Complex Systems

How Embodied Knowing Emerges and why it matters.

Rather than a collection of stuff – independent units - in a vast or maybe infinite universe, one might alternatively consider that everything is a vast unitary system. If that’s too big a bite to chew on, maybe it’s easier to think of the Earth, or Gaia, as a unitary system in which we and everything else – animate and inanimate – act. Seeing it this way is way more complex, but opens more, or at least different, understanding, because complex systems exhibit behaviors that could never be computed by following linear cause and effect relationships.

Complexity: The manifold interactions produced by the co-merging points of existence as they arise; the state of being interdependent. Tarthang Tulku

The study of complex systems and nonlinear dynamics is an interdisciplinary field of research, involving mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, ecology, medicine, economics and social sciences alike. Google AI

Ecological complexity evokes an intricate web of interactions within an ecosystem, where numerous species, environmental factors, and dynamic processes interrelate in a way that creates emergent behavior. One type of emergent behavior - the butterfly effect - describes how small changes can lead to big consequences. Emergence produces unpredictable and often self-organizing patterns; difficult to fully understand by simply studying individual parts and well-ordered linear chains of causation.

The inherent chaos of complex systems – entropy - is paradoxically the driver of complex, highly ordered systems like human beings.

What is the pattern that connects the crab to the lobster and the primrose to the orchid, and all of them to me, and me to you? Gregory Bateson

I wish I knew who created this brilliant graphical representation of the relationships between order, disorder, emergence and entropy:

Let’s bring mind into this discussion. Here is a picture of a murmuration of starlings. How do these birds do this? It seems unlikely that they have each individually figured out in their brains how to fly together like this. They appear to be enacting a collective mind.

Ervin László speaks of the interiority of living systems:

The phenomenon of mind is neither an intrusion into the cosmos from some outside agency, nor the emergence of something out of nothing. Mind is but the internal aspect of the connectivity of systems within the matrix... The mind as knower is continuous with the rest of the universe as known. Hence in this metaphysics there is no gap between subject and object... These terms refer to arbitrarily abstracted entities.

In previous blogs I’ve addressed non-duality, and specifically the root duality – Subject & Object.

Reductionist (Shallow) Ecology vs Embodied (Deep Ecology)

In my February 27th blog - We Embody Knowledge - Embodied Ecology - Connecting to Place, I discussed accessing this greater mind, perhaps we could call it the mind of Inter-being. It is important to not settle simply for reductionistic, dualistic ecological science; not that linear models don’t have value. There are restorative ecological interventions because of dualistic research; however, dualism is blind to the spiritual solvent that can remove the obstacles that impede progress toward climate and habitat restoration. For example, we clearly understand how to sufficiently reduce emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to stop climate change. The obstacle is a linear system of profit and politics. We are smart damn fools! What we lack is sufficient wisdom and compassion. This crucial point is obscured by well-meaning ecologists whose scientific myopia blinds them from our interdependent unity. An Ecology based on embodied knowing would embrace both reductionism as a practical matter, and unitary wisdom.

Consider two definitions of Ecosystem:

1. Ecosystem (reductionistic): the complex of living organisms, their physical environment, and all their interrelationships in a particular unit of space. Britannica

2. Ecosystem (non-dual): Ecosystem: the totality and unity of beings, including living organisms, and all of the complex systems of intra-connected relationships in space and time.

Graphically:

1. Linear, reductionistic dynamics:

2. Non-dual emergent dynamics:

Let’s close with a quote from The Blind Spot by Frank, Gleiser and Thompson (a most highly recommended book):

By embracing, from the outset, a non-reductionist perspective that focuses on the centrality of entangled, looping relations and their emergent properties in complex systems, with ourselves included as inextricable from the entangled loops we study, complex system science offers a glimpse of what a scientific worldview beyond the Blind Spot might look like. We think this is a hopeful sign.

Dharma College offers opportunities to explore and practice non-duality to heal ourselves as individuals and the whole of our beloved planet. The next Dharma College class - on Zoom - is coming in September; details TBD

The Zoom Class - Embodied Ecology:
The Work that Connects Us to Place

This link will take you to Dharma College’s website page for all classes. It will be updated for September classeses in the Summer: https://dharma-college.com/all-courses