an inside for every outside

One of the features of Ken Wilber's integral theory I find particularly fascinating is the idea that individual consciousness and social interaction go all the way back to the beginning of the world of form (in the Big Bang, or however all this got started). It is easy to see the interior/exterior aspects of human existence - we have an objective aspect which can be seen and measured: cells, DNA, neurons, neurotransmitters etc. The corresponding interior aspect of our being is what it feels like to be alive, our thoughts, emotions, perceptions etc. We also have an intersubjective social space, sharing culture, language, art etc. Similarly, it seems intuitively obvious that other animals also have an interior world and a shared social space, albeit on a much more primitive level. Plants respond to their environment and share information in various ways - e.g. trees in a forest send chemical signals to each other warning of parasites and other threats. Bacteria are busily swapping DNA, communicating and interacting with each other, exploring their environment and learning new ways of being.

However, it has always seemed a bit difficult to imagine this extending all the way down to atoms and quarks. Recently, however, I started reading Howard Bloom's wonderful book Global Brain:The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, and found his descriptions of physical processes very evocative of the interior and social dimensions of simple, prebiotic forms.

Networking has been a key to evolution since this universe first flared into existence. Roughly 12 billion years ago, a submicroscopic pinpoint of false vacuum arose in the nothingness and expanded at a rate beyond human comprehension, doubling every 10^-34 seconds. As is whooshed from insignificance to enormity it cooled, allowing quarks, neutrinos, photons, electrons, then the quark triumvirates known as protons and neutrons to precipitate from its energy.

The instant of creation marked the dawn of sociality. A neutron is a particle filled with need. It is unable to sustain itself for longer than ten minutes. To survive, it must find at least one mate, then form a family. The initial three minutes of existence were spent in cosmological courting, as protons paired off with neutrons, then rapidly attracted another couple to wed within their embrace, forming the two-proton, two-neutron quartet of a helium nucleus. Those neutrons which managed this match gained relative immortality. Those which stayed single simply ceased to be. The rule at the heart of a learning machine was already being obeyed: "To he who hath it shall be given. From he who hath not even what he hath shall be taken away."

Protons, on the other hand, seemed able to survive alone. But even they were endowed with inanimate longing. Flitting electrons were overwhelmed by an electrical charge they needed to share. Protons found these elemental sprites irresistible, and more marriages were made. From the mutual needs of electrons and protons came atoms. Atoms with unfinished outer shells bounced around in need of consorts, and found them in equally bereft counterparts whose extra electrons fit their empty slots.

And so it continued. A physical analogue of unrequited desire was stirred by allures ranging from the strong nuclear force to gravity. These drew molecules into dust, dust into celestial shards, and knitted together asteroids, stars, solar systems, galaxies, and even the megatraceries of multigalactic matrices. Through the connective compulsion "a terrible beauty was born."

One of the products of this inorganic copulation was life.

-Howard Bloom, Global Brain, p. 14-15.