Posted on 11/17/2003 6:02:20 AM PST by Tribune7
"The Origin-of-Life Prize" ® (hereafter called "the Prize") consists of $1.35 Million (USD) paid directly to the winner(s). The Prize will be awarded for proposing a highly plausible mechanism for the spontaneous rise of genetic instructions in nature sufficient to give rise to life. To win, the explanation must be consistent with empirical biochemical and thermodynamic concepts as further delineated herein, and be published in a well-respected, peer-reviewed science journal(s).
All dialectical materialist origin of life scenarios require in extremis a primeval soup. There is no path from this mythical soup to the generation of a genome and a genetic code. John von Neumann showed that fact in his Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata U of Ill. Press 1966. One must begin with a genetic message of a rather large information content. Manfred Eigen and his disciples argue that all it takes is one self-catalytic molecule to generate a genome. This self-catalytic molecule must have a very small information content. By that token, there must be very few of them [Section 2.4.1] As they self-reproduce and evolve the descendants get lost in the enormous number of possible sequences in which the specific messages of biological are buried. From the Shannon-McMillan theorem I have shown that a small protein, cytochrome c is only 2 x 10^-44 of the possible sequences. It takes religious faith to believe that would happen. Of course the minimum information content of the simplest organism is much larger than the information content of cytochrome c.
But there is another type of subjective feeling about understanding life that motivated Pearson's question, the same, I think, that motivated Lucretius' and von Neumann's questions. It is a feeling of paradox, the same feeling that motivated Bohr, Wigner, Polanyi, the skeptics, and somewhat ironically, the founders of what is now reductionist molecular biology, like Delbrück. They all believed that life follows laws, but from their concept of law, they could not understand why life was so strikingly different from non-life. So I find another way of asking this type of question: What exactly does our view of universal dynamical laws abstract away from life, so that the striking distinctions between the living and the lifeless become obscure and apparently paradoxical?
My first answer is that dynamical language abstracts away the subject side of the epistemic cut. The necessary separation of laws and initial conditions is an explicit principle in physics and has become the basis (and bias) of objectivity in all the sciences. The ideal of physics is to eliminate the subjective observer completely. It turned out that at the quantum level this is a fundamental impossibility, but that has not changed the ideal. Physics largely ignores the exceptional effects of individual (subjective) constraints and boundary conditions and focusses on the general dynamics of laws. This is because constraints are assumed to be reducible to laws (although we know they are not reducible across epistemic cuts) and also because the mathematics of complex constraints is often unmanageable. Philosophers have presented innumerable undecidable metaphysical models about the mind-brain cut, and physicists have presented more precise but still undecidable mathematical models about quantum measurement. But at the primeval level, where it all began, the genotype-phenotype cut is now taken for granted as ordinary chemistry.
My second answer is that if you abstract away the details of how subject and object interact, the "very peculiar range" of sizes and behaviors of the allosteric polymers that connect subject and object, the memory controlled construction of polypeptides, the folding into highly specific enzymes and other functional macromolecules, the many-to-many map of sequences to structures, the self-assembly, and the many conformation dependent controls - in other words, if you ignore the actual physics involved in these molecules that bridge the epistemic cut, then it seems unlikely that you will ever be able to distinguish living organisms by the dynamic laws of "inorganic corpuscles" or from any number of coarse-grained artificial simulations and simulacra of life. Is it not plausible that life was first distinguished from non-living matter, not by some modification of physics, some intricate nonlinear dynamics, or some universal laws of complexity, but by local and unique heteropolymer constraints that exhibit detailed behavior unlike the behavior of any other known forms of matter in the universe?
The idea that life may have originated from pure RNA world has been around for a while. In this scenario the first life forms relied on RNA molecules as both symbolic carriers of genetic information, and functional, catalytic molecules. The neutralist hypothesis for the function of RNA editing assumes such a RNA world origin of life. It posits that RNA editing could offer a process by which the dual role of RNA molecules as information carriers and catalysts could more easily co-exist. The key problem for the RNA world origin of life hypothesis is precisely the separation between these two functions of RNA. On the one hand RNA molecules should be stable (non-reactive) to carry information, and on the other hand they should be reactive to perform their catalytic function. RNA editing, could be seen as means to fragment genetic information into several non-reactive molecules, that are later, through RNA editing processes, integrated into reactive molecules. This way, the understanding of this process of mediation between the role of RNA molecules as information carriers and catalytic molecules based on RNA editing, can also offer many clues to the problem of origin of a semiotic code from s dynamic (catalytic) substrate.
One big problem in another nutshell:
As Dean Overman writes in A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization (2003):
Overman suggests how remote such probabilities have of actually reifying in nature in an apt analogy – the analogy of the Amazing Monkeys Who Type Out the Dialog from a Certain Scene in Shakespeare’s Henry VI -- who just manage to get it all right via a random process, given enough time:
“Assuming the Big Bang occurred 15 billion years ago and that one million monkeys started typing at Planck time (10^-43 of the first second) and that each monkey types one letter every second, over a million billion years would be required to produce all probable [alphabetic] combinations [to accurately type a certain passage from Macbeth, consisting of 379 letters]. To put time in terms of a power of 10, only 10^18 seconds have occurred in all of time. As with the time available for abiogenesis, the monkeys simply do not have sufficient time in 10^18 seconds to have any real chance of typing this short passage from Shakespeare [this probability has been calculated at 26^379 using combinatorial methods*]. When we turn to calculations of mathematical probabilities for the unguided, random development of life, we find odds that are even more remote, especially given the finite time limit of 130 million years.”
[*To put the probability figure cited in the paragraph immediately above into perspective, Overman notes most mathematicians view a probability of 10^50 as mathematically impossible.] Overman quotes Harold Morowitz on this issue:
Hoyle wrote:
I think Aristotle is warning Plato to get his head out of the clouds because they're coming to some stairs.
If Christianity required the faith it takes to be an atheist, I could not be a Christian :-)
Your entire line of thought seems to be:
1.) By and large (people/living things/whatever) don't seek the destruction of their own lives,
2.) Therefore, the (continuation/improvement) of (life/existence/whatever) is objectively good.
In other words, 'it is the regular occurence, thus we can infer that it is the good.' Is that really what you're saying?
Yes, except it goes deeper than that. The continuation & improvement of our lives is the very reason we worry about the best way to live in the first place. It's axiomatic. (If you think it's not, then tell me how you'd go about convincing yourself to follow a moral code that you know will kill, impoverish, and/or generally destroy the lives of yourself and those you love. I don't think you can do it. What's more, I doubt you'd even want to try.)
Thus, the sustaining & enhancement of one's life and of those whom they value is as much an objective good as you could ever hope to find, IMO.
And isn't that the driving force behind this attitude that the atheist's worldview is a "willfully self-imposed narrow-mindedness", via our "Materialist cultural filter", which is so well defended by the "High Priests of Secular Humanism" that "you couldn't pry it off with a crow bar"? If our universe was simply a product of some mindless process which itself was perfectly natural in the context of its supernatural (or Ideal) realm, would y'all feel your critique of atheism's claim of rationality was even worth pursuing?
Hello, jennyp! You lay out the basis of the “dispute” excellently here, IMHO. On this basis, the question arises: Is the universe intelligent order or random (“mindless”) process? Instantly one must ask, if it is mindless process, then how did the physical laws arise in the first place, and from what?
I can’t answer such controversial questions definitively. But what I can do is explain why I think scientific materialism (in which Darwinist theory is firmly planted) is in the process of being displaced by discoveries in quantum physics.
I’d like to start by laying all issues of “Person” aside. To which I’m sure it can reasonably be objected: But if you argue intelligence is fundamental to the creation, sustenance, governance, and evolution of the Universe [as I do], then for there to be intelligence, there must be mind; and where there is mind, there must be a person whose mind it is. But you cannot prove that mind exists. Ergo, your entire theoretical approach is a Trojan Horse, and we must close the gates of the city against it.
To which I’d reply: I am innocent of the charge of trying the shoehorn physical theory into some kind of theistic preconception. Indeed, it is physics itself that is asking questions about intelligence, information, consciousness – mind. So I’m happy to just follow its lead.
In other words, we don’t need to invoke Divinity to explore these issues. They are competently addressed in terms of the laws of physics. Which is what I hope to do here. I have to start with a brief overview of quantum theory as I presently understand it, which feeds the following speculation. The subject is enormously complex. Given time constraints, I will need to speak in very general terms. But here’s the outline, just to get us all “on the same page,” posters and lurkers alike: [I apologize in advance for relating stuff you probably already know, jennyp.]
It seems clear to me that scientific materialism is a product of the Newtonian, or classical physics world view; that is, of the predominant world view of the past 400 years. Quantum physics is in the process of exploding this world view. I think we are on the verge of a scientific revolution of at least the magnitude of Einstein’s Relativity Theory, as ideas regarding the quantum nature of the Universe sink in. All scientific fields will eventually be swept into its logic, including the so-called life sciences.
On the Newtonian view of matter and energy, the Universe is composed of solid, separate bodies moving predictably in empty space. Quantum theory, on the other hand, predicts that there is no such thing as a discrete object – be it a sub-atomic particle, or a biological organism – and that space is not “empty.”
In The Field (New York: Harper Collins, 2002), Lynne McTaggert writes about the standpoint of quantum theory:
“Matter at its most fundamental level could not be divided into independently existing units or even be fully described. Subatomic particles weren’t solid little objects like billiard balls, but vibrating and indeterminate packets of energy that could not be precisely quantified or understood in themselves. Instead, they were schizophrenic, sometimes behaving as particles – a set thing confined to a small place – and sometimes like a wave – a vibrating and more diffuse thing spread out over a large region of space and time. Quantum particles were also omnipresent. For instance, when transiting from one state to another, electrons seemed to be testing out all possible new orbits at once, like a property buyer attempting to live in every house on the block at the same time before choosing which one to finally settle in. And nothing was certain. There were no definite locations, no set occurrence but only a probability that it might happen. At this level of reality, nothing was guaranteed; scientists had to be content with only being able to bet on the odds. The best that ever could be calculated was probability – the likelihood, when you take a certain measurement, that you will get a certain result a certain percentage of the time. Cause-and-effect relationships no longer held at the subatomic level. Stable-looking atoms might suddenly, without apparent cause, experience some internal disruption; electrons, for no reason, elect to transit from one energy state to another. Once you peered closer and closer at matter, it wasn’t even matter, not a single solid thing you could touch or describe, but a host of tentative selves, all being paraded around at the same time. Rather than a universe of static certainty, at the most fundamental level of matter, the world and its relationships were uncertain and unpredictable, a state of pure potential, of infinite possibility.”
As if the foregoing discovery of the fundamental nature of matter wasn’t startling enough, quantum theory makes two more startling discoveries: Non-locality, and the problem of the observer.
Non-locality is a very strange property of the subatomic world. It refers to the ability of a quantum particle – say, an electron – to influence another quantum particle of its type instantaneously, over any distance, despite the fact that no direct exchange of force or energy has occurred between them. It has been suggested that any quantum particle, once in contact with another particle of its type, retains that connection even when separated, even if the two particles are thereafter removed to “locations” at opposite “ends” of the universe. The idea is, no matter how far apart they are separated, the action of one will always influence the action of the other, simultaneously, instantaneously (that is, at superluminal speed – denoting a velocity faster than the speed of light). Indeed, any measurement taken of the energy state of one particle will be found identical to the energy state of the other. And this bit of “spooky-at-a-distance” weirdness has repeatedly been experimentally confirmed under laboratory conditions.
Now, the question arises: How can it be that two widely separated quantum particles can “entangle” each other whenever an “observation” is made, such that the energy state of one of them, when known, simultaneously specifies the energy state of the other, where the two particles do not directly come into contact with each other? The answer quantum theory gives is the particles exist in a universal field which mediates or facilitates the interactions of particles in the field, as well as interaction of those particles with the particles of other fields. Each type of particle has its own particular field. All particles in a field are identical to each other: Apparently they derive their particular properties (mass, charge, spin, etc., etc.) from the “instruction set” which is the field itself.
Granted, this last statement is speculative on the current basis of the science. Some great physicists and mathematicians are working on improving our state of knowledge in this regard.
Which brings us to the “observer problem.” A proper consideration of this topic is well beyond the scope of the present writing. For present purposes, let it suffice to say that quantum theory holds that any observer “disturbs” the object he observes by virtue of the sheer fact that he observes it. Uncertainty, contingency, inevitably enter the picture when consciousness, mind, enters the scene. On the other hand, quantum theory seems to suggest that it is the actual act of observation that brings a real state into existence out of the undifferentiated microcosmic (quantum) flux.
These are controversial issues. The point to stress, it seems to me, is that quantum physics addresses something that the materialist view of nature does not: consciousness. It suggests mind interacts with matter, and structures reality. The materialist view is that consciousness is simply an epiphenomenon of electrochemical activity in the brain. But to me, this view really doesn’t explain anything.
There’s an emerging speculative theory that holds consciousness is the result of energized particle exchanges between the material constituents of the physical brain and the primary vacuum field of the Universe, a universal zero-point field. This theory holds that consciousness itself is a universal field interacting with the primary vacuum field – which is effectively a universal information or instruction set, a kind of “cosmic DNA” that organizes the universe and all entities and systems in it, living and non-living. Even non-living, non-conscious entities “read” from this instruction set by means of particle exchanges with it, deriving the specifications for their own structure therefrom.
Where did the primary universal vacuum field “come from?” Quantum theorists will tell you its origin is unknown, and quite probably unknowable by science. The reason is that all known physical laws break down at Planck time – that infinitessimally tiny quantum of time – 10^-43ths of a second – immediately following the Big Bang, which was the “era” in which space and time were generated, the universe created out of nothing. [Planck time is the shortest interval or unit of time that physics can deal with. Quantum theory even “quantizes” time into teensy chunks or blocks!]
Jennyp, you seemed to suggest that what I claim is that a “person” in another universe created our universe. My understanding is there was literally nothing before the Big Bang, not space, not time, not a prior universe. As physicist Heinz Pagels has noted (in Perfect Symmetry, 1986),
“The nothingness ‘before’ the creation of the universe is the most complete void that we can imagine – no space, time or matter existed. It is a world without place, without duration or eternity, without number – it is what the mathematicians call ‘the empty set.’ Yet this unthinkable void converts itself into the plenum of existence – a necessary consequence of physical laws. Where are these laws written into that void? What ‘tells’ the void that it is pregnant with a possible universe? It would seem that even the void is subject to a law, a logic that exists prior to space and time.”
Dean Overman noted (in A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization , 1997), “In 1970 Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking published a paper which proved that in any expanding universe where the theory of general relativity applied and the universe contained as much matter as we observe, a Big Bang singularity must have existed. The beginning of time was a point of infinite density and infinite curvature.” The way I’m thinking about this problem these days, the singularity represents a logic or intelligence existing “prior” to space and time. As Overman observed,
“Thinking about a logic or intelligence that exists prior to space and time is obviously difficult…. [W]e should not even use the word ‘prior’ because time begins at Planck time and cannot be part of the concept of ‘true nothingness.’ If time and space came into existence with the Big Bang, the conclusion becomes invalid that the beginning of the universe would have been preceded by a time. But this implies that the very initial Big Bang itself [e.g., the singularity per se by my reasoning] was not a temporal event.”
Hypothetically, it is an event “from eternity,” from a timelessness that, post-Big Bang, comprehends all times, going forward along the arrow of time from the beginning of space/time, and thus of the universe, to the present, to the future. I imagine the “timeless” singularity may well be the cosmic code or “instruction set,” a kind of cosmic DNA, that continues to play out in universal evolution in the matrix of the primary, universal vacuum field of the Cosmos. It represents the entry of timelessness into the world process; i.e., into time. It generates out of itself all the vacuum fields, which structure their own particular types of particles, which, by engaging in energy exchanges with the vacuum field, get instructions for the types of combinations with other particles that give rise to matter, to entities, to life forms, to consciousness, etc., etc. It provides the “instructions” for the creation and on-going maintenance, not only of the physical universe, but of life itself.
Anyhoot, it’s a “cosmology of wholeness,” this theory of the beginning of our universe. That’s probably the reason I like it.
Against this background, Darwinist theory looks almost quaint. It focuses on discrete objects that quantum theory says do not exist, operating according to fixed, deterministic rules, while quantum theory says contingency plays a huge role in what happens. And then pits these discrete objects against each other, intraspecies, interspecies, and against the environment as a whole in ceaseless, often bloody competition for survival and genetic success. But it does not tell us what life is, or what consciousness is, or the significence of either in the universal scheme of things.
I am aware that, although I have not had any need to invoke the Creator in the above argument, there are enormous theological implications in what I wrote. Those details are well beyond the scope of the present writing. Suffice it to say that my main take-away from this line of reasoning is God told us the truth in Genesis and the Gospel of Saint John.
I apologize for the length of this reply, jennyp, and thank you for your patience in hearing me out. Please share your thoughts?
p.s.: I have never regarded you as a “bad conservative” or “immoral person.”
Right off the bat I'd observe that if this outer universe doesn't have time (in our sense), then there's no reason to think there must be causality itself (in our sense). So while it wouldn't rule out an external intelligence of some kind, it doesn't seem to point towards one, either.
Speaking of things of which I know just enough to be dangerous (or foolish :-), a thought just occurred to me: If there are really 11 dimensions, 7 (?) of which are tightly curled up and only 4 of which span the universe, then if we only measure the extent of the universe along those 7 dimensions, would the universe still look like just a singularity?
Against this background, Darwinist theory looks almost quaint. Indeed. Well said.
Oh and about this: I don't understand how y'all can make the leap from speculations about extra dimensions, the nature of the BB singularity, etc. to Darwinism. It sounds as relevant as pooh-poohing Newtonian physics because of quantum mechanics. And yet, just about all the technology our civilization is based upon uses Newtonian physics. Quite successfully.
(BTW: I like the use of "y'all" as the plural of "you". I've thought we needed a different term for the plural "you" ever since HS Spanish class. I think we should all start using "y'all". I wonder how many people it would take to make it catch on nationwide?)
It used to exist nationwide. Alas, the Confederacy is no more. But seriously ... "you all" is most useful. You-plural is always being re-invented. Some say "you'ns" (which I assume is "you ones"). And then there's "youse guys."
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