The Energyists: how Lagrangian dynamics and mutual biasing create new understandings of mind, ethics, and complexity

This book is about how to think in terms of energy. It shows, without equations, how to understand the world in terms of Lagrangian mechanics (premised on energy) rather than Newtonian mechanics (based on forces), and it details how the random actions of energy turn into complexity via the natural phenomenon of “biasing.” Then the book investigates the philosophical implications of adopting these energy-based methodologies.
The Newtonian theory of motion proceeds by describing events in a stepwise fashion, with one event leading inexorably to the next and the next (and its correlate in philosophy is causation). But the Lagrangian theory of motion defines movement in terms of how objects fit into more complex pictures (and its correlate in philosophy is the subject of this book). Both approaches are scientific, but the latter takes into account logical relationships and what lies beyond the immediate physical scene. The Lagrangian definition of motion is also more general than the Newtonian definition, meaning that the latter can be viewed as a special case of the former. Once the book examines this fundamental difference, it applies the tenets of complex movement and assembly to issues in philosophy. Applications include a novel approach to causality and determinism; new arguments concerning what constitutes complexity and how to create it; what constitutes moral imperatives; what it means to learn, evolve, and to hold information; and an explanation for why things don’t exist absolutely but become different in terms of how they fit with different others.
The book also explores some of the paradoxes of Lagrangian mechanics, akin to (but different from) those in quantum mechanics.
Ultimately, the book shows how energy can subsume matter as the foundation for a new scientific epistemology, to create the worldview and principles of energyism rather than materialism.