Essays on Polarity

Artistic beauty and cosmic creation
Several months ago, I wrote and disseminated an article, “Four Patterns in Cosmic Creation,” based (in part) on Guido Tonelli’s book, Genesis: The Story of How Everything Began (2019). Tonelli identifies four patterns present in the first instant of cosmic creation, i.e., in the first billionth of a second, which reappear in the early phases of cosmic creation: a) the unity of creation/destruction, b) the power of polarities, c) symmetry breaking, and d) transformation at a tipping point, most commonly the reduction in the temperature of the early universe following the Big Bang.

Remarkably, artistic creation commonly utilizes three of these patterns while attempting (with rare exceptions) to reverse the most important pattern of all: the unity of creation/ destruction. Tonelli writes:
“For the Greeks and Romans, for a work to be beautiful, it must necessarily contain symmetry, with elements and volumes in mathematical relationship with each other. Central symmetry, of the kind determining the regular distribution of the segments of an orange, or the arms of a starfish, was used widely in the classical world.” (p. 69)
And
“The modern notion of symmetry has made possible a mathematical formulation that has found many applications in the sciences. For physics in particular, symmetry is not just a concept that implies constancy and elegance of relations. It is a real tool of investigation that has enabled the construction of new laws of nature,” (p. 70)

For example, the Standard Model of quantum physics. Tonelli asserts that in the Standard Model, “everything emerges from a symmetry.” (p. 72) However, Tonelli maintains:
“The appeal of ‘broken symmetry’ can be found in many works of art. The orderly rhythm of perfect symmetry tends to pacify and reassure, but it risks ultimate blandness: it does not elicit emotion, because it fails to surprise. The effect of the break is unsettling, but also intriguing; it pushes us beyond the limits of our certainties … For an instant we seem to hesitate, we are overcome by trepidation generated by the unexpected innovation and the risks that accompany it; then the artist reassures us and returns us to familiar territory. … These are techniques used with great mastery by eminent painters and by composers of genius such as Bach and Mozart. …” (p.77)
“If in the field of art, dismantling symmetry is a deliberate act that provokes fascination and astonishment, how should we explain the fact that nature seems distinctly inclined to resist succumbing to the same process?
The universe that emerges after the phase of inflation is in a state of perfection. The laws of physics that regulate it are perfectly symmetrical. Why does such a perfect mechanism shatter?”

Tonelli’s answer is that the symmetry of the early universe was unstable; “as it cools down, it loses symmetry but acquires stability.” (p. 78)
According to Tonelli, symmetry in art is pleasing and comfortable, but eventually loses the power to command careful appreciative attention. In cosmic creation, it is the broken symmetry of matter/antimatter that allows matter to stabilize its existence, rather than being instantly destroyed.

Polarities increased the power of forces in the early universe from the Big Bang, hypothesized to have arisen out of a singularity of infinite density (standard version), or through cosmic inflation resulting from a mysterious blockage of a random fluctuation of a tiny particle (Tonelli’s speculation), to the birth of stars out of dense gas clouds, to nuclear fusion in the interior of stars which depends on the balance between gravity and electromagnetism, to the death of stars in explosions following gravitational collapse.

The conflict of polarities increases the power of dramatic art in which interpersonal conflict and group conflict is life blood. The multifaceted relationships between good/evil, love/hate, kindness/cruelty, the sacred and the profane, broken spirits/ resilience, brotherhood, and fights to the death between brothers and comrades, sensuality/spirituality, life/death powers dramatic art. Any scene of happiness and social cohesion at the beginning of a drama can only be followed by tragedy, violence, or other types of conflict. Too much happiness in love, family life or community in dramatic art is a potentially fatal soporific!

The polarities of dramatic art are often intrapsychic as well as interpersonal, arguably because human character has bipolar features, i.e., any strong trait of character is complemented by its opposite, usually in a hidden or recessive way. No one, it seems, is all of a piece, and the discerning exploration of character in fiction, plays, movies and biographies draws out these contradictions. Human character is full of contradictory tendencies which are elicited in different environmental conditions and social contexts. One of these contradictions is the experience (illusion?) of a unitary self which is somehow created from a brain with 86 billion neurons and a body with more than 30 trillion cells. The unitary awareness of animals and humans (i.e., an injury to one part of the organism is an injury to the whole organism) is the most impressive early achievement of central nervous systems. Per Damasio, it is the product of affect.
Music and dramatic art point toward climatic finishes that transform earlier phases and scenes into an aesthetically pleasing whole. Popular movies commonly utilize happy endings in which admirable characters prevail, but occasionally moviemakers violate this expectation. Great directors, novelists and short story writers transform their characters and events in a way that at best is both surprising and seemingly organic. However, there is one feature of cosmic creation that artists (with rare exceptions) do not copy and struggle against: the unity of creation/destruction. As a rule, any type of art that creates an art object is an attempt to capture beauty, to make it timeless in a way that seems impossible. The art that violates this principle, e.g., Tibetan sand art, stands out. It is difficult to watch Tibetan monks who have labored for months in the creation of an exquisite mandala from sand destroy it in a few seconds. However, they do so for a reason, which is to model the cosmic unity of creation/destruction. The creator god, or gods - if there be such - do not cling to the beauty and magnificence of their creations, regardless of the loving attention devoted to them.