Leer en español: Ley 4: La Ley Universal de la Dirección — Fragmento del libro
GI 4
The Governing Interaction of Direction — Book Excerpt
Every attraction and repulsion, including
the random, flows along the path
of greatest attraction and/or
least repulsion.
Also available as a paper: The Governing Interaction of Direction (full text).
Each operative attraction and repulsion is about something, and so carries a direction, singly or by group. That direction is the greatest attraction and/or least repulsion among the available directions, or another direction would replace it.
A random direction is no exception; it too is the direction of greatest attraction and/or least repulsion.
Where acceleration and momentum are zero, available alternatives may remain, and their attractions and/or repulsions determine the direction in which motion begins.
The greatest attraction and/or least repulsion should not be confused with an ideal or imagined choice. Imagination allows us to rationalize and idealize attractions and repulsions without acting upon them. Reality often requires compromise. The compromise put into motion expresses the greatest attraction and/or least repulsion operating in that interaction.
The Direction of Least Repulsion—More Than Meets the Eye
Herbert Spencer first cast this as a law of motion in First Principles (1862): motion along the line of least resistance. Some thirty years later, William James carried it into psychology as the path of least resistance, describing habit and mental effort, in The Principles of Psychology (1890). In this book, he bridges passivity and activity by intervening will, as in willpower.
Resistance is also a derivative of repulsion and is a primary effect (as friction) emerging from the interaction of fundamental attractions and repulsions, and is not a force in its own right.
Climbing a mountain looks like nothing but resistance. Technically true: moving against gravity is nothing but resistance, but that does not dissuade the climber.
The act of hiking up and/or climbing up is more attractive—and/or less repulsive—than staying home or doing something else less satisfying. Climbers are still moving in the direction GI 4 describes.
Here, GI 4 also describes the impossible direction, which is the opposite in meaning of what is written: Nothing can move against its cause.
GI 4 and the Order of Nature
This GI describes both order (negentropy) and disorder (entropy) that flow in their directions of greatest attraction and/or least repulsion. Constructive negentropy and destructive entropy both operate in the same direction.
Drop three marbles into a cereal bowl and watch what happens. Gravity moves them downward, and the bowl’s curved shape guides them to a stable resting place at the bottom center of the bowl. A simple structure forms, not through intention, but through gravity and direction.
Repetition dictates structure, bounded by
details, with little room for
deviation.
Repetition depends on the direction, frequency, and rate of momentum of interacting parts. Without strict repetition, atoms wouldn’t be categorizable because their properties depend on these repetitive qualities.
The same principle scales up. Most crystals, such as diamond and halite, have fixed attractions and repulsions and therefore repeating symmetry orders, causing cleavage breaks along repeating planes. Amorphous mineraloids such as obsidian and hyalite lack repeating boundary conditions and form no such repeating breaks; they fracture along curved, shell-like (conchoidal) surfaces instead.
DNA is a repetitive code: it dictates what forms and what doesn’t.
Likewise, entropy, the spreading and dissipation of energy, follows the same GI. When repetitive interactions break, disorder increases, at least until a new interactive order becomes repetitive.
Construction and destruction can occur at the same time: forming one order may require dismantling another and expending energy elsewhere. Reconstruction does not reverse destruction; it creates a new order through new interactions.
Disorder obeys GI 4.
Picture that bowl of marbles again—only this time, it falls off the table and shatters. The marbles scatter outward.
Chaos. Disarray. Entropy. But not without direction.
Each fragment flies away along the path of least repulsion—the trajectory where nothing pushed back hard enough to stop it. Some pieces bounce, some spin, some remain still.
That disorder wasn’t random. It followed the same GI. Entropy obeys GI 4 just as surely as negentropy does.
Thermodynamics follows the same rule.
In an isolated system, energy tends to spread because there are generally more possible microscopic arrangements with energy spread among its parts than concentrated in a few.
Heat transfer moves outward from concentration into cooler regions, and temperature gradients reflect this change of location in interaction with their environment. GI 4 constrains the paths along which those outcomes unfold.
Direction is not a force itself. It is the signature left by unequal attraction and repulsion.
Even aggression obeys this GI. You might think, But I attack someone because they’re repulsive, not attractive! That is true insofar as you have defined them that way, but if attacking someone were more repulsive than attractive, the motion would not happen. Attacking someone has become less repulsive than not attacking; the motive, whether to be seen, read, heard, smelled, or perhaps physically felt, may or may not yet be determined.
When someone claims to have moved against GI 4, they have shifted their focus, and that shift is the new attraction or least repulsion. Redirecting attention to revenge, duty, or proving a point becomes more attractive and/or less repulsive than not acting. Naming the target repulsive does not reverse the law; it disguises the attraction or least repulsion behind the action.
Likewise, accidents also obey GI 4.
Buyers Link Wine, Geography, and Song. “Hear the tune? Buy the wine?”
For two weeks, music blared in an English supermarket above displays of comparable bottles of French and German wines. Nearby, a team of University of Leicester psychologists monitored buyers’ choices. When French accordion music played, French wine outsold German varieties by a five-to-one ratio. But, when German beer-hall music oompahed, buyers bought two bottles of German wine for every French bottle. Only a few buyers admitted—or were even aware—that music played a role in their decision, says researcher Jennifer McKendrick. “If you go in to buy a specific item, music won’t affect your choice,” she says. “But if you’re uncertain, music could be an influencing factor.”
(Vol. 193, No. 5, May 1998, National Geographic Magazine.)
Without commitment to a specific product, the buyers had no fixed direction of attraction. The music supplied one.
See the full Table of Contents →
Understanding Attraction, Repulsion, Repetition, and Change, Vol. 1 · Back to all projects