A Summary of the History of the Cosmological Evoluton of Complexity

Information gives rise to self-organization which gives rise to emergent properties. To have self-organization, you must have information communication, networks through which that information can flow, and paradoxical relations that create tensions which drive complex interactions.

1. Energy -- foundational information leading to self-organization and the emergence of structure

2. Quantum Physics
-- free particle-waves
-- atoms

3. Chemistry
-- fluid dynamics
-- solid-state
-- complex systems (interface of solid and fluid, giving rise to flows, networks, etc.)

4. Biology
-- monocellular (archaebacteria, eubacteria, eukaryotes)
-- polycellular
-- multicellular (combining features of monocellular and polycellular)
-- social (requiring interspecies and intraspecies communication)

5. Human Psychology/Sociology (Tier 1 in Gravesean psychology)
-- Tribal
-- Heroic
-- Authoritative
-- Entrepreneurial
-- Egalitarian

6. Metahuman Psychology/Sociology (Tier 2 in Gravesean psychology)
-- Integrative (view the world in an interdisciplinary way)
-- Holistic (view the world as fully integrated set of networks)
-- Transpersonal (begin to personally identify with the whole of creation)
-- ?
-- ?
-- ?

7. ?

etc.

As suggested, this evolution is an open ended process, with no given endpoint. However, we should be able to see patterns emerging. For example, each larger emergent process has a number of subprocesses that lead up to the next emergent process. As a level of complexity becomes "full," a new level of complexity emerges to create new environments in which to evolve.

Here I combine J.T. Fraser's umwelt theory of time with Clare Graves' psychosocial emergent complexity theory of mental/social evolution. Both thinkers argue paradox is what drives the emergence of new levels of complexity, with each new level of complexity creating its own paradoxes which then get "resolved" (but not really, as their maintenance is necessary to maintain the level of complexity supporting the one which resolves the paradoxes of that previous level) in the next level.