Structure-preserving transformations
The intricate and beautiful structure of living centers comes about naturally, and most of the time without effort, as a result of the repeated application of structure-preserving transformations to the wholeness which exists.
The wholeness is changed, since the relative strength of centers has changed. The centers have not changed greatly, only slightly. Yet this slight change changes the wholeness of the entire configuration, and by our making the intensification, a new structure more highly differentiated than before has been created. This is what I call a structure-preserving transformation.
I should like to make some observations about the structure-preserving transformation D1 -> D2 that we have just looked at.
(A) First, this structure-preserving transformation is not unique. Other existing and latent centers could have been chosen for intensification. However, there are not an unlimited number of choices. Relatively few acts intensify the structure which exists, while there are thousands of random acts which would not intensify the structure.
(B) The new structure has more life than the previously existing empty circle. Not greatly more life, but slightly more, and noticeably more. […]
(C) The D2 is arrived at by taking the whole, the wholeness of D1, and intensifying that. In other words, it arises from the structure as a whole, not from a fragmented portion of the structure. And it arises from a process that enhances and embellishes that whole.
(D) Even in this very rudimentary transformation, as the new whole, D2, emerges, some of the fifteen properties already begin to appear more strongly. The smaller disk in the middle has contrast, it has good shape, its size is chosen so that the empty ring of space around it forms a boundary and so on. Thus in parallel with the intensification, the life of the whole is growing both as measured by the appearance of stronger centers, and as measured by the appearance of geometric properties which support the increasing life of the new centers.
If I had chosen the black disk to be smaller, the boundary would have been less strong, and the contrast and good shape less marked. So the particular form of intensification was chosen to maximize the effect of preserving and enhancing the structure which exists, so as to give D2 as much new life as possible, without losing to going away from the structure of D1.
(E) Please note that nothing entirely new has been injected — the newness has been created by intensification of what exists. Thus the procedure is both conservative (it respects the previously existing structure) and innovative (it creates new structure, not previously visible in the older structure of D1).
There is something profound here in the way this process combines conservative and innovative forces to act together towards a common goal. In current political environments it always seems like these forces are antagonistic and can’t work together at all.
We have seen how a mechanical process, following from adherence to structure that exists according to well-defined rules of transformation will by itself create entirely new and previously unseen structure.
Thus the creation of morphological novelty, biological invention, artistic creation, architectural invention… may all be understood as products of a relatively simple process. This possibility arises because there is invisible of semi-visible structure present, and active, within the structure that exists — and it is this structure which gives birth to new possibilities and new combinations at every step, even though it is a relatively mechanical procedure.
All that is required is that this mechanical procedure is sensitive to the whole and is influenced by and guided by the structure of the whole. That is the secret of morphological emergence in natural phenomena. It is also, I maintain, the secret of all artistic and constructive human-inspired acts of creation.
#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/2 Structure-preserving transformations#