Freedom is a fundamental physical regularity in the ecological structure
When hearing or reading the term “freedom,” most people today probably do not think of concrete physical laws of nature and mathematically calculable quantities. Instead, the word is more likely to be associated with abstract categories such as philosophy. Yet the mathematical treatment of degrees of freedom is commonplace in many fields of physics. This applies to classical mechanics and extends to molecular physics and quantum physics. There are mathematical symbols such as f and df (degree of freedom) and common formulas. Degrees of freedom describe, for example, the possible movements of an electron in space as well as its internal degree of freedom, its spin. However, when it comes to living matter, i.e., organisms in ecosystems, such concepts are rarely applied. Yet this area offers a practically inexhaustible field of application, both in qualitative and quantitative terms.
In living matter, so many different degrees of freedom can be defined and determined in terms of their quantitative levels that the number of possible applications far exceeds those in all other areas of physics. When these calculations are combined, fundamental regularities emerge that are connected to the mechanisms of the law of free evolution discussed in the section Evolution – which itself already includes clearly definable degrees of freedom. A comprehensive theory on the physical structure of degrees of freedom in ecological structures is currently being developed at the ZEIS Institute for Ecological Education. The following is an easy-to-understand approach to the fact that the average degree of freedom in ecosystems is a widely dominant and mathematically representable physical parameter. It also shows, by way of example, how concrete observations can be converted into mathematical formulas that are also used in other areas of physics. This will happen below in a minute.
An accompanying investigation in real ecosystems can greatly aid understanding. We therefore recommend that every reader try this for themselves. Getting started is not complicated and does not require any in-depth specialist knowledge. Any layperson can discover freedom as a physical regularity of ecosystems in a very practical way by means of their own small empirical observations.
The easiest way to begin recognizing freedom as a physical regularity of living matter is to look at the most complex organisms, namely vertebrates. These are birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and fish. Simple but strong empirical evidence can already be determined in advance by a process of elimination. Namely, in the collection of all scientific descriptions of the approximately 70,000 known species of vertebrates on planet Earth, there is not a single empirically proven example in which one species permanently controls another. However, direct empirical derivation requires concrete observation. And that is precisely what we will now focus on. To emphasize: the focus on vertebrates is only an auxiliary restriction, as the objective regularities are most easily recognizable in them. Freedom as a physical parameter is approximately the same across the entire ecological structure.
Ideally, the vertebrates observed should not be influenced by humans, i.e., they should not be fed. It is now important to pay close attention to all observed individuals to see if there is anything that speaks against their complete self-determination. It should therefore be apparent that any reaction or movement is not the result of a decision made by the animal in question for its own benefit or that of its offspring or its own population, but is forced upon it by another life form. In addition, the restriction criterion would also be met if the animal’s free and thus self-determined development is clearly reduced by illness or injury.
The background to this approach also lies in the core meaning of the term “freedom” itself. The word comes from the Old Germanic “fri halsa,” which expressed that an individual “determines his own neck.” In other language families, too, concepts of freedom emerged with the same meaning: self-determination. From a mechanical point of view, the organism in question determines itself in its own interest through its decisions, reactions, and actions. This happens automatically and is independent of cognitive abilities, for example. Bacteria and plants also determine their own decisions and reactions in their own interest.
The result of a systematic investigation is always the same
The result of the study based on vertebrates will always be the same in real nature, no matter where on the planet it is carried out. It therefore does not matter whether the systematic observation takes place while hiking in forests and along rivers in any climatic zone or while snorkeling in tropical coral reefs or other bodies of water—the physical regularity is generally the same. This regularity consists in the fact that the actions of the observed individuals of all species (on average) are based almost entirely on their own decisions and the development of their innate characteristics for their own benefit. With regard to this own benefit, it is possible to extend this to that of their own offspring, their own population, or the respective social structure.
The more often such practical and systematic investigations are carried out, the clearer it becomes that these cannot be coincidences, but that freedom is in fact almost absolutely the common denominator of the existence of the various animals and thus a central regularity in their natural existence. It can also be concluded that this must always have been the case since vertebrates have existed on Earth, i.e., for about half a billion years and also independently of location across the entire planet.
Before systematic investigation in a real ecosystem, there may still be doubts. For example, one could vaguely assume that the life of the blackbird in the forest is somehow determined by predatory predators and that these predators therefore determine the actions of the blackbird as potential prey. However, if we consider a scene in which a real blackbird flies up from a meadow and flees because it has spotted an approaching hawk, there is nothing to contradict the absolute and self-interested self-determination of this reaction. The hawk would, of course, prefer a completely different reaction from the blackbird, but it cannot bring this about because the blackbird is in a state of freedom. With this flight reaction, the blackbird has therefore determined its own interests 100 percent and thus absolutely. Consequently, the hawk has determined this reaction zero percent in terms of its own benefit.
Restrictions on freedom are only minor side effects in ecological structures
Only if one were to observe that the hawk is successful and manages to catch the blackbird would one actually discover a restriction of its freedom. For now it is in the power of its predator and can no longer determine its own fate. However, it is precisely this aspect that reveals the extreme importance of practical and systematic observation in reality: after a while, it automatically becomes clear that the periods of these actual restrictions until death occur are, on average, negligible in relation to the state of freedom.
This realization comes when you have perhaps spent almost an entire day hiking through nature, observing thousands of birds and other vertebrates, but still have not been able to find a scene in which an individual was in the clutches of a predator. In a healthy ecosystem, death occurs so quickly on average that it represents only a tiny fraction of reality.
The tiny size of this fraction can also be understood mathematically, and then it becomes clear why, during systematic observation, you probably spent an entire day hiking through nature and spotted thousands of birds flying freely without seeing a single bird die in the clutches of a predator. Using the blackbird as an example, it could be captured by a hawk after a year of freedom.
If this process takes two minutes from the first physical contact to the moment of death, then the ratio is 262,800 to 1. The blackbird had thus unfolded 525,600 minutes of its total physical organization in a self-determined manner, and there were only two minutes of restriction of this unfolding during the final death struggle. One would therefore have to keep one’s eyes on the blackbird day and night for a whole year without interruption in order to finally see two minutes of restriction of its freedom by another living being.
This analysis can now be used for an initial calculation of a degree of freedom df according to the methods of physics. In doing so, the obstacles and restrictions on the states of freedom of a particular species are determined by another particular species. The resulting outcome is already similar to those obtained when the study is repeated using other predator-prey structures. This crystallizes a general value df, which is probably approximately the same in every carbon-based ecosystem—in relation to all different life forms and all their interactions.
The following is a selective calculation. For the sake of clarity, we always multiply the results by 100 so that the final value df becomes an easily comprehensible percentage. Clarity is important because the more interactions are included, the more extensive the calculations of degrees of freedom become.
The potential maximum value is always 100% (df = 100% = unrestricted freedom). The degree of freedom is therefore always between 0 and 100 as a closed interval, including the boundary values 0 and 100. This results in the following formula, positions, and calculation based on the average blackbird and the inhibitory effects of its predator, the hawk:
Total lifetime (T) T= 525,600 minutes
Time under restriction (E): E = 2 minutes
Free lifetime (FT): FT = T – E = 525,600 – 2 = 525,598 minutes
The approximately absolute degree of freedom in ecological structures is therefore also mathematically evident in relation to predator-prey relationships among vertebrates. The fact that such investigations are rarely or never applied in the system of civilization, even though they concern an important part of reality, is fundamentally due to psychological repression mechanisms. For if such calculations were to be made, it would be almost impossible to avoid applying them to “farm animals,” which are kept in captivity by their predator, humans, throughout their entire existence. The FT value is then zero. Let us assume, for example, that the total lifespan of an individual in question is also 12 months, as in the case of the blackbird, which roughly corresponds to the lifespan of so-called “laying hens,” for example, then the result is:
Total lifespan (T) T= 525,600 minutes
Time under restriction (E): E = 525,600 minutes
Free lifetime (FT): FT = T – E = 525,600 – 525,600 = 0 minutes
Such a value df = 0 is actually fundamentally impossible in an ecological structure. This applies not only to animals, but to all life forms. Because the fundamental law of free evolution, as explained in the section on evolution, makes it impossible for one species to force any characteristics onto another across generations and thereby control it, each new generation of the latter always emerges with an initial value greater than zero (df = >0). This would even apply if all individuals in a population came under the control of another species a few seconds after the fusion of the egg and sperm cells (or, in the case of single-celled organisms, after cell division).
Illness and infirmity are rare among free animals
Those who carry out systematic and targeted research in reality will immediately gain the basis for calculating a further category of degrees of freedom in ecological structures: Restrictions on freedom caused by illness or injury, for example, are on average so small in relation to free and healthy development in an intact ecosystem that they also account for only a tiny fraction and are correspondingly rare.In concrete terms, this means that during an all-day hike through the ecological structure, among thousands of vertebrates observed, one might find at most a few specimens that were recognizably restricted in this respect. This observation is also no coincidence, but one based on the physical regularities that govern all ecosystems everywhere—and have done so since the beginning of life.One would also have to snorkel for hours in a tropical coral reef to find, if at all, perhaps one or two such fish with limited development. And so it is with gazelles in Africa, frogs in ponds, and all other vertebrates across the planet.
The connections now become more complex because several different degrees of freedom must be brought together. The hawk comes back into play here. Let’s stick with the blackbird as our “model bird” for now. The pathogenic virus XY is rampant in its current population of 1,000 individuals. If the disease caused by this virus breaks out in a blackbird, its general degree of freedom rapidly decreases. From 100 percent before the outbreak, it declines until the bird dies after 24 hours. During this period, the blackbird is visibly impaired in terms of its general physical condition and its degree of freedom is only 20 percent on average. Of the 1,000 individuals, 2 individuals fall ill every day. After 365 days, only 270 individuals are still alive; all the others have been killed by XY. And now we calculate the average degree of freedom of the blackbirds in this one year.Here are the five steps of the calculation. The final result is the average degree of freedom dfavg (degree of freedom on average):
At around 99.75 percent, the average degree of freedom here also approaches the absolute value of 100 percent, even though most of the blackbirds die from the viral disease over the course of the year and only 27 percent of the population are still alive after 365 days. This degree of freedom, which is close to the maximum value, is one of the reasons why we could see almost only healthy and free blackbirds in reality.And now the hawk comes back into play. It now represents all potential predators of the blackbird, including buzzards, falcons, and foxes, as well as owls and martens that hunt at night. It is highly likely that one of these will kill and eat the average sick blackbird well before the 24 hours are up, so that the average degree of freedom of the population will increase accordingly to well above the value of around 99.75 percent just calculated. In an ecological structure not influenced by human civilization, it will probably be above 99.9 percent in most cases.
The tautness of an ecological structure does not counteract the high degrees of freedom, but rather secures them.
The ecological structure therefore has a parameter of high tautness, which means that states of illness and the resulting infirmity are ended so quickly by death that they are only minimal side effects. At first glance, one might mistakenly assume that this enormous tautness must mean that, for example, the fish or birds observed in the study exist under a form of constant pressure that somehow restricts their freedom as individuals. However, this is not the case. As long as the creature is healthy and in full control of its own destiny, the characteristics that have developed over millions of years of evolution are almost fully developed, and the existence of the supposed pressure is actually a very important part of this free development.
To make this easier to understand, you can imagine it as similar to a very skilled and passionate motorcyclist. He rides at high speed, but also with great precision through the curves. The danger zone is always only a few centimeters away from him, and even the smallest mistake could lead to his immediate death. But if asked, he will always say that it is precisely these moments in which he feels completely free and that there is no other state in which he could enjoy his existence more.
And so, through the development of its evolutionary and innate characteristics in constant self-determination, a free and healthy vertebrate in the ecological structure and the entire biosphere also masters, for example, the everyday dangers posed by predators. The immune system and other mechanisms of its body successfully defend it against the countless parasites that exist in the environment or even on and in it. The organism is adapted to the temperatures, humidity, and all other climatic factors of its habitat.
When this self-determined and thus free life is no longer possible, it usually ends quickly before long illness, suffering, and misery can arise. However, it is very important for a correct understanding to note that in nature there is no system superior to the living individual that determines this end in any way. Rather, in order to correctly classify the physical context, the observation must be reversed. To understand this, one can imagine that freedom as a physical state is, in a sense, life itself. And when it, i.e., physical freedom, ceases, then physical life also ends.
Recognizing regular freedom based on insects
Anyone who has carried out the recommended investigation in reality will now have gained a good sense of the central regularity of freedom in their existence based on vertebrates. Building on this, it takes a little more effort to extend this insight to the overall context of an ecosystem, because things become much more complicated in the animal classes of insects and mollusks. And this is even more true for plants, macroscopic fungi, and microorganisms.
However, this does not mean that freedom is not a central regularity in these forms of life. It is also a central regularity in them, regardless of the species. To take this a little further, insects, which are by far the largest group within the animal kingdom, are particularly suitable for this purpose.
One reason why recognizing the physical regularity of freedom in insects is not quite as easy as in vertebrates is that there are so many of them that the proportion of restrictions, which is also close to zero on average, can be discovered much more often. Only in mathematical reflection does it become apparent that there is basically no significant difference in terms of the always approximately absolute high degrees of freedom.
An observer sitting by a pond could, for example, look at the spider webs on the shore. He might then see many mayflies that have become entangled in them. And now he thinks that this species must regularly experience a relatively poor ratio between self-determined free development and the process of death caused by a predator. But they would be mistaken.
Even the average mayfly is almost completely free
The entire life cycle of mayflies (Ephemeroptera) consists mainly of a larval stage, which lasts from one to four years, depending on the species. These larvae have legs and lead a self-determined and, incidentally, very active life in the water. They hunt and gather, evade predators, and do whatever else is necessary for the free development of their evolutionary and innate characteristics. Even if such an animal later, after metamorphosis, lives for half an hour entangled in a spider’s web as a winged specimen before the spider kills it or the effort causes the organism to collapse, the ratio for an individual with a total lifespan of two years would still be 35,040 to 1 in favor of free development.
This is a fairly low value, but its average is increased by the much more numerous specimens that are killed in a matter of seconds by birds or bats, for example. The situation is very similar with other flying insects, whose obvious and relatively long process of dying in a spider’s web is particularly noticeable to an observer who is not systematically observing them, while the vast majority of their conspecifics – in the case of mayflies, sometimes several million per hectare – are free to develop in large numbers in the surrounding area and whose death, if they are caught by swallows, for example, comes almost instantly. For flies, bees, wasps, and beetles, too, the effects of predatory enemies that inhibit their free development (inhibitions against degree of freedom df) are very close to zero.
Misconceptions and errors surrounding colony-forming ants, example 1: Aphids are not “dairy cows”
Certain misinformation about some circumstances involving colony-forming ants can also cause confusion in understanding freedom as a central regularity of the ecological structure, which is why it will be briefly examined here. The solution to the widespread misconception that some ant species “keep” and “milk” root lice and aphids, and that the lice are therefore not in a state of near-absolute freedom, is quite simple.
In fact, the aphid species in question often specialized millions of years ago in attracting certain ant species by means of an evolutionary enrichment of special sugars, called melezitose, in their own useless feces, thus securing benefits in the form of aggressive bodyguards, carriers, or even winter hosts. In the professional world of insect researchers, one does not speak of ants “keeping” aphids, but rather of “visiting” them. Aphid species that, for whatever reason, currently suffer more disadvantages than benefits from ant visits can reduce the proportion of melezitose in their feces that is particularly attractive to ants within a relatively few generations to such an extent that they are hardly visited at all or not visited at all.
So this is by no means a question of “milk” and actual “milking.” But this misrepresentation quickly makes it clear why, at least among laypeople, there is still a lot of enthusiastic writing and talking about aphids being milked and kept: it is an attempt to legitimize the unnaturalness of the permanent control of “milk cows” that began a few millennia ago. Their milk is not a useless fecal matter with which they attract humans, but rather it originated in the early history of mammals over 200 million years ago for the sole purpose of nourishing their own offspring. And for individual and average “dairy cows,” the degree of freedom df is basically zero, which is actually an impossible value in ecological structures.
Misrepresentations and misconceptions about colony-forming ants, example 2: “Slave ants” are not really slaves
Another example of misrepresentation concerning colony-forming ants concerns the relationship between so-called “slave-making ants” and “slave ants.” These are defined as a form of social parasitism, although scientists now tend to believe that they are very complex, mutualistic or even obligatory symbioses between the same species that have existed for millions of years. The soldiers of certain ant species attack the colonies of other, always the same ant species in order to steal their pupae. These larvae are then integrated into their own colony, where, after metamorphosis, they care for the queen’s offspring. The fact that this does not really restrict their freedom is primarily due to the fact that the affected workers would have developed in practically the same way in their own colony, caring for the offspring in accordance with their innate characteristics and traits.
There are several reasons why this topic has not gained as much public attention as the famous misconception surrounding the ant-aphid relationship. One of these lies in the explanations provided by some experts, such as evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson, who is widely regarded as one of the most competent researchers on the phenomenon of so-called slave-making ants. As early as 1975, after many years of observing various species on several continents, he documented something that renders the assumption of slavery in the literal sense meaningless: The supposed slave ants are not only fully integrated into the social structure of the slave-making ant colony, where they develop their evolutionary characteristics. They also have a status in the social hierarchy that is at least equal to, but often even higher than, that of the soldiers they once stole as pupae.
So this is, at most, a form of forced adoption. And compared to the existence of the workers in the original colony, the suppression of the development of evolutionary characteristics and self-determination is either non-existent or, if it does exist, only to an extent that is close to zero.
The study of plants and microorganisms also leads to the same result
The connections reflected upon so far show that it basically does not matter where in the ecological structure an observation is made – one will never find a place where the physical regularity of freedom is not present to an average degree that is close to absolute. A seemingly paradoxical phenomenon of this reflection is that regularity is most clearly evident in the most complex organisms of the structure, while it seems to become less distinct with relatively decreasing – but still uncontrollably high – complexity. However, this is basically only because, for example, in the areas of plants or microorganisms, the effort required for recognition is much greater than in the case of easily observable vertebrates. The relationships there become more complicated and their reflection correspondingly more extensive. But one will never find an example in which the average existence in any species does not take place in a state of physical freedom, at least approximately, over longer periods of time. Restrictions in this regard can only be temporary over relatively short periods of time. In the longer term, they either lead to evolutionary evasion or, if this is not possible, to the rapid extinction of the affected population.
CONCLUSION: Even a layman can see from vertebrates that freedom in the literal sense, i.e., the self-determined development of the individual, is a central physical regularity in all of their species. In the reality of the ecological structure (apart from the effects of human civilization), there is no evidence of any form of permanent subjugation between different species. Furthermore, the proportion of individuals whose self-determined development is restricted, for example by illness or injury, is always a relatively minimal marginal phenomenon across all vertebrate species, because even small deviations from the state of freedom – also regularly – lead to rapid death on average. These findings based on vertebrates refer, so to speak, to the surface of the physical relationships surrounding freedom. They are therefore only particularly evident in the most complex life forms. Mathematical calculations of the average degrees of freedom using the methods of physics show that these are always close to absolute in all life forms in ecological structures.