Part 2 here

Terrence McKenna wrote several books, but he's best known for raps recorded over several decades of workshops and teaching lectures.  Some of these recordings are well-established, others have an unknown provenance.   On top of everything else, McKenna was a Bard.  One of the roles we look to for our Bards is to tell the story of creation.  (My druid friends start all their rituals with an evocation of the cosmic processes of creation. ) In a session  called "Eros and Eschaton", McKenna breaks down two fundamental processes:   Complexity and Novelty.  I'm going to put down this transcription in two (possible three) parts - and then refer back to it later in some future posts.  I've got a good one in mind to tie in the anthropic principle with McKenna's Timewave, via the excellent writings by  Paul Davies.   

I make a couple of edits in this transcript - these were open form talks, and I do take out one or two tangents just to keep this on track.  All the original recordings are available online, my favorite source is Lorenzo at Psychedelic Salon.  Enjoy.  

Nature builds on previously established levels of complexity.  This is a great general natural law that your own senses will confirm for you.  

What I mean by that,  nature builds on complexity,  is the following:

When the universe was born in the dubious and controversial moment called the Big Bang, it was at first simply a pure plasma of electrons, it was the simplest that it could possibly be.  There were no atoms.  There were no molecules.  There were no highly organized systems of any kind.  There was simply a pure plasma of expanding energy   and as the universe cooled new kinds of phenomena we say emerged out of the situation.  

 As the universe cooled, atomic nuclei could form and electrons could settle in to stable orbits.   As the universe further cooled, the chemical bond became a possibility.

Still later the hydrogen bond, which is a weaker bond, the basis of biology.  

 So as the universe aged, it complexified.  This is so obvious that it's never really been challenged, but on the other hand its never been embraced as a general and dependable principle either.  Follow it through with me.

 Out of atomic systems come chemical systems.  Out of chemical systems comes the covalent hydrogen bond,  the carbon bond, complex chemistry that is pre-biotic or organic.  Out of that chemistry comes the macro-physical systems that we call membranes, gels, charge transfer complexes...this sort of thing.  These systems are the chemical pre-conditions for life.  Simple life, the life of the prokaryotes, the life naked un-nucleated DNA that characterized primitive life on the planet.

 Out of that life come eukaryotes, nucleated cells and then complex colonies of cells,  and then cell specialization - leading to higher animals, leading to social animals, leading to complex social systems, leading to technologies, leading to globe-girdling,  electronically-based, information-transfer-oriented cultures like ourselves.  

So this is very interesting that apparently the way the universe works is upon a platform of previously achieved complexity - chemical, electrical, social, biological whatever - new forms of complexity can be built that cross these ontological boundaries.  

 In other words what I mean by that is that biology is based on complex chemistry, but it is more than complex chemistry. Social systems are based on the organization that is animal life.  and yet it is more than animal life.  This is a general law of the universe overlooked by science, that out of complexity emerges greater complexity.  

We could almost say that the universe  is a novelty conserving or complexity conserving engine.  it makes complexity and it preserves it.  And it uses it as the basis for further complexity.