The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself by Sean Carroll

Author:Sean Carroll
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science, Philosophy, Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9780525954828
Publisher: Dutton
Published: 2016-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

The Big Picture 237

The resulting images have a high degree of apparent complexity; in order to describe them accurately,

you would have to actually specify the intricate shape of the cream-coffee boundary, which would

require a relatively large amount of information.

IMAGE 34

A simple computer simulation of cream and coffee mixing together. The configuration starts out simply

and grows increasingly complex; further evolution would show it becoming simple once again, as the

black and white became completely mixed.

The relationship between “fractal” and “complex” is more than just a cosmetic one. A fractal is a

geometric figure that possesses structure at all length scales. In the cream and coffee, we see roughly

fractal patterns appear in the configuration of the molecules, before they eventually fade away in

equilibrium. This is a hallmark of complexity; interesting things are going on when we look at the

system up close, with just a few moving parts, and also when we look at it all at once.

In both physics and biology, complexity often emerges in a hierarchical fashion: small pieces

conglomerate into larger units, which then conglomerate into even larger ones, and so on. Smaller units

maintain their integrity, while interacting together within the whole. In this way, networks are built up

that exhibit complex overall behavior emerging from simple underlying rules. The coffee-cup automaton

is too simple of a system to model this process faithfully, but the appearance of a fractal shape is a

reminder of how robust and natural complexity can be.

Keep going, and the apparent complexity disappears. All of the cream and coffee is simply mixed

together. If we wait long enough, any isolated system reaches equilibrium, where nothing interesting

happens.

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