“Asymmetry is the absence of, or a violation of, symmetry (the property of an object being invariant to a transformation, such as reflection). Symmetry is an important property of both physical and abstract systems and it may be displayed in precise terms or in more aesthetic terms. The absence of or violation of symmetry that are either expected or desired can have important consequences for a system” (Wikipedia, retrieved September 2021).

Graphic artist and author Allen Hurlburt observes our interest in design, symmetry, and perfection in nature:

“Just as mathematics began with the measurement of objects and space, design began with the arrangement of objects in harmonious relationship to each other and to the space they occupied. The linkage of mathematical systems and design can be traced to the earliest cultures and science and art have frequently found a common denominator in the search for perfect form throughout history” (1978, p. 9).

“The history of the universe is a succession of shapes, and these shapes and the relationships between them are what give us ‘duration’ and our sense of time”, states physicist Julian Barbour. This evolution can be viewed as increasing complexity from uniformly disordered origins, and revealed in the ratios, hence geometry, of these shapes and their spacetime structures (2020). The golden ratio portrayed by the golden rectangle presented an aesthetic perspective on the symmetry found in nature when author and art instructor Jay Hambidge visually connected it to the logarithmic spirals found in plants, seashells, and perhaps even galaxies, in his book “The Elements of Dynamic Symmetry” (1920) :

“Dynamic symmetry in nature is the type of orderly arrangement of members of an organism such as we find in a shell or the adjustment of leaves on a plant. There is a great difference between this and the static type. The dynamic is a symmetry suggestive of life and movement” (1920, p. 13).

Does nature’s dynamic symmetry, “suggestive of life and movement”, speak to something still deeper, perhaps as some imprint of time, or traces of agency, projected from its structure? In an essay titled “Imageless Beauty : An Inquiry into the Prosody of Meanings” (1925), philosopher and professor of art Helen Huss Parkhurst takes the broader view that dynamical symmetry extends beyond surface appearance or projection, and does itself have a generative, creative character:

“In the temporal arts, blended symmetry and a-symmetry of formal structure — masses, curves, colors, figures, echoing and re-echoing but generating always new and unanticipated departures from the norm of the invariable ; in the temporal arts, the regular qualified everywhere by the irregular — variation of beat, of interval, of rhyme, of harmony, breaking constantly in upon uniformities, and creating an ascending hierarchy of modulations” (1925, p. 94).

A Sheaf of Golden Rules from Twelve Religions | Sikhism:
“As thou deemest thyself, so deem others; then shalt thou become a partner in heaven” (1946, p. 310).

Barbour, J. & Kuhn, R. L. (December 1, 2020), Time, the Universe, and Reality on Closer to Truth [Youtube video] retrieved September 2021 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOYio-_cmb4

Hambidge, J. (1920) The Elements of Dynamic Symmetry. New York, United States: Dover Publications Inc. [PDF document] retrieved September 2021 from https://aapor.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/elements_of_dynamic_symmetry_hambidge.pdf

Hoople, R. E., Piper, R. F., & Tolley, W. P. (Eds.), (1946), A Sheaf of Golden Rules from Twelve Religions, in Preface to Philosophy: Book of Readings (pp. 309-310). New York, United States: The Macmillan Company (1952 ed.)

Hurlburt, A. (1978) The Grid: A Modular System for the Design and Production of Newspapers, Magazines, and Books. New York, United States: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.

Parkhurst, H. H. (1925) Imageless Beauty : An Inquiry into the Prosody of Meanings in The Open Court: Volume 1925: Issue 2, Article 3 (pp. 86 – 97). New York, United States: Harcourt, Brace & Co. [PDF document] retrieved September 2021 from https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3789&context=ocj

In an essay titled “Life Functions in a Resisting Medium” (1934), philosopher L. P. Jacks sees the agency manifest in nature as life working in a “resisting medium”… utilizing it as “the fulcrum of creative action” :

“Every living thing is an example of this. The bird needs the resisting medium of the air to fly; the fish of the water to swim; and man when he stands upright is resisting a tendency to fall, though he may be unconscious of it. Standing upright might be defined as successful resistance to the force of gravitation” (1934, p. 36).

Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli explores the notion of agency more deeply in a paper titled “Agency in Physics” (July 2020). Beyond resisting media, an agent is simply that which ignores some of the physical links to its environment, whether in the case of the wind pushing an air mass down a slope, a sprout breaking through soil, or a person deciding to take some action. These macroscopic examples of independent agency can ultimately trace back to many microscopic roots, as basic as a difference in temperature between or within systems of any size, all the way down to the random agency of quantum indeterminacy arising from unaccounted degrees of freedom, as in the microphysics of brain activity.

Temperature differences, or thermodynamic gradients, cause a change in entropy such as the heat dissipation associated with cooling. Such fundamental activity can drive macroscopic independent agency as temporally-irreversible change, when the realizing of possible system evolutions is observed, and which Rovelli equates with the system or agent as having made a choice. This change leaves a memory that consequently creates information, which in turn can fuel further agency and lead to an openness with “ample space for subtle, high level processes to influence the macroscopic future” (2020, p. 6).

“Memory and agency can thus be viewed as mechanisms that convert free energy into information. This may well be the primary source of the information the biosphere, the brain, and culture, deal with” (2020, p. 1).

Does placing a metaphysical frame over this view see it accord with Buddhist notions of dependent origination where every thought or action carries some agency, and nothing is without a cause? If so, does this thus translate that thoughts, words, and actions are themselves agents creating information, and leaving traces to affect other agents?

Moreover, what is the nature of the asymmetry; thermodynamic, perspectival, or otherwise, underlying agency and which seems to impel systems in this manner, perhaps by providing “the fulcrum of creative action” ?

Jacks, L. P. (1934), Life Functions in a Resisting Medium in The Revolt against Mechanism (pp. 19 – 24), reprinted in Hoople, R. E., Piper, R. F., & Tolley, W. P. (Eds.), (1946) Preface to Philosophy: Book of Readings (pp. 35-38). New York, United States: The Macmillan Company (1952 ed.)

Rovelli, C. (July 2020), Agency in Physics (pp. 1-7). DOI: arXiv:2007.05300v2 [PDF document] retrieved September 2021 from https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.05300