Energy, Cracks, and Consciousness

While coding an educational tool for fracture mechanics, I dove back into energy principles. Ended up questioning the nature of consciousness.

Here's the thing: cracks propagate when energy gradients overcome surface resistance. The math describes how systems solve energy problems—finding paths to dissipate energy more efficiently.

Then I read Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle. Suddenly cracks and brains were speaking the same language.

Both are dissipative structures solving energy gradients. A crack does it by fracturing. A brain does it by predicting. Both minimize "surprise" to maintain their organization against entropy.

Add Andy Clark's predictive processing: we're not passive observers—we're "proactive predictavores" generating controlled hallucinations constrained by sensory evidence.

Then Michael Levin's work on bioelectricity: cells regenerating perfect anatomical structures through voltage gradients. Intelligence without neurons. Morphogenesis as cognition.

Here's what intrigues me:

We can describe ALL of this beautifully. The equations are elegant. The mechanisms clear.

But we still don't know WHY.

Why does energy exist?

Why does matter organize into structures that act purposefully? Why does the universe change rather than remain frozen?

We named it ENERGY. We know what it does.

But what it is, remains mysterious.

Maybe true knowledge always falls through the cracks. Or maybe the cracks are where knowledge lives. Just think about that—how many times have you either said or heard "...fell through the cracks"? Maybe my missing socks are in there as well...

From UV-absorbing molecules 4 billion years ago to you reading this now—it's one continuous thermodynamic process. You're twenty watts of consciousness built from dissipative structuring.

You ARE energy, arranged in a configuration complex enough to wonder about energy.

The universe asking, "What am I?" through you.

The deeper I dig, the better we describe HOW. The WHY remains beautifully elusive.

Is that a bug or a feature?

So, if you were to ask me what I enjoy most from working with AI…
Besides the Socratic debate and the countless online journals… books to read

Full essay & audiobook exploring thermodynamics → life → consciousness in comments

This essay synthesizes current scientific understanding as of November 2025, drawing on thermodynamics, complexity theory, origin of life research, neuroscience, consciousness studies, developmental biology, and fracture mechanics.

"The knowledge doesn't fall through the cracks—it lives there."

Link to my work: https://lnkd.in/epHTZuhX