Syntropy:
Comprehending a Temporally... Complex Universe
January 15, 2026
The Feral Salon is a collaboration between the Feral Ecologies Lab and Salon Ruigoord in Amsterdam, established to provide intimate dialogues with the most engaged and undomesticated philosophers following the pulse of our zeitgeist of the great rewilding.
On January 15th, 2026 Jeff Dunne is proud to be presenting at the second installment of this new series. He will be speaking about the nature of syntropy, the evidence supporting it, and how we might change our worldview to accommodate a universe in which time is not the one-way river we have been led to believe.
Popular scientific dogma makes strong assertions about the nature of time, most notably that things evolve into the future solely as the result of what has happened in the past. It’s a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics, after all; entropy always increases, and systems will go towards states of greater disorder. To feel comfortable with this perspective, however, a surprising amount of evidence must be ignored. Life, for example, is a case where simple things like amoebae defy entropy to eventually become organisms so complex, so organized, that they can write presentation abstracts. Suggestions regarding precognitive insights—such as those that might explain why the World Trade Center had substantially reduced occupancy on September 11, 2001—are dismissed as anecdote, just as precognitive dreams are described as nothing more than chance (surely if enough monkeys have enough dreams, some of those dreams are bound to come true exactly as was dreamt, right?) As for the measurements in which a physiological response to certain stimuli begins prior to the existence of those stimuli… well, we just don’t talk about that.
But what if the same equations of physics that predict entropy had a second solution? What if that solution resulted in the propagation of energy and information flowing *backward* in time? Lucky for us, that is exactly the case. Syntropy, the complementary principle to entropy, was originally dismissed as being ‘merely a mathematical artifact’ resulting from taking the square root of a negative number, but we have seen some amazing technologies build on the consequences of imaginary numbers and the evidence for syntropy’s existence is simply too overwhelming to justify continued denial.
degree from Hollis University and has accumulated a diverse work experience, spanning multiple disciplines: education, technology, business and law, predominately in support and administrative roles. She currently works for the College of New Jersey in its Office of Disability Support Services. Lynn Ann has been an administrative assistant to ICRL’s President since 2011, and has extensive familiarity with the organization’s structure and activities, along with a deep commitment to its mission.
Vasileios Basios is a physicist, conducting interdisciplinary research on the foundations of complexity science and nonlinear systems, self-organization and complex matter. During his formative years, he was tutored by Ilya Prigogine, at ULB where he received his PhD, and by Emilios Bouratinos on meditation and philosophy. He is currently interested in the complex interface between action and information. Other interests include the history of ideas in science and their role in the transformation of science beyond the prevailing naïve, materialistic, mechanistic-reductionist world-view. With others from PEAR, he initiated the Mind-Matter-Mapping Project and has since published several essays for ICRL. He is also a member of the Board of the Scientific and Medical Network and the Steering Team of the Galileo Commission. Vasileios is inspired by the prospect of introducing self-reflection into the practice and understanding of science, and the emergence of a Self-Reflexive Science of Consciousness.
Ian Cook is a Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where he directs the UCLA Depression Research and Clinic Program at the Semel Institute and was the inaugural holder of the Joanne and George Miller and Family Endowed Chair in Depression Research at the Brain Research Institute. He has been a part of the PEAR/ICRL family since 1980, when he was among the first undergraduate students to conduct research at the PEAR lab. He graduated from the Yale School of Medicine and pursued his residency training and research fellowship at UCLA. His research has focused on understanding the relationships among the mind, the brain, and the body, and in translating developments in technology into more effective treatments for disorders of mood and cognition.
Bob (Brahmatirtha) was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1949, completed his B.S. in Chemistry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1971, and received his M.S. in Geology from Rutgers University in 1975. After a twenty-year career serving as a geologist and vice-president of a large regional environmental company, he currently works as an environmental consultant to state governments. He has been a member of the Bhaktivedanta Institute since the inception in 1976, giving a presentation at their First International Conference on Life Comes from Life in 1977, and working on a multitude of projects with R.L. Thompson (Sadaputa) from 1995 through 2008. He is also a certified court mediator. He now serves as the Director of the Bhaktivedanta Institute for Higher Studies.
Carolyn is a writer and dancer, two avenues that support her central purpose as a healer. Through her numerous books she teaches that every moment brings unbidden opportunities from the universe, that every day of is filled with beauty and surprise. Ecstatic experience is the goal of her work, the personal to the cosmic. 
The largest dataset collected at PEAR used Random Event Generators, or REGs. These devices were essentially electronic coin flippers that produced a series of 1’s and 0’s; operators were instructed to influence the machines to produce more 1’s than 0’s or vice versa.
