to a narrow range of relatively simple systems, at the level of stars and galaxies. Certainly, it does not apply to complex systems, such as human beings.
Ever since Newton, the nature of light—particle, wave, or both at once—was a subject of intense interest to physicists. In 1900, Planck (1858–1947) noted that a blackbody emitted electromagnetic radiation (which includes light) in small discrete packets, later called quanta, rather than as a continuum emission—energy was quantized. His law, giving the distribution of the radiated energy, formed the basis of quantum theory. Einstein later theorized that a beam of light is not a wave propagating through space but a collection of discrete wave packets, which he called photons, whose energy content is proportional to the wave frequency. He then demonstrated that one sufficiently energetic photon can transmit its energy to a single electron in a metal, ejecting it. In 1923, De Broglie (1892–1987) showed that electrons can be diffracted in a similar way to light: that is, particles can act as waves—the wave-particle duality. Photon-electron—or more generally radiation-matter—interactions form the basis of modern quantum mechanics theory.
To comply with the requirements of wave-particle duality, in quantum mechanics an electron is represented by a complex quantity called a wave function, based on the conservation of energy and momentum. The wave function cannot be identified with a single physical property of the electron. Unlike particles, waves do not have an easily defined spatial and temporal position. Thus, for an electron to have wavelike properties, its position cannot be determined with certainty and all its physical attributes cannot be expressed in a deterministic manner, requiring statistical treatment instead. As a result, in quantum mechanics all physical laws are inherently statistical. Quantum reality shows that at a more fundamental level, the world is not Newtonian but it is governed by notions such as chance, probability, and uncertainty. Moreover, the theory insists that we cannot make a measurement without influencing what we measure—the observer becomes an active part of reality. The irreversibility of time is admitted but it is introduced into theory by way of the fictitious observer and is not intrinsic to matter—it is anthropogenic, not materialistic.
Although waves may not have objective existence, the abstract wave equations of quantum mechanics have provided excellent approximations for a vast range of systems, from crystals to atoms. But the theory can only make accurate predictions for systems at the subatomic and atomic level, where energy is low and, above all, the number of components is small. The physical principles involved in the theory appear to be inappropriate for the description of very complex systems with a great number of degrees of freedom such as those found in biological structure. Quantum mechanics is thus an incomplete, complex, and indirect description of reality.
Theoretically speaking, modern physics possesses two major doctrines of space and time, general relativity and quantum mechanics, each applying to extremes of the magnitude scale of the universe—the macro and the micro world—but lacks a theory for the world in between, the one we inhabit. Attempts have been made—and continue to be made—to generalize, reconstruct, or build a new and more comprehensive quantum mechanics, but the various approaches so far pursued in these directions have been unsuccessful. The unification of quantum mechanics and general relativity has also been intensively sought, but the so-called “theory of everything” has not been achieved. A major obstacle in these attempts appears to be the passage from simple to complex systems.
In the first half of the twentieth century, it was recognized that the concept of a purely entropic universe did not make sense. Human beings living in such a universe would be in a constant struggle against nature, pushing things uphill and powerful laws bringing them down over and over again. Under these circumstances, life could not be sustained. This is against the order observed over billions of years of successful organic evolution. Among the scientists who recognized this paradox was the quantum physicist Schrödinger (1887–1961), the composer of the wave equation, who was looking at the phenomenon of life from the point of view of physics. To describe those obviously orderly processes, he invented the term “negative-entropy.” Order in organisms was maintained by an intake of “negative-entropy” from the environment, contained in the food they ingested. In this way, the universe became a mixture of order and disorder.
Since the latter part of the last century, the introduction of powerful electron microscopes and telescopes made it evident that this world contains countless ordered or partly-ordered spatial units—atoms, molecules, macromolecules, organelles, cells, organs, organisms, stars, solar systems, galaxies, clusters of galaxies—distributed all over the visual space of the organic and inorganic realms. Although less evident, these spatial units are organized in complex hierarchies in every organism and in the universe as a whole. To explain the origin of these units and hierarchies of units and their development over time, a new kind of general theory, a one-way (irreversible) science of changing structure accounting for all the patterns in the universe, is required. To be successful, this theory should be built on the geometry of tridimensional space—the space we really see. It should be simple and capable of explaining all known partial theories, including quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. Is such a grandiose theory possible?
It is not only possible but its blueprint already exists, although present physics has not recognized it as a legitimate theory. To openly admit the irreversibility of natural processes, physics would have to renounce the whole system of Newtonian concepts on which the ideas of quantum theory and relativity are rooted, and so far it has been reluctant to do so. Matter, energy, forces, interactions, and wave properties are not appropriate for the description of irreversible effects. A whole new set of concepts is required to deal with one-way processes.
Contrary to all available theories of classical physics, this unique one-way field theory was primarily derived from observations of biological structure. It is a theory of change built on a sound scientific foundation. Its basic concepts were developed over the centuries, from Heraclitus and Aristotle (384–322 BC) all the way to Ernst Mach (1838–1916), Pierre Curie (1859–1906) and Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), but it was only in the middle of last century that they were put together by the Scottish physicist Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) and later extended by the American physicist and psychologist Leo John Baranski (1926–1971). The theory is the most general ever conceived, in fact universal, and therefore applicable to all physical, organic, and social systems. Its realm is not that of quantity but of order.
For the purpose of this work, we are only interested in those systems where there is structural change over time with formation and extension of ever more complex structural patterns. The concept of order described below refers to the order found in these systems.
The ultimate source of order
Our world—stars, planets, trees, and people—is constantly changing. Stars are born and die, the earth is continuously rotating and translating, trees have cycles of growth and decay, and the same is true with us. But this change is not arbitrary: there is an order hidden in it. We know that tomorrow will be here and next spring will arrive in the predicted time. It is the existence of this order that allows us to make plans for the future. And it is because of this order that not everything is possible in the world. We cannot fly like birds do, for instance. There are laws in nature.
Logically, however, there should be just one general law from which all other partial laws should derive. If there were two or more general laws, a clash would inevitably occur at some point along the vast time expanse of evolutionary development, with disastrous consequences. Besides being the most general of all laws, that single law of order should be simple and should reside at the beginning of all things: that is, at the level of the field, since it is from the field that every structure derives. The unitary field theory referred above fits these requirements. But how did such field theory come about?
A turning point in theoretical physics occurred somewhere from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, when it was recognized that in isolated systems the cause and effect relation—the causal relation characterizing any science—was
