Matter Regimes
Description
Fred Spier:
"The history of the Universe is the history of emerging complexity. In the beginning there was no complexity at all. The further the Universe evolved the more complex some portions could become. Right now, after about thirteen billion years of cosmic evolution, the human species is arguably the most complex organism in the entire known Universe.
Seen from the most general point of view, complexity is a result of interactions between matter and energy, resulting in more or less complex arrangements of matter (I will call them matter regimes). Cosmic history, therefore, primarily deals with the question of how these matter regimes have formed, flourished and foundered over time. Unfortunately, no generally accepted definition exists of how to determine the level of complexity of matter regimes. Yet there can be no doubt that it makes sense to call certain regimes more complex than others. Who, for instance, would be willing to argue that a bacterium is more complex than a human being, or a proton is more complex than a uranium nucleus? Apparently, the numbers of the building blocks of a certain matter regime, their variety, and their interactions jointly determine the level of complexity. I would therefore argue that a matter regime is more complex when more and more varied interactions take place among increasing numbers of the ever more varied building blocks of which the regime consists. In other words, a regime is more complex when the whole is more different than the sum of its parts"