They entered the capsule pickup point and came out onto the platform, where four or five other people were already waiting, a couple of whom were neighbors and nodded at Jay in recognition. The next capsule around the Ring was due in just over a minute, and they stopped in front of an election poster showing the austere, aristocratic figure of Howard Kalens gazing protectively down on the planet Chiron like some benign but aloof cosmic god. The caption read simply: PEACE AND UNITY.
“Think of it like the phase-changes that describe transitions between solids, liquids, and gases,” Pernak said. “The gas laws are only valid over a certain limited range. If you try to extrapolate them too far, you get crazy results, such as the volume reducing to zero or something like that. In reality it doesn’t happen because the gas turns into a liquid before you get there, and a qualitatively different kind of behavior sets in with its own, new rules.”
“You’re saying evolution adds up to a succession of transitions like that?”
“Yes, Jay. Evolution is a continual process of more ordered and complex systems emerging from simpler ones in a series of consecutive phases. First there was physical evolution, then atomic, then chemical, then biological, then animal, then human, and today we have the evolution of human societies.” Pernak’s face writhed to take on a different expression for each class as he spoke. “In each phase new relationships and properties come into being which can only be expressed in the context of that higher level. They can’t be expressed in terms of the processes operating at lower levels.”
Jay thought about it for a few seconds and nodded slowly. “I think I get it. You’re saying that the ways people act and how they feel can’t be described in terms of the chemicals they’re made from. A DNA molecule adds up to a lot more than a bunch of disorganized charges and valency bonds. The way you organize it makes its own laws.”
“Exactly, Jay. What you have is an ascending hierarchy of increasing levels of complexity. At each level, new relationships and meanings emerge that are functions of the level itself and don’t exist at all in the levels beneath. For instance, there are twenty-six letters in the alphabet. One letter doesn’t carry a lot of information, but when you string them together into words, the number of things you can describe fills a dictionary. When you assemble words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and so on up to a book, the variety is as good as_ infinite, and you can convey any meaning you want. Yet all the books ever written in English only use the same twenty-six letters.”
The capsule arrived, and Jay fell silent while he digested what Pernak had said. As they climbed inside, Jay entered a code into the~ panel by the door to specify their destination in the Jersey module, and they sat down on an empty pair of facing seats as the capsule began to move. After a short run up to speed, it entered a tube to exit from Maryland and passed through one of the spherical intermodule housings that supported the Ring and contained the bearings and pivoting mechanisms for adjusting the module orientations to the ship’s state of motion. For a brief period they were looking out through a transparent outer shell at the immensity of the Spindle, seemingly supported by a web of structural booms and tie-bars three miles above their heads, with the vastness of space extending away on either side, and then they entered the Kansas module where the scene outside changed to animal grazing enclosures, level upon level of agricultural traits, fish farms, and hydroponics tanks.
“Okay, so you track it all back to the Big Bang,” Jay said at last. “Then where do you go?”
“Classically, you can’t go anywhere. But I’m pretty certain that when ‘you find your theories giving singularities, infinities, and results that don’t make sense, it’s a sure sign that you’re trying to push your laws past a phase-change and into a region where they’re not valid. I think that’s what we’re up against.”
“So where do you go?” Jay asked again.