Break

What is breaking? When something breaks, how does it break——how does it suddenly pass away? If it could have not broken, why did it break instead of not breaking? What drives the breaking forward?

Meditation disclaimer.

This essay doesn't discuss why something breaks or the lead-up; or the consequences and aftermath of it breaking; or the complex contingent events in the break such as where various pieces fly. Just the core dynamic of the breaking itself.

1. The word

Etymology

English "break" is Germanically cognate with "breach", and cognate via PIE "*bʰreg-" through Latin "frango" with {fracture, refract, infringe, fragile, fragment, frail}.

Words

  • break
  • crack, split (apart, open), snap, fracture
  • crumble, disintegrate, shred
  • shatter, fragment, explode, splinter
  • burst, pop, breach, rupture
  • tear, rip
  • unravel
  • crash (down), collapse, buckle, give (in, out), implode, crumple
  • cleave, sever
  • dissolve, melt, disperse, evaporate
  • (animate / processual:) die, perish, (de)cease, break down, halt, disband
  • (active:) destroy, smash, crush, puncture, perforate, lacerate, sever, dismantle, demolish, pulverize, kill

Passing away that isn't breaking

  • (gradual) fray, wear (down), fade, corrode, erode, thin, abrade
  • (gradual, animate) wither, wilt, ossify, decay
  • (gradual cooption) rot, corrupt, parasitize
  • (lost context) replace, obsolete, abandon, alienate, starve, choke, encrypt

2. Data sources

Searching "X Y" for X in {building, rock, tree, bridge, bus, dam, society, government, glass, ...} and Y in {collapsing, eroding, cracking, shattering, falling, crumbling, snapping, crashing, ...}.

Slow-motion videos of things breaking, e.g. glass or magnets.

Hydraulic Press Channel

If you walk around, you can find many broken things, such as this:

3. Initial ideas

A breaking is when a thing ceases existing in its fullest form, and does so suddenly (on the scale of its own timecourse), and does so not according to the natural course of its own essence.

Momentum cascade

Or a "falling-break".

A prototypical momentum-cascade break is a building collapsing by the top floor falling and knocking out each floor below, on impact, in sequence.

A momentum-cascade break is where breaking causes a shift that produces an increased force, which is applied to cause more breaking by crossing a previously uncrossed threshold of force, which causes more of the same shift.

Momentum-cascade is a complex breaking: It starts with a small simple breaking, and that leads to more breaking. The consequences of the initial breaking include that some energy is released, and also there is something that can absorb the energy. The thing that absorbs the energy stores it up——e.g., as momentum——so the energy accumulates in the thing, and then the thing crashes through more of the surrounding structure, releasing even more energy. And this snowballs, so that previously solid supports can be blasted through.

§ Examples

  • Think of a rock climber, doing lead climbing outdoors. Ze climbs up, sticking gear into cracks in the rock a long the way and clipping the rope into the gear. If ze falls, the rope catches zer... But if the gear isn't put in well enough, it might get pulled out of the rock. If some gear gets pulled out, ze will fall further, because the rope doesn't catch zer as soon. Having fallen further, ze is moving faster, so when the rope engages the next piece of gear, it's pulling harder, making it more likely for the next piece to rip out. See e.g. here, here, here, here, here.
  • The collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. In each building, after the perimeter columns at the crash site buckled, the top floors fell——and their immense momentum crashed through all the lower floors in sequence, releasing more energy as they went (hence not being stopped partway).
  • Maybe: a stock market crash. Many traders are tracking the expectations of others (either as epistemic deference about the longer-term value of various investments, or because market sentiment just is the near-term stock price). So, I assume, sometimes if the stock price goes down, that releases more doubt / deference, which makes people sell, which makes the price go down more, which releases more bearishness.
  • Similarly to a stock market crash, any arena with speculative investment, such as political leadership, social prestige, or upper management in a company, has momentum and momentum-cascades. Probably there's a more complicated thing involved higher-order reactions——e.g. stock traders or politicians explicitly tracking "momentum". (This sort of momentum works not just for breaking, but also for "breaking upward", i.e. increasing investment. We might want to say that there's still an asymmetry: contra Tolstoy, there's many ways to have lots of investment, but there's only one way to have zero investment; so gaining investment, even by a cascade, is more like a creation of something, and losing investment is like a passing away of something into nothing.)
  • Social "flaming out". Boaz needs help so he asks Carmel, but Carmel reacts in a way that doesn't help Boaz, and furthermore enrages him. Now enraged, he asks David for help, but since he is enraged, David too reacts in a way that further enrages Boaz——e.g. by refusing to help simply because of Boaz's feelings. Now more enraged and also desperate, Boaz asks Elisheva——who also refuses. So Boaz ends up homeless and alone. By building up metaphorical momentum, Boaz breaks relationships, some of which might not have been broken if he'd gone to them first.
  • Maybe: Some avalanches. There seem to be three ways that more snow or ice gets set in motion during an avalanche: some snow hits some other snow and knocks it into motion; some snow moves, and so stops supporting uphill snow, releasing it to fall; and tremors from the motion in one spot shake loose other snow in another spot. In the first case only, this would be a momentum cascade. (Well, after watching this, it's not clear to me how much this is a thing; it seems like loose snow avalanches are momentum-cascades, but I don't know whether or not slab avalanches tend to be cascades or not——they might sometimes be mainly just the initial slab, more like a landslide.)

Concentration cascade

Or a "snapping-break".

A prototypical concentration-cascade break would be a rope snapping (I think).

A concentration-cascade break is where breaking of some supports leaves the load to be borne by fewer supports, which increases the force on them, which crosses more thresholds, and so on.

Unlike with a momentum-cascade, a concentration cascade doesn't have to increase the overall breaking force being applied——it doesn't have to release energy, or accumulate energy or momentum, or reach levels of force that break through supports which otherwise would have held the weight at rest. (You could imagine a zipper-fall where, if only the second piece of gear had somehow been right below the first piece, then even if the first piece of gear is ripped out, the second holds strong. So there wouldn't be a concentration cascade, even though——spaced differently——there can be a momentum cascade.

§ Examples

  • Think of a slab resting on 10 posts, P0 through P9. The posts are the same height, so the slab's weight is distributed evenly between them. The strength of each post is enough to carry approximately 1/8 the weight of the slab; however, there's a lot of variance in the strength of the posts. P0 can only carry 1/11th the weight of the post. So it breaks. Now there are only nine posts. P1 can only carry 1/9.5th the weight of the slab——strong enough that it would have done its job if all posts were intact, but now that P0 broke, 1/9 > 1/9.5 and P1 also breaks. But P2 only carries 1/8.5 of the slab, but is given 1/8, so it too breaks. And so on.
  • Some trees falling over, I think. See here. Hear the noises, and think of the remaining unbroken strands of wood under more and more tension. (Though, the situation is complicated because the tree is also moving, turning some of the force from compressive force into tensile force. In that way, it's like the other kind of tree falling, where the roots are pulled up and the whole thing tips, rather than the trunk breaking.)
  • I imagine a rope breaking is like this. I haven't found a good close-up slow-mo video though. Some seem sort of like this on one time scale, where the rope will "snap" multiple separated times. But we'd want to see the final cable snapping, and see strands snapping one at a time in very quick succession, as the tensile force is transferred to fewer and fewer remaining unsnapped strands.
  • This video claims that WTC 7 collapsed by a concentration-cascade, I think.
  • Suppose Efraim has a life crisis. He's now more stressed out, lower slack, needs more help, and is less fun to be around. He taps into his social support network. But the increased demand grates on Hannah, so she tells Efraim that she can't talk to him regularly anymore. That means Efraim has to tap more into Itamar——and then Itamar reaches his breaking point under the increased load. And so on.
  • Think of a company collapsing because some employees left——so there's too much work for the remainder, causing more to leave——increasing the pressure further. Any collective project could have a concentration-cascade break like this.
  • The later part of the breaking of the Harmony Ridge Trestle Bridge looks like a concentration-cascade, though it could be a momentum cascade——and either way it also is more sequential than a "flat" sort described above with the slab and posts. The earlier part looks like something else——more like dominoes, where the things are directly knocking each other down sequentially.
  • The Nanfang'ao suspension bridge collapse seems like a concentration cascade. At some point the cable which was most corroded, relative to its load, snapped; then the rest fell in turn under the redistributed load. But again this is somewhat sequential rather than flat.
  • A ripping or tearing is a sequential concentration cascade, I think.
  • I think that if you hang an extremely heavy weight on a vertical steel bar, it will plastically deform in a way that first concentrates the stress on the remaining smaller-radius rod, and then breaks. See e.g. this video of tensile testing a steel rod. It might AFAIK be that the smaller-radius steel is as strong, or stronger, per cross-sectional area compared to the undeformed steel——dislocational defects might move around without anything breaking or tearing; the tears are self-repairing so to speak. But because the total cross-section is smaller, the overall strength is less or not much greater, and the stress is greater. Maybe.

§ Discussion

To some extent, we're at risk of shuffling things around like Foucault's aphasiac, here. But we can look for regularities without being committed to finding a perfect classification. What we're looking for is to understand, arthrodiatomically (joint-carvingly), the variety of basic shapes of the process of breaking.

Disequilibration cascade

Or a "buckling-break".

A prototypical disequilibration-cascade break is a soda can buckling under pressure from the top.

A disequilibration-cascade break is where breaking of some supporting-relations leads to the elements moving, thereby pulling or knocking elements of other supporting-relations out of their load-bearing position.

§ Examples

  • The soda can only needs a small perturbation to its side to collapse. Why? There's some concentration effect, but not much——the buckling would have happened even with much less weight. I think what's happening is that the deformation of one part of the side pulls and pushes on the rest of the side. Other regions of the side thus move out of alignment, so that they don't directly push against the weight, and then themselves buckle. But maybe this isn't a good description. E.g. maybe what's really happening is that there's supposed to be equilibrated pressure within the sides, and a buckled region fails to provide pressure, so that nearby regions are pushed into the new "vacuum".
  • To be very elemental: simply, if one object rests on top of another, and then falls off (by tipping off the edge, say), that's a disequilibrium break (though not a cascade). It leaves the region of phase space where it gets support——even though the elements are intact, and they could provide the needed forces, and they are close to being in the needed position.
  • When a ship crashed into a pier of the Francis Scott Key bridge, that pier was demolished, and the spans it held up broke and fell. The adjacent pier was not destroyed. However, the span on the other side of the adjacent pier no longer had a counterbalancing weight, so it tipped off the intact pier and broke and fell.
  • Some mudslides and landslides might be like this, though IDK. Some earth starts to move, which removes support from uphill earth, and so on... Though it's more a cascade of support being directly removed, rather than a disequilibration (where the support is still there but disaligned).

§ Chain reaction

Or "shatter-break".

A prototypical chain reaction break is glass shattering... I think.

A chain reaction break is where breaking releases internally stored energy, which induces more breaking.

(I decided chain reactions are a subclass of disequilibration cascades, but: Whereas a disequilibration cascade is about supporting-relations being disrupted and disrupting each other, a chain reaction has an explosive quality. The material is explosive from inside itself, of its own accord——something in the material is released. In a disequilibrium cascade, supporting-relations are disrupted from energy coming from what is supported; in a chain reaction, energy is released that doesn't come from supporting-relations that were relevant to the macro-scale structure of the thing that's breaking.)

§ Examples

From "Visualizing Residual Stresses in Plastic and Glass", Joseph Maciejewski

  • Glass shattering. In the above linked video, it seems like there must be stresses in the glass that are being released in a chain reaction——the slo mo guy didn't apply much force to start the chain reaction. But then, glass shattering due to an impact doesn't need the released energy as an explanation, there's plenty of energy from the impact. How to think of this CD spinning to bits? Also, does glass cracking even release energy at stresses, or does it just follow stress lines? What about ceramic?
  • A supercritical nuclear chain reaction.
  • A wildfire.

§ Discussion

It may seem to you like my hypothesizing is not really hypothesizing, and we're just saying vague stuff that doesn't have a precise meaning——we could describe things different ways, there's no fact of the matter. No. That's not the case. I just don't know enough about the physical events in question. If we knew more, we could say more exactly what is the governing shape of the breaking——the major forces, and how they apply to the objects in question, in what magnitudes, over the course of the breaking.

Disconnection break

Or "circuit break".

A prototypical disconnection break is an electrical appliance no longer working because the electrical circuit can't closed.

A disconnection break is where some flow or progression is destroyed by one of the steps or elements not allowing the flow to proceed.

§ Examples

  • A pipe being leaky or disconnected.
  • An electrical circuit having a missing connection.
  • A computer program gets updated. Now the API has changed. So one chunk of a system still returns a Foobar, but the updated chunk expects a Foobaz. Both chunks still make internal sense and can do the work they're supposed to do, and that work adds up to the capabilities needed for the overall system to do its job. But the interface is broken, so the flow of data and computation is broken and the system doesn't work.
  • An assembly line has one station with a broken robot arm. The whole line is basically stopped until that one link is fixed.
  • Generally, a tool or machine being broken, in that it can't be used for its purpose. Here the circuit involves the human trying to do something——the flow of efforts achieving an outcome is broken.
  • Feedback circuits.
  • Supply chains breaking.

§ Discussion

As the examples show, "disconnection breaks" are problematic. The entity that suddenly ceases to exist is more abstract; not a unit of material, but a flow, a circuit, a process. Is an organism dying a circuit break?

Sigmoid melee collapse

A prototypical sigmoid melee collapse is a predator-prey system collapsing.

A sigmoid melee collapse is where at first the entity is constituted as a quasi-equilibrium between multiple forces, each of which could on its own have a runaway growth in strength; and then the system succumbs to a small subset of the forces taking over.

§ Examples

  • Predator-prey collapse. The predators hunt the prey (applying a force), the prey becomes sparse (overwhelmed by the force), the predators die out, the prey has a boom (counterforce, going up the sigmoid), the predators have a boom (going up the sigmoid), the predators hunt the prey. This cycle can be stable, creating a stable ecosystem fragment; but sometimes (depending on conditions) the prey dies out or the predators die out, and then the ecosystem fragment is broken.
  • In terms of both intrapersonal and interpersonal relations, there are many compounding effects, both good and bad ones. For example, there are success spirals, where investments paying off motivates more investment; and there are failure spirals, where investments failing to pay off motivate disinvestment. So a normal life can break upwards (well-connected active billionaire) or downwards (homeless guy, alone, doing nothing), where several dimensions of success or failure reach escape velocity.
  • In the vein of predator-prey cycles, but in the human realm where there are things that are neither predator nor parasite, there's a battle between primary producers vs. quasi-disabler quasi-sneaks. On the one hand, primary producers move atoms and bits around in ways that make it easier for humans to do [what they like, on their own terms, as free creative acts]; on the other hand, rent seeking, misaligned bureaucracy, trauma, and egregores feed on primary producers——getting stronger as the production gets stronger.
  • In a real time strategy game, there are positive feedback cycles for production. More production means more resources to build economic structures and units, and research technologies. More production also means more military structures, units, and technologies, which means more ability to defend production, to capture territory and resources, and to interfere with the enemy's production. Hence "snowballing".

§ Discussion

These examples are strange in that what is broken is abstract, and is maybe not very much of a Thing. The thing that's broken is a quasi-equilibrium——e.g. a conflictual situation.

Complex breaking

The collapse of the Harmony Ridge Trestle Bridge has two stages: a disequilibration cascade and then a momentum cascade. That's a complex break: two somewhat separate processes (maybe happening in parallel, or one stage causing the next). Many collapses of buildings are complex breaks, e.g. first the support buckles, then there's a concentration cascade of the remaining supports, and then a momentum cascade as the upper floors fall.

Simple breaking

  • The simplest breaking is: you have two points. When nearby, they attract each other. They start nearby, and then move apart so that the dispersive force overcomes the attractive force.
  • E.g., imagine one magnet holding up another magnet underneath, and then the magnet underneath gets pulled down and away until it's not stuck to the top magnet.
  • Another example is the transition from being below escape speed to above. (Or in other words, the transition from an elliptic orbit, through a parabolic trajectory, to a hyperbolic trajectory.) The orbit system is broken into two diverging bodies.
  • A simple breaking as motion in an energy landscape:

Compound breaking

Breaks like disequilibration cascades and concentration cascades have simple underlying breaks——e.g., the snapping of a metal cable might boil down to the simple breaks of atomic bonds breaking. So why discuss these other sorts of breaks? Why not just say, it's a complex break?

Because it's not really a complex break, with multiple adjacent stages or regions. It's a compound, not a complex——it's a multiplication or fusion. A concentration cascade has a special character. It's specifically [a bunch of atomic breaks, combined in a concentration-cascade-y way]. Compound breaking is constituted by a characteristic relating pattern of other breakings.

The meditation on breaking is asking about the core character of these patterns of breaking, not asking about the "most fundamental" breaking. The appropriate level of description, not the smallest.

4. Notes

  • If you smash an egg with a sledgehammer, there might be something interesting to say about how exactly the eggshell cracks. But the operative thing is just the sledgehammer. It determines most of where everything goes: a somewhat different pattern of stress and strain and strength in the eggshell basically wouldn't change anything about the overall break; the egg wasn't close to not breaking. So this is not centrally breaking as discussed in this meditation——it's destruction. It doesn't have an internal character of breaking; the character of the destruction comes from outside; and it's purposeful, aimed at ending the thing.
  • So a break is a passing away (transition from being to not being) whose progress is determined by the being's structure. It's an unintended event, that happens despite the striving of the being.
  • Of course, we colloquially say that you break an egg if you smash it with a sledgehammer; and waves break, and you can break news or wind, or take a break; and things can be a little broken. But this is a meditation, not a dictionary.
  • We also exclude erosion that doesn't come to a breaking point, but just makes the being fade or ablate away gradually. So a break is a sudden passing away. (It can be lead up to by erosion, e.g. going bankrupt gradually, then suddenly.)
  • An edge case would be destruction that leads to a genuine break. For example, this faceted glass ball in a hydraulic press is intentionally placed under great pressure; first it crumples a bit, then it holds, then it shatters explosively all at once. It's an instigated break. Building demolitions are another class of edge cases. Crumpling (e.g., under weight) is not breaking.
  • How does a crack actually work? (There's something called "fracture mechanics". Apparently there are basic open questions.) How exactly does a rope snap? What's happening exactly when a water balloon or bubble pops? Is it a tear? If a bubble can pop, does the water balloon rely on the outflow of pressurized water to pop, or no?
  • Underlying question: What is it that breaks——what passes away? E.g. in a machine that breaks.
  • What other sorts of breaking are there, or noncovered examples?

5. What breaking reveals / means

  • Credit assignment. What about the being was doing the work? Where was it alive and dead? What was loadbearing or not?
  • Where was the being strong and weak? Which parts broke first or last? Which parts stuck around, desperately trying to save the being, as it were? What did the load to be borne rest on until the end? The tree rots from the inside out. What were the ways for forces to worm in to the being's cracks and widen them? What let them in?
  • Constitution. Before it broke, what gave the being strength as a whole, beyond just its parts? How did it distribute the load to bear?
  • What forces shaped the being? What was it made / selected / grown / self-created to be and to bear?
  • What are the adversaries of the being? What was it bearing? What had it successfully borne?
  • What force overcame the being? What was it ultimately defenseless to? Why hadn't that force broken it earlier?
  • All these questions, for others of the being's same kind, even if they aren't yet broken.
  • A mirror image of creation——origin, construction, enclosing, forging, raising <-> falling, melting, bursting, destruction, death.

6. Features / dimensions / classes of passing-away

  • Endogenous, exogenous
  • Complex, simple, compound
  • Fast, slow (compared to the exogenous force's timecourse)
  • Intended, unintended
  • Complete, incomplete
  • Explosive, implosive
  • Material, machinic/telic, animate, ecological...

7. Pictures