From Knowledge, Knowability and the Search for Objective Randomness to a New Vision of Complexity

TL;DR

This paper explores the nature of complexity and randomness in physical phenomena, proposing a new perspective that links spontaneous natural randomness to a novel state between dynamic and thermodynamic conditions, with implications for understanding life.

Contribution

It introduces a new conceptual framework for complexity based on the role of genuine natural randomness and a state intermediate between dynamic and thermodynamic, challenging traditional views.

Findings

Spontaneous randomness is a genuine property of nature, not just limited knowledge.

A new intermediate state emerges under certain conditions, bridging dynamic and thermodynamic states.

Life can be understood as a natural consequence of these dynamical processes.

Abstract

Herein we consider various concepts of entropy as measures of the complexity of phenomena and in so doing encounter a fundamental problem in physics that affects how we understand the nature of reality. In essence the difficulty has to do with our understanding of randomness, irreversibility and unpredictability using physical theory, and these in turn undermine our certainty regarding what we can and what we cannot know about complex phenomena in general. The sources of complexity examined herein appear to be channels for the amplification of naturally occurring randomness in the physical world. Our analysis suggests that when the conditions for the renormalization group apply, this spontaneous randomness, which is not a reflection of our limited knowledge, but a genuine property of nature, does not realize the conventional thermodynamic state, and a new condition, intermediate between the dynamic and the thermodynamic state, emerges. We argue that with this vision of complexity, life, which with ordinary statistical mechanics seems to be foreign to physics, becomes a natural consequence of dynamical processes.