To imagine the opposite, James Clerk Maxwell (18311879) a British physicist, mathematician and mechanic, at one time came up with a hypothetical demon living inside a gas at the molecular level, which could estimate the speed of each molecule, for fast ones open the door, but not for slow ones. Then one part of the body would spontaneously cool down, while the other would heat up. The impossibility of such a miracle in nature has been called the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The act of creation is to be studied
But wait! The world is not so dull around! And he is not at all balanced. In it, something is constantly born, something new arises! Stars and planets are born from clouds of scattered gas in space. Stars form and form galaxies. On the planet, a calm atmosphere gives rise to a cyclonic whirlwind or tornado. And thats just inanimate nature. Living is simply an inexhaustible fountain of origins, origins and occurrences. Including its highest manifestation as human society and the most important part of human activity business, its history with the change of technological eras, the generation of new products and industries.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the German thinker, one of the founders of all Western philosophy, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, drew attention to the fact that the Act of Creation had not ended at all. The world continues to change and develop! There is always something new in the world. Something that didnt exist before. Quantity turns into a new quality. The new order denies the old constructions. The laws of the emergence of the new were formulated by him in the form of the laws of dialectics in the book Science of Logic.
And what does Thermodynamics say about Arising? After all, this is all a direct and obvious violation of the Second Law: a new order is emerging, chaos is decreasing, disequilibrium is increasing, entropy is clearly decreasing! In fact, not quite so: physicists say that the emergence of new forms of complexity, orderliness is also an increase in entropy. What does it mean? A gas cloud in interstellar space, condensing under the influence of gravitational forces, «seems to be more ordered than scattered. But this is not the case, because in a scattered cloud the velocities of the molecules are all orderly small, while when compressed, the velocities of the molecules increase. The cloud compresses in physical space, but scatters in phase and this is more significant,» explains Carlo Rovelli, one of the authors of the Theory of loop gravity.
We are not going to dive into the subtleties of physical theories. Let the rise of order be the increase of disorder. Let, according to physics, the emergence of vortices in a gas and liquid, the appearance of living nature, the development of social forms this is all" self-structured disordering.» We are interested in the very fact of the Emergence of the New.
The most common phenomena of self-organization the spontaneous emergence of a new order boiling water, the emergence of atmospheric vortices. From the point of view of Dynamics, which explains the behavior of an object on the basis of the interaction of its parts, it is impossible to find a reason that would force the molecules of a liquid or gas to change their behavior abruptly. At the particle level, nothing new happened, no new force was added, no one interfered with the atmosphere with a giant ladle, and a typhoon vortex appeared in the system. Or does Maxwells demon still exist? But this is unlikely.
Does this mean that some more physics is needed? Or is it no longer physics?
So far, physics is modern thermodynamics, which studies the processes occurring in open, complex, non-linear systems active or passive, located far from the equilibrium position. A new, far from complete physical doctrine, called non-equilibrium thermodynamics, describes the processes of spontaneous appearance of ordered structures in various highly non-equilibrium open systems, i.e., self-organization processes.
A great contribution was made by Ilya Romanovich Prigogine (1917 2003), a Belgian scientist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977 for his work in the field of nonequilibrium thermodynamics. His works are widely known: «From Being To Becoming» and with Isabelle Stengers «Order out of Chaos: Mans new dialogue with nature».
It is the categories of Emerging, Arising, Becoming, New Quality that will be the central point for us, entrepreneurs, because the conditions of constant competition make us be very attentive to innovations. Whether in technology, or in the organization of affairs how and why does something original appear that did not exist before?
The wisdom we need
For us, such terms of non-equilibrium thermodynamics as a qualitative transition, state bifurcations, self-organization are important. Because both technological revolutions and the birth of new business models are just examples of these phenomena.
«BIFURCATION (from Latin bifurcus forked) is all kinds of qualitative rearrangements or metamorphoses of various objects when the parameters on which they depend change.»
This word will be our most commonly used term. So, lets dwell on understanding it. The main content of the term bifurcation lies in two important points:
First. These are phenomena when something qualitative happens, fundamentally different from what has been so far up to the point of bifurcation. Separation of the state of an object into before and after.
The water was calm, but now boiled and seething.
The microphone was silent and suddenly «beeped» so that everyone clutched their ears.
Mobile phones in a short period «buried» landline communications.
Second. When further development can take place in fundamentally different ways, when at a certain point the same bifurcation point, there is a separation of possible trajectories. For example, the phenomenon of bifurcation in hydrology: in Russia in the Far East there is the river Delkyu, from which several channels depart about 180 km from the source, gathering into a river that flows through the rivers Kuidusun and Indigirka into the Arctic Ocean. The other part of the river below the bifurcation zone flows into the Okhota, that is, it carries its waters to the Pacific Ocean. This means that two particles of one drop of water from a glacier may end up, for reasons beyond their control, in two different oceans of the planet! (The author of these lines, by the way, visited this interesting point on a hike along the Suntar- Khayat ridge.)
The guiding star of our entire future path will be the question: water molecules, okay, nothing depends on them. For them, its a coincidence. What about people in their business? We are «thinking molecules» in the social fluid. Can we act consciously and independently determine what route the fate of our cause will draw? Will our project end up in an arctic ocean without hopes, or in a warm one, full of life and prospects?
Is this exactly what promises us to reveal the secrets of a qualitative transformation in our affairs? Maybe!
The modern view of the structure of science is to recognize the equal complementary position of Dynamics and Thermodynamics.
The ray of the laws of Thermodynamics is directed from the higher systems of nature towards the ray of the laws of Dynamics.
In the area of systems, which man has been looking at since time immemorial as objects of his influences, there are three main postulates, which physicists called the Beginnings of thermodynamics. Closer to the tip of the beam, that is, where there are systems over which a person no longer has power as over a gas or liquid in a vessel, at least because he himself is a particle of them these are biological or social objects, there are patterns of non-equilibrium systems. And in the very tip of the second ray, one can assume the existence of still undiscovered fundamental laws of the balance conservation, which should unite all nested systems both galaxies, and cyclones, and life forms. However, the laws of the highest level could be discerned only by one who is at the very tip of the beam who can look down on everything in any of its complexity, who is above everything that is, the Almighty. Science is still very far from such heights. Even the existence of alien life forms is still only a hypothesis.
Fig. 2. Two rays of the laws of nature
Lets not anger the gods and make serious scientists laugh, lets descend from metaphysical heights to our sinful Earth. What is important for our mundane concerns, we could learn? It seems that we have groped for a part of physics that deals with the emergence of the New in any of its incarnations! We hope that innovations in business that are of interest to us may also be in the area of attention of this physics.
To summarize: the behavior and structure of any object of nature is thus determined not only by the laws of Dynamics, that is, from below the axis of complexity from the inside, but also by the laws of Thermodynamics, from the opposite end of the axis, if you like from above.
Theories belonging to the first ray Dynamics, as we have already noted, constitute Special Knowledge. A person who understands the intricacies of phenomena, in their nature is called Specialist. Knowledge of the laws of the second ray Thermodynamics, allows a person to see the important reasons for the behavior of any systems, regardless of their nature. This is exactly the very knowledge that from time immemorial has been called Wisdom. And wisdom in any business can be very useful. Especially if she is ready not only to explain why it happened that way, but also to suggest innovative solutions such that something new happens, and in the right way and when we need it.
Arising not subject to calculation
Cheers cheers! Will physics help us now? Explain how fundamentally new businesses arise, how their products capture markets? Will he give the laws by which we will build formulas for success? Give us wisdom?
Not so simple.
If we carefully look at the very edge of both one and the other rays of Physics, we will see strange things.
In the microcosm, as one penetrates into more and more subtle parts of matter, many basic concepts familiar to man become unsteady. Einsteins space turns out to be a field that can move, bend, oscillate. Time can flow at different speeds. A particle to be at the same time a wave. Quantum mechanics has declared that in the world of very, very small objects, everything is «grainy», discrete. And in all movements there is an element of chance. Events at this end of the axis are ambiguous, probabilistic the state of the particle at the moment cannot accurately determine what will happen to it in the next instant. At the microscopic level, you can calculate the probability of an event that will happen, but you cannot predict the future with complete certainty.
But what about at the other end of complexity, at the tip of the ray of Thermodynamics? In a completely different way, but clarity and unambiguity also disappear. The foundation of physics the measurability of the properties of objects, disappears with increasing complexity. The trouble is that if more and more complex systems are included in the consideration, the concepts of temperature, entropy, and energy for them lose their rigor. It is impossible to measure or mathematically describe such parameters for society or for an organization. The basic concepts of thermodynamics energy, entropy, temperature turn out to be only metaphors in the world of people. Physics, as you move up the scale of complexity, disappears as an exact science. It seems that the tips of both divergent beams blur in a haze of fundamental uncertainty.
And in this haze, our hopes for help from physics in the world of business problems dissolve?
And thats not all washes his hands and the instrument of physical knowledge Her Majesty Mathematics!
Even where equations for the behavior of complex systems are still being written, they turn out to be nonlinear. In such complex systems and their models, everything depends on everything! Dependencies are sometimes contradictory: it is good for predators in the forest if there are many small animals around their food supply. Predators multiply, and and destroy their food supply. The population of predators begins to decline sharply.
Solutions of non-linear equations lose their stability at certain points, which means that they become ambiguous. Such points on the mathematical trajectories of mathematics are called bifurcations.
«The bifurcation point is a critical state of the system, at which the system becomes unstable and uncertainty arises: whether the state of the system will become chaotic or whether it will move to a new, more differentiated and high level of order. A term from the theory of self-organization.»
The number of both predators and their prey can fluctuate, and under certain conditions one or both populations can end their existence catastrophically.
How to «feel» this very bifurcation? Play with it, look at this strange self-organization. This, it turns out, is not difficult there are a lot of bifurcations with us and around us!
Fig. 3. Expected behavior of an elastic object
It is unlikely that in todays computer world someone uses an eraser an elastic band to erase what is written with a pencil or pen. Maybe you remember this subject from school? Such a small brick of gum, which was fun to play with, squeezing it with your fingers. And now, lets extract science from such an» anti-stress» of our childhood.
Squeezing the elastic between the fingers, we make it shorter. We compress even more we deform the elastic bar even more.
But at some point, the elastic band suddenly refuses to compress further and bends to the side. Squeezing and unclenching our fingers, we repeatedly reach this point, when the behavior of a simple elastic object changes qualitatively. And each time in a different way: once the deflection will be in one direction, and once in the other.
Fig. 4. Buckling the real behavior of an elastic object
We will not write the equation, as we promised, but we will only say that it has a unique solution only up to a certain compression. And at this critical point, the solution loses stability. If we imagine that we have an absolutely perfect bar of gum inside and out, and we press our fingers strictly along its longitudinal axis, the gum will continue to shrink without bulging. But this will already be an unstable segment of solutions. Just as a ball can, in principle, stick to the top of a convex surface, but only in an absolutely ideal case.
If you «move» your finger at least a little bit physically, or the homogeneity parameter of our rubber band mathematically, the solution of the equilibrium equation will immediately rush to another, stable state. But! Now there are two possible stable states in the solution the deflection is either «to the right» or «to the left», and which one our object will fall into depends on those very random, literally microscopic «movements».
That is, the point is not that we do not know how to count, but that mathematics fundamentally cannot give an unambiguous solution. On the contrary, mathematics proves that now there can be no uniqueness! Moreover, if we took not a rubber block, but a rubber cylinder, we would get not two possible positions after the deflection, but an infinite number any direction in a circle.
Fig. 5. The condition of the gum under pressure. Pitchfork bifurcation
To sum up, in what state the system will pass, hitting the critical point, mathematicians cannot unambiguously calculate the solutions become unstable with respect to fluctuations. This means that there are solutions to the equations, but there can be many of them. And even infinitely many. What solution is implemented in practice depends on infinitesimal deviations in parameters that occur only in the real world, more precisely, in the microcosm, and which a person and, therefore, mathematics can never know. These are such small movements, such small inhomogeneities of the gum material, that it is impossible to measure, plan, or take into account in advance. Such small deviations are fluctuations. To calculate the exact state of a complex system in the future, it is necessary to know a huge number of initial conditions onshore, which will never be known to anyone. And someone who, and business is definitely a system with an infinite amount of uncertainty.