TFNR - What exists? What happens? How happens?
These three fundamental questions give way to the main research lines of Evolutionary Physics: ontology, phenomenology and dynamics. The answers to these three questions show us the basic aspects of Reality, in the Evolutionary Physics approach to the study of Nature.
The fundamental topics that characterize this approach are the following:
- Entities: Agents (the forces) and Acted (the fields), as united complementary manifestations of the sources, the objects of study of Ontology.
- Events: the variations of (the states) of the Entities.
- Relations: the links between Events. Events and Relations are the objects of study of Phenomenology.
- Processes: organized sets of relations between entities and events. As seen, everything can be always described in terms of Entities (agents and fields), Events and Relations, or together in term of Processes, according to our point of view: what exist, what happens, how happens, or, together, how what exist produce what happens in the way it happens (natural definition of a process).
- Principles: cognitive representations (patterns, cognitive models) on how Reality (or part of it) manifests itself and evolves. They express general properties and behaviors of Reality or part of it, from the most elementary levels to the more complex ones. Processes and Principles are the objects of study of Dynamics
- Existence: one of the two fundamental attributes/properties of Reality (the other is the Essence, the form). Existence is the attribute, the property of the Process of Formation of Reality and its parts. Exists what is in the three dimensions of Reality: cause, space and time. So, what exists is the Source and everything emerges from the Source. The concept of Physical Existence is strictly related to the concepts of emergence, causal permanence and extension in space time field, while Metaphysical, Cognitive Existence is strictly related, again to emergence and causal permanence, together with the extension in the cognitive field (an abstract, but very real, entity that supports the intangible information produced by the cognitive activity of living beings, from the simplest organisms to the more complex manifestations of the human though, the human culture and the products of the interactions of the cognitive systems acting and coevolving on this planet). The former manifestation of Existence emerging from the Source is the Action.
- Essence: it is the second of the two fundamental attributes/properties of Reality. It represents the “form” of the existence, the way in which the Universe evolves, the shape of the Forms (the objects that compose the Universe), the way in which Physical and Cognitive Reality manifests itself. The former manifestation of Essence, emerging from the Source, through the organization of the Action. Is the Information, the scheme of organization of the Relations that link the Events (representing the same Action). Existence at the more complex levels substantially consists in the organization, transformation and selection of the Relations among the Events that we can call “complex Action”. Evolution of the Action in Information, and, at the same time, evolution of the Entities, the Source, the Fundamental Force and the Elementary Field, in derived forces and fields.
- Formation: is the dynamic and conservative process by which the Realty is incessantly created and evolves from the elementary level of the Source to the full complexity of the Universe in evolution.
- Creation: is the formative sub process by which the Force, the fundamental causal Agent, acting on the Field, the “enhanced space-time field”, incessantly causes the phase transition from Nothingness to Elementary Action, the most elementary form of existence. This is constituted by the Elementary Events, the fluctuations of the space time field that represent the most elementary form of existence, the “substance” that support the entire Reality.
- Evolution: is the formative sub process by which the Field of Elementary Action, under the incessant pressure of the Force, reaches more and more complex levels of organization, from the basic level of the Elementary Action to the Structures of Information, till the material and immaterial Forms that populate the Universe in evolution. Creation produces the elementary forms of existence, while evolution builds the complex ones.
Here a basic scheme of the relations among the main topics that characterize the Physical Reality and the corresponding parts of Evolutionary Physics.
These three questions and their answers are so strictly connected that is very difficult to talk about the Entities without referring to the Events, and to the Relations that link them together, giving support to the Information, the scheme of organization that gives form to the Physical Reality. In facts, if we should describe the essence of Reality in a glimpse, we will say that:
Reality is the creative and evolutive process (Process) by which what exists (Entities) produce what happens (Events) in the way it happens (Relations).
In other words, we can say that the Source (Force and Field interacting) manifests itself as Action (Events) and Information (organized sets/nets of Relations among Events).
More in general, the fundamental question about “what exists”, that leads to Ontology, finds his answer in the triad: Entities, Events and Relations. These three fundamental categories of Existence cover all the spectrum of the existence and the essence of Reality, the fundament of all that exists and evolves in the Universe.
At the same time, the questions “what happens and how happens”, that leads to Phenomenology and finds its former answer in the category of Events (the variations of the states of the Entities, that emerge through their interaction), can’t exclude the same Entities (because without their variations their existence can’t manifest, so we can say that also the Entities emerge, at last, happen) and the Relations (because without the interactions among the Events, Relations can’t emerge, can’t happen, building the very evolving aspects of the complexity of Reality).
Again, also for the last fundamental question "why and how what exists produces what happens in the way it happens", that leads to Dynamics, we can’t answer in a unique way, we can’t talk about Relations without comprehending the Entities, whose relation, in the most elementary form of interaction between Force and Field, produce the Events, and the Events themselves, the ways they interact, described by the Fundamental Principles of Evolutionary Dynamics, producing the modes in which Relations emerge and evolve, determining the way Reality forms.
In this sense, we can say that the Knowledge of Reality is the comprehension of the Relations between the Events produced by the Entities. Knowledge is the cognitive, the metaphysical counterpart of Physical Reality, the essence of Meta-Reality.
A few words about the words "state" and "variation":
- the state of an Entity, for example the Field, is not an Entity itself. It is only an abstraction, a useful representation obtained slicing Reality in the time dimension, finally, a snapshot. It doesn’t really exist, because Reality is a process, an incessant, a continuous flow of mutations, of variations of the Entities. The time dimension is continuous and its flowing never stops,
- the variation of a state of an Entity, an Event, as seen above, happens, emerges from the interaction of the Entities, the Agents and the Acted, forces and fields. It is fundamental for the existence of the Entities themselves, from the very ontological perspective, because Entities manifest their Existence, emerges from Inexistence, in the causal former phase transition from Nothingness to Existence, though their interaction that manifests itself as variation. Variation of the state of an Entity, of a field, producing and/or modifying gradients, that can propagate and conserve structuring the field itself). This is the essence of Action, in its three fundamental modes of expression: perturbation (gradients), propagation (translation, waves) and conservation (rotation, vortices, particles).
Links to the tables of contents of TFNR Paper
