Logos (not Legos)

1500 Words, 7 minute read

Do you like riddles? Give these a try:

(1)    What do people fail to comprehend before and after they have heard it? (Heraclitus)

(2)    What is shared by everyone but acknowledged by no one? (Heraclitus)

(3)    What separates us from what is closest to us? (Heraclitus)

(4)    What was before all things, through which all things came to be? (St. John)

(5)    What scatters all things and gathers them together…simultaneously? (Heraclitus)

(6)    What is with God (spirit) outside history and with us (flesh) in history? (St. John)

(7)    How do we know that all things are one? (Heraclitus)

Each of these riddles has the same answer and, you guessed it, the answer is logos. But that doesn’t help very much, does it? What is this logos and how can it be all things to all people (as above)?

Logos is an ancient Greek word, of course, whose meaning has evolved. The original concept was that of a weir or net, useful for example in fishing. Logos first emerged as an organizing principle in the philosophy of Heraclitus, a 5^thcentury BCE pre-Socratic from Ephesus, modern Turkey.

After a stint with the Stoics, logos resumed center stage with Heraclitus’ fellow Ephesian, the Apostle John (c. 80 CE). It is no exaggeration to say that John’s Gospel is Christianity’s founding philosophical document (vs. biographies, letters, diaries, sermons, exhortations, hymns, etc. elsewhere in the New Testament).

Today, logos is typically translated as ‘word’ – not wrong, but certainly the semantic minimum . Odd too, because John uses a completely unrelated term whenever he’s referring to a unit of speech. If we’re sticking with the language metaphor, then logos is more like syntax than word.

More broadly, logos suggests order, i.e. the way uniform spacetime accommodates non-linear concentrations of energy such as subatomic particles, atoms and molecules, objects and organisms, galaxies and their clusters, to wit the way it helps me catch a fish. If Being is an organism, logos is its skeleton; if it’s an edifice, logos is the foundation and the frame.

On the other hand, logos is nothing like an architect’s drawing. Blueprints specify a building’s details down to the positioning of fixtures in the bathrooms. Logos, on the other hand, is ‘detail agnostic’. It does not care how spacetime clumps, only that it does so inexorably and spontaneously: “Light appeared in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1: 5)  It is as if your contractor said, “Here is the house’s footprint; it’s non-negotiable. But you can break up the interior space (rooms, corridors, etc.) anyway you wish. One great room, 100 tiny cells, it’s up to you.”

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“Cold enuf 4 ya?” (What, you don’t speak New England?) If it is, then pour some water in a bowl and watch it freeze. Fascinated? Well, it’s better than watching paint dry! Ok, so do it again…and again. Each time, you begin with a liquid and end up with a solid. But the process is not instantaneous; phase change takes place over time, and the specific sequence of crystallization never repeats…exactly.

Did you make videos? Then note that while no two crystallizations are the same, there’s no way to distinguish one pattern generation (in space and time) from another…except point. The most we can say is, “They look different.” The territory is the map.

Or we could say that the crystallization patterns (in space and time) differ from one another infinitesimally. Therefore the difference between any two patterns is the difference between every two patterns. We could say the ‘difference’ is really a differance (Jacques Derrida).

“Cold enuf 4 ya?” No worries, I’ve got a Markov Blanket that will keep you warm (below).

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Logos is a rich philosophical concept, an abstract model of physical process. Recently, however, developments in math and physics have identified concrete correlates. For example, in 1995 Michael Talegrand conjectured that given any unspecified  number of points scattered across an unspecified number of dimensions, it is always possible to connect some of these nodes to form a convex surface that divides the space asymmetrically into a compact, self-contained interior and its exterior template.

Unexpectedly, Talegrand’s conjecture was recently proven (with some help from AI) and is now a theorem. It basically states that the tendency of spacetime to self-organize is endemic. Logos is what Being is. Order is neither imported nor injected; it emerges naturally.

This tendency of chaotic elements to self-order (logos) is what distinguishes fecund Being from sterile Void. Logos is Being and Being logos. That is how there is something rather than nothing. The Book of Genesis outlines the process. Beginning with that inert Void, the primal separation of light from dark kicks off a process (crystallization?) that results in the World as we know it today. Genesis, of course, attributes the process to divine agency but there is no reason, at least not initially, to accept that conclusion.

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The bifurcation of spacetime creates a non-linear gradient that distinguishes inside from out. In living organisms (cells), this gradient takes the form of a semi-permeable membrane, an organelle responsible for the structural integrity of the organism and for its long term survival in an ever changing environment.

To achieve this dual mandate, the membrane must enable, but censor and ultimately limit, the exchange of energy/matter/information between the interior and the exterior of the organism. This limited exchange of elements across a non-linear gradient is characteristic of so-called dissipative systems.

When spacetime self-orders, it does not break into inert monads, forming a multiverse. Solidarity is always preserved by logos. Here Aquinas was right, “Being is one!” And so Riddle #7 is solved. Congratulations, BTW.

I beg your pardon: I promised you a Markov Blanket (above) and so far all I’ve delivered is a semi-permeable membrane. You must be freezing! What gives? Well, turns out our membrane includes a Markov Blanket, so it’s everything I promised you…and more! (With a track record like this, I should run for public office.)

To the extent a Markov Blanket is in place, interior and exterior are isolated. Nothing inside can communicate with anything outside, or vice-versa, without the intermediation of the Blanket: I → MB → O and O → MB → I but never I ↔ O.

In living organisms, a Markov Blanket is one function of a membrane. It preserves the integrity of the interior. It functions like Big Brother (TV show or novel); like a prison warden, it reviews all communication between inmates and the outside world; it mediates all communication…until it doesn’t.

Communication is one thing. Food and Waste are something else again. The warden does not monitor the daily delivery of food nor the continuous discharge of waste. These functions are organic to a prison.

The membrane allows order to be concentrated and conserved in convex regions of spacetime known variously as ‘insides, interiors, figures, or bubbles’, even as the whole (inside/outside) obeys the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics, i.e. even as entropy increases inexorably.

This remarkable existential feat is known as homeostasis, a complex of self-regulatory mechanisms that allow a figure to maintain its integrity (order) against an entropic ground for an extended period. In the case of living organisms, e.g. cells, homeostasis requires a regulated exchange of particles/energy between the interior and exterior of a cell.

These exchanges serve solely to maintain the character and the integrity of the Bubble. They do not satisfy Gregory Bateson’s ontological criterion: they do not constitute ‘a difference that makes a difference’. In other contexts, figures can act intentionally to modify their grounds (techne); this is not that! Here the exchange of energy occurs only to suppress change, i.e. to propagate the status quo. It has no informational value.

Other than homeostatic noise, no direct communication occurs between interior and exterior. All communication is mediated by the membrane functioning as a Markov Blanket. Information generated internally impacts the Blanket and, if appropriate, the Blanket impacts the exterior. Likewise, information generated externally…

The natural tendency of spacetime to bifurcate into convex shapes, sustained by homeostatic processes but otherwise segregated from their exteriors by a Markov Blanket, is direct, experiential evidence of the operation of logos at the heart of Being.

So back to our riddles:

(1)    What do people fail to comprehend before and after they have heard it? logos.

(2)    What is shared by everyone but acknowledged by no one? logos.

(3)    What separates us from what is closest to us? logos.

(4)    What was before all things, through which all things came to be? logos.

(5)    What scatters all things and gathers them together…simultaneously? logos.

(6)    What is with God (spirit) outside history and with us (flesh) in history? logos.

(7)    How do we know that all things are one? See above, logos.