The Science of Change—Part I
A Brief Introduction to Metamorphology
Introduction
This brief, four-part introduction to metamorphology, the study of transformation in nature— the scientific foundation of all our own work on change—offers a synoptic view of the epistemology and principles. For any biological assembly, the perception of and differential response to changes is fundamental.
But change, a difference over time, is relative to point of view and a function of description, and can only be theoretically accommodated within nature if we include within nature a cluster of fundamental concepts traditionally excluded.
The far–reaching consequences for our conception of the physical universe and of mind are very briefly surveyed over the course of this and our next three posts here on Change, along with the emerging practical applications of metamorphology in creating major transformations in the world of affairs through small, precisely pinpointed interventions.
Today’s post kicks off by beginning to make sense of how there could be such a thing as a science of change in the first place. If, on the other hand, you don’t think there’s anything paradoxical about a science of change, well, think again.
—The Editors
The Science of Change—Part I
The universe was put into equations the way the history of France was put into madrigals.
—Maeterlinck
In today’s post,1 I’d like to introduce you briefly to an emerging field of scientific study, already nearly half a century old but with at least as many decades of history behind it, yet a field still barely nascent.
Rather than attempt, impossibly, to convey the richness of the tapestry, and its significance, I shall confine myself instead to drawing your attention to just a few of the threads running through it, and say a little about why I think these threads worth pursuing.
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A New Science of Change?
The word “metamorphology,” not a pretty word, comes from the Greek “metamorphosis,” the equivalent of the Latin “transformation.”
The Oxford English Dictionary reminds us that a century ago it was applied to the study of “change of form” solely in the context of post–embryonic ontogenesis. Today it refers more broadly to the study of transformation in general—the emerging science of change.
This admission should at once arouse our deepest suspicions! After all, which branch of science does not study change? Does physics, and indeed each of the special sciences, not deal with change of one kind or another?
When one has said everything the various sciences have to say about specific classes of changes, what more is there to say on the subject of change? Surely, one might argue, if there are any fundamental principles underlying change in general, these would turn out to be none other than the laws discovered by physics!
Now on the basis of prevailing views on change we should be fully warranted in drawing such a conclusion. And yet, I have come to believe, to do so would be a grave error. If nothing else, I hope in this brief discussion to indicate just a little of why I think so.
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Invariance, Context, and Scientific Inquiry
Now you might say that, as scientists, whatever our particular discipline, we study certain observed invariances of interest to us. In fact, each branch of science concerns itself with a certain class of invariances.
We study the contexts within which certain invariances occur, and we seek, empirically, to define the limits of those contexts—that is, to identify where the invariances do not occur.
We aim finally, when all goes well, to account for those context–bound invariances in terms of a smaller number of others which are considered more fundamental, and which in turn account for a wide range of still other invariances too, some perhaps as yet undiscovered.
So we may study mirages, for example, and come eventually to delineate precisely the physical contexts in which mirages can uniquely be observed, and do the same, say, for rainbows, and account for each of these context–bound invariances in terms of, at most, a few of the laws (the more fundamental invariances) of optics and atmospheric physics.
Or again, we may study certain invariances in the degree of darkening of the skin on exposure to sunlight, and come to account for these, in the first instance, say, with reference to the quantity of melanin, and so on.
But whilst the appearance of mirages on a hot country road, or of a rainbow after a shower, or of a tan after a holiday may all be considered to be changes, what we are normally interested in, as scientists, is to account for observed invariances as they happen to be exhibited in these specific changes.
The changes themselves may provide us with observational fodder, they may offer us the very clues we need to penetrate more deeply into the nature of things, but they provide only one starting point of our inquiry and perhaps some of the signposts along the way. Change is not, in such cases, the subject of our investigation itself. How could it be, or rather, why should it ever be?
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Change Is Inescapable
Well, certain changes can indeed be, and often are, the very subject of a scientific investigation, but normally only tacitly.
So let me state the obvious.
Once we turn our attention from physics to the biological sciences, let alone the human sciences, we note that change, as a phenomenon, has long been as indispensable in scientific explanation as it has been ubiquitous.
For any biological assembly, the perception of and differential response to changes in its environment has long been taken tacitly to be fundamental. We need look no further than such common or garden examples as birds flying south for the winter.
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Change is Inadmissible
But now let me point something out that may be less obvious.
To rely on the notion of change in nature, in our explanations, or to refer to it at all, is ‘Officially’ an illicit move. That is, within nature as Officially conceived over the past four centuries, there is no room for the concept of change.
For change is a difference over time, and, logically speaking, any difference in a given particular can only be a descriptive difference. For some particular p to be regarded as different at time T1 to the way it was at some earlier time T0, it must be identifiably the same p, which is now different in some (descriptive) respect.
What is more, we can readily prove the following from first principles: To state the matter somewhat informally, for an assembly a to perceive or respond to a change in some particular p, a must at the very least detect a descriptive difference in some pattern or invariance of p—a descriptive difference in pattern, moreover, which is of significance from a’s point of view.
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Description, Point of View, and Significance in Scientific Explanation
But whoa! Wait a minute. How did description and point of view and significance (meaning, no less!) suddenly appear amongst the would–be fundamentals of the universe? How did these three interlopers manage to gatecrash the explanatory party?
If it is indeed the case that, in logic, any attempt to invoke the concept of change is, however tacitly, to presuppose the concepts of description and point of view and significance, can we permit scientific explanations to rely so heavily, as they therefore currently do rely implicitly, on such concepts as these?
Can we permit a key role for description and point of view and even meaning for heaven’s sake, in the fundamental mechanics of the physical universe?
The short answer goes something like this: We might as well, and for two reasons.
First of all, it is unlikely that we could get by in scientific explanation without making use of the notion of change, at least outside of basic physics (and even there, for reasons we cannot go into here, it is unlikely that we could get by without it for long; contemporary relational quantum mechanics implicitly if not explicitly absolutely does make use of such a notion).
And second of all, the concepts of description and point of view and significance turn out to be analysable as more austere and theoretically parsimonious concepts than we might at first be inclined to fear.
In fact, within the theoretical edifice of metamorphology, these concepts are logically derived2 fairly straightforwardly, from a small stock of fundamental notions from amongst the basic concepts of predication and the basic concepts of measurement. Arguably, the only novel concept we need to import is the concept of imparity, or unequal weighting.3
These “exotic” sounding concepts—description, point of view, significance—are therefore derived from basic notions which are already presupposed by virtually all scientific inquiry of the past 300 years, and thus would appear, on analysis, to give no special cause for concern.
If we cannot do without a concept—change—which presupposes the concepts of description and point of view, and if the latter can be analysed into concepts already presupposed by the very enterprise of empirical science, why not give the gatecrashers a dance card? Or, to change the metaphor, why not, as we in fact go on to do in metamorphology, let these poachers turn gamekeepers?
There are plenty of reasons, frankly, against, at least reasons aplenty for the faint–hearted. For even to admit description and point of view, let alone meaning, explicitly into the mechanics of the physical universe, however ineluctably, has some far–reaching consequences for our conception of the physical universe and of scientific explanation.
But before I turn to consider some of the consequences, let me pick up another couple of threads of which I will need you to be aware. To these threads we shall turn next time in Part II.
© Copyright 1995, 2023 Dr James Wilk
The moral right of the author has been asserted
An earlier version of this four-part essay was first presented as a lecture to an international conference, “Einstein Meets Magritte: An Interdisciplinary Reflection on Science, Nature, Human Action and Society,” in the Department of Theoretical Physics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, 31st May 1995
James Wilk, Principia Metamorphologica: Novum Organum; London: Brunel University (PhD dissertation), 1995
D. J. Stewart, “A Ternary Domanial Structure as a Basis for Cybernetics and Its Place in Knowledge,” in Kybernetes, 1988, Gordon & Breach Scientific Publishers