New 'Edge of Chaos' Theory Tested at Royal Society — SkimNews
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- Dynamic Symmetry Theory (DST), proposed by philosopher Benedict Rattigan at The Schweitzer Institute, holds that all complex systems — from living cells to stars to fundamental particles — flourish at the shifting boundary between order and chaos.
- Rattigan organized a conference in May at the Royal Society in London where scientists from quantum theory, Earth systems and genetics tested DST; they agreed the dynamics were innate to their fields but found the theory's core framework 'woolly.'
- DST's core equation, DSI(t) = 1 – αO(t) – βD(t), presented to calculate the balance between order and disorder over time, drew silence from researchers when asked how it could generate novel discoveries in their own work.
- The piece situates DST within a broader shift beyond reductionism, the 17th-century Cartesian approach exemplified by CERN's Large Hadron Collider, which failed to find the supersymmetric particles many theorists — including Stephen Hawking — had predicted.
- Astrophysicist Adam Frank, theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser and philosopher Evan Thompson argue in their book The Blind Spot that reductionism now blocks deeper insights in cosmology and consciousness while reducing nature to 'material resources to be extracted.'
- Enactivism, the idea that knowledge arises through active engagement rather than passive observation, is offered as a complementary framework; DST echoes it by treating symmetry as a generative process that gives rise to new forces and evolutionary innovations through symmetry breaking.
- The author concludes DST's real value is less prediction than the spotting of a cross-scale pattern, arguing that future frameworks should be welcomed as 'partial and complementary perspectives' rather than another monolithic theory of everything.
Why it matters: Western science's dominant reductionist paradigm — exemplified by the Large Hadron Collider's failure to find the supersymmetric particles Stephen Hawking predicted — is increasingly seen by physicists and philosophers as having hit its limits, and the Royal Society's careful reception of DST signals an active search for new frameworks to make progress on cosmology and consciousness.
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