Assembly Theory
“In assembly theory the future is determined, but not until it happens.”
“Assembly theory reintroduces an expanding, moving sense of time to physics by showing how its passing is the stuff complex objects are made of: the size of the future increases with complexity.”
“The future of the universe is more open-ended than we could have predicted.”
The above sound bites are just a sampling from the very quotable article “Time is an Object” by Sara Walker and Lee Cronin on Aeon (14 May 2023). A friend recently shared with me this careful attempt to explain “assembly theory,” which I had never heard of, but which captured me immediately.
The thoughts and habits and beliefs of all people, if left untreated, decay into ruts. You can euphemistically rename this inevitability “faith” or something else, but it’s still a failure of creative energy, and now you read about how the brain is programmed to predict possible futures, prioritizing the familiar, and thus, as everybody knows, to a large extent sees what it wants to see, and finds what it wants to find. I don’t understand why people fall roughly into two groups: those who domesticate the ruts, and those who feel trapped by them, but it seems to be so, the former group far outweighing the latter.
Personally, I equate being in a rut, maybe exactly, with depression. That’s why I found this article stimulating and refreshing—like the rescuers breaking through and the sweet air rushing in. The theory doesn’t introduce any new elements to the major players in our perception of reality—space, time, matter, force—it offers instead a novel way of thinking about their inter-relation. It especially offers a new way of thinking about time.
I’m not a card-carrying member of any political party or religion or school of thought—except maybe some vague generality like science or ethics—but to me, formalized common sense (science), and primal compassion (ethics), are above tribalism and don’t issue cards. I enjoy not knowing because only when I know I don’t know, which is always, can the space of discovery unfold before my eyes. Only then can I feel I may be using my mind for what it was designed to do, or rather, for what it may be capable of doing. I have, however, in my lifelong search for the thing I cannot name, sometimes found myself in the sweet spot where the counter-intuitive becomes intuitive—most resonantly, for me, with the idea of the Tao, which seems to harmonize nicely with assembly theory. A quotation from the Tao te Ching, Chapter 6 (trans. Stephen Mitchell) is in order:
The Tao is called the Great Mother:
empty yet inexhaustible,
it gives birth to infinite worlds.
It is always present within you.
You can use it any way you want.
The Tao might conjure the image of a uniform, omnipresent primal plasma from which all things issue, but assembly theory suggests that the emergence of phenomena is local: things appear and grow in complexity only where they can, where there is sufficient information—that is, memory—to build upon. The Tao is not everywhere, only everywhere it is. “Everywhere” is just too big a word—it can’t contain all the possible nothing. But “nothing,” as Roger Penrose observed, is unstable, so we can say the Tao is possible everywhere. It manifests reality when there are memory and different combinations available, new information in the environment, and the ability to replicate. If the Tao is not somewhere, that means that somewhere is not ready for it, or in other words, is nowhere. Nowhere is not an absence of space, but of time.
At least in my attempt to understand the theory, two thought patterns are particularly helpful: one, that time is not a screen upon which reality is projected—neither is it (as Einstein felt) in an absolute sense an illusion; neither is it simply another word for movement, or entropy: it is an actual material property. And two, time is the slow, creative process of selection and evolution, in the development not only of life forms, but of everything that develops. The process is not determined until it is, but neither is it random. And a “block universe” has no need of evolution, which alone can explain complex things, so that’s dubious. I think of it as a force—like gravity, which is equally invisible and known by its effects, too primal to be explained. “An object can be produced only where there is local memory that can guide the selection of which parts go where, and when.” And: “Time is the ever-moving material fabric of the universe itself.” No object can come into existence in a space that is too small for it—that is, without sufficient memory to support it. Life forms, which take an enormous amount of memory, and very deep time, to develop, of course can themselves channel the Tao and create their own complex objects. “High-assembly objects can be generated only by life.” I would include among those the idea where forms are subjugated to a consciousness of possibility itself, often called “enlightenment.”
Complex molecules, the life forms they become, the complex creations of art or engineering, are not random but are selected out of the space of all possibilities. The monkey with a typewriter and infinite time eventually chancing to type the complete works of Shakespeare would never happen, not only because the concept of “infinite time” is invalid—time is not a line extending forever, or a blank space waiting for a monkey to type every possible combination of letters—it is something that happens where there is memory. “As the memory requirements increase, the probability that an object was produced by chance drops to zero because the number of alternative combinations that weren’t selected is just too high.”
The authors, when they get to the questions we’ve been waiting for—“But how did something emerge from nothing? How did life emerge from non-living atoms and develop consciousness and intelligence?”—only conclude that in assembly theory these things are fundamental, not emergent. Reminds you of the physicists at the blackboard in the old New Yorker cartoon: at a certain point of complexity—“then a miracle occurs.” I didn’t notice the authors answering the questions, but I believe they would say the answer lies in deep time. Complex forms, including life, are not specifically determined, but are latent in, original material. To me, that is a hard distinction to grasp. As for “original material,” I’m afraid I have to ask—where did it come from?
Assembly theory challenges conventional thinking in several ways. As with the idea of the Tao, the theory sees the universe as a seedbed of possibility. But equally for me, the theory challenges the direction of the universe. Traditionally we see it—or are programmed to see it?—as having a beginning, then expanding from there toward we’re not sure what. One thinks of Aristotle’s “prime mover”—as long as we remember that Aristotle saw the “moving” as attraction, not pushing. He thought reality didn’t emanate from the Prime Mover, but was attracted back to it—since he needed a Prime Mover that wasn’t itself caused, or motivated, lest we get into an endless loop of what caused that?
The movement of the universe is not from but toward. God is infinite possibility, and thus can never be a completed thing: God didn’t create the universe, the universe is creating God. That works for the Tao too. Why does “God” have to be a being? Why can’t it be a force? Why can’t it be time itself? Nothing is planned—everything builds on what was before, and unfolds. Even if you insist the universe is determined, you can’t prove it can be predicted.
Like a good novel, the universe keeps you wondering what’s coming next.
August 20, 2023
More to the Deputy Than Meets the Eye
He was about what you’d expect—whoever “you” are, and whoever “I” am who is telling you this: well put-together, but with his stocky frame—mostly muscle, for now—threatening his uniform at every seam. His patent leather shone slickly, and the law enforcement accoutrements adorning his thick belt made you wonder if they were permanently attached, or if he had to reinstall them every morning, and forced you to imagine that process. He was a peace officer in the old sense, well-liked by fellow officers and the public alike, because he was genial and helpful and just didn’t give you anything to challenge or dislike. He enjoyed a good beer, bad joke, and was an exceptional marksman, and the kind of guy everybody wanted on their bowling team.
Of course he was named Danny.
But it is my job to tell you now that when he went home at night, things were different.
Danny was single, lived alone, and when he was safely in his fortress of solitude he shed his uniform, carefully hanging everything up, perhaps to be worn again, perhaps to be dropped off at the cleaners, depending on the circumstances, safely stored his Glock and Taser, took a shower, went to his “other” room, and after surveying the rich assortment of women’s clothing in the walk-in closet, re-dressed. He loved the luscious feel of silk panties (don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it), and nylon stockings, and applied his make-up with great and tender care. Danielle was set free—Danny a faint memory. You might say, a dream.
There was a liminal moment during the transition—no longer Danny, not yet Danielle—when, like opposite charges, his two selves canceled each other out, and he felt the bliss of pure consciousness—minus the tiresome inconvenience of identity. Maybe refinding that place every night was the whole point—when subject and object swapped places, when “I like these panties” became “These panties like me.” But Danielle didn’t think of it that way, she just followed her heart.
First of all—and this is me again—forget the trick that there is “a” self—we are never more than our latest “I.” Our reality, when something has told us the limit of what our reality can be, and we have believed it, is a competition between the multiple I’s that elbow their way into the spotlight, including the I that concludes there is no master I, and the one that wonders how it knows that.
Or, if you like—as in my case—the narrator.
All of this milled about in the realm of the intuitive. It wasn’t something Danielle dwelt upon, nor something Danny could share with his bowling team.
Other things they couldn’t share:
The occasions when they had come around a corner in the house to discover themselves sitting in a chair.
Their mutual suspicion that they were dreaming themselves, and themselves were dreaming them, and so there was nothing but dream.
The enigmatic sticky notes each self left for its later—another word for “other”—self, which the recipient could only puzzle over, never comprehend, like koans, wondering what they would know if they could revive within them the germ of that inscrutable message.
How curious to wonder: what am I trying to tell myself? Knowing there are no selves, only the places where they have been.
August 19, 2023