If time is the medium of branching then node zero of the single hierarchy referred to in Nodism could be synonymous with the beginning of time. We see that every option taken, every possibility turned into reality by the tide of time can be mapped back physically to a time of no time the beginning of time, the big bang.
Now this paragraph needs to be looked at closely. Just before I forget, there is the issue of physical branching. Are things at a microscopic level actually branching in any way. Perhaps if they split up, yes. But when they join, how does this relate to a hierarchy?
When we join two things on the hierarchy, theoretically, we can split the thing in two (at least) and join the first thing under the second thing and the second thing under the first thing. This gets us to a single theoretical hierarchy as envisioned by Nodism. My father and my mother and me. My mother and my father and me.
But what happens in the physical with respect to mixtures, combinations, chaos, etc. This certainly does not seem like a physical hierarchy - but with respect to decisions in time, or movements through time... if time can override feedback, does time override a mixture. Is a combination, when viewed with respect to time (as in, only the present exists type of time), still a physical branching of possibilities and hence, still a physical hierarchy?
This question I continue to approach with thought experiments. It is not easy. It is important. I certainly feel like I am wrong to place everything into a physical hierarchy. I expect there are benefits to placing everything into a theoretical hierarchy (that would be called organization). But would these benefits be greater if indeed the single theoretical hierarchy could be shown to actually be a single physical hierarchy.
The picture above does not appear to be a hierarchy. It is located in many places of a theoretical hierarchy. But what about physically? It is a series of photons or whatever scanning across the monitor. Well that is a time based boolean AND - this and that and that and that. That is a hierarchy. Looking at it smaller than photons, who knows but we will want to know. I suspect that at the most traditional level of understanding, we do not see a hierarchy and therefore, the true physical construction (hierarchy or not) is not really relevant to our appreciation - making the question of whether everything is a physical hierarchy um, silly, cold, overly-reductionist, moot, missing the point, etc.
Life is another question. Growth - is all growth a form of life? Does growth act only within a hierarchy. What about crystalline structures. If they grow in time, which presumably they do, is branching a necessary attribute? This would seem to be a related topic to that of above.
Getting back to the first paragraph, there is also the possibility that we have cycle where the beginning is the collapse of another cycle's end. It is interesting to think that the goal of life is to communicate and eventually in what might seem like an eternity, our forces of organization will consume the entire universe, bringing us closer together for efficient communication until we collapse. This cycle could have been going on forever.
I suspect that the current theory and explanation for time and space say that this is not the correct way to see it. Time and space just did not exist before the big bang is what they say. Non-existence is good for a nice solid node zero. A cycle is more difficult for a node zero as it would have to take another meta step to outside the cycle. Cycles in general - sine waves, etc. pose a challenge to a hierarchical system unless reduced to the micro-time branching explanation (which still needs to be worked out).
I leave you now.
