Archetypes: Natural or Artificial?

Is the solar system like an atom? Is the earth like an apple? Is water like electricity? Is mathematical elegance like a haiku poem? Does nature work with any organizational templates or archetypes? And do natural archetypes, if they exist, have anything to do with design?I take my inspiration for this topic from Arthur M. Young, an early helicopter designer at Bell Labs. In his book The Geometry of Meaning (1976), he reasons geometrically (and somewhat circuitously) that the twelve signs of the zodiac and the twelve “measure formulae” of physics can be aligned on a circle according to their prevailing archetypes (or ancient meanings, in quotes):Aries ~ acceleration (L/T²) ~ “Spontaneous Act”Taurus ~ mass control (ML/T³) ~ “Establishment”Gemini ~ power (ML²/T³) ~ “Knowledge”Cancer ~ velocity (L/T) ~ “Change”Leo ~ force (ML/T²) ~ “Being”Virgo ~ work (ML²/T²) ~ “Fact”Libra ~ position (L) ~ “Observation”Scorpio ~ momentum (ML/T) ~ “Transformation”Sagittarius ~ action (ML²/T) ~ “Impulse”Capricorn ~ control (L/T³) ~ “Control”Aquarius ~ moment (ML) ~ “Significance”Pisces ~ moment of inertia (ML²) ~ "Faith”Now, I am not out to promote astrology. Neither was Arthur M.Young (p. 118):

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The origins of the zodiac go further back in time than Greek Philosophy, or even the I Ching. The zodiac is, of course, the basis for astrology, currently regarded as a pseudo-science (largely because its critics misinterpret what it purports to do). Apart from the question of whether astrology is or is not valid, one can hardly question the zodiac. Spring is the time of physical acceleration; autumn is the opposite, the time of mental stimulus. Summer is the time of physical change, and winter is the time when growth has ceased.

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“So what,” says the modern mind, putting its faith in the constructions of science.

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But as I have been at pains to show and have obliged my patient reader to witness, the measure formulae, which are the very basis of science, draw their meaning from the same angular relationships, from dispositions about a circle, from the opposition and complementarity that thousands of years ago were evident to the ancients.

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A. M. Young may have been way out there with the New Age crowd; I’ll admit that. But I still can’t shake the question: Does nature operate in any way through some template assistance from archetypes? In that respect, I take notice of the fact that the flow of water molecules in a gravitational system can be modeled using the same equations that express the "flow" of electrons in an electromagnetic system. And those two systems stand very far apart in nature; indeed they are quite separate forces.Ah, but are they held together by archetypes, maybe? And does this have anything to do with design in nature? As scientists, we have to be careful here; it could get us into as much trouble as Haeckel got into with his delusion that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.(I suggest this topic be placed under "Is It Science?")”HMEdited by Admin, : Fix typo in title.

Yes, it could be MJB. But wait. Has physics really unified the whole? Are all the important questions already answered? Do you really know why a photon is both a particle and a wave, or why gravity is associated with mass? And is there no connection between the past and present of physical objects in terms of our evolving understanding of nature? Do we know everything knowable about physics? And why does the juice in a copper wire behave like water in a hose? Why does gravity obey an inverse square law like that of a electromagnetism? And why are planetary orbits round or elliptical instead of square or rectangular?And perhaps the buggiest of all questions: Why is biological code digital like that of a computer?Answer: Because there are constraints on natural organization that limit variety and uniqueness to families of archetypes. If that were not true then there would be no need to invoke metaphors to explain physical phenomena. Please try to describe anything in nature without using metaphor, simile, or analogy. You can't do it. Why? Because the universe is chuck full of archetypes. In fact, the universe itself is an archetype: we speak of its life, its history, its age, its size, its expansion, its future as if it were a fat old man.”HM

OK, SG, that's a pretty good answer. But force was perceived by man long before Newton took it to a mathematical description. Furthermore, Newtonian force depends upon the mass of the forceful object, but electromotive force does not. Yet there is still force, per se, that accounts for mechanical interaction. Way couldn't that appreciation of force stand as an archetype in nature, just as power or momentum stood for earlier descriptions of archetypes that were later resolved mathematically?My point here is that science, as we know it today, has done a better job of resolving those archetypes, but they were already known to exist in both nature and in the minds of men (and probably women) long before Newton got ahold of them. The ancients, some of them anyway, saw force as a lion”perhaps "the force of being"”and they called it Leo. Later it was described as F =ma.Science is a great tool of the mind, but men tooled around mentally long before science arrived.”HMEdited by Hoot Mon, : No reason given.

Now you're playing with words, but that's OK because archetypes are all about words and concepts. Wouldn't you agree that the concept of force was well known to the ancients as something that involved both strength and motion. When Newton defined "force" he reached out for a metaphor”a word concept”that fit what he was describing. I don't know where he got it, maybe he got it from II Samuel 13:14:

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Howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice: but being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her.

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King David, The Lion, forcibly raped the fair maiden, because he was stronger and therefore more powerful than she. These are all ancient archetypes of mechanics. Newton didn’t go out and invent the word force. He simply provided a more elegant explanation for it. But even then, he used the metaphor “force,” as, say, in David’s strength of a lion, King of Beasts.”HM

What? If acceleration doesn't have anything to do with motion then I wouldn't know what to do after the traffic light turns green. When we speak of mechanics we speak of mass, length and time, which are the fundamental units of motion. You know that. Are you saying that pyramid builders, spear makers, and chariot drivers had no concept of force? Are you saying that a cave man didn't know the difference between a small stone and large rock when either one was dropped on his toe? I'm saying he knew quite well that the rock would hurt more than the stone because he already knew instinctively about the direct relationship between mass and force.”HM

Yes, I know. A. M. Young was wearing his helicopter hat when he came up with his zodiac alignment. And I'm not about to defend him, so go ahead and scorn. But I had never before seen this sort of thing coming from an aircraft designer, and it fascinated me.Nevertheless there are archetypes in nature, I will assume here, that seem to show remarkable resonance across a spectrum of domains. But maybe "archetype" is the wrong word for whatever I think is resonating. I wonder, for example, if there is such as a thing as a digital archetype”taking a clue from the observation that both genetics and the Internet are digital operations. And, as if genetically, you and I are out here trying propagate our POVs on another digital landscape. That's what genes do. And memes, too. So is that stupid?”HM”HM

How's that again? If you mean technical reason then, yes, that didn't come until Newton. But I'm saying that ancients also had a worthy appreciation of force, work, inertia, momentum, power, control, etc., long before Newtonian physics came along.”HM

I don't recall ever saying that it did. Force in the scientific sense needed force in the intuitive sense as a predecessor. Nothing that science ever discovered came without an intuitive hypothesis regarding the matter at hand.”HM

It's that inherent part that makes me wonder about archetypes. I think it was possible for ancient humans to appreciate force, for example, as something of an animal god at first”say, the lion”before they woke up to science. The zodiac is only a primitive devise to ascertain cause and effect. Yes, it's stupid today, but so is exorcism and blood letting. It's what we did until we learnt better.As for the zodiac: it's bunk, of course, but it's also not really a bad start on cause-and-effect inquiries. Consider how the lives of humans, both ancient and modern, are affected by the mechanics of the earth, the moon, and the sun operating in a gravitational field. Their relative positions in space have huge implications on human life, and most other life as well. We get days and nights and seasons from them; they are part of us to our cores. The archetypes begin there and then eventually get resolved into more precise formulations.So they made a few mistakes about the constellations. So what? Modern human still drink their savior's blood and pray for rain, or for WaMu to give them back their money. How do you suppose ancient people invented the water wheel without knowing something about force, even gravitational force. They didn't need Newton to tell them that F -ma in order to put the old mill stream into service.”HM

You probably know more than I do about QM, Woodsy. So, I'll ask you: What is so counter-intuitive about entanglement? I could easily argue that action-at-a-distance is an ancient intuition.”HM

onfire, what you say is probably true, but I doubt if any scientist today could say that he or she knows why gravity works the way it does, or even why it exists. I certainly don’t know why. But it’s still there, and we have to deal with how it occurs in nature. But we don't need to dicker over the whys and hows.The zodiac is a dubious example of archetypes, I know, but I like its gravitational implications. It has seasons, which I see all over the place as archetypal in human affairs. So, let’s forget the zodiac and focus on a different venue of archetypal inquiry: human history and generationsThere is an interesting theory about human generations that employs seasonal archetypes to explain political, economic, and lifestyle trends affecting any durable civilization, such as America (for the time being, at least). William Strauss & Neil Howe’s The Fourth Turning (1997) provides a seasonal explanation for the occurrence of four generational types in a “saeculum,” or a complete generational cycle ("year"), comprising four seasonal cohort groupings:the “Prophet” or “Idealist” (springtime),
the “Nomad” or “Reactive” (summer),
the “Hero” or “Civic” (autumn), and
the “Artist” or “Adaptive” (winter).When a saeculum comes to its end there is a great crisis as the winter storms set rage on and set the stage for the next saeculum. Thus springtime sprouts anew with the next round of Prophets.A seaculum last roughly 80 years; and its four generations are roughly 20 years long (please allow for considerable variance). As such, America's current saeculum is heading into winter, which is about what I see outside my window. And I take notice that 1929 occurred 79 years ago. If Strauss & Howe's theory has predictive value then I'd say we are on the brink of the next Great Depression. (BTW: this matter is discussed quite intelligently on the The Fourth Turning forum.)So, I take notice of seasonal archetypes that come from gravitational circumstances. And I am left with a conviction that physical circumstances impose archetypal morphologies on human affairs that can be well enough understood to serve as predictive models.”HM