Posted on 02/27/2005 12:55:27 PM PST by betty boop
Can the Monist View Explain “What Is Life?
by Alamo-Girl and betty boop
In this article we would like to address the soundness and adequacy of the monist view of reality which conceives of “all that there is” as ultimately reducible to the concept of “matter in its motions.” This view holds that there is no essential difference between living and non-living systems in nature since both ultimately are expressions of the workings of the physical laws and only the physical laws. This insight or expectation leads one to presume that the laws of physics and chemistry are entirely sufficient to explain how matter came one day to spontaneously generate Life and thus all evolving living systems. This hypothesis is called abiogenesis and, try as hard as many first-rate researchers have done thus far, the fact is it has never yet been scientifically demonstrated.
Darwin studiously avoided abiogenesis in his major works — hence the insistence on the forum that the “theory of evolution” does not include abiogenesis. Perhaps his avoidance of the issue was for political reasons, we don’t know. At any rate, Darwin was known for his speculations about a “warm little pond” though evidently he didn’t want it to be a part of his theory. http://www.evowiki.org/index.php/Abiogenesis.
And yet one readily gets the impression on following the forum debate that many, if not most, subscribers to Darwin’s theory suppose that abiogenesis did, in fact, occur in some far distant past. On this view, biological evolution takes its origin from an unvalidated event that is presumed to be wholly material in character. This materialist aspect is fully consonant with the Darwinian view; abiogenesis rounds out the cosmological view to include a “beginning,” the problem that Darwin sought to avoid.
Implicit in the monist theory is the expectation that the universe is causally closed. All causes are material causes, and what we see all around us is the present cumulative effect of a virtually infinite succession of random material events that have taken place from a virtually infinite past until now. Such causes arise only within the 3+1 dimensional “block” of space-time as we humans normally experience/conceive it.
Yet as Elitzur (1993) points out, “the most essential attribute of randomness is the absence of connection between the states of the system’s components.” Organization, by definition, means that the system’s parts are highly correlated. The converse of “organization” is “reducibility” or “separability.” Therefore, organization means non-separability, connectivity. A. Grandpierre points out that “biological organization is different from physical ordering that is accompanied by a decrease of entropy. While physical ordering (misleadingly called ‘self-organization,’ but its actual meaning is self-ordering) plays an important role in storing information, the dynamical process of government through information is a process with a quite different nature.”
And yet the monist view holds that “all that there is” is fundamentally reducible to material random events or accidents being fortuitously tamed or shaped by physical laws. Which is what you would expect if you think that only material, physical, tangible entities are real. And thus information processing in living systems is a subject that can never come up in the first place; for fundamentally it is an immaterial, intangible process.
And yet here’s the interesting situation that develops from the physicalist (i.e., monist) concept: The physical laws themselves are immaterial, non-physical, intangible entities. It is here that the monist view breaks down as a valid interpretation of nature on its own terms. You can’t at the same time say that physical matter is all that there is and then turn around and invoke an immaterial principle that conditions or determines material behavior without engaging in self-contradiction.
And what can we say about the physical laws themselves — the great laws of motion and thermodynamics? Assuming that they “tame matter” or cause it to behave in certain ways, and assuming that matter is more or less “dumb and blind” (and quite possibly “lazy!”), then the physical laws must possess an informative content. And there’s another very interesting thing about the physical laws: They are in the main all laws of conservation. It has been observed that the amount of information required for conservation of a system seems not to be high, at least in comparison with the amount of information needed for a system to organize itself, modify its behavior, develop, evolve. For matter, left to its own devices (e.g., blind, dumb, and lazy devices), will follow the principle of “least action.” To put this into perspective, Paul Davies (The Fifth Miracle, 1998) writes:
“The laws of physics … are algorithmically very simple; they contain relatively little information. Consequently they cannot on their own be responsible for creating informational macromolecules … life cannot be ‘written into’ the laws of physics…. Life works its magic not by bowing to the directionality of chemistry, but by circumventing what is chemically and thermodynamically ‘natural.’ Of course, organisms must comply with the laws of physics and chemistry, but these laws are only incidental to biology.”
For the above reasons, the present writers remain skeptical about claims issuing from the monist position with regard to the fundamental origin and nature of life in the Universe. There is a need to account for, not only the fact that life cannot be exhaustively explained in terms of what is “chemically and thermodynamically ‘natural’”; but even more importantly, that life seems to work to counter the outcomes predicted by the physical laws.
Of particular interest is the possible relation of entropy and information in living systems. By information we mean the successful communication of a message (or “informative text”) such as to cause a “reduction of uncertainty in the receiver,” as formulated in terms of Shannon information theory. Note that “reduction of uncertainty in the receiver” issues as an actual event by virtue of a “decision” made and thus is analogous to state vector collapse in quantum microsystems, and to realized intended outcomes of sentient beings in “real-world” macrosystems. In all three cases, it appears that the probability amplitude is collapsed into just one “choice,” and all other possibilities vanish into a netherworld of unrealized (at that moment at least) potentialities. In all three cases, we seem to be looking at instances of very frank “quantizations” of “the continuum.”
Thus the thought occurs to one: Perhaps it is the ubiquitous presence of “observers” making “informed” choices which constitutes the irreversible “arrow of time” of the second law of thermodynamics. For “observations” lead to events (decisions) which, in the 3+1D block, constitute a successive temporal sequence of newly produced causes or, more to the point, a history (which can be thought of as evolution in retrospect). And history — like memory — is an irreversible process.
Alternatively, in the Feynman/Everett multi-world models, history may be a sum of histories (the cat is both alive and dead). In the second case the apparent thermodynamic entropy on our particular worldline as observer (the phenomenon which suggests an arrow of time) — is only one selection — though for our worldline that path or arrow of time would likewise seem irreversible. Whether or not it is actually irreversible and whether the arrow of time itself points in one direction only depends on whether there is another temporal dimension (f-Theory, Vafa). We need to mention that we recognize the significance of other multi-world and extra temporal dimension models as competing cosmological views. A fuller treatment of this subject is beyond the scope of the present article.
Now it is controversial that thermodynamics can have anything at all to do with the propagation and transmission of information. Indeed, it is reasonable to draw the negative conclusion, provided that one’s thermodynamical model is the one espoused by Boltzmann, whose hypothesis was that the second law is a law of disorder, of chaos. That hypothesis alone would appear to make thermodynamics a problematical construct for systems that are complex and self-organizing, such as living systems seem to be. And yet living systems are ineluctibly microstates within the global macrostate so well described by the second law of thermodynamics. This problem has been well noted.
Yockey, for instance (in Information Theory and Molecular Biology, 1992), presented a mathematical proof that Shannon entropy and thermodynamic entropy are functions of probability spaces that are not isomorphic. From this mathematical fact, he draws the conclusion that these two entropies have “nothing whatever to do” with each other:
“The function for entropy in both classical statistical mechanics and the von Neumann entropy of quantum statistical mechanics has the dimensions of the Boltzmann constant k and has to do with energy and momentum, not information.”
But what if the sine qua non hallmark or signature of living organisms is that they work by converting thermodynamic entropy into Shannon entropy? This would mean that although the two entropies belong to non-isomorphic probability spaces, living organisms preeminently possess a mechanism to bring the two probability spaces into direct relations. Indeed, that may be the entire point about what it is that constitutes the difference between a living and non-living system.
This is the problem that Hungarian astrophysicist A. Grandpierre tackles straight on in a forthcoming work. It is perhaps surprising that an astrophysicist would veer into biology. It turns out that his researches into the nature of the Sun suggested that astral bodies are self-organizing systems that actively work against the setting up of thermodynamic equilibrium that would otherwise obtain given initial and boundary conditions. In other words, the Sun is not a “hot ball of gas.” And so the resemblance of the Sun’s observed behavior to anything that we normally perceive as “biological behavior” struck him as an interesting problem.
As for the criteria of “biological behavior” to be applied, Grandpierre primarily draws on Ervin Bauer, a Hungarian theoretical biologist and physicist active during the first part of the 20th century, largely under Soviet auspices. Bauer is little known today. (His work, Theoretical Biology [1935], was published only in German and Russian and, we gather, is out of print anyway.) But we think he will make a come-back. For as far as we know, it was Ervin Bauer who first drew thermodynamics into explicit connection with biological theory, and Grandpierre highly values his insights:
“Living organisms do not tend towards the physical equilibrium related to their initial and boundary conditions, but [at all times] act in order to preserve their distances from the deathly physical equilibrium” predicted by the second law.
This says that, unlike physical systems, living systems move in just the opposite direction from that predicted by the second law: that is, living systems, for as long as possible, are devoted to evading or forestalling the eventual total loss of potential energies for the task of productive work, and thus ultimately “heat death.” But if living systems can counter the second law, then one must ask, how do they do that?
Grandpierre notes that “entropy is a somewhat subtle concept just because it connects two fundamentally different realms, of which only one is usually termed as ‘reality.’ Entropy connects the realms of possibilities with the world of manifested phenomena. If one would guess that possibilities do not exist since they do not belong to the phenomenal world, this would be conceptually confusing at the proper understanding of physical world. The central role of entropy is one of the most fundamental laws of Nature; the second law of thermodynamics tells that possibilities do belong to reality — and determine the direction of development of physical systems.”
“Realizing the possibilities” appears to depend on information. And so,
“[First we must] quantify some biologically fundamental aspects of entropy, information, order, and biological organization. Thermodynamic entropy, S and the entropic distance of the human body from its physical equilibrium at constant internal energy [must be] determined quantitatively, together with the number of microstates related to physical, chemical, and biological macrostates.
“We distinguish between physically and biologically possible states. In physical objects internal energy is redistributed by dissipative processes. In living organisms the Gibbs free energy, G is also redistributed, but not only in the individual degrees of freedom, but also by means of the consecutively coupling action of biological organization, which works on the whole set of all possible collective degrees of freedom.”
From the “here determined quantities [that] shed light on the source of biological information….our calculations show that the relatively high value of S [entropy] enhances the ability of living matter to represent information.”
And thus, by “determining the average information flow of a cell in the human body, and determining the enthalpy of a DNA molecule, we can draw quantitative consequences with regard to the static and dynamic information content of DNA. We estimated that the information necessary to govern the >105 chemical reactions sec–1 cell–1 in the 6*1013 human cells requires >1019 bits sec–1 that cannot be supplied from the static sequential information content of DNA ~109 bits for more than 10–10 sec. Physical self-ordering and biological self-organization represent opposite yet complementary tendencies that together cooperate to serve optimal balance. All these results together show that the source of biological information is ultimately to be found in the Bauer principle, in the same manner as the source of physical information is to be found in the [least-]action principle of physics.”
Elsewhere Grandpierre refers to the Bauer principle as the “life principle.” This has been alternatively termed as the fecundity principle (Swenson), or “the will to live.” It is customary to regard DNA as the information source that drives living systems. But having estimated the gigantic information flow present in the human body, and comparing that with the static information content of DNA, Grandpierre realized that there is something like a 20-orders of magnitude deficit in DNA information as compared with this number. We point out that DNA is the same in every cell of the body; and yet different cells are undergoing all kinds of different reactions, are involving themselves in collective modes (formation of macromolecules, organs, etc.) constantly. Obviously, the relatively low information content of DNA cannot explain the huge variety of functions that are taking place in the human body at every instant of time. Another interesting fact is that an organism’s DNA is exactly the same in a living cell as it is in a dead one. Thus if anything, it appears that DNA primarily works at the level of “physically-possible systems” (which are those that are still operational after death occurs), and so does not appear to be the only or even the main factor in biological self-organization, self-maintenance, etc. In order to be effective in the governance of “biologically-possible systems,” DNA itself must have access to a dynamic information source in order to compensate for the deficit of its static information in terms of driving biological behaviors.
So, where does this dynamic information come from? We are usually criticized for introducing a “pink unicorn” at this stage of the argument, for we propose that biological information is carried by a universal field. And yet the existence of fields is uncontroversial in science. We know that there are particle fields, force fields (e.g., EM, gravitation fields), and the reality of vacuum field is also uncontroversial. The main point about a field is its universal extent. Being universal, it is not an “ordinary” object of 3+1D spacetime. Rather, fields constitute matrices in which events happen, ultimately unifying all world processes into one integrated whole.
Fields apply universally to all points in space/time — every where and every when — thus they are neither time-restricted nor spatial coordinate restricted.
Grandpierre argues that, in addition to the other fields identified by science, there is also a “biofield” or an organic zero-point vacuum field that is the carrier of biological information. An analogy might help to explicate the theory. The Internet is a “universal” information field that can be accessed by anyone who has the proper equipment. There are often cases when communications are sent to us over the Internet. DNA stands for the particular “address” at which we can be successfully contacted; DNA is “smart enough” to be a router for incoming information addressed specifically to a particular receiver. And its presence as a router is necessary; otherwise, information being addressed to us would have no efficient way to reach us and, thus, to do us any good.
One might speculate that the physical laws, being also universal in extent and application, may similarly be field-carried phenomena in this sense.
In any case, when we speak of a “netherworld of yet-unrealized possibilities” occasioned by a re-imagined second law, are we not speaking of potentially real things that have to reside somewhere, because they represent states of potentiality that may become actualized? If this “netherworld” is of universal extent, then it would need a field to carry it.
In the space of a short article, we can only briefly touch on the arguments advanced by Dr. Grandpierre and his associates. If you have an interest in looking at his research, the Journal of Theoretical Biology may soon publish an article of his (working title: “Thermodynamic Entropy and Biological Information”) which richly details the merest sketch of certain key points given above, and a wealth of others besides.
"If someone were to propose that the planets go around the sun because all planet matter has a kind of tendency for movement, a kind of motility, let us call it an 'oomph', this theory could explain a number of other phenomena as well. So this is a good theory, is it not? No. It is nowhere near as good as the proposition that the planets move around the sun under the influence of a central force which varies exactly inversely as the square of the distance from the center. The second theory is better because it is so specific; it is so obviously unlikely to be the result of chance. It is so definite that the barest error in the movement can show that it is wrong; but the planets could wobble all over the place, and, according to the first theory, you could say, 'Well, that is the funny behavior of the "oomph".'"The "universal mind field" only "explains" things because you can attribute any properties to it you choose to imagine. Fairies would be equally useful as an explanatory mechanism.( Richard Feynmann, "The Meaning of It All", New York: Perseus Press, 1999, pp. 19-20. )
No way to argue with the great Feynmann regarding this remark. But please note it pertains to the movements of physical bodies. We are speaking of animate systems, i.e., living systems. They do not move like physical bodies. A chief difference is they can modify their behavior, change their paths. Physical bodies do not self-initiate their motions, they do not "intend" their own behavior. Their motions turn out to be those predicted by the physical laws.
Indeed, Ichneumon, this distinction is essential, and what largely motivated the writing of this piece.
I want to repeat it:
"Ommph -- the funny behaviour! Is that well said? You could theorize it in the first place. "D'accord. I'll plan it to wobble over." The wrong show, bared arses in movement. Definitely it! Chance results to be unlikely, obviouslty, so specify better because secondary center squares are distant. In verse exact variances force central influences. Understand? Round moves planned that proposed as good as near nowhere. On ton the ryes this is well. Ooomph, and it calls us. More 'til kind! Move ten, Dennis, kindly! Hazmat or play net. All causes be sunny. Gerund stun lap -- that porpoise wears someone. -- Fey"Time!
Another draft, barkeep!
There are many ways to weave a cohesive and functionable narrative. Lord Kelvin was wrong to insist on numbers for Hook did it with verse and cypher.
A few years later over in France another man did it with a loom, and his flowers so loomed spawned an evolution of ideas that today are King of all the methods.
Yes there is evolution. Ideas evolve and designers incorporate them.
Ah!!! Haunting shades of Dr. Seuss!!!
I was raised on that dude. Plus a few others, notably Walter Farley (when I got old enough).
Biological organization is physical ordering. Both, which are physical ordering, are accompanied by an increase in entropy.
"Elitzur (1993) points out, “the most essential attribute of randomness is the absence of connection between the states of the system’s components.”
No, in reality, the idea of randomness is always associated with a particular interaction governed by physical laws. That is fundamental. The value of the variables in the interaction have a certain spread that depends the sensitivity of the interaction and other minor external effects. Absence of connection is trivial and means just that. In biology, physics, chemistry and structure are the connection.
" ...if you think that only material, physical, tangible entities are real." If it's not physical, then it doesn't exist. The tangible intellectual constructs of a sentient, conscious being have a physical basis as the machinery of the being. W/o that machinery, their is nothing tangible, or real. "then the physical laws must possess an informative content. And there’s another very interesting thing about the physical laws: They are in the main all laws of conservation. It has been observed that the amount of information required for conservation of a system seems not to be high, at least in comparison with the amount of information needed for a system to organize itself, modify its behavior, develop, evolve"
The amount of information needed for a physical system to organize itself is contained within the laws of physics. In particular the chemistry and structure that determine the interactions, rest entirely on the laws of physics. The paritculars of the chemistry of organic compounds allow life to emerge given the physics and chemistry of all else. The law of entropy includes. that if it can happen, it will.
"The laws of physics … are algorithmically very simple; they contain relatively little information."
Davies ignores too much of what information is contained in the physical world. Thus his conclusion, " Consequently they cannot on their own be responsible for creating informational macromolecules.", is NG. As is, "Life works its magic not by bowing to the directionality of chemistry, but by circumventing what is chemically and thermodynamically ‘natural.’ Of course, organisms must comply with the laws of physics and chemistry, but these laws are only incidental to biology.” Life circumvents none of it. The machine came about, because the laws of physics and chemistry were followed absolutely. THe laws are not incidental, they are absolutely how the machine came about and govern it's workings completely.
"There is a need to account for, not only the fact that life cannot be exhaustively explained in terms of what is “chemically and thermodynamically ‘natural’”; but even more importantly, that life seems to work to counter the outcomes predicted by the physical laws."
Life may seem counter to the physical laws, but only because of a failure to know and understand both. The fact that you can't exhaustively explain something means nothing as far as the reality of it goes. It only means you can't explain it, which says nothing about whether, or not you ever will be able to explain it.
"Boltzmann, whose hypothesis was that the second law is a law of disorder, of chaos."
Boltzman beleived in S=kln(omega), where omega is the number of states available. The concepts of disorder, or chaos have nothing to do with omega. They are qualitative concepts that have no validity, other than qualifying some particular reality. The reality itself is well ordered.
"But what if the sine qua non hallmark or signature of living organisms is that they work by converting thermodynamic entropy into Shannon entropy? This would mean that although the two entropies belong to non-isomorphic probability spaces, living organisms preeminently possess a mechanism to bring the two probability spaces into direct relations."
Shannon entropy refers to the state of some detector. It starts out huge and ends up small, or zero, when some input places it in a particular state. If the Shannon machine is working, Shannon's law says the entropy must decrease in an "interaction". Shannon's entropy is subjective, not objective, and as such they remain independent. Shannon's entropy depends on a sentient being's determination, based on his own qualification and choices-subjective. Physical entropy depends on physics-objective.
"“Living organisms do not tend towards the physical equilibrium related to their initial and boundary conditions, but [at all times] act in order to preserve their distances from the deathly physical equilibrium” predicted by the second law."
The at all times part is not true. The organism acts according to it's composition arranged machinery. A helper T-cell will engulf an AIDs particle and a smoker might continue. An engine will run as long as it's gassed up and oiled, until it wears out. The wears out part renders Bauers principle moot.
"All these results together show that the source of biological information is ultimately to be found in the Bauer principle, in the same manner as the source of physical information is to be found in the [least-]action principle of physics.”
The action principle applies to all biology.
"Grandpierre argues that, in addition to the other fields identified by science, there is also a “biofield” or an organic zero-point vacuum field that is the carrier of biological information. An analogy might help to explicate the theory. The Internet is a “universal” information field that can be accessed by anyone who has the proper equipment."
The internet and it's posters, observers ect all rely on physics. Nothing more needs to be supposed. There is no biofeild, because it can be shown that it is not independent of other fields. ie. QED, or those contained in the standard model. That is, because biochem accounts for life.
"DNA is “smart enough” to be a router for incoming information addressed specifically to a particular receiver. "
DNA is not even in the picture when someone's consciousness is tossed in the garbage with amphetamine.
I always remember the teaching, "remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." So many try to prove that God exists by grasping, pleading and handwaving. It's all for naught. Here's what God said about it in Matt 16:1- "The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and tested him by asking him to show them a sign from heaven.
He replied, “When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,’ and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Jesus then left them and went away."
The sign of Jonah is the Holy Spirit, the Bread(of life) prayed for in the Lord's prayer. There is nothing else to be found outside of what He taught when He came here to teach. When you look at man scientifically, all you will find is a machine made of dust. That's a machine made with the capacities of God, in the likeness of God.
Since God is real, He also has a physical makeup. That is hidden and will not be uncovered. That is the meaning of the churubim waving the flaming sword barring return to the garden and Matt16.
The spirit of one's life is not the machine, but the tangible principles, holdings, beleifs, ect of one's life. There is no spirit, or soul driving the physics and resulting in, or providing for consciousness. The physics is the dust that gives you the capacity to create and drive your spirit. Jesus recreated the Spirit of God within Him as a man. His soul came first and was the Father. A man's soul comes later and has the Spirit created by the man. In the image and likeness of God means man is also a trinity. That is, because He was created to have eternal life.
Another interpretation of the law of entropy states that if it can happen, it might happen.
Nobody here that I know of is arguing that living systems do not have a necessary physical basis that properly is subject to the laws of chemistry and thermodynamics.
The proposal here is that life cannot be explained or accounted for at that level of physical or material description. Something other than or beyond the physical laws must be at work in order for the production of what we see all around us in nature to take place in the first place.
A work in progress, spunkets. Thanks truly for your collaboration.
Scriptures and Jewish tradition speaks of the soul and spirit in four levels as follows:
2. ruach - the self-will or free will peculiar to man (abstraction, anticipation, intention, etc.) – by Jewish tradition, the pivot wherein a man decides to be Godly minded or earthy minded (also related to Romans 8, choosing)
3. neshama - the breath of God given to Adam (Genesis 2:7) which may also be seen as the “ears to hear” (John 10) - a sense of belonging beyond space/time, a predisposition to seek God and seek answers to the deep questions such as “what is the meaning of life?"
4. ruach Elohim - the Holy Spirit (Genesis 1:2) which indwells Christians (I Cor 2, John 3) – the presently existing in the “beyond” while still in the flesh. (Col 3:3) This is the life in passage you quoted: "In him was life, and the life was the light of men..." (John 1)
The “self-will” is in the domain of the ongoing inter-disciplinary studies of consciousness and the mind. The monist view would be that consciousness (as well as the soul) are merely an epiphenomenon of the physical brain. Qualia speaks against such a conclusion. Qualia are the properties of sensory experiences which are epistemically unknowable in the absence of direct experience of them and therefore, are also incommunicable. Examples include likes and dislikes, pain and pleasure, love and hate, good and evil.
Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed [it] unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: - Romans 1:19-20
On a previous thread we were splitting rocks and rabbits until it got ridiculous. At the lowest level, they are comprised of geometry (space/time coordinates), fields, particles - and yet at a higher level one is non-life and the other lives.
Moreover, that will to live is evident in the molecular machinery (cardiovascular, neural, digestive, etc.) which comprises the rabbit - each functionally integrated with another to serve the higher organism, the rabbit's will to live.
As you say - intention, behavior, boundaries...
Non sequitur of the day. That made no sense whatsoever. Sigh...
Also, when uncertainty has been reduced in molecular machines going from a before state to an after state, there is a dissipation of energy in the local surroundings - paying the thermodynamic entropy "tab".
Information is the reduction of uncertainty (Shannon entropy) in a receiver or molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state - the action, not the message. The DNA (message) is as good dead as alive. Personally, I like to use the term "successful communication" to describe information in biological systems to avoid confusion as many people have a tendency to think of information in terms of the message, its value or content. The value or content of a message is completely irrelevant to Shannon's mathematical theory of communications.
For Lurkers:
Information Theory and Molecular Biology
Hmmm. An abstract. Or “Cliff’s Notes!” Should be doable (just please don’t ask for a specific delivery date just now.)
How does DNA "tap" into the force field of life? is a question that came to my mind, but I'm not sure I'm imagining in the right direction.
I think you’re imagining in the right direction. At least, information theory seems to be going in that direction. As to how DNA “taps” into the putative (organic or biological) vacuum field, I gather the best candidate to effect a “successful communication” in the Shannon sense is photon exchange. One current proposal avers that biological organisms, in self-organizing themselves, form into “collective degrees of freedom” what were formerly the individual degrees of freedom pertaining to their constituent parts. [For an individual atom, a basic constituent part, there are said to be 3 degrees of freedom corresponding to the three spatial dimensions of our 4D block.] Putting it in simple and probably much too general language, this process liberates free electrons, which in turn potentially emit photons. The couplings between such photons and “virtual” photons emitted by the vacuum field constitutes the basis of information transmission in the natural world.
That is a theory subject to test. It firmly resides within the sphere of science to test it.
But the following is another sort of question, xzins:
"In him was life, and the life was the light of men..." Any "life" given us is a share in a field of already existing life?
We here cross over from the “natural sciences” (Naturwissenschaft in the German language — denoting the natural sciences of physics, chemistry, mechanics, etc., side of the so-called “Cartesian split”) into the “humanities” side (the Geisteswissenchaft, or sciences of the “Spirit” — including theology, philosophy, history, music, literature, the arts, etc.).
As you have probably noticed, in our modern age, these two great historical branches of human knowledge are scrupulously separated. Or so it is thought. But the real point is, the great Cartesian divide has always been an “artificial one”; and the proof is, it is the rarest and most scrupulous adherent of the methods of Naturwissenschaft who proves totally immune to the impulses that come from the (putatively now disgraced and forbidden) Geisteswissenschaften side of Wissenschaft — the German word for the unification of the totality of extant human knowledge. (There is no like word in English.)
We point out in the lead essay that, in short, “scientific” materialism is a philosophy. IMHO that statement is completely accurate. So even science “sins” by communing with the “other side of the great epistemic divide,” even if only subconsciously or unconsciously. But I digress from your question.
Which was: “[Is] any ‘life’ given us … a share in a field of already existing life?” The only answer I could give to this question would not be a scientific answer. It wouldn’t be an original answer either. I guess you’d have to qualify it as a theological answer meditated by a humble Christian soul: God is Life. All life is a participation in Him. Now and forever. And the Logos is the Son of God, the Word “who was God and who was with God” in the beginning, and got the world started, and by means of Whom the world is continuously nurtured and redeemed.
Sir Isaac Newton evidently held that the production of all the contents of the Universe living and non-living proceeded from the presence of “the Lord of Life with His creatures.” Newton never included a field in his thinking as far as I know. Even though he did designate the “region” wherein the Lord of Life came into contact with His creatures as the sensorium Dei. Which — I can’t help it!!! — looks like a potential candidate for a “field” to me!
Like I said, this is not a scientific answer for the simple reason that it cannot be validated by means of scientific method (i.e., is not falsifiable, and in any case would probably “predict” nothing even if validated).
But it seems to me that if we humans ever reach the point where this question is widely discounted as risible/irrelevant, we would all be in seriously deep trouble. FWIW.
Thanks so much for writing, xzins.
So very sorry to hear that, dear tortoise. I wish I knew of a way to make this hypothesis clear for you. After all, it's just a hypothesis -- it won't bite you!
Crystals for sale! Git your fancy make you look ignorant and stupid crystals here!
"Darwin studiously avoided abiogenesis in his major works — hence the insistence on the forum that the “theory of evolution” does not include abiogenesis. Perhaps his avoidance of the issue was for political reasons, we don’t know"
Perhaps abiogenesis is not in the theory of evolution, because it is not part of the theory!
Perhaps Darwin was smarter than the average semi-literate creationist. Darwin was not as money grubbing as the creationist scam artists who promote nonsense to make Christians look stupid.
IOW, molecular happiness.
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