The Frost Diamond
David Cowles
“God is ‘special’ only to that extent that in God, A and Ω are the same event.”
How are prior events linked to subsequent ones? This problem occupied the greatest scientific minds of the 20th century, including Einstein, Schrödinger, Bell…and Robert Frost. Yup, at the same time Einstein was tinkering with Relativity, and Bohr was playing with atoms, Frost was walking through the backwoods of New Hampshire.
In The Road Not Taken, Frost offers a de minimus model of irreversible process: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood…Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.”
Events are rooted in choice and choice cannot equivocate, nor can it be revoked. Every event expands Universe by one, but such proliferation does not strain solidarity, it strengthens it. In fact, an event can be understood as a quantum of solidarity.
Every event marks both a convergence (Ω) of what already is and a divergence (A) of what is coming to be. Frost’s initial position (A) and final destination (Ω) are fixed. Everything in between is TBD.
Frost offers a flesh and blood enactment of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Initially, we know everything there is to know about his location…and nothing about his momentum (direction). But once Frost has chosen a path and begun his journey, we know everything about his momentum and ‘nothing’ about his position. (Any knowledge Frost may have about his geographic location while walking must come from an extraneous source, e.g. other hikers, GPS.) Finally, Frost reaches home; now location is once again secure and momentum is but a memory…at best.
Frost is blessed (or cursed) with free will. Free will is ‘will’, it’s not ‘magic’; it can only do what can be done. I cannot use my ‘free will’ to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Frost can only exercise his free will on actual pathways, and in Frost’s minimalist model, there are only 2 paths available to him. So Frost models a quantum of process which I have, less poetically, expressed as a diagram:
A
↙ ↘
x x’
↘ ↙
Ω
This model does not consider the possibility that Frost will encounter other forks along his chosen path that do not lead to his desired destination. IRL, things can get crazy quickly:
↘ ↙
A
↙ ↘
x x’
↙ ↘ ↙ ↘
Ω
↙ ↘
One person’s A is another person’s Ω. In fact every node, even God, is an A and an Ω. God is ‘special’ only to the extent that in God, A and Ω are the same event: “My end is my beginning (Queen Mary), my beginning is my end.”
To generalize Frost’s model, I have developed a broader representation of process which I call, appropriately I think, The Frost Diamond:
A
↙ ↘
x x
↙ ↘ ↙ ↘
x x x
↙ ↘ ↙ ↘ ↙ ↘
x x x x
↘ ↙ ↘ ↙ ↘ ↙
x x x
↘ ↙ ↘ ↙
x x
↘ ↙
Ω
This diagram illustrates a process 6 steps long; but the pattern can expand indefinitely to accommodate any number of steps.
The Frost Diamond is the paradigmatic structure of an event, any event. Every event begins as a choice between at least two options. Relative to any proposed destination, there are always at least two pathways. IRL, there are no linear functions; all equations are quadratic or higher order. Therefore, all destinations can be reached by at least two different routes.
The choice and execution of a single route, forsaking all others, is what turns mere activity into an event. Being an event is 99% exclusion.
The World is a funny place! On the one hand, nothing ever seems to change, and the more things do change, the more they seem to stay the same (to coin a meme). On the other hand, I have no idea whatsoever what tomorrow will bring. Or even this afternoon. We are all always just a micron or millisecond away from an infinitesimally probable, but life altering, catastrophe.
What we call living is the ultimate sobriety test. “Walk a straight line between crushing boredom and devastating tragedy…or just hand over your license right now.” No wonder everyone is anxious all the time!
Why is the World like this? The 20th century British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead hinted at an answer. Any world that is, or ever could be, must include three irreducible but undefinable categories: One, Many, Creativity. The one becomes many and the many becomes one: that’s the creative process. That’s what a ‘world’ is. Father ‘begets’ Son and from them ‘proceeds’ Spirit.
Whitehead’s minimum conditions closely track Frost’s Diamond. Every Alpha (A) births two or more divergent pathways which re-converge at an Omega (Ω). For every Alpha, there is at least one Omega. What goes around goes around. That is the solidarity of the Universe.
Today, there are two dominant schools of ontology: Classical Determinism (CD) and Quantum Mechanics (specifically, Hugh Everett’s Many Worlds Interpretation, MWI). Neither is remotely satisfying.
Determinism brings us back to Shakespeare: “To be or not to be.” And then to Looney Tunes: “That’s all folks!” One and done. It either is…or it is not. If it is, it’s what is, period. Welcome to Hell (but cheer up, it’s an ‘all inclusive’).
Many Worlds relieves the boredom, but it comes at the price of Chaos! According to MWI, there is a universe in which I ordered the lasagna at your wedding and another where I ordered the Lamb. Lucky me! Well, not so lucky. I’m Kosher; I can only know from meat or dairy – I can’t combine the two. Like Frost, I can’t ‘travel both and be one traveler’.
Of course, the bifurcation of reality does not stop with restaurant menus. Everything you do creates a node, a bifurcation point…you and every other human being…you and every other organism…you and each one of the 30 trillion independent cells that make up your ‘body’.
The World is a funny place! All the popular models are either too loosey-goosey or too frigid-rigid. According to Heraclitus, ‘Everything flows’. Liquid state molecules are ‘oriented’; they are neither wildly chaotic (gas) nor rigidly constrained (solid). Now take another look at the Frost Diamond; yup, it’s a liquid. It flows. Heraclitus, meet Robert Frost!
David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com.
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