More on Connectivity and Architectivity

A rocky planet is an environment in which things can be found which are persistently static relative to each other - ie architective.

Smaller extra-terrestrial objects such as comets and even cosmic dust grains also offer such environments, but they are not nearly as rich, offering a very much lesser variety of objects in persistent stasis, probably limited to the molecular and crystalline levels of architective emergence. And let us not forget, that with every extra level of emergent architecture, novel connective serial narratives may arise. Rocky planets provide opportunities for complex worlds based on stasis to develop, our own Earth being a bountiful example.

Each rocky planet also provides a central reference frame for its world, against which the relative position and motion of all the objects of its world can be absolutely compared, thereby conjuring a rich self-consistent reality anchored to the planet - which, outside a planet (and outside a spaceship or comet or dustgrain) cannot exist.

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Processional narratives display a kind of momentum, or perpetuance we might call it, in that they persist in their organization until they encounter an interaction that changes that perpetuance; just as in Newton's first law by which a physical object continues its motion (or lack thereof) unchanged until compelled to do so by the application of an interactive force. Indeed, it is difficult to shift a processional narrative by a non-interactive influence such as reason - a physical or economic force is needed. Connective narratives do not display anything like perpetuance since they are so easily disturbed.

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Considering the basic physical interactions, bosonic (ie connective) interactions are mediated by a field (eg gravitational and electromagnetic) and involve exchanges of energy while interactions between architectures are mediated by a contact or bump which involve exchanges of momentum. The dimensional expressions for energy and momentum are quite similar (E=mv^2 while P =mv) yet both are independently conserved. I wonder if the independence of their conservation arises from one being a connective expression and the other an architective expression?

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In Physical Spirituality I only mentioned hierarchy and procession as procedures by which architectivity can be expressed, but there must be many others. Fractal self-simulation would be another such architective procedure, while the composing of architective pictorial elements might be another. The variety of ways by which architectures can replicate, by which they can interact by bumping against each other and by which they can be categorized are other expressions, not to mention the different paths that may be taken during the creation or destruction of aggregates.

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While we may argue as to whether the universe is spatially infinite, the spatial scope of architectivity is so narrow in comparison to that of connectivity that connectivity may well be regarded as spatially infinite.

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Architectivity - that epitome of constraint within boundaries - is itself ultimately constrained by its inability to cross the planetary divide.

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With each level of architective emergence the size of the emergent phenomenon is greater than that of its constituents, until eventually the limit of architective possibility is reached and there can be no further architective emergence.

With connective emergence that is not so for the scale of a connectively emergent phenomenon may be greater or lesser than those of its contributing phenomena, while no limit of emergent possibility exists. Again, scale is irrelevant to connectivity.

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The architective window of scale is effectively the 'factory floor' of the universe, for it is here that all the objects connectivity plays with are made.

Our own technological gadgets, like cars and phones, expand the universe's capacity for connective play as well as for architective play. Unfortunately we design our devices primarily for their architective functionality, not recognizing that it is the room for connective play which they incidentally facilitate that is appreciated cosmically.

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One may listen to a connective signal, even if it just drones or whines, and one will still be able to hear other signals through their interference with it.

An architective signal, on the other hand, overrides those that comprise it or eliminates those that contest with it - so information is lost.

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Paying attention to connective subtleties does not require that one not attend to the connective bigger picture. But paying attention to an architective detail means losing focus on the bigger architective picture.

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Objects may be moulded by connective influences to take on shapes that are connectively beautiful even though the objects themselves are architective (eg curvaceous sculptures, rocks sculpted by wind and water).

Such too is the case of a photograph or painting of a connectively beautiful scene. As an object the picture is static and architective (and probably not architectively beautiful, being a simple rectangle with meaningless non-linear scribblings or washes of colour) but may still be able to convey some of the connective meaning in the original scene even though the picture is static.

Thus the original connective beauty of a dynamic connective motion may be momentarily captured for re-display at a later time without losing its connective value entirely. The photograph may not have all the connective value of the original scene but it still has much of the value which was momentarily evident. And that value can of course be hugely extended by making a movie rather than taking a single snapshot. A recording of a musical recital can be almost as valuable as the original; and a recording of a profound original will of course have greater connective value than a recording of a poor one.

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Resonance (as I have distinguished it from constructive interference) requires an architective shell or anchor point - so though it is a feature of connectivity it can only occur at architective scales.

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The connective equivalent of architective layers is the order of a connective's patterns, and each object added to the connective contributes a new order to its patterning.

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When objects relate architectively their groupings are static aggregates. When objects relate connectively their groupings are moving waves.

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In a purely connective system every participating object is moving in accordance with all the other objects of the connective. It could be argued that although the movement of each object is unconstrained, there is no freedom of choice in its movement - each has to dance in tune with all the others. The only counter to this argument that I can see lies with the holism of the system - that they have to dance in tune with all the others but also with the whole - with the holism - whose indeterminacy may deliver a modicum of freedom to each object. This is particularly pertinent in the case of the cosmic connective system, where the Cosmic Deity (its holism) not only delivers some freedom to each object, but also allows for the presence of sentience in the holism itself, and the presence of sentience in any object that is able to constellate with the consciousness of the holism.

The argument for freedom of choice in a mixed connective and architective environment is much simpler, for in that environment architective constraints can isolate systems from the overall co-operation of the cosmic connective system, and it is in just such an environment that we find ourselves in, such that we are able (to some considerable extent) to choose to act in opposition to the influences of the cosmic connective system.

Of course, within a purely architective environment, freedom of choice is totally restricted to what little scope there may be for sublimating the architective constrictions.

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Unless some entirely novel communication medium is discovered, Physical Spirituality suggests communication that could be described as telepathic cannot be architective. That is, telepathy cannot convey specific, quantifiable information.

Feeling like you are being watched could be a purely connective communication and therefore a valid form of telepathy - and not definitively 'provable'.

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It's not the complexity of an architective structure itself that can lead to life but the complexity of the connectivity the architective structure contains that can give it life.

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Fields of serial meaning emerge in distinct semantic levels in both connective and architective contexts, but whereas higher level fields in an architecture have priority and organize the lower level fields in the architecture, no level in a connective has priority over others within the connective.

A semantic level of a connective may however have priority outside a connective, in that it is more effective than others in the connective's relationships with its external environment. For example, while watching wavelets interfering on a beach, I might be taken by an unusual interference pattern which holds my attention for a few seconds, and my attention then switches to a different interference pattern. It is my attention to the wave behaviour that has determined which semantic level in the water's behaviour has priority for me. Similarly, it is my attention that determines where a rainbow 'is' - when observing a rainbow, I will always be on its central axis no matter where I observe it from. There is no internal, set, hierarchical priority to the levels of serial meaning in a purely connective context - but it can have extrinsic semantic priorities, and these are fluid.