Relational Order Theories - The Cosmological Level

The Cosmological Level

The conventional explanations of Big Bang and related cosmologies (see also Timeline of the Big Bang) projects an expansion of and related ‘cooling’ of the universe which entails a cascade of phase transitions involving fundamental forces, quark-gluon transitions to simple atoms, complex atoms, simple and complex molecules, and aggregations of these entities into galaxies, stars, planets, etc. (Strictly speaking, phase transitions can both manifest correlation and differentiation events, in the direction of diminution of degrees of freedom, and in the opposite direction disruption of correlations. However, the expanding universe picture presents a framework in which there appears to be a direction of phase transitions toward differentiation and correlation, in the universe as a whole, over time) At least at the level of aggregation of baryons, each correlated and differentiated system thus evolved can be considered, from the relational point of view, as a network of relationships.

David Layzer and Eric Chaisson have provided slightly varying but compatible explanations of how the expansion of the universe allows ordered, or correlated, relational regimes to arise and persist, notwithstanding the second law of thermodynamics.

Layzer spoke in terms of the rate of expansion outrunning the rate of equilibration involved at local scales, while Chaisson summarizes the argument as “In an expanding universe actual entropy … increases less than the maximum possible entropy“ thus allowing for, or requiring, ordered (negentropic) relationships to arise and persist.

Chaisson depicts the universe as a non-equilibrium process, at least in this sense, in which energy flows into and through ordered systems, such a galaxies, stars, and life processes. This provides a cosmological basis for non-equilibrium thermodynamics, treated elsewhere to some extent in this encyclopedia at this time. In terms which unite non-equilibrium thermodynamics language and relational analyses, patterns of processes arise and are evident as ordered, dynamic relational regimes.