Akinbo, Peter,
One thought to consider is that inherent dichotomy of energy and form.
Nothing exists if it doesn't express/transmit some amount of energy. Unless it is speeding up, or slowing down some interaction, we can't detect it. Yet on the other hand, any such detection amounts to a degree of equilibrium between forces. Opposite forces cancel each other and exist as mass as long as they sustain some degree of vibrating/cycling energy in that relation. Combining forces balance out to some larger force, ie. a bigger wave, higher amplitude. Then there are any number of myriad interactions, such as waves of energy connecting with mass forms of energy, etc.
Now we can go down to smaller and smaller scales and get Peter's wheels within wheels and each one needs both that static concept of being a "wheel," and being spinning, as both form and energy. Or we can go back up the scale and get to the point of a moving car. Even at that level, it doesn't have an exact form and location. In fact, the more you examine it and consider all the various processes, input, impressions, etc, it can seem even more ephemeral than a quantum particle. Consider just taking a picture of it; The shutter speed of the camera has to remain open for some fraction of a moment and while the shortest possible opening might produce a seemingly clear image of this object, it can't be a dimensionless point in time, as that would be leaving the shutter closed and no motion of light striking the lens. So it and all its constituent parts and their constituent material and the atomic structures and dynamics within, are all still dancing around this shortest moment of time.
Consider even these ideas we trade back and forth; The words are like small wheels in the larger wheels of sentences and paragraphs, composed of letters of some static form and attached meanings, yet each expresses and connects and carries on some larger idea, that is also some quantized fragment of a larger design that we are trying to express. All of course requiring that store of information that Rob so effectively points out is necessary to make sense of even the simplest equation/sentence.
Then we try to expand it out to encompass that larger idea and doing so, have to include ever more wheels within wheels and potential confusion to the minds to whom we are expressing it.
Some we connect with and some just glancing interactions. So even our efforts at clarity can magnify the confusion.
Now the point I'm trying to make here is that we will never create enough wheels to fully explain this, because our notions of form are only one side of the coin. Our thoughts, words, models, etc are these stabilized connections of energies, which we then view as entities in their own right and then assume are foundational, rather than emergent from the dynamic, that we then consider as an effect of the existence of these entities. The verbs resulting from the nouns. We have that top down, static view of a bottom up dynamic. Then we assume there must be ever more static and rigid laws and patterns as the basis of this existence, when it works the opposite direction. Those definite forms are simply the more repeatable and stable forms to arise. They are like the skeleton that is left when all the creative dynamics have slowed down and washed away, rather than the seeds of momentum and interaction that create such complex realities.
The one place where this dichotomy of energy and form is most apparent is the effect of time. As energy is dynamic and constantly in motion, it is necessarily forming and creating new forms, relationships and patterns, thus also leaving behind and dissolving previous forms. So what we think of as the present can best be considered as the energy. It is the forms which are constantly shifting and thus coming into being and evaporating, such that they go from what we call the future, into that called the past, neither of which is physically real, since it doesn't have the requisite energy to manifest it. So while we seem to have so much trouble defining and describing the nature of the present, it is because energy is NOT form! All those shapes and relations and grand patterns are what are actually ephemeral, as they come into being, solidify, consolidate and eventually collapse.
Another distinction created by this dichotomy of energy and information, is that we have evolved a distinct set of organs to process information, in the central nervous system and a set of organs, in the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems, to process energy. Which goes a long way to explain why we are so intellectually focused on the study of forms, which we are constantly creating, storing, ordering, adding and yet which the more we build them up, the more rigid and fragile they seem to become. Then these increasingly unwieldy creations start to break down and we start over, building on the foundations of what remains, seemingly the most stable. Thus giving the sense that solid form is the seed from which creation is born, when in fact it is more of a grain of sand around which we form our pearls of wisdom. That to which the flows of energy start to interact and accumulate. Of course, seeds are also a collection of information which are designed to inflate as they accumulate energy...... Endless interactions....
Regards,
John M
