---
slug: convergence-encyclopedia-c04
title: Convergence Encyclopedia: C04 — Symmetry-Breaking / Bifurcation
canonical: https://miscsubjects.com/a/convergence-encyclopedia-c04
---

**F1 — Tier.** T1 (established across multiple fields, no unified theory but well-documented phenomenology).

**F2 — Sources.** 
- Landau, L.D. (1937). “On the theory of phase transitions.” Zhurnal Eksperimental’noi i Teoreticheskoi Fiziki, 7, 19–32.
- Anderson, P.W. (1963). “Plasmons, gauge invariance, and mass.” Physical Review, 130(2), 439–442.
- Higgs, P.W. (1964). “Broken symmetries and the masses of gauge bosons.” Physical Review Letters, 13(16), 508–509.
- Prigogine, I. & Lefever, R. (1968). “Symmetry breaking instabilities in dissipative systems. II.” Journal of Chemical Physics, 48(4), 1695–1700.
- Turing, A.M. (1952). “The chemical basis of morphogenesis.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 237(641), 37–72.

**F3 — Domains.** Cosmology (electroweak symmetry-breaking), condensed matter (superconductivity, ferromagnetism), biology (morphogenesis, left-right asymmetry), particle physics (Higgs mechanism).

**F4 — Scale.** Subatomic (Higgs field, ~10⁻²⁸ m) → organismal development (morphogenesis, ~10⁻³ m) → cosmic structure formation (~10²⁶ m).

**F5 — Falsifier.** A complex structure with no prior symmetric state — a system that displays broken symmetry without any identifiable more-symmetric precursor configuration. This would imply spontaneous structure formation without symmetry-breaking, undermining the paradigm.

**F6 — Rival (strongest form).** Structure arises from local interactions without any global symmetry-breaking phase transition. Many patterns (e.g., some cellular automata, diffusion-limited aggregation) produce complex structure through purely local rules; the “symmetry-breaking” description is a post-hoc overlay, not a causal mechanism. The appearance of a symmetric prior is a modeling convenience, not a physical history. (Anderson 1972 Science 177:393; Goldenfeld & Woese 2011 Science 332:1373.)

**F7 — Independence.** HIGH. Landau (condensed matter phase transitions, USSR), Anderson (many-body physics, gauge invariance, Bell Labs), Higgs (particle physics, Edinburgh), Turing (mathematical biology, Manchester) — four fields, three countries, zero institutional or intellectual borrowing. Each discovered symmetry-breaking independently in their domain.

**F8 — Pattern type.** Structural.

**F9 — Maps.** A1 (foundational structure), A7 (pattern geometry).

---

## Corpus map
- Previous: [Convergence Encyclopedia: C03](/a/convergence-encyclopedia-c03)
- Next: [Convergence Encyclopedia: C05](/a/convergence-encyclopedia-c05)
- Encyclopedia start: [The Schema](/a/convergence-encyclopedia-schema)
- Same node, other planes: [Catalogue node C04](/a/oip-node-c04-symmetry-breaking-bifurcation) · [Catalogue hub](/a/oip-convergence-public-article)
- Edges touching C04: [convergence edge 10](/a/oip-convergence-edge-10)
- Kin corpora: [Total Structure](/a/oip-total-structure) · [Signature of the Grain](/a/oip-sog-preamble-axioms)
