Posted on 06/23/2008 3:05:46 PM PDT by betty boop
What is Life/Non-life in Nature?
by Jean F. Drew
Everywhere we see the “behavior” of life/non-life (death) in nature; but that doesn’t tell us what life/non-life IS.
Darwin’s theory of evolution doesn’t help with this question. It presupposes the existence of life axiomatically, and then proceeds to speak of the origin and evolution of species. Its fundamental assumption is that biological evolution is a wholly naturalistic, material process governed by the laws of physics and chemistry, with random variation and natural selection as the principal drivers of the system. Central to the Darwinist view is that life forms — species — evolve into completely other, more complex species; and this is so because all living beings are members of a Tree of Life that is rooted in a single common ancestor (the theory is silent on where the common ancestor came from).
But Darwinist theory doesn’t tell us what life is, or where it came from, just how it evolves (or speciates) under purely materialistic and naturalistic constraints. It is not a theory of life, and I think Darwin would agree with that.
This does not prevent theorists from speculating that, given the preferred scientific cosmology of a material universe of infinite size and unlimited duration — no beginning, no end — anything that can happen, will happen in time. Therefore, it is plausible to suppose that life itself may have originated from random chemical reactions that somehow “lucked out” and “stuck,” giving us the origin of life and its ubiquity and persistence henceforth.
The important point is that Darwinism rests on a certain cosmology, or world view. That worldview is increasingly being falsified by modern physics. (See below.)
It seems doubtful that an investigation carried out at the level of physical chemistry can demonstrate the emergence of life from non-living matter. This is called abiogenesis, which describes the situation where non-life (inorganic matter) spontaneously bootstraps itself into a living organism.
Miller and Urey attempted to demonstrate abiogenesis under laboratory conditions, using simulated lightning strikes on a suitable “pre-biotic soup.” They got a bunch of amino acids. But amino acids are the building blocks of living systems, not living systems themselves.
Wimmer got a better result in his attempt to create a polio virus, a living organism. He actually succeeded! But his “recipe” involved far more than the material “cell-free juice” he used as his culture: He introduced information into the mix: Wimmer began with the information sequence of RNA which he synthesized to DNA (because RNA cannot be synthesized) and then synthesized the message from DNA to RNA. When he added the message to a cell free juice, it began transmitting and duplicating. And he got himself a polio virus — a living being….
But the important thing to bear in mind is that, although Wimmer was successful in creating a living being, he was not the author of the information that led to this result. It was already “there” — and no scientist claims to know its source. Indeed, physics so far has been unable to locate any source for this type of life-generating information within the physical world. In other words, scientists recognize the indispensable requirement of information to living systems, they see that it is indeed “there”; but they cannot say how it got there, or from whence it came.
Consider also that the universe itself seems to be “informed,” in the sense of displaying evidence of some remarkable “fine-tuning” that guides its evolution. Physical chemistry itself rests on, is informed by, deeper principles: the physical laws, which in turn depend on certain ubiquitous universal constants — the speed of light; the value of pi; Plank’s constant; Plank time; the resonance precision required for the existence of carbon (a necessary element for life); the explosive power of the Big Bang precisely matched to the power of gravity (its density precisely matched with the critical density of the universe); the delicate balance in the strong nuclear force; the precise balancing of gravitational force and electromagnetic force; the meticulous balance between the number of electrons and protons; the precision in electromagnetic force and the ratio of proton mass to electron mass and neutron mass to proton mass; the Big Bang’s defiance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and gravity’s cumulative effect; etc., for examples.
If the universe were at bottom “random” in its evolution, these instances of evident fine-tuning would be inexplicable. The fact is we cannot say whether a system is random or not without knowing its symmetrical properties.
The “fans of random” speak and act as if they think the problem of symmetry is irrelevant to their concerns. Yet to the extent that they recognize the universe conforms to physical laws (and usually they do), the symmetry problem cannot be obviated. For laws demonstrate the property of what mathematicians call symmetry. A symmetry of some mathematical object — and the physical laws are inherently mathematical structures — is any transformation that preserves the object’s structure.
A practical application of the principle of symmetry can be found in Einstein’s observation (in his 1905 paper on Special Relativity, the same that gave us his magnificent unification of mass and energy, e = mc2) that the laws of nature are the same for all observers, regardless of their particular space-time positions.
It is evident that there are symmetries in nature, and also that mathematics has been amazingly successful in teasing them out. A favorite story is Reimann’s geometry of curved spaces. He “created” this geometry at a time when no one believed that geometry could be other than flat (Euclidean). So Reimann put his geometry on the shelf where it sat for about 50 years, gathering dust. Then a friend of Einstein pointed him to Reimann’s geometry (and Ricci’s tensor) as possible keys to the elucidation of the problems of special relativity. And they exactly did the trick.
Indeed, mathematicians have been so good at doing this sort of thing — creating mathematical systems with an eye to symmetry, and finally beauty — that Eugene Wigner marveled about “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” in its ability to model and describe nature.
At this point, it seems useful to widen our purview and revisit cosmology, for now we are speaking of the universe as a whole, and cosmology is the branch of knowledge that deals with the universe as an integrated and (some would say) even living system (in some fashion).
Cosmology is conventionally defined as: (1) a branch of philosophy dealing with the origin, processes, and structure of the universe; and (2), the astrophysical study of the structure and constituent dynamics of the universe, with a particular eye on the construction and modeling of a comprehensive theory that describes such structure and dynamics. The latter is the scientific approach. Note that (2) does not explicitly address the question of origin.
Indeed, questions of origin, both of the universe and of life, seem to be troubling to many scientists. Historically, their preferred cosmology has been the eternal universe model, wherein the universe, thought to be infinite in size, just always was, having no beginning or end; it just goes along in periods of expansions and contractions in a sort of self-conserving “boom and bust” cycle forever (no second law of thermodynamics to bother it).
Now in an infinite, eternal universe, anything can happen. And so this “classical perspective” of biology anticipates that the origin of life involves “random chemicals reacting for eons and finally lucking out, resulting in a living cell coming together,” as Harold Morowitz explains it.
But then satellite observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation starting in the 1960s provided striking evidence that the universe actually had a beginning. That is, it is not eternal, and it is not infinite. The CMBR — which is universal in extent — is thought to be the “echo” of the original “big bang,” which constituted the creation event of the universe in which we live, and which powers the cosmic space-time expansion. Thus the universe truly can be thought to have “initial conditions.”
The troubling thing about the big bang/inflationary universe theory is the suggestion that the universe was either created out of nothing, or if it was created out of something, then there’s no way we can detect or prove that cause. Using a “time-reversal symmetry transformation” here — running evolutionary time “backwards” like a videotape played in reverse — the laws of physics break down at the Planck Era — 10–43 of the first second following the big bang. “Prior” to that, there is no space, no time, no physical laws of nature, no matter; it’s pure nihil: Nothing.
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. — Heinz Pagels
Which of course is precisely what Genesis says: The Creation is “ex nihilo,” initiated by and proceeding according to the Word, the Logos of God, Who Is the Law of the Void as well as of the Creation, the “logic that exists prior to space and time.”
Evidently this is not a scientific statement, though I believe it is a truthful one. Still it is true that some physicists (and biologists) find the idea of a beginning of space and time out of nothing deeply disturbing for whatever reason. Taking into effect the evidence that leads to this conclusion, some have sought a “non-theistic” explanation for the phenomenon of the Big Bang. This cosmology grudgingly acknowledges that the universe did have a beginning, postulating its origin as a random fluctuation in a universal quantum vacuum field. But of course, this line of reasoning is silent about where the universal vacuum field itself came from in which a random fluctuation can occur, or how time and space got started so that events can occur in it.
This view (non-theistic cosmogenesis) is fallacious, however, because sudden quantum appearances don’t really take place out of “nothing.” A larger quantum field is first required before this can happen, but a quantum field can hardly be described as being “nothing.” Rather, it is a thing of unsearchable order and complexity, whose origin we can’t even begin to explain. Thus, trying to account for the appearance of the universe in a sudden quantum fluctuation doesn’t do away with the need for a Creator at all; it simply moves the whole problem backward one step to the unknown origin of the quantum field itself. — M. A. Corey
Whether your cosmology is philosophical or scientific, ultimately it rests on an unknown that is directly unknowable, a mystery. Scientists just as much as anybody else ponder the origin question, despite the fact that their formal methods cannot help them much there.
Cosmologically speaking, scientists get much better traction with the problem of constructing and modeling a comprehensive theory that describes, not the origin, but the structure and dynamics of the universe. But even here, they run into “mysteries.” Such as evidence for the almost eerie fine-tuning of the universe necessary for the inception, evolution, and support of Life. As Freeman Dyson put it, “The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.”
Take just one example from among many, the just mentioned universal vacuum. Because the vacuum is not “nothing,” it has energy, specifically “vacuum energy” — the energy content of empty space. Ian Stewart notes:
As it happens, the observed value [of vacuum energy] is very, very small, around 10–120, but it is not zero.
According to the conventional “fine-tuning” story, this particular value is exactly right for life to exist. Anything larger than 10–118 makes local space-time explode; anything smaller than 10–120 and space-time contracts in a cosmic crunch and disappears. So the “window of opportunity” for life is very small. By a miracle, our universe sits neatly within it.
But Stewart is a tough-minded mathematical scientist, and so evidently feels constrained to add:
The “weak anthropic principle” points out that if our universe were not constituted the way it is, we wouldn’t be here to notice, but that leaves open the question why there is a “here” for us to occupy. The “strong anthropic principle” says that we’re here because the universe was designed specially for life to exist — which is mystical nonsense. No one actually knows what the possibilities would be if the vacuum energy were markedly different from what it is. We know a few things that would go wrong — but we have no idea what might go right instead. Most of the fine-tuning arguments are bogus.”
What a relief that Professor Stewart thinks that only “most” of the fine-tuning arguments are bogus, and not all of them! One of the things likely to “go wrong” under his scenario would be the end of life as we know it on this planet, and with it intelligence. But other than that, his is a respectable argument, even though it would probably be entirely moot under different values for the vacuum energy, since intelligent beings probably would not then be around to entertain it.
There is an abundance of evidence from the precision of the fundamental values of the universe that contradicts the theory that a universe compossible with life can arise (or indeed actually rose) from an “accident.” Just as “nothing comes from nothing,” the laws of nature cannot have been established via a random process. There is nothing implicit in the meaning of “random” that contains any motive spring for it to generate order, organization, higher complexity. It is simply “random”; i.e., it reflects no law in its behavior. The people who say that the universal evolution is nothing more than the effect of a process of matter in its motions and “pure, blind chance” — as Nobel laureate Jacques Monod claims — rely on the same reasoning that says, if life can be spontaneously generated from non-life, then similarly order can come from disorder.
Which is the same sort of problem, it seems to me, involved in all the multiverse and parallel universe and “panspermia” cosmologies one finds littering the landscape these days. The latter — panspermia theory — seems to be a particular favorite of atheists such as Francis Crick and Sir Fred Hoyle.
Panspermia theory holds that life on Earth was seeded here by space aliens. I gather anything that avoids the conclusion that the universe, and Life, is a divine creation, and thus has a spiritual dimension (which would include such things as intelligence, law, information, etc., all the “non-phenomenal” aspects that “tell” phenomena “what to do”) is what is being sought in such fanciful imaginings. Such theories seem ultimately designed to forbid anything that is immaterial from having causal impact in the universe. But if you say that, then where does physical law fit in, where mathematics, or logic, or intelligence, or information? Not to mention the evident universal constants? None of these are material entities.
But the fact regarding these exotic cosmologies is, not a one of them can be falsified, or subjected to replicable experiments. All these cosmologies are works of pure philosophical imagination dressed up in the language of scientific jargon.
However, that doesn’t mean the adherents of such imaginative speculations are bad scientists. Here’s Sir Fred Hoyle, a “non-Darwinian evolutionist,” contented atheist, and honest thinker:
No matter how large the environment one considers, life cannot have had a random beginning… there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (1020)2000 = 1040,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.… the enormous information content of even the simplest living systems… cannot in our view be generated by what are often called “natural” processes,… For life to have originated on the Earth it would be necessary that quite explicit instruction should have been provided for its assembly… There is no way in which we can expect to avoid the need for information, no way in which we can simply get by with a bigger and better organic soup, as we ourselves hoped might be possible a year or two ago.
Information is the key to life, just as it is the key to the fundamental structure and evolution of the universe, from the beginning. One conjectures the universe has the structure and dynamics it has because these were “programmed” in at the beginning. And this structure evidently was primed for life.
Again, this is what Genesis tells us: The Universe has an intelligent cause that is outside of space-time. Physics and biology acknowledge the necessity of information for the rise and maintenance of life, but assign no cause for this information within spatiotemporal reality. But if it cannot be found “there,” then where can it be found?
See Genesis. And consider this observation, from Albert Einstein:
“The natural law reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”
Scientists recognize so well that the universe has fundamental structure that they are encouraged to propound “grand unified theories,” GUTs, or “Theories of Everything.” The standard model of physics today recognizes four fundamental forces in nature: the nuclear strong, the nuclear weak, electromagnetism, and gravity. So far, all have been conveniently “reconciled together,” or unified — except for gravity, which continues to resist being fitted into any kind of “grand unified” model thus far.
Regarding the four fundamental forces, here are some more interesting thoughts from Ian Stewart:
Other types of forces could in principle give rise to other types of universe, and our ignorance of such possibilities is almost total. It is often claimed that without the particular forces we have, life would be impossible, proving that our universe is amazingly fine-tuned to make life possible. This argument is bogus, a wild exaggeration based on too limited a view of what constitutes life. Life like ours would be impossible — but it is the height of arrogance to assume that our kind of life is the only kind of organized complexity that could exist. The fallacy here is to confuse sufficient conditions for life (those aspects of our universe on which our kind of life depends) with necessary ones.
It is interesting that here Stewart reduces life to the definition, “organized complexity.” The description appears to be general enough to encompass everything (everything material at least), yet at the same time, is useless to provide insight into the living nature of actual, particular living beings.
Be that as it may, it seems Stewart is working to a doctrine, to a particular world view, in giving his analysis. And he seems to recognize this in what follows:
The view that a Theory of Everything must exist brings to mind monotheist religion — in which, over the millennia, disparate collections of gods and goddesses with their own special domains have been replaced by one god whose domain is everything. This process is widely viewed as an advance, but it resembles a standard philosophical error known as “the equation of unknowns” in which the same cause is assigned to all mysterious phenomena…. “Explanations” like this give a false sense of progress — we used to have three mysteries to explain; now we have just one. But the one new mystery conflates three separate ones, which might well have entirely different explanations. By conflating them, we blind ourselves to this possibility.
When you explain the Sun by a sun-god and rain by a rain-god, you can endow each god with its own special features. But if you insist that both Sun and rain are controlled by the same god, then you may end up trying to force two different things into the same straightjacket. So in some ways fundamental physics is more like fundamentalist physics. Equations [brief enough to fit] on a T-shirt replace an immanent deity, and the unfolding of the consequences of those equations replaces divine intervention in daily life.
Despite these reservations, my heart is with the physical fundamentalists. I would like to see a Theory of Everything, and I would be delighted if it were mathematical, beautiful, and true. I think religious people might also approve, because they could interpret it as proof of the exquisite taste and intelligence of their deity.
Exactly so — that would be my takeaway!
To sum up, it appears that a model of the universe that stipulates that all that exists — life and non-life — is simply the product of random transformations of “matter in its motions” has been falsified by modern physics. To the extent that information — which presupposes intelligence — plays a role, we have to acknowledge that other, immaterial factors are at work. Which of course we do, to the extent we realize and acknowledge the universal existence of physical laws, of finely-tuned cosmic values, and of the symmetries in nature. To do so, we have to put a check on randomness as a possible explanation for the nature or structure of things.
But we cannot eliminate randomness altogether. In the final analysis, it seems to me the universe lives in the dynamic tension that obtains between that which is changeless (the symmetry), and that which is changeable (a symmetry-breaking event). Or as Leibniz put it, at the level of fundamental universal principles the universe must consist of something that does not ever change, and something that is capable of changing.
For example, consider the first and second laws of thermodynamics. The first is a conservation law — matter cannot be either created or destroyed — that is, matter is unchangeable; i.e., it is “symmetrical” under all known conditions. The second law “breaks the symmetry” of the first; and if it couldn’t do that, then probably nothing would ever happen in our universe.
The most amazing thing to me is that evidently, as a consequence of such a fundamental tension, we live in a “guided” universe, but not a wholly deterministic one.
And the Guide does not seem to reside in the system — at least, as far as science can tell.
Thus it seems to me if the Guide could construct a universe finely-tuned and primed for life on the most global scale — i.e., that of the whole universe — then it should be child’s play for this Source to prime and guide any living (or non-living) sub-unit of the universe — preeminently biological creatures; and of these, Man above all.
Given that the universe evidently has been left deliberately incompletely determined, or underdetermined (Planck’s constant reminds us of this), then not only the “free development” of nature has been left intact (subject only to the natural symmetries), but so also has human free will been left wholly intact.
Given the splendors of natural reality, and the uncanny facility that man has for exploring and understanding them, really all I can say is: I am on my knees in gratitude, thanks, and praise, and all glory be to God — in Whom we live and move and have our Being.
You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration.Jack London, The Iron Heel, 1908
Does that make reasonablity a second-reality?..
Thus the reasoning of a person living in a "second reality" may be self-consistent to him but in truth - woefully incomplete, a fantasy and flat wrong.
If people were like oysters then "second realities" would be understandable. How could an oyster be expected to know what is on the other side of the island much less what is above the water?
But with people "second realities" are rarely a matter of physical handicaps. Instead, they usually suffer from either mental illness (e.g. he thinks he is Napoleon) or more likely, spiritual illness of self-will run awry:
I a real sense people ARE like Oysters.. (good metaphor)..
Some with a pearl of great price growing in them at great painful cost..
Not all but some.. Until they are "born again"(metaphorically) they remain in their own second reality.. Their "spirits" need to be released.. from the shell of self protection.. into first reality (John ch 10)..
Second reality is indeed a real thing.. a virtual shell of protection.. from reality.. first reality.. I think there is a whole sermon imbedded in your oyster metaphor.. and very scriptual too.. How like an Oyster in an oyster bed are the unregenerate souls of humans.. I could expand the thought with Scallops but most would not know the difference between an Oyster and a Scallop.. life style wise..
Science relies on the belief in evidence — and on the belief in the scientific method. Some scientists even maintain that the scientific method is the only legitimate tool for the evaluation of the universe and the things in it. For this reason, even highly educated paleontologists can be misled, "indoctrinalized," into the belief that everything in Nature is reducible to matter and mechanics (which in essence is what the scientific method studies).
But what if the world really isn't that way, Coyoteman?
Then we are screwed and the Muslims are just as likely to be right as the Jews and Chrisians. Everybody becomes reduced to guessing.
Even if you have “ears to hear” you are still guessing. I can give you drugs to hear and see all kinds of things. Christianity is a minority religion. You would be just as good a Muslim if you had been born in Kuwait.
I think time stopped and length equaling 0 ,at the speed of light, would be considered a REDUCTION of our perceived spacetime framework.
From our reference frame, speed of light means 'time stopped' but could it actually mean that whatever is at light speed is affixed to present and no longer limited by spatial variables?
From what I attempted to understand about the "Go-Splat" theory is that the photons' present, from its' reference frame at the speed of light, would be instantaneous from its' creation to demise.....So it would appear we have something that's locked in its' present, but instantaneous in its' creation and demise.
i.e., does future contain present and past, but past doesn't contain future or present?
Now I have a Headache.;=)
But the process is directed by the dependability of the data used to form concepts of what is being observed. The consistency of the spacetime actions/reactions is what begs one to believe they should limit conceptualizations to just that which can be measured and contained in actions/reactions carried out in the limited realm of our physical aspects. That the conceptualization occurs outside of that realm is dismissed too easily by some scientists.
Scripture telling the story of Jesus' earthly sojourn indicate that an alternate or other physicality may in fact exist to which we have yet to reach and make measurements. To arbitrarily dismiss that realm is perhaps comfortable for some scientists, but it is not a useful self-limitation given the advances we've made in measuring ... we may be in fact able now to start making measurements of this 'other realm' of physicality, so dismissing the possibility of its existence is, well, silly.
Quantum Physics has pointed to the existence of space and time variables which we ought to be exploring if we can figure out ways to do so. And some scientists are actually anticipating such exploration, while other scientists wish to dismiss the possibilities out of hand.
The explanation Cajun gave above is a prime example of speaking about different variability realms of space and time. What Cajun wrote was certainly not gibberish, and the description begged consideration of states of reality not yet accessible directly but which can be explored via 'shadows', as the other realm's effects upon our realm. That is almost Platonic to consider 'shadows' as means to explore other realms, don'tcha think?
Those who do not have "ears to hear" cannot hear Him. Those who do have "ears to hear" and who have been reborn in Him, know Him quite personally.
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: - John 10:27
But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. – Romans 8:9
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned. - I Corinthians 2:12-13
So you doubt that a muslim terrorist is as convinced of the reality of his religion as you are?
Sneaky photons messing with me again.
Exactly.. well said.. very well said..
All global and local views by humans, any humans are based in faith in something..
Even calculated guesses are based in accepted peripheral data..
I think we really don't have a true 'sense of the present,' because communication is not instantaneous. But our bodies have a very wonderful "filtering and prediction" capability, which allows us to (almost always) act safely beyond the gap. But again ... this capability is quite common among modern control systems.
Thank you so much for your engaging essay/post r9etb! I especially appreciate the fine elaboration you give of the distinctions that exist between sensation and the "processor" of sensation, and their mutual relations.
In the second graph of the above italics, you seem to draw a tentative conclusion: "...we really don't have a true 'sense of the present,' because communication is not instantaneous." Evidently this conjecture rests on the strength of the analogy between "data" and "control systems," and the basic modalities of human perception/cognition.
But I wonder how strong this analogy can be. For the "control systems" to which you refer are purpose-built machines, and moreover built by humans. This recognition suggests that there may be a "categorical problem" with the analogy such that we ought not to trust it.
Yet I'd suggested that the "control system" of a human being is not of this nature. I.e., it is not a "machine," not any kind of physical device at all. If Augustine, James, and Rosmini (not to mention Plato, Plotinus, Aquinas, Anselm, etc., etc.) are correct, this non-observable is describable as "I", "ego," psyche, "soul," and/or "Thought." All these names refer to a totally intangible entity, the real existence of which the history of human culture from as far back as we can document in some fashion (probably back to ~25,000 B.C.) universally attests to.
And not even in just the arts and written histories, legends, traditions, etc., etc.; it is vividly obvious that human beings, alone of all the species of nature, are the only ones who universally demonstrate recognition and concern for their dead, as we see in the sheer ubiquity of funereal rites and traditions among all the religions, cultures, and races of man. The common thread evidenced here is the expectation that there is such as thing as the human soul, and it indeed has an afterlife.
Against this background, the scientific claim of the non-existence of the soul appears, well, rather odd....
I wonder, r9etb — what is your view, your opinion, of this matter? How do we "square" the historical data with science?
Again, thank you so much for your excellent and informative essay/post!
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