Without imbalance there is no change.
When all forces and energies are in equilibrium, nothing happens. Nothing can happen. At equilibrium there can be no motion, no waves no vibrations, no change. If the origin of our universe (or the universe) was in the Big Bang, then that must have been in response to some great, prevailing non-equilibrium, the Great Imbalance which caused the Big Bang. (It always seems to me a little unsatisfactory that a Big Bang can be postulated without also having to postulate why a Big Bang would need to occur). All change is always in the direction of eliminating the imbalance which caused the change. If the universe is expanding then it must be in response to an imbalance and the expansion must work towards eliminating that imbalance. The physical world is driven by imbalances. Fluid flows and heat flows and electricity flows are achieved by creating imbalances which force the flow. Human and animal behaviour is driven by imbalances. In fact all life is driven by imbalance.
All motion and even the vibrations of the most fundamental particles (whatever they are) can only be in response to some imbalance. The earth spins and the planets move because gravitational forces are not in balance. Geology happens in response to imbalances. Imbalance always causes change in the direction of eliminating the causal imbalance. Change can only therefore be a response to an imbalance. One change may cause another imbalance to come into being, leading to further change and so on ad infinitum. Though a change may be in the direction of eliminating the initial imbalance, the chain of change may not necessarily converge to stasis. All change needs time to flow. We do experience that time flows – even if we cannot define or experience what time itself is. But then the flow of time must itself be due to an imbalance which the flow of time seeks to eliminate. We do not – can not – experience any lapse of time without change or observe any change without the lapse of time.
Chemistry (which is just applied physics) causes material to combine and merge and split but always as a consequence of some initiating imbalance. Sometimes this chemistry produces living cells which then maintain not only a cyclical chemistry (now biochemistry) but also a code for maintaining the particular, cyclical biochemistry in a changing environment. The state we call “life” is a state of change. All life and its evolution must therefore be in response to some causal imbalances. Furthermore the direction of life or evolution must therefore be to eliminate the initiating imbalance. But here too there is no certainty that the chain of life will converge to stasis.
If any change – including the state of change we call life – can be said to have a purpose, it is to eliminate the imbalance which caused the change or life in the first place. It would seem then that the ultimate purpose of all change must be to return to a state of complete equilibrium where even time does not have to flow. A state of stasis.
Our universe and everything within it is then a “state of change”, moving from one equilibrium state of stasis to another.
Time and change and states of stasis
The very concept of Change carries within it the concept of No change – which I call a state of stasis. Without a state of Change there is no framework within which Time can – or needs to – exist. It is this state of No change – changeless and timeless – which defines stasis. The concept of Time and duration would seem to emerge simultaneously with or after the commencement of change. But can there be Change without a concept of Time? Stasis was/ is /will be where Change is not. There may be many different states of stasis. Whether states of stasis can precede or follow periods of change is indeterminate since without change – and therefore without Time – there is no before and there is no after.
In stasis there can be no change of any kind, no material, no energy or even dark energy.
Stasis will be reached again when time runs out.
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