Law 4
The Universal Law of Direction
Each attraction and repulsion, including
the random, moves in the direction
of greatest attraction and/or
least repulsion.
Each operative attraction and repulsion is about something, and so carries a direction, singly or by group. That direction cannot be more repulsive or less attractive than another available direction, or the other direction would replace it.
A random direction is no exception; it too is the direction of greatest attraction and/or least repulsion.
Where acceleration and momentum are zero, available alternatives may remain, and their attractions and/or repulsions determine the direction in which motion begins.
The greatest attraction and/or least repulsion should not be confused with an ideal or imagined choice. Imagination allows us to optimize or maximize attractions and repulsions without acting upon them. Reality often requires compromise. The compromise put into motion expresses the greatest attraction and/or least repulsion operating in that interaction.
The Direction of Least Repulsion—More Than Meets the Eye
Herbert Spencer first cast this as a law of motion in First Principles (1862): motion along the line of least resistance. Some thirty years later, William James carried it into psychology as the path of least resistance, describing habit and mental effort, in The Principles of Psychology (1890). In this book, he bridges passivity and activity by intervening will, as in willpower.
Resistance is also a derivative of repulsion and is a primary effect (as friction) emerging from the interaction of fundamental attractions and repulsions, and is not a force in its own right.
Climbing a mountain looks like nothing but resistance. Technically true: moving against gravity is nothing but resistance, but that does not dissuade the climber.
The act of hiking up and/or climbing up is more attractive—and/or less repulsive—than staying home or doing something else less satisfying. Climbers are still moving in the direction the law describes.
Here, the Law of Direction also describes the impossible direction, which is the opposite in meaning of what is written: Nothing can move in the direction of lesser attraction and/or greater repulsion while its attractions and repulsions remain unchanged.
The Law of Direction and the Order of Nature
This Law describes both order (negentropy) and disorder (entropy) that flow in their directions of greatest attraction and/or least repulsion. Constructive negentropy and destructive entropy both operate in the same direction.
Drop three marbles into a cereal bowl and watch what happens. Gravity moves them downward, and the bowl’s curved shape guides them to a stable resting place at the bottom center of the bowl. A simple structure forms, not through intention, but through direction.
Repetition dictates structure, bounded by details, with little room for deviation.
Repetition depends on the direction, frequency, and rate of momentum of interacting parts. Without strict repetition, atoms wouldn’t be categorizable because their properties depend on these repetitive qualities.
The same principle scales up. DNA is a repetitive code: it dictates what forms and what doesn’t.
That’s why human fetuses don’t grow antlers. It’s not part of the repetitive order encoded in DNA, RNA, or any other biochemical instructions.
Antler growth in human fetuses, being dangerous to mothers and wasteful for adults, would be excluded by the process of natural selection. If it did happen, the antler process would be excluded through the death of the mother and offspring.
Except for amorphous mineraloids such as hyalite and obsidian, which don’t have repetitious boundary conditions, most crystals have fixed attractions and repulsions that cause them to have repetitious crystal orders. Examples are diamonds and quartz crystals.
Likewise, entropy follows the same law. When repetitive interactions break, disorder increases, at least until a new interactive order becomes repetitive.
Construction and destruction can occur at the same time: forming one order may require dismantling another and expending energy elsewhere. Reconstruction does not reverse destruction; it creates a new order through new interactions.
Disorder obeys the Law of Direction.
Picture that bowl of marbles again—only this time, it falls off the table and shatters.
The marbles scatter outward.
Chaos.
Disarray.
Entropy.
But not without direction.
Each fragment flies away along the path of least repulsion—the trajectory where nothing pushed back hard enough to stop it.
Some pieces bounce, some spin, some remain still.
That disorder wasn’t random. It followed the same law.
Entropy obeys the Law of Direction just as surely as negentropy does.
Thermodynamics follows the same rule.
Heat moves outward from concentration into cooler regions.
Temperature gradients do not sit still. They follow the interactions of their environment.
Direction is not a force itself. It is the signature left by unequal attraction and repulsion.
Even aggression obeys this law. You might think, But I attack someone because they’re repulsive, not attractive! But here’s the thing: if punching someone were more repulsive than attractive, you couldn’t do it.
The motion wouldn’t happen.
When someone claims they moved toward something repulsive, they shifted their focus. That shift is the new attraction. The act of redirecting attention—toward revenge, toward duty, toward proving a point—became more attractive and/or less repulsive than not acting. Naming the target repulsive does not reverse the law. It only disguises the attraction behind the action.
Likewise, accidents also obey the law.
Buyers Link Wine, Geography, and Song. “Hear the tune? Buy the wine?”
For two weeks, music blared in an English supermarket above displays of comparable bottles of French and German wines. Nearby, a team of University of Leicester psychologists monitored buyers’ choices. When French accordion music played, French wine outsold German varieties by a five-to-one ratio. But, when German beer-hall music oompahed, buyers bought two bottles of German wine for every French bottle. Only a few buyers admitted—or were even aware—that music played a role in their decision, says researcher Jennifer McKendrick. “If you go in to buy a specific item, music won’t affect your choice,” she says. “But if you’re uncertain, music could be an influencing factor.”
(Vol. 193, No. 5, May 1998, National Geographic Magazine.)
Without commitment to a specific product, the buyers had no fixed direction of attraction. The music supplied one.
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