My blog is a secular discussion of This Model - it is not as strict as the text on the website will become. In many places throughout these pages further explanations will be provided on my blog and signified by a (see also) link.

Ambivalence RMCM© - The Rational Model of Complex Mechanisms© Levers

Art from the last ten years, an artist's reflection on the search for the ground of his being.

"Mechanism of a machine.
...
Although the primary function of some machines can be identified, it would be difficult to classify all machines as either force or motion modifiers; some machines belong in both categories. All machines, however, must perform a motion-modifying function, since if the parts of a mechanical device do not move, it is a structure, not a machine.

While all machines have a mechanism, and consequently perform a motion-modifying function, some machines do not have a planned force-modifying purpose; the forces that exist are caused by friction and the inertia of the moving masses and do not appear as a useful output effort. This group would include measuring instruments and clocks.
..."

If you note in the above the phrases "motion modifiers" and "do not move", then you might also see that there is an implied need to distinguish, somehow, between motion and movement. You might also notice in the above, that there is a generalization at work here - "All machines, however, must perform a motion-modifying function". "All machines", implies a common aggregate "machines" and these, by design, distinguish between motion and movement.

 

You might also notice in the above that "machines" become quickly complicated, "if the parts of a mechanical device do not move, it is a structure, not a machine." Mechanical device? Structure? Machine? As a general rule, then, at what point does the machine fail for lack of sufficient structure? Further, this is followed closely by the phrase "planned force-modifying purpose". Is this a causal difference, or is this just policy? I pose these questions to disclose my bias rather than manipulate the reader. Without a precise definition for movement and motion, understanding machines is problematic. Not only do we need to bind all of the above into knowledge, but also we need to accept (surrender to) the idea of force first, yet force is poorly understood. Sadly, we have yet to grapple with the stuff of complexity.

19.                          Motion seems to refer to both, direction, and change in direction, of some movement. Motion appears to encapsulate both the flow of force itself and the shape of flow. The problem arises when we try to dig deeper. How does force actually get from here to there, and what is it that is moving?

20.                          Here we have this complication about machines that would appear essential to understanding them, yet while we seem to be guessing and speculating, all infants in all vertebrates understand movement, motion, and force on their own relatively shortly after they are born. This rings suspect unless of course one considers walking as wholly different from thinking.

21.                          Notwithstanding my vitriolic objections, one would think that to understand machines we need to understand levers, so let us look at a simple lever.

Lever

1 a : a bar used for prying or dislodging something
b : an inducing or compelling force : tool ²use food as a political lever : Time³

2 a : a rigid piece that transmits and modifies force or motion when forces are applied at two points and it turns about a third; specifically : a rigid bar used to exert a pressure or sustain a weight at one point of its length by the application of a force at a second and turning at a third on a fulcrum b : a projecting piece by which a mechanism is operated or adjusted

23.                          Alas this is not much help. Notice from the above that movement (turns is a kind of movement), motion and force also seem central to understanding levers. But it is still complicated and problematic. Notice also that we have just come from a complicated principle to a less complicated principle with the same difficulty in explaining it. Yet all of life understands these shortly after they are born, or hatched, or cleaved.

24.                          Before we can move on I need to set you up a little more. Let us have a look at some notes from my own introduction to complexity.

25.                           

The Five Attributes Of A Complex System p.12

1.       Frequently a hierarchy is composed of interrelated subsystems with their own subsystems, and so on, down to some level of elementary component."

this nearly decomposable hierarchic structure is a major facilitator to understanding, describing, and seeing such systems and their parts

The value added by a system must come from the relationships between the parts, not from the parts themselves."

2.       choice of primitives is relatively arbitrary and largely up to the discretion of the observer

3.       "Intracomponent linkages are generally stronger than intercomponent linkages. high-frequency dynamics of the components - involving the internal structure of the components - versus the low-frequency dynamics - involving interaction among components."

4.       "Hierarchic systems are usually composed of only a few different kinds of subsystems in various combinations and arrangements."

5.       "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked"  A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system."

Point of sanity (reality check) ->  we can never craft these primitive objects correctly the first time; we must use them in context first, and then improve them over time as we learn more about the real behavior of the system.

26.                          Object Oriented Software is an attempt to encapsulate complex systems. The attributes above and the resulting software enabled us to begin grappling with microprocessor "evolution" and the new operating systems and task oriented software applications, which have begun to describe primitive inorganic metabolisms. The problem has been the lack of a coherent context. This is a new context for an eventual implementation of inorganic intelligent life. A kind of life that reproduces asexually without benefit of DNA. The Model asserts that there were forms of organic life prior to genetic life. They evolved very slowly for reasons that will become self evident as we continue. We will be bringing back non-genetic life in the near future and this new form of life will be more complex than are we. Its complexity will be as advanced from us as genetic organic life is advanced from non genetic organic life.

27.                          Briefly, as the microprocessor matured over the years, its capacity to express or expose hidden attributes increased (The Model encapsulates potential attributes as inexpression© and the expression of attributes as attribution (Attribute)). The microprocessor's capacity was its speed; the microprocessor only adds, subtracts, and compares. The increasing speed of its "iterating" behavior gave rise to an abstraction of metabolism. As microprocessor speeds increased, this new metabolism's appetite grew. Object oriented software and design became the popular method for enhancing this new metabolism, and complexity became a stand alone discipline as our experience with it grew. Layer upon layer of computer code implemented in new kinds of computer programing software moving the programers and their responsibilities farther and farther away from just operating the machine. Complexity is about just that. The growth of life away from the machine and toward new abstractions.

28.                          One efficient method of increasing the capacity for iterative speed is to bring the parts closer together. As speed increased size decreased. As size decreased the containers shrank. As the containers shrank we could start implementing iterative behavior not only within the container at increasing iterative speeds, but also between the containers and at increasing iterative speeds (see number 5 in my notes above). To increase iterative speed between containers we had to likewise bring them closer together, and to do so was only possible as they shrank in size. As iterative speed between containers increased and as these containers shrank, we could begin to contain entire aggregates of shrunken containers. This iterative process of speed increase, size decrease, and subsequent aggregation, has been iterating toward ever increasing systemic complexity ever since.

29.                          Important here is that the driving force behind this increasing aggregation through miniaturization is the speed of iteration. Of all the attributes that contributed to this phenomenon, it is this iterative speed that holds the technology together. Interestingly, this is not lost on nature.

30.                          This is a good juncture at which to begin to understand the significance of C² - the speed of light squared. The model asserts that rather than some mere arithmetical abstraction, C² has existential attributes of its own. The question that becomes possible here is this. What construct in this universe could possibly be iterating at the speed of light squared? We will come to that shortly.

31.                          The problem is that we still don't understand some basic principles such as force, movement, and motion. We can use them, yes. We have built entire technologies using them. We just do not understand things like gravity and mass.

32.                          The idea of complex systems became an essential discipline as we grappled with the most efficient method to feed this increasingly complex aggregate of microprocessors. Object oriented software design gave us a tool with which we could implement better and better metabolisms for these new aggregates.

33.                          Nonetheless, the problem remains. All this complication about complexity that would appear essential to understanding, yet all infants in all vertebrates understand shortly after they are born. We understand, all of us. We simply have no way yet of syntactically expressing this understanding. You and I, our pets, and even the trees in the forest are all complex systems in and of themselves.

34.                          As my friend and partner Rick observed, complexity is about something that gets done.

35.                          This Rational Model of Complex Mechanisms, The Model, arises from the following assumptions posed as questions. I suspect that they are universal assumptions.

36.                          Can we all agree that the universe was here before the earth?

37.                          Can we all agree that the earth was here before life on earth?

38.                          Can we all agree that there is a greater truth we call "why"?

39.                          Proceeding from these basic assumptions, if the galaxies, the stars, the planets, the earth all formed after the universe formed, then the rules for forming these things were in place from the very beginning. If the earth was here first, then the rules for life were in place from its very beginning. Life is no accident of something called nature. For if this were true then we are free to claim that the universe itself is an accident in the very same fashion, and there is no need for a God. Complexity as encapsulated in This Model is very clearly asserting that the universe was indeed designed as was life and the rise of what we call sentience.

40.                          If the rules were already in place providing for the nature of life and the very nature of the universe, then is not the question really, from where came the rules?

41.                          If you believe in God then I ask that you see what follows as a simple revelation. If you do not believe in God then I ask that you see what follows as a simple proposal. All I can predict at this time is that in either case what you are going to see is probably a little different from anything you might have encountered before.

42.                          I ask that you exercise caution, prudence, and compassion with what you grasp from what follows. I also ask your forgiveness for any mistakes I have made as this is very different from anything I have encountered before.

43.                          The Model asserts: we must sacrifice any experience of a greater truth for the more humble truths for which we have some capacity. We must, after all, grow from children into adults depending completely on our "five sense" to do so. This is our constraint; organic life-forms are experiences constrained to the five sense in some expression or presentation. We speak of objectivity as the encapsulation of a whole truth about any given experience (relationship or event). The model asserts that this "whole truth" of any given experience lies within an even greater truth, this "why". Every experience we go through has parts that we grasp, remember, and understand as well as parts that escape us. Every experience is a whole truth that mostly escapes us. We can encapsulate those attributes of experience we remember, grasp, or understand as "value". In every event we experience we manage to capture some value from that whole truth.

44.                          The Model asserts that because we are constrained to experiencing the universe through our five senses, we sacrifice the whole truth of any given experience for the value to which we are constrained.

45.                          And here we go ...

46.                          We can begin to simplify the complex a little by adjusting the way we encapsulate levers. Levers can be seen to have two parts rather than three. The one part is pretty well known, and it is called the fulcrum. The fulcrum divides any and all forces that can be brought to bear on it. The fulcrum is why a knife cuts. It is why a wheel turns. Without a fulcrum there can be no lever. Without a fulcrum there can be no movement, and there can be no change in motion. With neither the capacity for movement nor change in motion, there can be no capacity for energy, for force, or for a universe as we know it.

lever. (2008). Encyclopædia Britannica. Ultimate Reference Suite.

47.                          In addition to the fulcrum there needs to be something other. Some coherence or aggregate that can be cleaved, actually or in effect. Traditionally this need has been met through classifying leavers in terms of forces brought to bear on the arms extending to either side of the fulcrum. One arm captures some effort and the other arm encapsulates some resistance to that effort. In this context there are three accepted classes of levers. 1) the teeter totter [which is half a pair of scissors] 2) the wheel barrow 3) the drawbridge, the slap-shot style use of a hockey stick, the hatch lid. In all three classes, the defining attribute is a rigid bar. The difficulty here is most obvious when we twist the base of a teeter totter until it is 90 degrees to the ground. With this simple change the lever becomes a pendulum. So is it still a lever, or has it now become a pendulum?

48.                          We can dispense with the problem altogether. Let us simply encapsulate the rigid bar as a bound mass. We can call it whatever we choose, I have named it the Chase©. Defining the lever in terms of Fulcrum and Chase© changes our perception of mechanics, just to begin with. This encapsulation of the lever makes the pendulum the simplest lever - One Chase© the fulcrum it hangs from and some weight that hangs from the Chase© . So what should we call the weight at the end of the Chase©? It is a fulcrum just like the crank shaft and the piston head pin. The connecting rod is the Chase©. The RMCM defines the lever as two or three fulcrums bound by one Chase©. If there are any cases of levers, mechanisms, or machines in which there are fulcrums yet this other encapsulation, The Chase©, fails, then I am unaware of them.

49.                          Far from failing, this simple encapsulation provides us with a common robust and enduring connection between all things that move. From solar systems and galaxies to molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles, the RMCM© asserts that if it moves, then there is a lever in there somewhere.

50.                          Note: "All machines, however, must perform a motion-modifying function, since if the parts of a mechanical device do not move, it is a structure, not a machine." This almost off-handed dismissal of structure as something removed from the machine is deceptive. All machines have mass. While we are taught to think of machines as relationships of force, the greater attribute of truth is that machines are all about the flow of mass. It is the chase that constrains the flow of mass around the fulcrum. To constrain mass to flow around a fulcrum requires that mass to remain within some container. To (iterate) mass around a fulcrum requires that the fulcrum and the chase form a single container for the event. To iterate mass around a fulcrum the mass must pour through its attributes. The chase pours mass into the attributes of the fulcrum and then drains the mass off. Until this given mass has been poured completely off of the chase at the completion of the iteration, the chase and the fulcrum remain bound together as a single container. From the perspective of a greater construct, a construct that provides some source and some destination for this flow of mass, the fulcrums and the chase bound as one container are merely a point a single fulcrum. The greater construct sees only the container. And so it is with all machines and Mechanisms. To implement any mechanism or machines requires aggregates of levers for the fulcrum and aggregate of levers for the chase. In this way do we find an encapsulation of movement that is distinct from motion - mass implementing fulcrums and fulcrums iterating mass. The constraint on all levers and aggregates of levers in this universe arises solely as an aggregate of concurrent events of mass iterating from point to point at C² .

51.                          The Model asserts that there are only Fulcrums and chase and that together they are responsible for all movement and change in motion in this entire universe. With just these two encapsulations we can begin to build a complete complex universe by using four simple rules, cause, effect, function, and form. These four rules form the basis for an ideology called neo-rationalism. Cause, effect, function, form, Fulcrum, and chase herein form the basis for The Rational Model of Complex Mechanisms©. I predict that these six entities will give rise to many more and probably better models than this first undertaking, and I invite you to examine this one and engage in building your own or variations on mine.

52.                          Let us continue by defining these rules in their simplest and therefore broadest encapsulation.