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C. Jack Pearce
We are Going with the Cosmic Flow: But Will We Float or Sink?


Abstract

The presentation will propose that our longings for and experimental efforts toward a global community are rooted in and impelled by identifiable themes of cosmic organization which are operative from the early stages of the cosmos, through today, and into the future. But it will also point out that the success of the human embodiment of those themes is probabilistic only, not assured of success, and our efforts to reach hoped-for potentials must surmount some of the scaffolding which has brought us thus far.

The presentation will present a unification of current hierarchy theory, emergence theory, and a view of cosmic evolution which draws extensively upon on the work of Eric Chaisson. This unification will be based upon a correlational mechanic operational from the quantum levels extending to an hierarchy of life groupings on Earth of the sort earlier sketched out by Leo Buss. Illustrations of the correlational, hierarchical order building process will include how simple atoms are formed into complex atomic aggregates, up trough the periodic table, how atoms are grouped into molecular aggregates, simple molecular aggregates into complex aggregates, etc. Identified characteristics of the ordering process will include but not be limited to differentiation, combinatorics, computation, and hierarchy building. Power law and Boltzmann-Shannon statistics will be shown to be ubiquitous in the ordering process, evidencing a common correlational basis, and demonstrating common manifestations in biological organization from the cellular through the social animal levels (as pointed out by Lazlo Barabasi). The characteristics of correlational ordering will be shown to extend to the fields of social network analysis, internet organization, and similar matters.

The life process is depicted as a development of non-equilibrium thermodynamic processes, in which energy flows are captured in ordered dynamic patterns which reproduce in a manner allowing for evolutionary elaboration. This portion draws upon the work of Brooks and Wylie, Smolin, Kauffman, and others. The evolutionary elaboration will be depicted as a continuing form generation process, which uses the genetic mechanism as a semiotic aid to the reproduction system, but not itself the exclusive core of that process, along lines suggested by Goodenough and Deacon. Leo Buss’s work will be used to depict hierarchical levels of life organization, beginning in the murky world of cell precursors, and extending through multicellular organisms and social systems of multicellular organisms. Humanity will be depicted as developing an elaborate embodiment of social organization at the multicellular organism level of life organization, utilizing language systems and other aids to social cooperation.

Thus the current efforts to create a global human polity, aggregating globally the social aggregates evolved to date, and beyond that to create some global concordance of life processes resulting in a more ample rather than impoverished ecosystem, will be traced from their roots, and put in cosmic context.

But the realization of these efforts will be depicted as contingent only, in that the development of ordered systems in the cosmos is seen as proceeding on a conditional probability basis, in which more complex and higher energy density systems build on prior aggregates and fall on a power law curve which explains their rarity in the observed universe. The genetic reproduction mechanism itself is suggested to result in kin preference biases which work against efficient large-group organizational realization, including but not limited to parasitism of such groups by lineages. Prior-used group organization techniques, both biological and social (e.g. scent identification, headscarves and some religious traditions) will have to be taken into account and surmounted in producing higher level groups of groups, in the biological hierarchy building process.

Current ‘emergence theory’ thinking will be integrated, to help bring into focus both the foundations of and some of the fundamental characteristics of the challenges which face the current efforts to produce emergent new levels of life system organization through its human creation.

Drawing on a combination of the foregoing bodies of knowledge with experience in public affairs at the national and international level, a limited number of specific suggestions will be made as to techniques in social organization to be used at the globalization level. Not all of these will be uncontroversial.

 

Biography

C. Jack Pearce’s education includes Baylor University (B.A.), Southern Methodist University (LLB), and a National Institute of Public Affairs fellowship at Cornell University.  His career includes government service with the United States Justice Department’s Antitrust Division (where as Assistant Chief of the Public Counsel Section he participated in legislative and intragovernmental policy issues), the Agency for International Development  (as an Assistant General Counsel and capital projects loan coordinator), and Deputy General Counsel of the White House Office of Consumer Affairs.  He founded a law firm in Washington DC, and practiced antitrust law and legislative relations work for over twenty years. He is currently President of O.S.I. Management, Inc., which  conducts office leasing businesses. Pearce has also  served on the boards of civic organizations.

For the bulk of his educational and professional career, Pearce has maintained an interest in and devoted time to questions of how order has evolved in the Universe. In recent years,  Pearce has pursued these interests with more extensive research, participation in conferences, correspondence with scholars in fields of interest, and authoring materials on this topic and its ramifications. Some of this work can be seen at www.pearcesite.net



 

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