Incomplete Nature [Paperback]

If it were a snake it would have bit us. It's sitting right under our noses. It's the unifying insight behind the two biggest breakthrough clues toward solving the biggest remaining scientific mystery. Grateful and greatly encouraged by the breakthrough clues we ran with them, ignoring their underlying and unifying insight, the insight that made them both possible. We ignored the underlying insight until Deacon's book, whose 600 exquisitely reasoned and written pages I'll attempt to summarize here.

The biggest remaining scientific mystery is how to close the explanatory gap between the hard and the soft sciences, between energy and information, between physical forces and living desires, between a values-neutral physio-chemical universe and the values-driven bio-psycho-social universe--in a word, between clockwork physics and ever-game-changing life.

In other words, why can we talk about a living creature's intentions, preferences, desires, appetites, adaptations, functions, and purposes, but not a rock, a planet's, or an atom's? What changed, making information and intention cause matter to behave so differently, the way it most obviously does with life? And precisely how do intentions change things?

The two biggest breakthrough clues are evolutionary theory and information theory, and the overlooked underlying insight is about where to look for what life does differently--not in things themselves but in differences, and in particular differences between behaviors that do and don't persist, differences between what remains present and what becomes absent.

Darwin discovered how differential survival, the proliferation of some lineages and the disappearance and absence of others yielded game-changing adaptations over time. Life doesn't require a creator-thing, or an improver-thing in order to evolve. Instead, it requires a difference between the lineages that stay present and the lineages that become absent.

We have embraced Darwin's breakthrough but haven't embraced what it tells us about where to look to finish solving science's greatest mystery. Instead, we treat differential survival as a creator-thing, for example when we say that natural selection designs a trait. And we treat DNA as an improver-thing, a magically powerful yet merely physio-chemical-thing that improves organisms.

Information theory may be less familiar to you than evolutionary theory but its consequences are everywhere. Pioneered by Claude Shannon, information theory made modern computers possible and gave us such essential and commonplace terms as bit, megabyte and pixel. Shannon, an engineer at Bell Labs came up with a simple functional definition of information, as again, a difference between what remains present and what becomes absent.

Pick a card, any card. Before you pick there are 52 possibilities. After you pick there's one. The step-down from 52 to one--the difference between what could have been picked, and what turned out to be picked is a measure of the amount of information gained in the process. Information is not a thing. It's a narrowing of possibility.

Again, though we ran with Shannon's breakthrough, we ignored its underlying insight. We treat information as a thing in computers, in the bit, the hard drive or the memory chip.

We are very thing-oriented.

We are so thing-oriented that, though it has been over 150 years since thermodynamic theory showed that energy is not a thing but a difference, we still treat energy as a thing. Put a frozen pizza in a hot oven and the temperature difference equalizes. And yet we still talk as though we're pumping some heat-thing into the pizza. We pump an energy-thing into our gas tanks and in and out of batteries.

We are so thing-oriented that we ignore how a whirlpool is not a thing but a remainder, a difference between what remains present and what becomes absent as turbulence cancels itself, leaving only a "least discordant remainder."

Complexity and self-organization theory provide a breakthrough understanding of such self-organizing processes but again we have run with the breakthrough, forgetting the underlying insight. A whirlpool is not a self-organizing-thing, because it's not a self-thing and it's not, as complexity theory suggests a process, that gravitates toward an attractor-thing.

The key in all of these cases, argues Deacon is to pay attention to the "constraint dynamics" that produce these differences between what remains present what becomes absent. Heating a pizza is "constraint dissipation," the equalization of differences. The formation of a whirlpool is "constraint propagation," the compounding growth of differences, as the more turbulence cancel each other, the less discordant the remainder, which cancels even more turbulence.

Life is a different kind of constraint dynamic in which constraints constraint, maintain and preserve themselves. Deacon shows step by careful step how with life real selves emerge, not as things but as constraint begetting dynamics, producing from its origins, lineages that in self-regeneration, impose new constraints upon their environments.

And in the process Deacon's approach provides a backdoor solution to the problem of free will. It's not how life becomes unconstrained, but how it becomes the source of novel constraint, acting in novel upon the world as it does in us humans especially, but to some extent in all adaptive traits, organisms and lineages.

The burden is on scientists to show in strictly classical physical terms how informational, intentional behavior emerges from energetic behavior, not at the origins of the universe, not at the origin of the human mind, not at the origin of sentient organisms, but at the origin of life. At the origin, differences between what remains present and what becomes absent become constrained in new ways, constraints that create, preserve and maintain themselves, in ways Deacon explains.

Embracing the full implications of the underlying insight that with life there is a change in how differences happen, Incomplete Nature provides a clear step-by-step description of how intentional dynamics really emerge from physical dynamics--how informational dynamics really emerge from energetic dynamics.

Deacon's approach offers an unprecedentedly comprehensive attempt at a physical science of all informational, intentional and meaningful behavior, a theory of everything" that "does not make it absurd that we exist," a theory that might complete our incomplete theories of consciousness by naturalizing in physic science the incompleteness we experience in life's infinitely innovative capacity to produce Darwin's 'endless forms most beautiful.'

In the past century, quantum physics and general relativity expanded physics in two directions, shrinking the status of classical physics to that of a special case operative under special conditions. Deacon's approach suggests that by understanding the physics of intention, the kind of work we living creatures do, we may be on the verge of a third expansion, a physical science of mattering that expands our scientific accounts of what is physically possible to encompass what has heretofore only been physically familiar.

Imagine the consequences for science and society of having a physical explanation for functional, meaningful and conscious behavior no less scientific and accessible than our explanation for lightning. I believe Deacon provides just that.

The first thing that anyone thinking about reading this book needs to understand is that "Incomplete Nature" is Deacon's "magnum opus". It is the distillation of a lifetime of thought on a highly complex subject, masterfully crafted and painstakingly argued. It was not written in such a way as to be profitably read in an afternoon, or breezed through in a couple of days. It is meant to be fully engaged by the reader, studied and even toiled over. For those who are willing to take the plunge, they will be rewarded with a rich understanding of the solution to mind/body problem, formerly one of the last remaining intellectual mysteries facing the human race. I say "formerly" because I believe that Dr. Deacon has indeed solved the problem, and his solution is founded on one primary concept: constraint.

What is a constraint? In everyday life we think of constraints as barriers that prevent us from doing things. Our jobs put constraints on what we can do with our time, laws put constraints on what we can do to other people, and so on. The essence of a constraint, then, is a limiting of possibilities.

Why are constraints important? Constraints tend to force things into patterns or regularities. In the first quarter of every year, hundreds of millions of people file their taxes in the United States. Without the constraints placed on us by our country's tax laws, this yearly pattern of behavior would not exist. The same is true of physical systems as well. When two physical systems collide they place constraints on each other. When two billiard balls collide, they force each other to change direction. When a heat source (such as a flame) "collides" with a flask filled with water, it forces the water to start boiling, or to put it another way, it prevents the water from doing anything except boiling.

The focal point of the book is ultimatley the connection between constraints and emergence. Sometimes when two systems collide the resulting behavior can be highly organized and complex, so much so that it appears as if a new "entity" has sprung into existence. In these cases the constraints placed on the systems have actually led to a whole new level of behavior that was not present before the systems collided. This new level behavior can itself form the basis of another collision, and thus can produce even higher, more constrained, levels of behavior with new "entities" appearing at each level.

In most cases, highly complex and organized patterns of behvaior tend to quickly peter out as the energy source that led to their creation equilibrates. But in some cases such behavior is self-sustaining, such as in autocatalysis where a catalytic reaction creates the very catalyst that initiated the reaction in the first place. Deacon shows in elaborate detail how such reactions can form the basis of systems that exhibit rudimentary teleological behavior (which he refers to as teleodynamics). He then painstakingly shows how teleodynamcs is the engine of evolution and information processing.

But probably the key insight about emergence is that these new "entities" that arise at each new level are not defined by what they are made out of, but rather the behavior that they exhibit. Take a whirlpool for example. Whirlpools come into existence when two systems collide, as when I stir my coffee with a spoon or when rocks impede the flow of water in a stream. A whirlpool can form in any liquid, be it water or mercury or even air. Therefore, "whirlpools" cannot be said to be made out of anything in particular. Whirlpools are a type behavior that can manifest in many different substances. And yet, in the absence of any and all substances, whirlpools could never exist. Thus, constraints are responsible for bringing abstract entities into existence.

So how does this all relate to the mind? In the last paragraph we said that constraints could lead to the emergence of new phenomena that exist at a level that is independent of the materials from which they are made. Such phenomena are not equivalent to the substances in which they are manifested, and yet they can only exist by taking form in some substance. Kind of sounds like the relationship between mind and body doesn't it? And that is Deacon's main point, that the mind is literally the result of a long, hierachical chain of constraints in physical systems. That is what he means when he talks about the mind being defined in terms of what is absent (i.e. what is not realized because of constraints).

Of course, Deacon fleshes out his argument with much more detail and supporting argument than I could ever place in a review, and I think his argument succeeds. After reading this book, I feel that the question of "what" the mind is has been answered, though the questions about "how" it works are still decades in the answering. Either way, this book will be sure to provoke thought in anyone willing to put the time and effort into following the argument. Highly recommended.

The author talks about - and to some degree - explores self-organization/morphodynamics; he outlines how systems that are (then) far from equilibrium can spontaneously "create themselves" (not a quote). Ever more complex systems pave the way to, are substrates for and mark steps toward life (and mind). Biological cells are pretty complex. To create them, self-sustaining (autocatalytic) systems (constituted by chemical processes) are necessary which need to progress to autogen(ic) status; autogenic status is characterized by the ability of the system (cell) to repair itself and to replicate itself. Essentially, in order to reach the complexity required for life, (gradual) progress has to be made. Each increase in complexity, each increase in sophistication of systems needs to be protected so that it can be build upon. Very much simplified: imagine a self-assembling sandcastle that needs to protect itself against the onslaught of mindless children who are out to destroy it. Mr. Deacon offers concepts for how that could work (not for sandcastles).

However, while he discusses all sorts of things (prominently: complexity theory, self-organization/morphodynamics, thermodynamics, teleodynamics, intentional/ententional [the latter a term he creates] phenomena, information theory and emergence) it does not converge into progress. At least not to me.

Ententional phenomena (elements that are not directly physically represented, such as purpose and thoughts) seem to be what he assigned a fundamental role to. But a focus on that theme is only present in the book's first half and does not amount to a conclusion, to a new insight, to something to work with.

The focus then shifts to constraints. Constraints prevent things. They cause things to not happen, they cause them to remain absent and to only be what (otherwise) could have been. Incidentally they cause/allow for other, alternative things to happen. (Naturally, they play a role in organization/morphodynamics.) I have a feeling that this doesn't sound like much of a great insight. It wasn't to me. I don't see what can - in respect to the emergence of mind/consciousness - be gained through that, allegedly new, perspective. For one thing, constraints are physically there. They aren't absent/absential features. For another thing, defining things negatively (a banana is a fruit that is not any fruit other than a banana) is not a new invention. I do not see anything resembling the paradigm shift and revolution Mr. Deacon postulates (and the publisher advertises).

In my view, this book doesn't revolutionize the concept of emergence; nor does it revolutionize (or particularly further) the understanding of the human mind. It enlightens few things. But it was interesting to read since it addresses interesting topics (of course that's a subjective assessment -- the second paragraph provides a short list, the first paragraph a minimally detailed example). The author's language could be called convoluted. Nonetheless, he remains modest. His insistence on having outlined something astounding is strange. There's a - let's say small - chance that somewhere in his text an idea is encoded and encapsulated that I could not access with my breadth and level of knowledge. In consequence, I plan to read his previous book (The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain) and, through different authors, to further explore the topics he addresses. The impressions described here are based on having read the full book and are strong enough to warrant a review; I will modify and mark it should I arrive at a new/improved understanding. Criticism is welcome.