Dear Lorraine,
I find your essay one of the most passionate among those I`ve read. Furthermore, it deals with one of the most intriguing and fascinating aspects of the physical universe - one that physics still has problems considering seriously, let alone understanding. While physics has always been dealing only with `the outside of things` - the standard forces, matter, energy, etc. - there is also, deeply intertwined with it, what Teilhard de Chardin calls `the inside of things`, which has to do with action, spontaneity, creativity, consciousness, self-consciouness. This essential component of the fabric of reality evolves hands in hands with the material outside of things; as matter self-organises into increasingly complex patterns, its `internal component` grows too, culminating in the human phenomenon, which is also the title of his most famous book (are you familiar with it?).
Some physicist (maybe Schroedinger, but I am not sure), wrote something like `life is that phenomenon that causes a material body to keep moving even when, according to the laws of physics, it should come to rest` - a funny way to point out that a key component of our physical universe still escapes the grasp of traditional physics.
Teilhard de Chardin`s objective was to come up with a sort of new, totally scientific theory able to combine the external and internal faces of matter into a coherent picture. He also had a profound understanding of the importance of the notions of emergence and self-organisation, decades before science started looking at them. But, in spite of the depth of his visions, he could not formulate a rigorous theory.
I personally believe that one possibility to provide some formal rigour to his views about the evolving cosmos is offered by the notion of (emergence in) computation, as I try to illustrate in my essay here. This is fully compatible with the idea that physical laws do not exist apriori, out of time and space, but progressively emerge as the layered architecture of the universe unfolds. In doing this, I was inspired also by Chaitin`s idea of `life as evolving software`, and Tononi`s mathematical theory of consciousness and integrated information.
Needless to say, the crucial problem in these computational models of the baby universe is, still, to spot the emergence of entities that manifest autonomy, spontaneity, creativity, or the ability to act (or to appear to act?) independently of the `rules` of the lower layer, as some patterns in cellular automata appear to do. I do believe that free will exists, but as scientists we should try hard to pull it out of the realm of magic, and give it some sort of mathematical characterization. Would you agree with this? And, if so, do you have a preferred way to attack the problem?
Thank you and best regards.
Tommaso
