The Sapwood of Synchronosophy 17/18
Powers of Knowing
Even though there are no ways of knowing for sure,
there are ways of knowing for pretty sure.
〰 Lemony Snicket 〰
Entropy and Syntropy
It appeared to me that these syntropic phenomena were real,
and existed in nature, as I could recognize them in the living systems.
〰 Luigi Fantappiè 〰
Luigi Fantappiè (1901-1956) was one of the leading mathematicians in the first half of the 20th century. His discovery of syntropy and the law of future causality could have-should have-would have been hailed as the most sensational discovery in the history of science, if Fantappiè’s scientist buddies ~ mega influencers like Einstein (1879-1955) and Oppenheimer (1904-1967) and co ~ had been a little more supportive of their Italian colleague and the advancement of science, and less concerned about their own careers.
So what happened to Fantappiè and his sensational epiphany about syntropy and future causality? Why have most people never even heard the name of this Italian Maths-genius?
To understand syntropy it’s best to take a step back and get clear about its polar opposite ~ entropy.
Entropy was coined in 1865 by the German physicist Rudolph Clausius in relation to the laws of thermodynamics [from Greek en = within + tropē = turning] defined as a turning towards, in the sense of a transformational process.
Engineers working on steam engines were the first to discover the principle of entropy, in the way the word is generally used today. No matter how efficient their machines, some energy was always lost in the process of running them.
In physics, the second law of thermodynamics states that physical systems degenerate spontaneously and gradually, deteriorating from a state of order towards chaos. This phenomenon was called entropy and explained, for example, with the observation that heat always flows spontaneously from hotter to colder regions, and some of that heat gets lost along the way.
The mathematician and historian James R. Newman, among others, drew the conclusion that entropy is “the general trend of the universe toward death and disorder.” As a consequence, entropy became known in physics as a ‘universal principle’ associated with randomness, disorder, and loss of energy.
This deductive conclusion may well be one of the greatest errors in the history of science, as we shall discover shortly.
Another important factor in the ‘entropic equation’ is time. The loss of heat or energy in the process of any mechanical operation linked the word entropy with degeneration over time, which ~ as far as leading scientists of the early 20th century knew ~ runs from past to present.
Physicists were looking at so-called ‘forwards-in-time’ solutions, where the process is driven by positive energy and the causation lies in the past. In such experiments they were measuring entropy based on diverging waves (= moving away from each other).
What the 2nd law of thermodynamics doesn’t explain, however, is the fact that complex living systems arise from states of disorganisation and chaos. Unlike a mechanical system, a living organism develops from a ‘chaotic void’ into a perfectly organised systemic entity.
What engineers had observed in steam engines, and what physicists had taken as a ‘universal law’ to apply to living systems, left some crucial questions unanswered!
In 1941, Luigi Fantappiè recognised that the principle of entropy must have an equal polar opposite counterpart. He reversed the process, observing backwards-in-time solutions driven by future causality (also known as retrocausality).
“The cause of processes driven by negative energy lies in the future,” he explained, “exactly as living beings work for a better tomorrow.”
Fantappiè discovered that waves towards a future cause show a new type of phenomenon, symmetrical to entropy ~ a kind of ‘negative entropy’ ~ which he called syntropy.
On the 30th of October 1942, Fantappiè presented his findings at the Accademia d’Italia, in the form of volume titled The Unified Theory of the Physical and Biological World.
When the scientific establishment heard that ‘syntropy has qualities associated with life,’ that it is associated with ‘retrocausality’ and realised that this discovery would challenge Einstein’s theory of relativity, Fantappiè was ridiculed.
‘Retrocausality!’ critics scoffed. ‘How is that even possible?!’
Instead of celebrating this pioneering work, and nominating the young genius for the Nobel Prize, Fantappiè was dismissed as ‘crazy’.
Retrocausality & Syntropy
Syntropy is a converging force which leads to life, order and diversity.
〰 Antonella Vannini 〰
In the late 20th century, Italian psychologist Antonella Vannini became interested in the theories of her forgotten compatriot Luigi Fantappié and began to study the principles of syntropy and retrocausality. She conducted experiments for her PhD dissertation to measure anticipatory reactions in the autonomic nervous system.
“Measuring the parameters of the heart rate and skin conductance I could observe strong retrocausal effects when using stimuli with an emotional content.” Vannini reports.
When she came up with positive results, she met with unexpected resistance. “The reaction of the academia was violent,” she recalls. “They said, ‘you are a liar’, ‘it is impossible’, ‘we will not waste our time with this data’, ‘you are a disgrace’… they tried to expel me from the university.”
Despite the fact that Vannini could prove that anticipatory reactions can be observed in vital physiological functions ~ and despite confirmations by many other researchers using various types of experimental designs ~ Fantappiè’s hypothesis that syntropy is the life energy based on retrocausality continues to be rejected as a ‘heretical vision of reality’.
Thanks to these two Italian pioneers, Luigi Fantappiè and Antonella Vannini we now know with a high level of certainty that life is governed by the opposite of entropy. “Syntropy is a converging force which leads to life, order and diversity and is present in living systems,” Vannini explains, “whereas entropy is a diverging force which leads to chaos and death and is also present in physical systems. There are two forces interacting, one building up and the other breaking down.”
Within the inner world of individual human Consciousness this discovery has significant consequences.
“There are two forces interacting, one building up and the other breaking down.”
〰 Antonella Vannini 〰
The building up is syntropy, the breaking down represents entropy. Until we become aware of the interaction between both forces, our attention is mainly drawn to the breaking down, the degenerating forces of life, driven and accelerated by trauma.
We can feel the destructive powers of entropy at work within our own subjective experience of negative emotions, grinding us down. Unprocessed trauma is arguably the greatest source of energy loss in everyday life, driving the intimate experience of entropy, enforcing the fatal belief that ‘this is our inevitable human condition’.
The law of retrocausality continues to be a controversial topic in scientific and philosophical circles. From the perspective of subjective experience, however, the principle of projecting causes into the future is relatively easy to understand.
Since time is a mental and social construct, contemporary scientists should no longer have a problem with the idea of retrocausality. Time as we once knew it no longer exists. The sci-fi concept of ‘back to the future’ (1985) is now totally plausible.
Syntropy and Time
The major problems in the world are the result of the difference
between how nature works and the way people think.
〰 Gregory Bateson 〰
“The only time is now!” says the mystic.
Flocks of mindfulness teachers and their followers focus on living in perennial presence, practicing detachment from both, past and future.
“Time doesn’t exist,” says the scientist (e.g. H.P. Dürr), referring to the conventional concept of time. The only time, for him, is the past, because it can be interpreted and measured; the present moment instantly falls away into the past, while the future is always open, always unpredictable.
If you replace the word ‘cause’ with ‘attraction’ it is easier to conceive the notion of timelessness and retrocausality within our time-bound reality. Entropic phenomena were born in an era of determinism (causes placed in the past). Syntropic phenomena belong to the era of indeterminism (attractors = causes placed in the future).
Hans-Peter Dürr (1929-2014), German quantum physicist, declared that “The entire evolution lives off the syntropy-differential” ~ or the difference between entropy and syntropy. These two phenomena can be regarded as two complementary and opposite dynamic forces, driving the regeneration of life and keeping the balance between order and chaos.
Entropy, the phenomenon linked to ‘past-causality’ can also be described as a centrifugal force, which is eccentric, moving from the centre to the periphery. You can imagine this force splitting the whole into smaller and smaller fragments, making it literally fly apart. Entropy is driven by divergence, competition, differentiation, and separation, moving towards degeneration.
Syntropy, the complementary and opposite force associated with ‘future-causality’, would be centripetal, concentric, moving from the periphery towards the centre. Parts are driven together to form a whole. Syntropy is therefore linked with order and the self-organising principle of life. It is driven by convergence, cooperation and collaboration towards regeneration.
In the early 1980s Ernst Götsch, a Swiss genetic researcher, left his job at a laboratory in Zurich to become a farmer in Bahía, Brazil. He bought 400 hectares of deserted land with a plan to regenerate the area, bring back the former rainforest, and grow a cacao farm. Everybody told him he was crazy!
Implementing the principles of syntropy, he proved all naysayers wrong. Within 10 years he had brought back the rain and the vegetation, turning the desert into a productive cacao plantation.
Götsch (one of the speakers in the video above) calls his approach to agriculture syntropic farming. It is based on diversity and collaboration between plants, which we can witness in every natural forest.
Inspired by this innovative method, regenerative farmers in Brazil, Portugal, and elsewhere are following his example. Ernst Götsch, meanwhile, is in great demand for teaching his syntropic approach to regenerative agriculture and syntropic way of life.
Trauma, Potential & Entelechy
No man can reveal to you
but that which already lies half
asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
〰 Khalil Gibran 〰
Every sentient being, growing through various developmental stages, experiences retrocausality via their innate potential. The oak tree, lying dormant within the acorn, can be explained as a ‘future cause’. The information of the butterfly encoded in the caterpillar is a future cause driving the juvenile life form towards maturity.
In the inner world of human Consciousness, the experience of trauma, especially in the very early stages of life, has a huge impact on our whole life. This can be explained ~ in the language of chaos-theory ~ by the ‘sensitive dependence on initial conditions’, as we have learned in Chapter 11.
Childhood trauma becomes the past-causality, leading to a reliance on survival strategies and typical behaviour patterns. The presence of trauma in the past can also explain the recurrence of traumatic experiences later in life.
In my personal experience, a dysfunctional relationship with myself, caused by invisible trauma due to emotional neglect throughout childhood, was a fertile soil for dysfunctional intimate relationships in adulthood, culminating in visible trauma of domestic violence.
Unravelling this troublesome pattern, I pondered the question, “what is the good reason for negative experience?”
This key question attracted ~ as if by invisible magnetic force ~ the revelation, that underneath the trauma we can find buried treasure in the form of dormant potential. This is confirmed in many stories about healing from trauma, often accompanied by a serious threat to survival.
In the inspirational book The Gift of Fire, Dan Caro describes his own harrowing journey from suffering a horrific accident as a toddler › ‘technically dying on the operating table’ after the accident › surviving a lonely childhood being shunned as a ‘monster’ › to following his dream as a jazz drummer.
It is not unusual for authors, who have written a memoir of their healing journey, to refer to the specific adversity they encountered as their ‘greatest gift’.
“Trauma is hell on earth. Trauma resolved is a gift from the gods,” says trauma therapist and pioneer Peter A. Levine.
But is the trauma really the gift?
Or is it the dormant potential stirring in the wake of recovering from the terrible ordeal?
“If you bring forth that which is within you, then that which is within you will be your salvation. If you do not bring forth that which is within you, then that which is within you will destroy you,” we can read in the Gospel of Thomas.
So what is that which is within us, which has such power over us that it will either destroy or save us?
In his autobiography, Peter Levine writes, “I believe there exists in humans a fundamental, primal drive toward wholeness and health. This includes access to a part of ourselves that has always been within, that lives beyond any trauma, and is eternally whole and undamaged.”
This ‘part of ourselves’ Levine identifies as the ‘True Self’ ~ following a theory of Jungian psychoanalysis.
“Sadly this primal instinctual energy is all too often forced underground by oppressive oversocialization, or overwhelmed by toxic stress and trauma,” Levine explains further.
In the Noctarine model of Consciousness, the Self plays a different role ~ to be explained at a later stage.
The ‘part of ourselves that is forced underground’ ~ as experienced by countless contemporaries in Western so-called ‘civilisation’ as well as other cultures ~ is the Magical Inner Child.
In the event of traumatising experience during childhood, we dissociate from ourselves ~ which in this case can be identified as our infantile individual human Consciousness (iiHC). That part ends up being abandoned, surviving in the inner permafrost.
“Nevertheless, this powerful resource lives deep within all of us and lies in wait, ready to be awakened at the right moment,” Levine continues.“In spite of pervasive trauma, I believe this creative curiosity, and inner sense of vitality and exuberance, was always present in my life and is what helped take me from there to here.”
Peter Levine’s autobiography is a moving testimonial to a life and work in the service of understanding and healing trauma. The iiHC, the part forced underground through the experience of brutal violence at a tender age, is reawakened through further exposure to trauma.
The wounded inner child returns from the inner wilderness with the help of its grownup ~ the now adult host of IHC. This frozen and fearful child carries within itself not only its unique magical potential, but also its matching entelechy ~ the actualisation of the potential.
Within the time-bound reality we experience as humans, our potential and entelechy, which lie hidden beneath the experience of trauma, belong to a latent future. Viewed through the symbiocentric lens of Synchronosophy, we can recognise them as phenomena driving future-causality.
The discovery of dormant potential and its actualisation (= entelechy) ~ invariably associated with trauma ~ provide the most powerful fuel for syntropy. This means, in real everyday life we can observe both principles at work: entropy driven by trauma, and syntropy driven by awakening and actualising our dormant potential.
Powers & Potentiality of the Vital Faculties
The creative adult is the child that has survived.
〰 Julian F. Fleron 〰
To reiterate the nature of these two complementary principles, entropy can be described as a centrifugal force, which is eccentric. You can imagine this force splitting the whole into smaller and smaller fragments, making it literally fly apart.
Entropy is driven by competition, differentiation, and separation, moving towards degeneration. Traumatic experiences cause fragmentation, disorder, degeneration, and fuel entropy.
Syntropy, the complementary and opposite force, is centripetal and concentric. Parts are driven together to form a whole. In the living organism syntropy is always present, associated with the self-organising principle of life.
Syntropy is driven by cooperation and collaboration towards regeneration. Awakening our dormant potential, once buried by trauma, and sponsoring our entelechy regenerates our indigenous resources and fuels this vital principle called syntropy.
Along with dismissing Fantappié’s discovery, Western culture has established itself firmly around the principles of entropy ~ focussing on competition and segregation, becoming increasingly eccentric, driving itself into disintegration at avalanching speed.
The discipline of Synchronosophy supports the dynamics of syntropy and entropy simultaneously. While we cannot deny or avoid the existence of trauma, or the effects it has on human lives, we can accelerate its disintegration using its own fuel. All we need to do is pay attention to our subjective experience of entropy and not resist its natural course.
This acceptance in itself releases the enormous resources spent on survival strategies and the impossible mission of trying to keep the avalanche of deterioration at bay. Instead, we can use that life energy to go on an inner treasure hunt.
Beneath every experience of trauma lies buried treasure. The 8 Powers of Potentiality, autonomous properties, provided by the Faculty of Inspiration, are available to help us ~ the hosts of our IHC ~ unearth and recover that treasure, which is rightfully ours.
When Peter Levine says, “trauma resolved is a gift from the gods,” what he refers to is the buried treasure ~ the dormant potential that lies beneath every human experience of trauma. Although the real and biggest gift is not that dormant potential either. It is the actualisation of the potential, for which the English language doesn’t even have a word.
In Ancient Greece this actualisation was called entelechy. For the Greek philosopher Aristotle, matter was associated with potential, while form represents the actual.
‘Matter is only stuff,’ Aristotle argued. He thought of matter as the creative medium, the elements from which something real can be made. ‘The mere stuff needs a certain form, essence, or function to complete it.’
Matter and form, according to Aristotle, are never separated but can be distinguished. “In the case of a living organism, for example, the sheer matter of the organism can be distinguished from a certain form or function or inner activity, without which it would not be a living organism at all.”
I don’t know whether Aristotle coined the word entelechy, but he associated it with the ‘vital function’ and ‘essence’ of the living organism, which he called ‘anima’, which got translated into ‘soul’.
In the Noctarine, entelechy is associated with the Faculty of the Inspiration, the Inner Genius who endows the organism of IHC with the ultimate gift of discovering our dormant potential ~ a gift that keeps nurturing us on the voyage towards self-actualisation.
Missed the earlier chapters? Click the links
The Rootstock of Synchronosophy
Chapter 1 The Mycelium of Synchronosophy, Chapter 2 Sub-Soil of Synchronosophy, Chapter 3 Nutrients for Synchronosophy, Chapter 4 Adjustments to an Unnatural World, Chapter 5 Loss of Self and Identity, Chapter 6 The Destructive Trail of Trauma
The Heartwood of Synchronosophy
Chapter 7 Emotional Messengers, Chapter 8 Love Thyself, Chapter 9 The Birth of the Noctarine, Chapter 10 Subjective Experience, Chapter 11 The Inner Wilderness, Chapter 12 Polarity and Wholeness
The Sapwood of Synchronosophy
Chapter 13 Symphony of Senses, Chapter 14 The Rainbow of Consciousness, Chapter 15 Ancestral Will, Chapter 16 Acts of Knowing
Veronica, this one is really beautiful, juicy and consistent. It feels like I'm reading a very rare book. :)) How you gather all the information and keep it flowing artistically, delicately, and imaginatively is amazing. Your work is wonderful! Thank you for sharing!
This is a powerful quote, "The creative adult is the child that has survived." It's also curious how syntropy was passionately rejected as we usually are quick to pick up the dualistic nature of life. I'm glad you mentioned how humankind is rapidly ratcheting up entropy. I wish more people felt less helpless (and frightened) and more moved to do something about it. Perhaps we are beginning to experience our need for syntropy and centering. xo