The Flowing Universe
We live in a world in flux, where vascular patterns indicate a law of nature. But what if that law were also the interface point between the virtual and the actual?
The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. The distribution of the galleries is invariable.
—Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel
The first time I read about transcendental emergentism, I didn’t get it—particularly the VPA component. So I called up one of its authors, Alexander Bard, and I said, “It’s over my head!”
Bard explained it to me carefully.
The following is my account after listening intently and rereading relevant passages. I probably missed something, but I’ll try to explain it anyway. (You can read about it in Chapter Nine of Process and Event.) Then, once I explain the VPA as I understand it, I will—quite arrogantly—propose an additive concept that could shed some light on a question that left me curious.
Could my addition amount to a theoretical breakthrough? Or could it represent the misapplication of physics (by a non-physicist) to ontology? I hope my approach sketches a partial explanation nested within an ontological description.
VPA
The Virtual-Potential-Actual (VPA) is an ontological construct developed by Bard and his writing partner, Jan Söderqvist. The model is a non-reductionive way to conceptualize time, existence, and the unfolding of events or entities.
But here’s where things get weird: Events go from the realm of virtuality into that of actuality, which is to say, from something like David Bohm’s implicate order into the explicate order we experience and always refer to in the past.
Consider also Stephen Wolfram’s Ruliad, a computational model of the universe that strikes me as somehow related. Indeed, this description resonates:
I call it the ruliad. Think of it as the entangled limit of everything that is computationally possible: the result of following all possible computational rules in all possible ways. It’s yet another surprising construct that’s arisen from our Physics Project. And it’s one that I think has extremely deep implications—both in science and beyond.
Finer minds than mine can tell me whether there might be sufficient conceptual overlap among Bohm’s implicate order, Wolfram’s ruliad, and Bard-Söderqvist’s virtual. But you will join me in attempting to conceptualize the Virtual (V), which must have a nature and properties configured or entangled in certain ways.
With that vital time dimension in mind, here’s a simplified breakdown of VPA:
Virtual. (Future) The virtual represents all possible states or conditions not currently actualized. These are not mere fantasies but exist as a dimension of possible worlds. In the VPA framework, the virtual is a dizzying array of potential outcomes, ideas, or forms that could be realized under certain conditions. (What are the right conditions? I don’t yet know. But stay tuned.)
Potential. (Present) Potentiality refers to the subset of the virtual on the cusp of becoming actual under the right conditions. It's a bridge between the virtual and the actual, embodying the processes or transformations that could lead to actualization. But the potential is more constrained than the virtual, as it's closer to becoming and is shaped by the specific conditions or forces at play in any given situation. It is the sorting or the sieve of emergence.
Actual: (Past) The actual encompasses all that has been realized or manifested. It's the culmination of the transition from the virtual through the potential to real-world existence. Once something is actual, it's part of the concrete world as we experience it. The actual is continuously fed by the potential, which draws from the vast virtual expanse.
The VPA model provides a dynamic way of thinking about how ideas, events, or entities come into actuality—and I think it is observer-dependent. It can be useful in discussing broad trends in technological change. Ultimately, though, the VPA offers a metaphysical framework for understanding change in cosmological time (emergence vectors) and from moment to moment.
Bard and Söderqvist situate the VPA in their emergentism by providing an ontological structure that explains how new properties—e.g., consciousness, life, or artificial intelligence—can arise from the complex interplay of simpler elements, moving from the realm of the virtual (all possibilities) through potentiality (specific possibilities under current conditions) to actualization (realized states or entities). But consider that the VPA is always underway. There is always change. There is always becoming.
Actuality unfolds in ceaseless novelty at every moment. New A-configurations mean new V configurations.
So, we live amid the potential but experience the actual being born, for as soon as we start to turn our awareness to the potential, it has already crystallized as the actual. It is past-looking. And that, I think, is why Bard and Söderqvist would say that observational science is inapt here. We are doing ontology first, which involves philosophy and speculation.
Yet it could inform some science of the future.
Now, assuming my distillation of VPA is accurate enough not to offend Bard and Söderqvist, I admit to being fascinated but wanting to understand the sorting or winnowing between the virtual and actual. My instinct—or perhaps some reductivist bias—says it can’t be arbitrary.
We can imagine an analog in Borges’s The Library of Babel: There were too many nonsense books in that library, that is, too many absurd permutations. Apart from the occasional Finnegan’s Wake, we read books that make sense. There is absurdity enough in our lives, but there is an irresistibly nomic quality to existence, too.
So, the VPA process has to explain how it generates such an orderly reality for us to inhabit.
The Law of Flow in Ontology
With the following, I want to consider time in the context of Adrian Bejan's constructal law, with which readers will be familiar. Then, imagine that the constructal law runs through the Virtual-Potential-Actual (VPA) model. In other words, how can we hybridize the VPA and the constructal law to shed some light on my question: Under what right conditions?
Remember:
The constructal law states that for a flow system to persist in time, it must evolve to provide easier access to the currents that flow through it.
This principle applies to both animate and inanimate systems, suggesting a universal tendency towards design and structure that facilitate flow.
Don’t forget, though, that the constructal law, as Bejan presents it, is intended as a law of physics.
What if we were to understand the constructal law as a species of ontology, too?
Now, Adrian Bejan's theory of time, particularly as it relates to his Constructal Law, offers a unique perspective on how time is understood and experienced within the framework of natural flow systems and evolution. (Note this sense of “evolution” refers to morphological change in systems, not Darwinian evolution per se, but the latter is most certainly part of the deal.) While Bejan's work spans various aspects of physics, thermodynamics, and design, his understanding of time is important to the law.
Time as a Measure of Change. In Bejan's view, time can be understood as a measure of change in flow systems. The temporal process is thus the evolution of such systems towards greater efficiency and flow. Time, therefore, is not just a backdrop against which events happen but is intimately tied to evolution.
Perceived Time and Efficiency. Bejan also explores how humans perceive time, suggesting that our sense of time is related to the flow efficiency in the systems we observe or are part of. For example, we may perceive time as passing more quickly in situations where flow proceeds with less obstruction.
Universality. Bejan posits that this relationship between time and evolution toward more efficient flow systems has universal application, affecting everything from river basins and weather patterns to social dynamics and technological development.
The question before us is: Does that universality extend *beyond* the actual?
If we take Bejan’s Law of Flow (constructal law), which already shares the centrality of time with transcendental emergentism, it becomes possible fruitfully to hybridize these theories to gain more explanatory ground. In other words, the VPA model is a breathtaking ontological description but lacks explanation, particularly regarding the right conditions. This could be because philosophy is often more art than science (so to speak). But if we stipulated that the VPA is correct, or similarly, that there is something like a mechanism, sorting process, or rational relationality to the properties that emerge—passing from the virtual to the actual via the potential—it might be meaningful to consider the constructal law as an exaptation from physics.
Intro to the Hybrid
Hybridizing Adrian Bejan's constructal law with the Virtual-Potential-Actual (VPA) model presents a novel (I think) conceptual framework that connects physics, metaphysics, and perhaps even the philosophy of time.
That bridge, I submit, is at least partially explanatory.
At the outset, we introduced the VPA and constructal law as distinct yet complementary perspectives. With its layers of virtual, potential, and actual “realities,” the VPA model provides a metaphysical scaffold for understanding existence and emergence. Meanwhile, Bejan's constructal law, focusing on the evolution of flow systems towards efficiency—which I think we can define as the least friction—offers a physical and thermodynamic basis for this emergence. The goal of developing the hybrid model is to explore how the evolution of flow systems under the Law of Flow can do some explanatory work on the ontology of the VPA.
The Virtual as the Seedbed of Flow Systems
In the hybrid model, the virtual represents the realm of all possible configurations of flow systems before they materialize. This encompasses not just the physical designs we see in nature, such as river deltas and vascular networks, but also potential forms of social organization, technology, and design that could facilitate flow.
In one sense, the virtual is a conceptual space where the principles of the constructal law operate at the level of possibility, guiding the emergence of systems that can evolve towards efficiency. But each possibility is more or less efficient, which is to say has the property of creating relatively more or less friction. In the virtual, this property would be something like relative friction likelihood.
Such a quality is determined by the new configurations in the possibility space left by already actuated events in the not-so-distant past, as well as new adjacencies in the virtual field. In other words, as soon as candidate virtualities relate anew in the novel virtual field, new relational properties become configured, and some of the new configurations demonstrate less friction. The most frictionless relational properties immediately “break” into the potential dimension.
Note that the most frictionless, say at the quantum level, might well be the shortest path.
I imagine this as like a bathtub vortex, where the surface tension and the air above it are like the virtual, only instead of air molecules, entangled potentialities are being pulled down into the present (the vortex), where the actual is down the drain, as it were.
The Potential as the Emergence of Efficient Pathways
As specific conditions in the virtual realm have become favorable, certain flow systems begin to transition, breaking into the realm of potentiality. But again, what is the nature of such favorable conditions? It would be premature to appeal to a transcendent god who picks and chooses events. The birth of the actual is immanent.
With the Law of Flow, we have a deceptively anodyne winnowing process, but a process nevertheless: the path of least resistance. Such aligns with Bejan's insight into how systems evolve to maximize efficiency. The potential stage is thus where the theoretical becomes imminent, driven by the imperatives of flow and efficiency as potentialities mingle, which collapses into the birth canal of the potential. The dynamic of V-to-A is thus a phase shift where the configurations self-sort and fine-tune themselves—preparing them for actualization in the physical world.
The Actual as the Realization of Efficient Flow Systems
In the actualization phase, the Constructal Law's predictions manifest in the tangible evolution of flow systems, which are historical aggregations. Having evolved from the virtual through the potential, these systems now demonstrate the law's principle: their structures and patterns have optimized the “flow” of reality, whether that is energy, information, or relationality. This stage also reflects Bejan's concept of time as a measure of change, with the efficiency and adaptability of these systems being directly experienced and observable.
A Note on Power and Least Resistance as Ontology
It is strange to think of power as an imperative of ontology, but relative strength is another way to look at friction—especially relative power. At this level of description, whenever there is a clash or collision between two entities, one is likely to have greater causal efficacy (or resistance) relative to the thing encountered. There is a master and a servant in that one can exert greater power, which overcomes or redirects the power of the weaker—a hierarchy of forces. This is both Newtonian and constructal at this level of description from the perspective of an ordinary observer. As with physics, so also with ontology?
I’m not sure.
Imagine the water rushing through jagged rocks in a new river basin. The flow is slow. There is a war between the water and the jagged rocks, and, for a time, the jagged rocks impede the river’s swifter flow. For today, a jagged rock might be an impediment to a water molecule. But over time, the continuous stream of interlacing water molecules causes the jagged rocks to become smooth. The constructal law predicts the total morphology of the rocky river basin towards relatively less friction, including its attendant vascularization. The river flows more briskly. The basin sacrifices less rock. And at this level of description, a hierarchy of forces makes total sense. But at the quantum level of description, the constructal law’s efficiency bias might manifest itself very differently.
Is relative potential power a determining factor when proximate possibilities encounter possibilities in the V-P transition? I don’t know. But I think the likelier candidate, say, at the quantum, is more similar to the path of least resistance. The principle of least action, also known as the action principle, states that the path taken by a system between two points in its configuration space is the one for which the action is minimized.
If so, this could partially explain the nomic nature of our reflections on the actual. It would be a strange and perhaps sad commentary on the universe that ontology, like Thracymachus’s justice, amounts to the interests of the stronger. While this comports with claims I have made elsewhere that to exist is to exert, it seems more likely that the future gives birth to the present via something like least action.
We now can see how the universe has its own logos and nomos.
Time and Evolution in the Hybrid Model
In this hybrid framework, time is not a static backdrop but a dynamic aspect of the evolution of systems flowing from the virtual to the actual. The flow of time is the energy and information in flux across “fields,” with efficiency—the tendency not to obstruct flow—acting as a common denominator—a throughline that facilitates winnowing from all possibilities to a limited set of actualities, refrozen in the permanence of the past.
This conceptualization allows for a unified understanding of physical evolution and ontological emergence as facets of the same fundamental process: the dissipative drive towards more efficient states of being as dictated by the constructal law, facilitated by the virtual-to-actual pathway of the VPA. We sit, as observers, perched upon the potential, experiencing the actual, discussing the actual.
Bard and Söderqvist might object to this particular adulteration of their theory because it imposes something decidedly more nomic into the virtual-potential transition. Might that mean transdeterminism risks collapsing into determinism?
Amor fati, indeed.
Implications
My suggestion to breed the VPA with the constructal law opens new avenues for understanding the universe's complexity and coherence. I propose, tentatively, that the evolution of flow systems towards efficiency is not merely a physical or biological process but a causal-ontological law encompassing different aspects of reality, from the virtual to the actual.
If time is the relative measure of change, then we must ask about the nature of time in the virtual because the future, as such, includes multiple possibilities. David Bohm argues that time in the implicate order is enfolded and thus non-linear. Contemporary theoretical physicists have even more bizarre. Here’s where I start to doubt my reflections, biased as they are by the actual. If time is the relative measure of change, then we must ask: Change according to whom or, better, relative to what?
Another curious implication for ontology and physics is that, though multiple parallel universes might still be possible, not all are possible, at least at this level of description. Universes in which weaker entities prevail upon “collision” with stronger entities might be precluded, and it’s unclear how one would reconcile the force hierarchies of the actual with the least action of the V-P transition or the quantum realm. This is highly counterintuitive and contradictory on its face. But maybe a “two sides of the same coin” phenomenon is indicated here.
Then again, can’t we imagine that a virtual photon in superposition is a synthesis? Our observation and reflection upon the actual (“photon went right”) mean that our observational science causes us to choose between propositions or their negations, where a more complete ontology lies ahead, always ahead—in the future. In a vascular universe mated with the VPA, we experience tributaries of that more complete ontology here in the transition from present to past (P to A).