When the tide goes out
What is a critical point?
Biologically, we have many inner clocks. Our breathing, our metabolism, our sleep-wake patterns or our hormones all define different cyclic rhythms repeating. Each clock is defined by its turning points. The turning points occur at the critical moments when the phase shifts: we inhale, until we exhale. We sleep, until we awake.
Reversals happen between two polar states: an ordered phase (self-reinforcing) and disordered phase (self-correcting) .
A human being has 17 - 30k breaths every day. When we are angry at someone, instead of saying I'll see you in an hour, could we suggest: I'll meet you in a thousands breaths?
It's not just a more precise metric. It's far more effective. Counting breaths acts like a self-fulfilling prophecy. It converges to emotional equilibrium or sleep.
If in our individual experience or collective action in the markets, we observe criticality as the mid-point of a cyclical pattern, in natural phenomena things break out of symmetry. After all, entropy only increases.
At the end of his 1895 PhD thesis, Pierre Curie noted an analogy between how the thermodynamics of a fluid and a magnetic field behaved at various temperatures. The intensity of magnetic field was analogous to the pressure of the fluid. The intensity of magnetisation was instead compared to density of the fluid. Temperature played a similar role in both models.
Temperature acted as the phase shifter. At a critical temperature, a solid would break its magnetic properties and a fluid could not be distinguished from its vapour.
Heat up a magnet on your fridge and it will drop to the floor. The electrons will start moving too randomly for any ferromagnetic effect to take place.
The intuition of a critical interval around the phase shift is profound. What happens around the phase shift is precisely the complex systems’ question. How can we characterise different critical (complex) systems?
Some neuroscientists believe this intuition can even be useful in explaining human consciousness…
Until the next one,
David