A study by a team of researchers at Cambridge University, the Medical Research
Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, recently provided new evidence that
the brain lives on the edge of chaos at a critical transition point between
order and disorder. This situation provides the brain, like other natural
systems, with the greatest zone of creativity and adaptability to its
environment.
The recently published research provides experimental data on this theory. In
fact, the scientists identify a phenomenon they call self-organized criticality,
which is characteristic of systems that spontaneously organize themselves to
operate at the borderline of order and chaos. This is found in many physical
systems, including avalanches, forest fires, earthquakes, heart rhythms and many
other natural systems that, on the surface, appear to be very different.
Computational networks demonstrate that these characteristics have also been
shown to have the best memory and information-processing capacity. According to
the researchers, critical systems can respond quickly and extensively to small
changes in their environments.
Dr. Manfred Kitzbichler of Cambridge indicates that “due to these
characteristics, self organized criticality is intuitively attractive as a model
for brain functions such as perception and action, because it would allow us to
switch quickly between mental states in order to respond to changing
environmental conditions.”
Interestingly, this scientific theory of critical self-organization corresponds
with Buddhist wisdom when it speaks of the right tension necessary for
consciousness and without which evolution and self-mastery are impossible.
The same idea is found in Ancient Egypt: “Order born of the realization of Ma’at
(justice) is the fruit of an ongoing dynamic transmutation of nonsense into
sense, chaos into intelligent harmony, savagery into civility,” writes
anthropologist Fernand Schwarz.
In understanding our natural reality, order is never fixed. It integrates chaos
to transform it into a higher degree of order, that is, always closer to the
source. Recent scientific discoveries about the human brain reflect discoveries
regarding natural systems and reveal the intelligent laws of life — it is up to
us to understand the examples of these laws.
