is a set of complementary dynamic phenomena~principles responsible for the genesis, existence, and evolution of our universe, that is, a nature entailing and entailed by complementing, completing, or perfecting relationships.
Scientifically speaking, nature is grounded in the laws of quantum mechanics. In it, a strange situation exists, in that a complete description of an atom’s behavior requires both waves and particles; which one is observed depends on the instrument used to measure it. Although waves and particles are mutually exclusive descriptions of the quantum world, they are not, as the great physicist Neils Bohr said, contradictory, but rather complementary. Such is the strange nature of the quantum world. Ordinary experience, however, tells us that if two descriptions of the same phenomenon are mutually exclusive, then at least one of them must be wrong. In fact, since the beginning of time, people have separated life into opposing pairs or “contraries”, and contrived explanations for them in terms of either/or relationships. As history has proceeded, many along the way have recognized that truth seems to be less cut and dry then that, less black or white. In fact, shades of grey might be more like it—somewhere lying in-between opposite poles. Considering their historical significance and the absolutely crucial role contraries and their interpretations have played in the history of ideas, surprisingly little language, philosophy and science exists that adequately captures both the polar tendencies of contraries and the relationship between them.
Even though almost everyone is familiar with pairs like love~hate, body~mind, theory~experiment, individual~collective, nature~nurture and yin~yang, and most would agree that such pairs have been central to the development of philosophy and science, some key questions remain unanswered. What are these pairs really, how do they come about, how do they interact with one another, and finally, what do they tell us about nature?
Some of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the 19th and 20th centuries, like electromagnetism, quantum mechanics and relativity have at their cores fundamental scientific reconciliations of contraries. It is hard to imagine what our world would look like without the successful reconciliation of electricity and magnetism, energy and matter, time and space, wave and particle. In spite of these cogent examples of the successful philosophical and scientific reconciliation of nature’s contraries, to our knowledge, a tenable, empirically based general theory of how the world of idealized poles and the world of the in-between may be reconciled has yet to be delivered. How come?
TCN explores this question in some depth. It begins with a brief exploration of the history of ideas that focuses not only on the role contraries have played, but how again and again, the interpretation of these contraries has strongly influenced the directions pursued and conclusions drawn by philosophers and scientists. Like a broken record, champions of polar extremes grapple for dominance, whether it be idealists vs. materialists, rationalists vs. empiricists, dualists vs. monists, reductionists vs. emergentists, or any of the many other polar opposites. Such either/or debates are far from over. They are raging all around us in our own life and times, here and now.
TCN suggests that even though stunning developments in science and technology are being made daily, problems that have to do with the interpretation and understanding of contraries are still with us, and are sitting at the heart of some of the most severe problems facing human beings in today’s world. TCN highlights the point that throughout history, some of the greatest philosophers, historians, scientists, pundits and politicians have done their level best to communicate the importance and mystery of contraries. For example, in the work of Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel— two of the major philosophical contributors to the subject—we find diametrically opposed basic interpretations of what contraries are. Whereas Kant believed contraries were constructions of the mind, Hegel thought contraries and their dynamics were actual phenomena. But Kant and Hegel both lived a long time ago. At least this debate must be over by now, right? Amazingly enough, just like the 300 year mind/body debate, a consensus has not been achieved!
TCN shows why it is very likely that the problem rests in the habit of trying to understand nature by setting up diametric poles (like material vs. mental) and then attempting to choose one over the other. We call this the “mutually exclusive either/or mind-set”.
But what if it wasn’t like that, either in our heads, hearts, minds or world? What if experiments showed that the human brain itself is capable of displaying two apparently contradictory, mutually exclusive behaviors at the same time, both of which are necessary for its function? And what if the same phenomena were seen to be ubiquitous also in human behavior? What if there was a scientific theory that attested directly to the complementary nature inherent in human brains and human behavior? Might this indicate why our perception of the world appears to split things into pairs—that the brain itself might actually be built up from and run on principles underlying such contraries? Might it also indicate there is a more enlightened way to proceed, a deeper reality that goes beyond metaphors and “isms”— to know nature and ourselves ? In TCN, the answer to all these questions is a resounding, “Yes!”
With the history of ideas as a background, TCN proceeds to describe concepts and developments that have led in the last 25 years or so to a tenable and testable scientific theory of complementary pairs and the dynamics relating them. Up to now, notions of complementary pairs have been either predominantly metaphorical—for example as in the concept of “dynamic” interplay of opposites represented by “dialectic” in Western Philosophy and “yin~yang” in Eastern philosophy—or rest on an interpretation of how the subatomic world behaves, as in the wave~particle duality of quantum mechanics.
TCN reconciles the language of physical science, which is a language of states, with the language of tendencies (no states, stable or unstable), and shows how opposing tendencies can coexist at the same time. TCN offers, we think for the first time, something that Aristotle would have been very happy about, namely a “science of both contrary poles and all that lies between them”.
