Differo ergo sum: A snowflake ❄ in Houston
“To exist is to differ; difference is, in a sense, the truly substantial side of things; it is at once their ownmost possession and that which they hold most in common. This must be our starting point, and we must refrain from further explaining this principle, since all things come back to it — including identity, which is more usually, but mistakenly, taken as the point of departure.”
Waiting in line at the Home Depot for plumbing supplies to fix our water main, I did what I imagine many people do in times like these: I thought about the universe, the way things are made and why things happen. And more specifically to the immediate context: Why to me and my family?
In a recent exchange with Arto Annila, author of “Back to Reality” (shared with his generous permission), I rediscovered the work of Richard Feynman and the principle of least action. In general, I enjoy tracing ideas towards their source and — if possible — interacting with the interesting minds that conceived/inferred them. And in doing so, I was reminded of Gabriel Tarde and his underappreciated works (like his “laws of imitation” which I referenced before).
“Meanwhile, let us not forget that every invention and every discovery consists of the interference in somebody’s mind of certain old pieces of information that have generally been handed down by others. What did Darwin’s thesis about natural selection amount to? To have proclaimed the fact of competition among living things? No, but in having for the first time combined this idea with the ideas of variability and heredity. The former idea, as it was proclaimed by Aristotle, remained sterile until it was associated with the two latter ideas. From that as a starting point, we may say that the generic term, of which inventions is but a species, is the fruitful interference of repetitions.”
Gabriel Tarde, The Laws of Imitation p.382
Tarde teaches us that our preconceived structures and mental models of how things are structured influence what we see and infer, limiting our understanding and appreciation of the whole.
For example, our mental model of physics today is dominated by theories of relativity. However, these theories are not one thing — they consist of multiple ideas and concepts, which in turn consist of ideas and concepts, etc. Consider the Einstein/Minkowski concept of spacetime, the idea to consider the 3 dimensions of space with 1 time dimension (4 total).
A drop of water falling on the floor spreads into a puddle over time, expanding in the x,y dimensions. Is this different from a photon spreading out in time, observed as a reduced frequency/wavelength (redshift)?
We accept that every snowflake is unique, as each traverses a unique path through the winter sky, forming ice crystal structures depending on variations in humidity, temperature, and so on. What if the same were true for photons, at some level or in some dimension? Just because we do not have sufficient resolution in our measurements, or are perhaps not measuring the right quantities, does not imply that photons are all identical. “To exist is to differ” — perhaps fundamentally, everything is unique?
Variability — to differ — differentiate — diversity
Humans observe by contrast, though differences blur with distance and fade in memory over time. Our minds have evolved to group things together, as it takes less energy to process fewer objects and concepts. Similarly, it is easier to accept existing theories as opposed to coming up with different ones — change takes energy and time, and revolutionary steps take more than evolutionary ones. Energy flows only where there is a difference in potential. For companies, the products and solutions provided to markets must differentiate from alternative solutions in order to be selected by customers.
Differo ergo sum — everything is unique, and this diversity is not only natural — it is why things exist. A cause for celebration, really. Especially now that we have fixed our water pipes…