Time, Change & Self Organization

" …whatever is born or done at this particular moment of time has the quality of this moment of time. Abstract Do things change in time, or does time change things? We explore the consequences of a theory that time—given a physical interpretation independent of space—drives system change globally, identical to the way in which information drives subsystem change, locally. We conjecture that Gregory Chaitin's characterization of maximum numerical unknowability in computation maps to maximum configuration efficiency in a complex physical system. 1.1.0 The physics of change: Time as duration. 1.1.1 In a single atom, a state change is defined as a quantum jump, an electron switching from one energy level to another. No unit of time is sufficiently small to observe this change of state, so the phenomenon is said to be discontinuous; the action apparently happens in zero time. 1.1.2 In the context of system dynamics, positive feedback is also discontinuous; i.e., one cannot determine the origin of the feedback, and the system is said to be out of control. An example is microphone-amplifier feedback, that aurally disagreeable " squeal " when one instrument is placed too close to the other. It is impossible to determine the cause of the feedback (microphone or amplifier). 1.1.3 Negative feedback, on the other hand, is a control system. As such, negative feedback resembles a continuous function, in which the rate of change is measured by intervals between chosen connected events, and time is defined as duration. 1.1.4 Newtonian (classical) physics belongs to the class of scientific theories in which time is treated as duration. In fact, such is the very basis of Newton's invention of the calculus to describe the rate of change of the rate of change (accelerated motion). Gravity—because it operates in one direction only, toward the center of mass, can be viewed as a negative feedback mechanism, a universal control system.