The Communal Universe

This book will take you on a journey through our physical universe, from the simplest fundamental particles, such as quarks and electrons, to the most complex of all material objects – our human brains. Our universe has evolved by the formation of communities of things, whereby simpler things come together in new groupings to make more complex things. Every “thing” in the universe is, in fact, a community of things, and at every level a community is greater than the sum of its separate parts. If we view the universe in terms of communities, it readily fits into a simple hierarchy of eight levels of communities, from protons and neutrons to human societies. At each level in the universal hierarchy, the communities are bound together by processes of ceaseless exchanges. Our universe reveals itself as a dazzling, dynamic structure, sustained by endless interactions between members of the communities at every level. Each of us is the universe in microcosm, for we each embody all eight levels of the universal hierarchy. It is by forming communities that the universe, with us now in it, has come to be what it is.