Random thoughts on densest packing

Thank you for publishing Paul Chaikin’s “Random Thoughts.” Chaikin is discussing the most fundamental unresolved problems from the physics and complexity viewpoints: What is random, and what is ordered? Even more interesting is that another fundamental quantity—organization—is created at the interplay between randomness and order at the “edge between order and chaos.” Organization, though fundamental for all complexity considerations, can be defined only after we know quantitatively what exactly randomness and order are. That fact makes their definition even more crucial and urgent.

After we have defined organization, we will be able to find out how to improve it and what a “higher level of organization” means. Those discoveries have implications beyond physics and will help us to deal with the constantly changing organization of our complex society.

I even want to speculate that if we understand what organization is, we will be able to improve it and thereby make our lives better. After that, we can start pursuing answers to even more fundamental questions: Is our three-dimensional world best suited for organization? How much organization will be allowed in more or fewer dimensions? A world in how many dimensions allows the best organization? Do we live in the best of all possible worlds? Do multidimensional worlds with higher levels of organization than ours already exist, and are they far ahead of us?