes the level-dependent distinguishing property of intentionality that distinguishes the living/cognitive level of universal ordering, but they crucially depend on the whole system to function.

With the epistemic functionality of this new macroscopic level of generative ordering that is life/cognition (“intelligence”) driven by 4th Law opportunistic path selection but now reflexively (autocatakinetically) grounded in physical information universally available with 1st Law time-translation symmetry, the universe evolutionarily reflexively turned back on itself to effectively gaining information about itself, building increasing knowledge about itself towards the end of further discovering new paths towards further universal ordering, and differentiation (“complexification”)—the production of new kinds, and greater numbers of kinds and numbers within kinds of “things” to extend its dissipative spatiotemporal dimensions.

This same systems logic, gets progressively self-amplifying, with progressive symmetry breaking to higher levels of evolutionary ordering with e.g., human language, written language, and contemporaneously algorithmic code, and AI systems. It is beyond the scope of the present paper to catalog all the concomitent symmetry-breaks (“revolutions”) this 4th Law path selection process has and continues to produced in the context of epistemic cultural ordering—agricultural, industrial, digital connectivity and information processing, all constituting new access to new pathways driven by 4th Law path selection in the process of generative universal evolutionary ordering and differentiation and production of “things”. The increasing speed with which this has been going on in recent times, however, is unlikely to have been missed by the reader.

6. Conclusion

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