Chaos And Order
On the constant shifting that is the essence of the worlds, and how it bring decay yet sparked life.
By Tiamor'Theri, philosoph and scientist.
Order and Disorder. Those are two antinomic states of mateer. We instinctively understand them, yet are unable to properly define them. A house is ordered. A pile of rubble is not. But why? There is no answer and there will probably never will. Trying to bring one is not the purpose of this essay. Here, we will study the place of these two states in the worlds.
Some say the world is perfectly ordered, and other than it is in a perfect balance between order and chaos (which is essencially the same thing). This is completely false. The world is naturally sliding toward disorder. Why? because of two things.
First, both the magical world and the material world are in a constant changing state. Mateer and magic are shapeshifter, and constantly go from one state to another, only difference is that magic change way faster than mateer (like water change faster than rock).
Second, there is more disordered states than ordered states. One easy comparison is a Diplomat
[NdT: Poker] hand. There is a lot more bad hands possible than good hands.
So, as the time flow, the world change: you discard your hand and draw another. If you had a good hand, you'll probably lose it, and eventually end with a really bad hand. In the real world, a house (a good hand) will eventually become a bad hand (a pile of rubble). We call this inevitable reality "Decay".
But, even if it is very unlikely, order can emerge from this constant shapeshifting of the wriggling chaos. Of course, it will soon decay and melt back into chaos. Unless... Unless its very structure -that randomly appeared- allow it to somehow slow down decay. Like the house having an inhabitant, who will fight back time by repairing the house, and prevent it from turning into a rubble pile once again. But this process need energy: the inhabitant need to eat. So the newly-born "living being" need to tap into its surrounding to find this energy. And to slow down its own decay, it accelerate the decay of something else. It is inevitable. Only by feeding on pure magic you could avoid this, as magic is primordial, and most chaotic, form of energy. It virtually cannot decay any further. And all energy derivate from magic.
So we have this very first lifeform. It probably emerged in the magic world, as the energy is plentiful and the changes way quicker. And it fight off decay. But this fight cannot be won, the newborn is imperfect. The best way it can save its order from disorder is to create another itself. Being new, it can outlive the first one, as decay has not yet touched it. Creating several new "itself" is better, because by multiplying themselves they will avoid "accident", random configurations of the surroundings that could prevent them to fight decay, to survive.
But these copies are not perfect. If they were, there is high chances that eventually something random will happen and destroy them all for some reason. No, the best way to go is to mimic the non-living world and "shapeshift". Random changes in the descendance that have high chances to fail and bring them closer to chaos, but could also create higher order, creatures that can survive better, and so multiply better and further.
A force, an unrelenting force have been unleashed. A blind force that will bring more and more order to the world just because everything that do not follow this force will soon disappear into primordial chaos. A force that sparked life, and made it into what we are now, a force that constantly find means to go further, quicker, higher. Constant changes, not toward disorder but toward Order, by pure chance and mathematical law. We call this force Evolution.
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Topic: Evolution VIII: Ediacaran Power (Read 56150 times)