Coherence
“Whence arises all that order and beauty we see in the world?” ~ Isaac Newton
The interactive force behind Nature is coherence. In other words, coherence is the mind of Nature. That Nature has order of seemingly infinite complexity is the testament of coherence.
“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.” ~ Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung
Classical physicists identified 4 natural forces: light, electricity, magnetism, and gravity. Modern physicists combined the first 3 and determined that gravity is an entropic warpage of spacetime caused by concentrated mass; quite dissimilar from energetically active electromagnetism. Quantum physicists identified 2 nuclear forces: strong and weak, which respectively hold atomic nuclei together and have them decay in a ballet between stability and change.
(The term interaction is now preferred by physicists over the brusquer force, as interaction emphasizes that energy only changes via interactivity. Existence is ever ecological.)
Physicists theorize that all interactions are unified at some level, as they were at the surmised instant that was the birth of our universe, when the cosmos was a supposed singularity. Their suspicions are correct.
Coherence is the first, fundamental force, with infinite energy at its disposal; hence the infinities that appear in mathematical descriptions of quantum mechanics and geometric relativity. Energy is the immaterial medium by which coherence weaves the materiality we call Nature.
To date, scientists have sidestepped the basic existential issue: mute about the font from which energy flows. Instead, the intricate and powerful weavings of energy are blithely assumed to be systemically intrinsic.
Scientists do puzzle over patterns which converge in widely divergent phenomena, illustrating fundamental algorithms at work. For instance, the mathematical rules for how plants grow and how brain cells sprout connections are selfsame. Both need to cover territory, completely but sparsely, without self-interference.
Evolution is an exercise in decision-making which necessarily involves intelligence and teleological intention. Adaptation is localized coherence.
There cannot be design without a designer; contrivance without a contriver; order without choice; arrangement without anything capable of arranging. Arrangement, disposition of parts, subservience of means to an end, relation of instruments to a use, imply the presence of intelligence and mind. ~ English philosopher William Paley
In that an order is apparent, there must be a composer of it – not as a supernatural being, but as an ongoing natural process. That our minds are inclined to view the beauty of Nature as organized patterns reflects how individualized consciousness corresponds with unified Ĉonsciousness.
The symphony of patterned existence is written in mathematics, which is the language of Nature.
“Reality is a mathematical structure.” ~ Swedish-American cosmologist Max Tegmark
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While physics provides an apt landscape upon which coherence comes into view, the most cogent argument for the unity of coherence and Ĉonsciousness is life.
Ĉonsciousness and coherence are described as if they are independent channels. They are not.
Monism means unity. Any duality, or multiplicity, that seems to arise is ultimately fictive. As such, Nature is a simulation of physicality, arising in the mind.
Our minds have a natural tendency toward factor analysis: to tear apart complexities into simpler units to facilitate comprehension. This is the inclination toward reductionism.
Owing to this proclivity, we have a hard time grasping the notion of synergy: that the interaction of constituent elements produces a greater effect than the individual elements can. Holistic understanding is hard to come by.
The rampant environmental destruction that humans have unleashed upon Earth owes in large part to our inability to comprehend the importance of healthy ecosystems as holistic processes. We instead think of individual animals and plants, and their population numbers. The extinction event now underway is a product of erroneous abstractions, welded into bogus belief systems. Such is economics: a conceptual reductionism which has senselessly left the majorities of peoples around the world struggling to survive, while a tiny minority wallow in wealth.
Capitalism, which eschews large-scale cooperation for minor league contention, is irrational in many ways. Yet the market system dominates humanity because its core atomic abstraction is appealing to the Collective: wealth attained by competition, with winners and losers. That, and people don’t care enough about each other. Owing to the insidious psychological effects of selfish economics, human cultures have failed in knitting people together into rational societies.
