Periodic Objects

Periodic Objects are values in a periodic system. A periodic system is one which exhibits periodicity -- the tendency of sub-attributes to recur at regular intervals, sharing attributes between similarly-positioned elements.

In FærieMUD, the "periodic system" you'll be dealing with is generally The Pattern, which is based on the Periodic Table of Elements and parts of several theories of developmental psychology and unified science. This set of periodic objects, exemplified by Developmental Objects, are an attempt to model the periodic nature of emergent objects, which are entities which emerge out of complex systems.

The periods of The Pattern represent the degrees of emergence which occur as an emergent entity differentiates itself from its environment or substrate. In each of these periods, the emerging entity (whether mind or society or whatever) goes through a similar sequence of reactions to its newly differentiated self.

Meditation of a Primitive Metapsychic

Close to the shore where the snow lies drifted, it is not easy to tell where granite ends and the frozen river begins. The juncture is veiled. Molecules of water have slowed to the solidity of stone, apparently immutable. My deep-sight easily sees through the snow to tell the difference, just as it pierces the icy lid of the Connecticut to perceive black water flowing beneath. But I am not strong-minded enough to see the subtler flux of the ice molecules themselves, or the vibration of the crystals within the granite boulders, or the subatomic dance of the bits of matter and energy among the nodes of the dynamic-field lattices that weave the reality of ice and gray rock in the cosmic All. My vision of the winter river in its bed remains limited, in spite of th abstract knowledge science lends me.

And how much more difficult it is to apprehend the greater pattern! We know we are free, even though the constraints hedge us. We cannot see the unus mundus, the entirety that we know must exist, but are forced to live each event rushing through space and time. Our efforts seem to us as random as the Brownian movement of molecules in a single drop of ultramagnified water.

Nevertheless, the water droplets come together to make a stream, and then a river that flows to the sea where the individual drops -- to say nothing of the molecules! -- are apparently lost in a vast and random pooling. The sea not only has a life and identity of its own, but it engenders other, higher lives, a role denied to water molecules alone.

— Julian May, The Surveillance

— GedTheGreysHain - 02 Sep 2000
— Scotus - 11 Aug 2001
— GedTheGreysHain - 21 Oct 2001 [Tweaked a couple of wordings]
— GedTheGreysHain - 29 Jun 2002 [Renamed from Periodic Properties]