THE SELF-ORGANIZING UNIVERSE
AND THE IDEA OF SYMMETRY:
COGNITION AND EXPRESSION

PETER KLEIN

Abstract: For a human-being looking onto the world as the field of his (successfull) life, the world appears as a well ordered universe. This impression seems to be contradicted by the 2nd thermodynamical law, which in the common interpretation is sayed to  state  a continuous growth of disorder. The problem is solved by causal laws that introduce symmetries  apt to explain the interactions of particles in matter.

These laws are given in mathematical form, hence stimulate the question for their ontological status: qualities of the world or of the mind? The historical answers differ. That of Romantic Natural Philosophy gives special re(f/v)erence to symmetry.