Peak complexity

and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. ¹

Sean Carroll favors a broad Church to accommodate the variety of complexity, for “there is no one definition that works for every circumstance—different systems can exhibit complexity in different ways.  That's a feature, not a bug; complexity comes in many forms.  We can ask about the complexity of a given algorithm designed to solve a problem, or the complexity of a machine that responds to feedback, or the complexity of a static image or design.” ²  (Or about the complexity of the system that asks about complexity—‘Who are we?’)  In Carroll's account the trajectory of the universe's entropic arrow of time is ever rising, whereas the trajectory of the arrow of complexity is parabolic, rise-peak-fall:  “The era of complex behavior that our universe is currently enjoying is, alas, a temporary one.” ³   Entropy, as aforesaid, increases; if not forever at least past the point the universe is capable of sustaining anything complex enough to sense the arrow of time. ⁴  

Stephen Jay Gould uses the concept of frequency distribution to depict the anabasis of complexity in the history of life on Earth. He presents it as “an increase in total variation by expansion away from a lower limit, or ‘left wall,’ of simplest conceivable form . . . into the only open space . . . toward the direction of greater complexity.” ⁵ He goes on to note that human cultural change “operates by mechanisms that can validate a general and driven trend to technological progress—so very different from the minor and passive trend that Darwinian processes permit in the realm of natural evolution.  And once you start to operate by general and driven trends, you can move very deliberately, and very fast.  With directed motion of this sort, you ought to start running into right walls.” ⁶   I.e., colliding with limits to further complexification. ⁷

The arrow of complexity shows up at different points in Being and Time. For instance, Heidegger comments in §11 that “so-called ‘primitive’ peoples have their own kinds of everydayness [seine spezifische Alltäglichkeit] along with ways of ex-sisting that are not of the everyday kind.  Focusing a hermeneutic of ex-sistence on the lives of such peoples would be methodologically fruitful for studying ex-sistence insofar as their experiences are often not obscured by complicated [kompliziert] self-interpretations and are expressed more directly in terms of their lived, pre-theoretical absorption in things.” ⁸

Again in §17 Heidegger claims that “In cultures imbued with magic and fetishism, people are more immediately [»unmittelbaren«] involved in their worlds of meaning and usually take things as signs without engaging in elaborate theories about it [nicht in theoretischer Absicht und nicht auf dem Wege theoretischer Spekulation].”  In such worlds “the sign has not yet become ‘free,’ that is, differentiated and detached from what it indicates [ein Noch-nicht-freiwerden des Zeichens vom Bezeichneten].  It is still tightly bound up with what it is about, what it is a sign of.”⁹

Sheehan's paraphrase highlights the thema of ‘not yet’ in this passage.  The formal definition of a world of practical activity “must be broad enough and flexible enough so that when we say something in a given world of meaning is ‘not yet X' (e.g., that ‘primitive’ cultures do not yet understand signs as signs), such statements will not be understood negatively but rather as offering a positive insight into what we are discussing.” ¹⁰   And for present purposes, a glimpse of the arrow of complexity.

In similar vein Heidegger will say a couple of years later that, although we sometimes speak of higher and lower animals, “it is nevertheless a fundamental mistake [ein Grundirrtum] to suppose that amoebae or infusoria are more imperfect or incomplete [unvollkommenere] animals than elephants or apes. Every animal and every species of animal as such is just as perfect and complete [vollkommen] as any other. Thus it should be clear from everything we have said that from the outset this talk of poverty in world and world-formation must not be taken as a hierarchical evaluation [einer abschätzigen Stufenordnung].” ¹¹    So also, we should add, jedes Dasein und jede Daseinart is, qua ex-sistence,  just as vollkommen as another (under the aspect of perfectly-imperfect kinesis—see footnote 10.) Nevertheless, from worldless to poor-in-world to world-forming is a trajectory with positive first derivative, from simplicity to komplizierten Lebensform,  in Wittgenstein's phrase.

Heidegger characterizes the stage of complexity of animals as Benommenheit: Positiv können wir sagen: Der Organismus ist das Fähigsein zum Benehmen in der Einheit der Benommenheit . . . . Die Benommenheit ist das Grundwesen des Organismus. ¹²   “The animal's way of being , which we call ‘life ’, is not without access [ist nicht zugangslos] to what is around it and about it, to that amongst which it appears as a living being.  It is because of this that the claim arises that the animal has an environmental world of its own within which it moves.  Throughout the course of its life the animal is confined [eingesperrt] to its environmental world, immured as it were within a fixed sphere [in einem Rohr] that is incapable of further expansion or contraction [das sich nicht erweitert und verengt].” ¹³

Life began at the ‘left wall’ of simplicity, Gould writes, “with a bacterial mode. Life still maintains a bacterial mode in the same position.” Gould's use of ‘mode’ here nicely ambiguates between the meaning ‘modality, Weise,’ and the word's meaning in statistics, ‘most frequent data-value in the distribution.’  Gould goes on, “So it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be—at least until the sun explodes and dooms the planet.”  Again: “On any possible, reasonable, or fair criterion, bacteria are—and always have been—the dominant forms of life on earth.” ¹⁴      

Furthermore, we live, says Gould, “in a fractal world of ‘self-similarity,’ where local and limited cases have the same structure as examples at largest scale.” ¹⁵  Benommenheit, then, is the ‘modal bacter’ of metazoa in that it is the predominating form of life's openness, its Offenheit für ___  .  [ Das Tier]  kann sich eine bestimmte Umgebung nur einpassen, sofern zu seinem Wesen die Offenheit für ... ge-hört und sofern aufgrund der Offenheit für ... , die sich durchdas gesamte Benehmen hindurchzieht, ein Spielraum ge-schaffen ist, innerhalb dessen das Begegnende so und so be-gegnen kann, d. h. in der Funktion des Enthemmens auf das Tier zu wirken vermag. ¹⁶  Yet as Gould notes of the region ‘to the right of’ the modal bacter, “New species occasionally wander into this previously unoccupied domain.” ¹⁷  So also, at the further stage reached by a unique case, into the unoccupied open domain ‘to the right of’ modal Benommenheit.

For, in comparison to that of, say, the bee, “the world of man is a rich one, greater in range [größer an Umfang], far more extensive in its penetrability [weitergehend an Eindringlichkeit], constantly extendable not only in its range (we can always bring more beings into consideration) but also in respect to the manner in which we can penetrate ever more deeply in this penetrability [der Eindringlichkeit mehr und mehr zu durchdringen].”¹⁸

The principal manner in which we accomplish deeper penetration is by further complication of our understanding of things, by ‘going theoretical’ through a künstlichen und komplizierten Einstellung ;  viz.: »Zunächst« hören wir nie und nimmer Geräusche und Lautkomplexe, sondern den knarrenden Wagen, das Motorrad. Man hört die Kolonne auf dem Marsch, den Nordwind, den klopfenden Specht, das knisternde Feuer. Es bedarf schon einer sehr künstlichen und komplizierten Einstellung, um ein »reines Geräusch« zu »hören« .¹⁹   In Welch's gloss, “it is one thing to understand what arises for encounter while we are caught up in responding to it, and it is quite another matter to understand it while locating ourselves at a distance from it.  Indeed, understanding-at-a-distance differs from understanding-on-site — not in kind but in mode.  For understanding-at-a-distance is derived from understanding-on-site.” ²⁰   Theoretical understanding derives from everyday understanding.

Its own modal bacter, the overwhelmingly most frequent and dominant ‘how’ of ex-sistence, is Alltäglichkeit: Diese Indifferenz der Alltäglichkeit des Daseins ist nicht nichts, sondern ein positiver phänomenaler Charakter dieses Seienden. Aus dieser Seinsart heraus und in sie zurück ist alles Existieren, wie es ist.  . . . Alltäglichkeit ist eine Weise zu sein, der allerdings die öffentliche Offenbarkeit zugehört.²¹

Alltäglichkeit and Benommenheit are similar structures at their respective scales of complexity, Seinsmodi; for Benommenheit is the Alltäglichkeit of animality, and Alltäglichkeit the Benommenheit  of ex-sistence. Yet, Alltäglichkeit deckt sich nicht mit Primitivität. Alltäglichkeit is, again in Wittgenstein's phrase, a complicated form of life, more complex than Benommenheit. Heidegger insists that Alltäglichkeit is ein Seinsmodus des Daseins auch dann und gerade dann, wenn sich das Dasein in einer hochentwickelten und differenzierten Kultur bewegt. ²²

In the frequency distribution of biological complexity Alltäglichkeit lies far out in the tail to the right of Benommenheit.  Yet for Heidegger even this extreme outlier  is a Noch-nicht-freiwerden des Verhältnisses vom Alltäglichkeiten.  And a few Daseins occasionally, rarely, do wander, for a moment, into the previously unoccupied domain, Seinsmodus, to the right of Alltäglichkeit and its offspring Theorie.   Heidegger names this remote, evanescent space Entschlossenheit, ‘eclosion.’

Entschlossenheit is reported to be a state of explicit, over-and-em-powering awareness that human being makes sense in an otherwise senseless universe, that “ex-sistence is the only place that meaning shows up.” ²³  Once this ‘moment of vision,’ Augenblick, has passed, the seer returns to Alltäglichkeit , yet transformed by the vision and now freed to ‘choose its hero.’    Sheehan characterizes the transformation as “to ‘double’ one's ex-sistence: already structurally thrown open (erschlossen), I take it over and become resolutely thrown-open (entschlossen).”²⁴  Note that Heidegger's employment ²⁵  of the experience retells the myth of deliverance. ²⁶   Here I'm only concerned to remark that this stage of complexity briefly exceeds Alltäglichkeit (jumps from er- to ent-), and so far as I can see is the peak (first derivative zero) of human complexity.

Concluding his recent soliloquy on complexogenesis  Carroll says, “So, I don't know about the universe as a whole, but I think that unless we do something dumb and kill ourselves, there's a lot of room for increased complexity and increased sophistication in our use of information here on Earth.” ²⁷   Carroll takes ‘information’ to be physical, ²⁸  i.e., low Boltzmann-entropy/free energy.  Note that to use information, with whatever level of sophistication, is concomitantly to produce entropy. ²⁹

This contemplated increase of complexity and sophistication in our use of information I take to be the equivalent of Heidegger's man braucht nur Seiendes hinzuzubringen, ‘we can always bring more beings into consideration.’ ³⁰   Such further resource-extraction and enhanced facility in manipulating beings/information would no doubt lead us into  einer hochentwickelten und differenzierten Kultur .³¹   But—my point—will not increase the complexity of human being qua ex-sistence.  

Ex-sistence has hit the right wall of life's complexity as openness, Offenheit.  Call it the keine neue Nähe phenomenon.  For, Heidegger says, Dasein ist »in der Wahrheit«.³² Sheehan's annotations help us see that Wahrheit here is, in Sheehan's term, alētheia-1, that is “the a priori dis-closure (opening up) of the discursive field of intelligibility.” ³³ “Metaphorically speaking,” Sheehan comments elsewhere, “as thrown-open (i.e., appropriated), human being is the ‘open space’ or clearing within which the meaningful presence of things can occur. (The previous sentence is Heidegger's philosophy in a nutshell.)” ³⁴   Sticking with metaphor, life is a physical field, das Offenfeld, and our local patch, ex-sistence, instances the highest value the field takes. “Being and Time as published shows that our ability to understand the meanings of natural, sensible things is unrestricted. . . . Structurally and in principle we are able to know everything about everything, even though we never will.” ³⁵   You cannot get more open to beings than that.

We can get better answers to our questions and these better answers will generate more questions.  It's simply that, like the animal's environmental Rohr, ἀλήθεια sich  nicht erweitert.   Our knowledge of beings grows, our openness to beings does not.  We are as opened-up (erschlossen)—‘in the truth’—as we'll ever be.

Entschlossenheit, just as Welch says of Theorie, differs from Alltäglichkeit not in kind but in mode; all three are phenomena of ἀλήθεια.  Sheehan (note 24 above) speaks of Entschlossenheit's occurring  in a flash of insight, and insight is an alltäglich phenomenon—“insights are a dime a dozen,” as Lonergan puts it.³⁶   Entschlossenheit ‘doubles’ ex-sistence in that Entschlossenheit is—to borrow again from Lonergan—“insight into insight,” ³⁷  an intimation of ἡ τῆς  ἀληθείας ἀλήθεια.

Responsive to the inveterate implicit inquiry ‘Who are we?’, this second-order insight discloses that, in Sheehan's words, “The clearing [what we're calling our region of das Offenfeld] is the οὗ ἕνεκα of ex-sistence, its very raison d'être, that for the sake of which ex-sistence ex-sists at all.”³⁸

To put it in information-theoretic terms, ex-sistence is the one and (so far as is presently known) only general-purpose information processor (G-PIP).  Moreover this processor is an obligate  omnivore. In Sheehan's mantra, ex-sistence cannot not  make sense of everything it encounters.  

All of which brings us back once more to ‘Darwin's curse,’ viz.:

“Natural selection will never produce in a being anything injurious to itself, for natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each. No organ will be formed, as Paley has remarked, for the purpose of causing pain or for doing an injury to its possessor. If a fair balance be struck between the good and evil caused by each part, each will be found on the whole advantageous. After the lapse of time, under changing conditions of life, if any part comes to be injurious, it will be modified; or if it be not so, the being will become extinct, as myriads have become extinct.” ³⁹

Peripeteia  in nature.  Carroll again:  “If that's something [i.e., increased complexity and increased sophistication in our use of information] that we value, then that's maybe a goal that we can have to keep that going, to keep that surviving and not do dumb things and destroy ourselves here on Earth.” ⁴⁰ The question then arises whether G-PIP's increasingly complex and sophisticated processing of beings might of itself  so change the conditions which have hitherto sustained it that its further output will eventuate in unintended self-extinction (not to mention extinction of myriad other species).

Rise-peak-fall is the trajectory of tragedy.  Aristotle remarked of the tragic mythos that ‘the most exquisite anagnōrisis co-occurs with peripeteia,’ καλλίστη δὲ ἀναγνώρισις ὅταν ἅμα περιπετείᾳ γένηται.⁴¹ The moment of vision at the very inflection point, at the precipice of catastrophe, makes the finest play.  If we do employ the track of human complexity, ‘Being's poem,’ as tragedy, then what is the part become injurious, the hamartia, the fatal Irre?

DCW  07/17/2025

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