Observational Flux by Carlos Rojas
“When atoms are travelling straight down through empty space by their own weight, at quite indeterminate times and places they swerve ever so little from their course, just so much that you can call it a change of direction. If it were not for this swerve, everything would fall downwards like rain drops through the abyss of space. No collision would take place and no impact of atom on atom would be created, and nature would never have created anything.”
Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe
In his six-volume treatise, The Nature of Things (De rerum natura), the first-century BCE Roman philosopher-poet Lucretius developed the atomistic model originally proposed by Greek philosophers Democritus and Epicurus. While Democritus’s original works are no longer extant and Epicurus’s have survived only in fragments, we nevertheless find numerous discussions of their thought in texts by their successors, such as Lucretius. From these latter writings, we see that in addition to the postulate that all matter is composed of minuscule atoms, Epicurus was also interested in how matter moves. For instance, in apparent response to Aristotle’s critique of an earlier atomistic model—in which he noted that, since all objects fall through a vacuum at the same speed, in principle, they should never collide with one another—Epicurus instead theorized that atoms, in addition to falling straight down, may also move at an oblique angle. Lucretius later developed this notion of oblique motion in more detail—proposing that, as atoms fall downward, some will occasionally deviate slightly from their original linear path, potentially colliding with others. Lucretius argues that this oblique swerve—parenklisis in Epicurus’s original Greek and clinamen in Lucretius’s Latin—provides the foundation for variability within an otherwise deterministic universe.
Although grounded on the work of pre-Socratic thinkers like Democritus and Epicurus, Lucretius’s discussion of random atomic movement presciently anticipates a phenomenon first observed empirically nearly two millennia later when the Swedish botanist Robert Brown, in the 1820s, noted how pollen grains in water follow a seemingly random path through the liquid. This phenomenon, which was dubbed Brownian motion, was not effectively explained until nearly a century later when Albert Einstein proposed in a 1905 paper that the particle’s movement is a result of its continual jostling by water molecules, which are themselves in constant motion due to their atomic kinetic energy. Three years later, Einstein’s model was verified experimentally by physicist Jean Perrin, who also used Einstein’s equations to calculate the size of different types of atoms.
In this intellectual trajectory from early Greek and Roman philosophers like Epicurus and Lucretius to modern physicists like Einstein and Perrin, we find a recognition that not only is matter constantly in flux, but, furthermore, this flux is essential for understanding the world itself. And while this line of theorization focuses on flux at the atomic level, a similar point could be made for virtually all scales of observation. Not only is all matter composed of subatomic particles that are continually in motion, but the universe itself is perpetually expanding—meaning that the very space-time matrix that matter occupies is itself in flux.
Under some conditions, motion is relatively predictable, but there are also many conditions where it is fundamentally indeterminate. One area where this indeterminacy is particularly relevant is at the subatomic or quantum level. In the 1920s, Werner Heisenberg posited that it is impossible to know the position and the speed of a subatomic particle simultaneously. This uncertainty takes two distinct forms, one of which is epistemological, while the other is ontological. On the one hand, Heisenberg noted what has been called the observer effect, which posits that it is impossible to observe certain types of systems without simultaneously affecting them, meaning that one cannot measure one aspect of the system without affecting others. On the other hand, another form of the uncertainty principle is grounded on the fact that quantum elements exist simultaneously as particles and waves and that these two states cannot be structurally disambiguated. This latter uncertainty is, according to quantum theory, independent of human observation and instead is intrinsic to (quantum) reality itself.
Heisenberg focused on uncertainty at the quantum level, but scientists subsequently applied a similar approach to structural uncertainty in systems at much larger scales. In the 1960s, for instance, the meteorologist Edward Lorenz became interested in the uncertainty inherent in meteorological predictions. To work out some of the underlying principles of this uncertainty, Lorenz proposed a simple thermodynamic system consisting of a water-filled cell heated from below. When the heat differential between the bottom and the top of the cell is very small, the heat will rise smoothly through the liquid, and the system will remain basically stable. If the temperature of the bottom of the cell increases beyond a certain point, however, the liquid will transition to a circular convection pattern where the liquid at the bottom of the cell expands and rises as it is heated, displacing the cooler liquid at the top of the cylinder, which then sinks to the bottom. If the temperature increases beyond another point, however, the circular convection system breaks down and becomes turbulent. Reductively modeling this thermodynamic system with only three differential equations, Lorenz showed that for some parameters, the output of the system becomes chaotic—such that infinitesimal variations in its initial state can lead to exponentially greater changes in outcome.
Lorenz wanted to use the ultra-simple model of the convection cell to better understand the inherent unpredictability of weather systems, and particularly why it is difficult to reliably predict the weather more than several days in advance. To this end, he proposed the concept of the butterfly effect—which posits that weather is a chaotic system wherein even an infinitesimal change in initial conditions (equivalent to a proverbial flap of a butterfly’s wing) could end up having a significant impact on subsequent outcomes.
Around the same time, Lorenz was attempting to mathematically model the inherent unpredictability of thermodynamic systems like the weather, one of his contemporaries was attempting to do the precise opposite—by creating a computer model capable of predicting long-term climate trends. In 1966, just three years after Lorenz published his article on the convection cell, his fellow meteorologist Syukuro Manabe created the first large-scale computer model of the earth’s climate, which suggested that although carbon dioxide is present in the earth’s atmosphere in relatively small amounts (roughly 320 parts per million at the time Manabe developed his model), changes in average global CO2 concentrations can have outsized effects on global temperatures. For instance, by the time Manabe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2021, global CO2 concentrations had increased from 320 to 420 ppm, and this modest increase in CO2 has contributed to a relatively large increase in global temperature (more than 1 degree Celsius over the past half-century).
In her essay for this Criticism section, oceanographer M. Susan Lozier offers an overview and commentary on our evolving understanding of the relationship between oceans and climate. In particular, she notes that it is precisely the oceans’ inherent volatility—and particularly the convection currents that move water from the surface to the ocean’s depths and back again—that has helped limit the effects of increased atmospheric CO2 levels on global temperatures. At the same time, however, the very same factors that have allowed the oceans to absorb extra CO2 emissions have simultaneously triggered a set of transformations within the oceans themselves, as CO2 absorption results in increasing ocean acidity and warmer water temperatures result in lower oxygen levels—both of which can have devastating effects on oceanic ecosystems. Lozier concludes that whereas “[f]or ages, humankind has veered between fearing and revering the ocean,” now it is “the ocean [that] is vulnerable to our power.” She suggests that we need to save the ocean because only in doing so can we simultaneously save ourselves from our own actions.
Global warming, as the name suggests, is a global phenomenon, but it does not affect all parts of the world equally. Instead, some regions are warming at a more rapid rate than others, and one recognized climate change hotspot is the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, where temperatures are predicted to increase at a rate 20 percent higher than the global average. Of course, the MENA region is not only a climate change hotspot but also a political hotspot, and there are times when the region’s sociopolitical volatility appears even more intractable than its climate-related challenges. The region’s sociopolitical volatility is shaped by many factors, but one of the most entrenched tensions is grounded in the relationship between the state of Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the nation’s tense relationship with several of its neighboring Arab states.
These tensions reached a tipping point when, on October 7, 2023, Hamas—the Islamist organization that is the governing body in the Palestinian-dominated Gaza Strip—launched a surprise attack on Israel, which resulted in over a thousand deaths and 250 hostages taken. This attack, in turn, triggered a destructive counterattack by the Israeli state, which sought to destroy Hamas but also resulted in vast numbers of civilian casualties. In his essay for this section, historian and Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov begins by offering a historical overview of the developments that led up to the current conflict while also examining how certain ways of characterizing the conflict (and specifically rhetorical accusations of Nazism and genocide) will inevitably undermine efforts to defuse the situation.
While Bartov considers discourses surrounding the violence that has engulfed Israel and Gaza in recent months, Chinese author and critic Yan Lianke looks instead at the eerie silence that currently characterizes many people’s reaction to a crisis faced by the Chinese nation. Alternately likening the nation’s situation to the Titanic about to collide with an iceberg or to a lake whose embankment is about to collapse, Yan Lianke posits that many Chinese are acutely aware of the imminent crisis yet assiduously avoid discussing it. To describe this avoidance, Yan Lianke alludes ironically to the school of Mahayana Buddhism known as Chan in Chinese, but which is better known internationally by its Japanese pronunciation, Zen. Chan Buddhism is skeptical of the ability of language to serve as a vehicle for transmitting Buddhist teachings. Instead, Chan practitioners often rely on seemingly paradoxical statements known as gong’an in Chinese and kōan in Japanese, or even silence (such as the meditation technique known as qingzuo or “quiet sitting”). In Yan Lianke’s essay, however, Chan Buddhism’s skepticism toward language becomes a stand-in for what he identifies as his compatriots’ attempts to avoid discussing contemporary concerns. Yan suggests, moreover, that by avoiding open discussions, his compatriots are indirectly exacerbating the underlying problems themselves.
Whereas Bartov concludes his essay by outlining a potential solution to the long-standing problem confronting the relationship between Israel and Palestine, and Yan Lianke similarly concludes by hinting at a potential solution to the crisis currently facing the Chinese nation, comparative literature scholar Irving Goh instead focuses on the reality of failure itself. Noting that many scholars working in a burgeoning field that could be called failure studies tend to focus on failure as a path to eventual success, Goh instead proposes that it would also be useful to focus on failure as failure. To the extent that failure may be compared to an interminable state of flux, he suggests, he “want[s] to stay with this flux, without any hope of getting out of it.”
To illustrate what this sort of approach might look like, Goh turns to Aztec mythology, which views the universe as being in a continual state of flux, with one age following another. This creation myth posits that, in the transition from the fourth to the fifth age, the gods Tecuciztecatl and Nanauatzin were called upon to sacrificially immolate themselves to create a new sun. Whereas the humble Nanauatzin accepted the assignment without hesitation, it took the vainglorious Tecuciztecatl five attempts before he could finally bring himself to throw himself into the fire. Goh notes that while modern commentators such as Georges Bataille tend to focus on Nanauatzin, whose successful self-sacrifice resulted in his becoming the new sun, less attention has been given to Tecuciztecatl, whose failure to correctly perform the ritual self-immolation led to his becoming only the much dimmer moon. Moreover, Goh contends that even this result (of becoming the moon) lies outside of Tecuciztecatl’s own perspectival horizon, and instead, “[f]or Tecuciztecatl, failure is forever. There is no redemption.”
The Aztec vision of a universe perpetually in flux, with one age replacing another, also aptly describes the fate of the Aztecs themselves. An important Mesoamerican civilization between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Aztecs were effectively wiped out in the 16th century, primarily because of Spanish colonialism. Just as Tecuciztecatl’s rebirth as the moon lies outside of the god’s original perspectival horizon, similarly, the contemporary archive of Aztec culture lies outside the perspectival horizon of the original Aztec civilization itself. (Ironically, much of what we currently know about Aztec mythology is derived from written records compiled during the period of Spanish colonialism—by the very same colonial regime that was largely responsible for the extinction of the Aztecs themselves—and otherwise, this, too, might have been lost to history.)
Coincidentally, in the fifteenth century—when the Aztec civilization was at its height—a similar fate almost befell Lucretius’s On the Nature of the Universe. Not only does Lucretius’s text provide an important window into the works of Epicurus, whose original writings have been mostly lost to history, but, furthermore, Lucretius’s own text would likely have met a similar fate had not a fifteenth-century papal emissary by the name of Poggio Bracciolini happened to find and preserve the last surviving copy. As historian Stephen Greenblatt observes in The Swerve, the fact that Lucretius’s text ended up being preserved for modern-day readers could be seen as a miracle—or, to borrow Lucretius’s own terminology, as a fortuitous but fundamentally random swerve, or clinamen: “The reappearance of his poem was such a swerve, an unforeseen deviation from the direct trajectory—in this case, toward oblivion—on which that poem and its philosophy seemed to be traveling.”
Not only was the fate of Lucretius’s text shaped by the sort of clinamen that the work itself attempts to theorize in relation to physical phenomena, but, furthermore, the work explicitly draws parallels between its observations about the physical universe and corresponding sociocultural phenomena. For instance, at one point, Lucretius observes that sometimes one type of matter can be induced to transform into a completely different type—such as when wind blows through tree branches and produces fire—and then adds that a similar phenomenon can be observed at the level of language itself:
“Now do you see the point of my previous remark, that it makes a great difference in what combinations and positions the same elements occur and what motions they mutually pass on and take over, so that with a little reshuffling the same ones may produce firs and fires? This is just how the words themselves are formed, by a little reshuffling of the letters, when we pronounce fire [ignes] and firs [lignum] as two distinct utterances.”
Here, Lucretius anticipates an important insight of Saussurean structural linguistics—which contends that linguistic elements contain no meaning in isolation, and instead their meaning is grounded on their relationship with other elements in the same system. Indeed, as Jed Rasula and Steve McCaffery observe concerning Lucretius’s passage, “atoms then are to bodies what letters are to words: heterogenous, deviant, and combinatory.”
Perhaps the most striking link between Lucretius’s reflections on physics and his observations about sociocultural phenomena, however, can be found in the section of the text where Lucretius discusses the concept of the clinamen. There, he argues that it is the random swerve of atoms that not only makes possible “some new movement that will snap the bonds of fate, the everlasting sequence of cause and effect” but is also “the source of free will possessed by living things throughout the earth.” The implication, accordingly, is that the inherent flux that permeates the material universe—which was theorized by Epicurus and Lucretius and has subsequently been confirmed by modern-day figures working in a variety of different fields—not only contributes to the matrix of causality within which all living beings are embedded but also provides the ground on which the very possibility of free will, agency, and autonomy is predicated. It is in the clinamen, in other words, that we find what Lucretius poetically describes as “the source of that will power snatched from the fates.”
Moreover, Lucretius’s clinamen is not only viewed as the source of agency and free will, but it also offers a way of understanding the relationship between sentient beings and the universe they inhabit. Just as Heisenberg theorized that it is impossible to observe certain types of quantum-level systems without affecting them, one could make a similar point about sociocultural systems. Indeed, even as each of the essays in this Criticism section seeks to describe phenomena, they also attempt to help shape them. Whether the phenomenon in question be global climate change, the Israel-Hamas conflict, the political-economic crisis facing contemporary China, or how we understand failure itself, the essays in this section function not only as observations but also as interventions into the phenomena they describe. Indeed, there is always the possibility that—like a minute atomic swerve or the proverbial flap of a single butterfly wing—an essay like one of these may contribute to a chain reaction that could have significant effects in the real world.
References
Lucretius. On the Nature of the Universe. Translated by Ronald Latham. Boston: Penguin Books, 1951. Quotes from pp. 53, 66, 67; translations slightly revised.
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: Norton, 2011. Quote from p. 21.
Rasula, Jed, and Steve McCaffery. Imagining Language: An Anthology. Boston: MIT Press, 2001. Quote from p. 532.
Carlos Rojas is a translator and professor of Chinese cultural studies at Duke University.