Heraclitus and the Bubbling Biosphere

• Heraclitus: "world bubbles forth" - what is actual now enables what is next possible
• Adjacent possible: biosphere bubbling forth for 4 billion years
• Physics cannot explain this bubbling/creative process
• Life started 4 billion years ago
  • First 2.5 billion years: single cell organisms co-evolving
  • Existing organisms create new possibilities (bacterium as highway for another)

Evolution Timeline and Cambrian Explosion

• 2.5 billion years after life started: multicell organisms emerged 6 times
• 1 billion years later (3.5 billion after life started): Cambrian explosion
• Cambrian explosion: 540 million years ago, lasted 50 million years
• Created all phyla that exist now in burst of creativity

Function and Jury Rigging Concept

• Function of organ part = subset of causal properties that sustain the whole
• Heart pumps blood (not making heart sounds) - this sustains life
• Jury rigging: finding subsets of causal features for new uses
• Examples:
  • Wire coat hanger + mop handle = purse retrieval tool
  • Screwdriver: screw insertion + putty scraping
  • Engine block: engine function + paperweight + coconut cracker
• Cannot deduce new uses from current function (engine block → coconut cracker not deducible)

Jury Rigging vs Computation

• Jury rigging is NOT computation or deduction
• Biosphere forever innovating in non-deductive ways
• Darwinian pre-adaptations examples:
  • Dinosaur scales (thermoregulation) → flight feathers
  • Clear crystallines from normal colored enzymes
• Cannot deduce what adjacent possible will create
• Cannot use mathematics based on set theory to predict biosphere/economy evolution

Third Phase Transition in Science

• Beyond Newton, beyond quantum mechanics
• Beyond Copernicus's clockwork view (480 years ago)
• Biosphere is NOT clockwork
• Paper published 3 days ago on this topic

Theory of Adjacent Possible (TAP)

• Mathematical theory of statistics of creative process
• Core idea: things combine to make new things
• Equation: M(t) = number of things in economy at time t
• If 10 things exist: keep 10 + jury rig from singles, pairs, triplets, etc.
• Examples: printing press = movable type + wine press

Combinatorial Explosion Mathematics

• 10 things → 45 pairs to fiddle with
• 100 things → 4,500 pairs
• 1,000 things → 500,000 pairs
• TAP process properties:
  • Long period: very slow increase
  • Then: hockey stick explosion
  • Number of things reaches infinity in finite time
  • Singularity and brief burst explosion

Human Evolution Pattern

• Australopithecus: 3.3 million years ago Africa
• Homo erectus: 1.5 million years later, ~20 crude stone tools
• Cro-Magnon: 30,000 years ago, 100-150 exquisite pressure flake tools
• Mesopotamia: 28,000 years later, needles and chariots
• Writing invention created complementary tools (stylus for clay tablet)
• Tools create niches for new tools and jobs (scribes)

Modern Explosion

• Late Middle Ages to now: billions of tools (knitting needles to space station)
• Adjacent possible example: bow → crossbow
• Human habitat sizes: flat for 290,000 years, then burst upward
• GDP: flat since Christ's time (100,000 years), burst up last 2 centuries
• Lifting millions from poverty through complex things → profit

Personal Lifetime Acceleration (83 years, born 1939)

• Didn't exist in 1939:
  • Helicopters
  • Television (listened to Lone Ranger on radio 6pm)
  • Computers
  • Plastics (now all over planet)
  • Microwaves
  • Lasers
• More innovation in 83 years than previous 50,000 years

TAP Acceleration Property

• Each new thing cuts waiting time for next new thing in half
• 1,000 years → 500 years → 250 → 1 year → 6 months → 3 months
• Great acceleration happening now
• Anthropocene signatures exploding upward everywhere

Environmental Crisis and Solutions

• Current rampaging over planet
• Need better adjacent possible
• Last year: emitted 40.5 billion tons CO2
• Hope in soils and compost solutions

Soil Solutions

• Johnson Sioux compost: less land use, fewer forest degradations, fewer extinctions/pandemics
• Eliminate fertilizer need
• Implementation strategies:
  • Distribute Johnson Sioux compost across landscape
  • Find good fungal-bacterial communities, coat seeds, sell globally
  • Use biochar as delivery system
  • Mix fungal-bacterial communities into biochar matrix + fertilizer for global distribution

Future Potential

• Fungal-bacterial communities can create novel adjacent possibles
• Can bubble forth with soil problem solutions
• Can implement solutions now
• "Planet's on fire" - urgency emphasized
• "We are of nature"