Where did life come from?
hideNatural selection explains how organisms that already exist evolve in response to changes in their environment. But Darwin’s theory is silent on how organisms came into being in the first place, which he considered a deep mystery. What creates life out of the inanimate compounds that make up living things? No one knows. How were the first organisms assembled? Nature hasn’t given us the slightest hint.
If anything, the mystery has deepened over time. After all, if life began unaided under primordial conditions in a natural system containing zero knowledge, then it should be possible - it should be easy - to create life in a laboratory today. But determined attempts have failed. International fame, a likely Nobel Prize, and $1 million from the Gene Emergence Project await the researcher who makes life on a lab bench. Still, no one has come close.
Experiments have created some basic materials of life. Famously, in 1952 Harold Urey and Stanley Miller mixed the elements thought to exist in Earth’s primordial atmosphere, exposed them to electricity to simulate lightning, and found that amino acids self-assembled in the researchers’ test tubes. Amino acids are essential to life. But the ones in the 1952 experiment did not come to life. Building-block compounds have been shown to result from many natural processes; they even float in huge clouds in space. But no test has given any indication of how they begin to live - or how, in early tentative forms, they could have resisted being frozen or fried by Earth’s harsh prehistoric conditions.
Some researchers have backed the hypothesis that an unknown primordial “soup” of naturally occurring chemicals was able to self-organize and become animate through a natural mechanism that no longer exists. Some advance the “RNA first” idea, which holds that RNA formed and lived on its own before DNA - but that doesn’t explain where the RNA came from. Others suppose life began around hot deep-sea vents, where very high temperatures and pressures cause a chemical maelstrom. Still others have proposed that some as-yet-unknown natural law causes complexity - and that when this natural law is discovered, the origin of life will become imaginable.
Did God or some other higher being create life? Did it begin on another world, to be transported later to ours? Until such time as a wholly natural origin of life is found, these questions have power. We’re improbable, we’re here, and we have no idea why. Or how.
Gregg Easterbrook, author of The Progress Paradox
Return to Big Questions: http://www.wired.com/42
Although scientists have never been able to create "life" by executing the following "recipe" in a lab, some believe there's a simple answer. Let's take it gently.
- But remember, no one has ever been able to create life in a lab by combining chemicals, zapping it with electricity, or any other such method.
- Some say it's reasonable to think the process of TheGameOfLife and similar automata are indeed life created in a lab. It depends on the answer to the question, What is life?
RNA from PhaseSpace.
Life is a kind of order that can only arise by performing work as described by the LawsOfThermoDynamics. This work is performed by means of a heat pump. There's a hot spot in an otherwise cool sky, and that means enthalpy, the converse of entropy. Enthalpy is a difference in available energy - something like a difference in temperature.
There's also enthalpy due to geothermal processes inside the Earth. In fact the mass of bacterial life down there far outweighs the mass of us multi-cell weirdos on the surface. Enthalpy powers the tendency of processes to differentiate into clumps and subclumps. The "cream" rises to the "top".
Under commonplace terrestrial conditions there are several atoms whose combinations are more promiscuous and variable than others. These are Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen. Combinations of these form an alphabet of compound molecules, some of which tend to bind together in repetitively structured sequences.
Pools of similar compound molecules occur due to enthalpy in the "cream". You may think of such a pool as a kind of PhaseSpace of combinations of the repeating elements. Like any Phase Space, this has attractors and repellors. One attractor is the RNA molecule, a sequential combination of the compounds Adenosine, Guanine, Cytosine, and Uracil. (http://www.panspermia.org/rnaworld.htm)
RNA is a dominant attractor because RNA molecules autocatalyze - once one forms, others tend to form around it. This is caused by the physics of EnergyMinimization. Not only does RNA autocatalyze, but a primordial system of RNA polymers might have been able to catalyze copies of themselves (additional polymers with the same order of compounds - of ACG and U).
(Note, however, that at this point such a capability is still hypothetical. Laboratory experiments have evolved RNA polymerases made from RNA, but with only limited success so far, producing molecules that can replicate just a very short sequence of bases).
Indeed you can still find pools of RNA in the wild, in clay sediments, happily polymerizing themselves en masse. But RNA strands are fragile. It doesn't take much for them to spontaneously bust apart, and then reassemble in another order.
RNA, Protein, DNA
So we observe pools full of these molecules copying and recombining. But there are other reactions than just copying, and RNA can catalyze these too. Because the RNA occurs in strands, the catalyzed molecules are also generated in strands, but many of these will fold up into other shapes as energy minimization occurs. And many of these shapes are much more stable than RNA. The most common of these are sequences of peptides called "proteins".
So RNA sequences and their corresponding proteins form a more complex PhaseSpace. Different combinations are more or less efficient at replicating, and more or less stable over time, and so are replicated more or less often. Attractors here are self-reproducing combinations of RNA and protein.
As conditions vary, one or another of these attractors comes to dominate the population of compound molecules in the pool. But forms are still extremely variable, and no compound can both last for long and also reproduce. Well, almost no compound. There is a stable compound that, while it can't spontaneously copy itself, is able to catalyze RNA molecules with a similar structure to itself.
In fact this molecule is just a variant of RNA, with Thymine instead of Uracil, and it might have been catalyzed by RNA almost as easily as RNA might have catalyzed copies of itself. When two complementary strands of this stuff occur, EnergyMinimization causes them to be attracted to one another in the shape of a double helix. This is DNA.
The OriginOfSpecies
DNA can't easily self-reproduce like RNA. But it's much more stable, and it catalyzes RNA transcripts very efficiently. So once a DNA molecule forms in the PhaseSpace of RNA recombinations, its structure serves as an attractor for the structure of RNAs. These numerous similar RNAs slowly produce more copies of the DNA. This copying is not very efficient compared to what happens inside your cells because neither RNA nor DNA by themselves form many shapes except for fibres.
But they catalyze peptides into structures that make other shapes. The more efficient DNA/RNA sequences catalyze proteins that fold up into shapes that make it easier for their DNA to replicate. So now we have complexes of all three, and a new PhaseSpace of combinations.
Bear in mind we're not talking about life, yet, just a pool of promiscuously catalyzing molecules. Inevitably certain combinations tend to be more efficient replicators of themselves than others.
Some molecules can enzymatically cut and destroy others. This is to say that their interaction, due again to EnergyMinimization, tends to cause the one complex to persist and the other to break apart. Efficient replicators don't contain self-destructive elements so that they don't break themselves apart before replicating.
Still more efficient replicators localize such elements so that they will apply only to other, different replicators. Remember that we have a very large pool of very numerous variations. This may be the actual OriginOfSpecies - the development of the ability of replicators to inhibit or destroy molecules that are not copies of their own molecules.
Sex and Death
So far all this work is driven by temperature differentials - enthalpy - caused by that hot spot in the cooler sky, or that hot spot in the cooler crust. But more efficient replicators can actually store a potential for doing work within their own structures. This allows them to replicate even when ambient enthalpy is not available.
Even more efficient replicators than these will do work, not just to replicate themselves, but to disperse their replications. Replicators that do this will continue to replicate even when local access to enthalpy disappears - the pool dries up or the geothermal vent closes.
And so we have another PhaseSpace, this one of replicators spooging themselves in all directions. Attractors here are for replicators that spooge most efficiently - in the direction of sources of enthalpy, and away from conditions of entropy. Again it's those that do this that become more numerous than the others.
Another attractor is the ability to consume enthalpy from the molecules stored inside other kinds of replicators, and to share it with replicators of your own kind. More efficient replicators share not only enthalpy, but DNA information, recombining it to communicate new reproductive advantages as these develop.
At first DNA is swapped freely. But here's yet another PhaseSpace with attractors and repellors. Those replicators that maintain their reproductive advantages by sharing DNA information only with others including complementary information are more efficient than them that recombine information more freely.
And on it goes. Any evolutionary biology textbook tells you what's next. It's always the same game - no particular intent for particular forms, but the emergence of form from the dominance of attractors in PhaseSpace s of combinations of replicators. TheGameOfLife.
Non-organic Lifeforms
Eventually these replicating processes share information without necessarily swapping DNA, first by means of grunts and gestures, then by signs and symbols. Publishing and politics occur. Here is another PhaseSpace, this one of signals, and its attractors include every religion, political persuasion, and brandname. The FeedbackEffect.
Still all of this evolutionary iteration and refinement of information is the inevitable work of a consistent availability of enthalpy - the hot spot in the sky and the hot spot beneath our feet. In fact some folk think the laws of nature themselves are an attractor in a PhaseSpace of possible fundamental physics. This is the essence of the AnthropicPrinciple.
But there are likely other games being played elsewhere. There are certainly other bases that fit in DNA/RNA apart from the ones that we use. There may be completely different carbon based combos that would work as well or better. Under very different chemical conditions there might even be Silicon based replicators that could better play the TheGameOfLife
I doubt that it will ever be possible to reproduce life like it exists on Earth exactly. IMO it is not only a matter of physical and chemical conditions but also of time (hundreds of millions of years) and space (a whole planet). Only very very rare events repeatedly lead to the accidental formation of structures complex enough to "live". In a laboratory we would probably have to wait trillions of years to see such things happen. And there is no way to quicken the process...
So why would it be less feasible that life was simply not an accident. Nothing occurs out of nothing. Mathematics proves that. (edit) Natural selection is does not happen by "accident" as some claim. Random genetic mutation is the way the system evolved to work. Your number of 20,000 years is not only contrary to Genesis (6000 years) but also contrary to radio carbon dating of archeological evidence. Human existance has been established at a minimum of 40,000 years ago to 50,000 - 150,000 years ago. 50,000 being when human migrations left Ethopia, 150,000 being the oldest dated female Homo sapiens. (end edit)
There is no mystery here. Open your Bible and become an unintelligent, well misinformed person.
Just because we can't explain something today does not necessarily derive that it cannot be explained. To argue that lack of explanation means we must except a dubious alternative (in this case, religion) for answers is a classic logical falacy. Consider the harsh cirticism and persecution early scientists endured when they advanced the then heretical concept that the earth was round and that it revolved around the sun and not vice-versa.
It's very telling that even in Judaism (the great authors of the Torah), they believe much of the Bible is actually allegorical and not to be taken literally.
Jim Hare - a recovering fundamentalist
contributed by on Jan 24 9:09am
In the grand view, the Earth's history is relatively young. Much of the early history of the Earth involved bombardment by numerous types of extraterrestrial materials. If the building blocks of carbon based life are common in the universe, it would hold that some form of privative life could have arrived on Earth through this process and started the long road to the diversity of life of our world.
contributed by on Jan 24 9:10am
To believe that the life we see on Earth today is derived from a "very, very rare" set of events spanned over "hundreds of millions of years" is just as much a religious viewpoint because it takes faith in those events way back then. It takes faith to believe in evolution - much more, in fact than creationism.
Has there ever been an instance of a species naturally evolving into another totally new species since we've been able to observe and record our natural world? Even a hint? No, not even close and yet this theory is passed off to our children as scientific fact. One of the fundamental tenants of the Scientific Method is that the proof is in reproducibility and observability. The statistical improbabilities alone should discount this from ever making it past the most basic of scientific litmus tests.
What drives the evolutionists crazy is that conceding the more plausible explanation of creationism moves them further and further into things they can't explain. But make no mistake about it - evolution is a faith, not a science. Just ask the question, "How do you know that life evolved the way you say?" The answer that comes back - "We don't KNOW exactly because we weren't there to see it happen." Not only that, but the puzzle pieces that link all of the steps together are based on that faith - therefore making the whole lot of it just a belief system and a world view that has grossly been misrepresented as science.
So to me, evolution is a more "dubious" alternative than creationism - at least everything has an explanation.
contributed by on Jan 24 12:55pm
Sorry, I cannot accept your conclusion. I accept the fact that we do not know the past with certainty, without a time machine and all, and so there is doubt about the sequence of events that led to life; that said, if the question is "how come there is organization (life) rather than not", creationism is not an explanation. All it is saying is that one form of organization (life) is due to another form of organization (god), and that leaves the question totally unanswered, or rather pushed back slightly: why organization (god) rather than none? (Same problem with simple panspermia theories, incidentally.) Now, some (non-literal) form of creationism might even be right, for all we (don't) know; it would still not be an explanation, but would require one. However, we have some tentative scientific explanations that feel plausible to me (read Prigogine) and I personally prefer that, dubious as it is, to a non-explanatory theory without much evidence. (that of course is a matter of further debate.) Though I understand that some people might feel otherwise. As long as you don't entertain the illusion that you've explained anything. Cheers,
contributed by on Feb 5 5:00am
The first Commentator is absolutely right that time is an important factor. All the Building blocks of life were there when life first started, (because otherwise i wouldn't be here typing this). However, another often overlooked factor is luck. And i by no means mean that natural selection has anything to do with luck. The question is ofcourse how much luck would be reasonable to factor in for the beginning of life. I (and many others) would argue for an almost insane amount of luck! The reason for this is that if you consider the amount of planets with the pre-requisits for life, and the amount of time that has passed and the fact that life has obviously sprung up on atleast one of these planets (ours!) it would seem that it was almost inevitable for life to appear, and i would be very surprised if our planet was the only one where it did. The problem lies in the fact that humans have a very low probability to witness or test this "luck" since our lifespans are extremely short and our definition of luck very low aswell.
Consider being dealt a straight flush in cards, many would consider that to be close to unbelievably lucky, now consider living for a very very long time,(oh i don't know, how about the estimated time since time came into existence to the origin of life) you play cards a fair deal throughout these two "lifetimes". Even though the regular-lifespan person would consider himself incredibly lucky for getting the straight flush the beginning-of-time person would probably be dealt the straight flush several times.
I realize that the "religious" claims so far have been ironic, but for future reference i agree. Just because you can't prove (or in some cases even explain) something doesn't mean you should believe in something that would require even more explaining.
// Chris
contributed by on Jan 24 1:18pm
I really don't want to see this thread devolve into a creationism debate. I'll just say that human beings have an incredibly poor innate understanding of probability and what is possible given large expanses of time. To dismiss the importance of rare events simply because you don't think they are going to happen is just ignorant. I really wish creationists would stop hiding behind this argument, because all it does is reveal how juvenile their arguments are.
Plus your post is off topic. Darwin got it exactly right when he said his theory cannot account for how life arose. Evolution has absolutely nothing to do with the origin of life, so quit muddying the waters.
(edit) though you are absolutely right about human beings poor innate understanding of probability and what is possible given large expanses of time (which "Chris" goes into more detail on) Evolution might have something to do with the origin of life, like the Cairns-Smith "clay" Theory (/edit)
contributed by on Jan 24 1:27pm
God.
(edit) Some proof for your claim would be nice. (end edit)
contributed by on Jan 24 1:45pm
We can see that a set of physical laws and properties can lead to structure in the right conditions. A snowflake may be a good example. It clearly has structure but has appeared as it is purely because of the properties of it's constituents and the properties of the environment it is in.
Of course, a snowflake has a vastly different level of complexity to the things we consider the building blocks of life. However as a principal the ability of a structure to form out of "nothing" should not seem fundamentally absurd because we see it all the time.
contributed by on Jan 24 1:50pm
Snowflakes don't form out of "nothing" - they form from water...another highly structured element. I don't think you are suggesting that the snowflake "evolved" from a water droplet and therefore created a new element - that would be absurd.
As for the theory of evolution not being presented as the explanation of the origin of life - it must have been some years since you were in school my friend. That's exactly what's being taught - in fact, it's the only thing. Let's just agree that the theory of evolution is at best a faith-based guess with very little true scientific backbone. And the same can be said for creationism - the difference is that evolution is passed off as science - a trick that tries to free it from skepticism and scrutiny.
(edit) If you look into evolution you will find that there is a mountain of evidence supporting it. (/edit)
contributed by on Jan 24 2:22pm
Do you believe that chemicals compounds have properties, that these properties gives them what can be called behaviors (they attach naturally to some, repel to others, etc), this is organization, well, given this properties of matter, A LOT of time and A LOT of matter, I can perfectly infer that there will come a time when some of this chemical reactions start to replicate itself, then over time mutate, and become more complex, etc.
contributed by on Jan 30 1:39pm
Canadian astrophysicist Dcotor P looks at this question in his video show Spacegeek, in the episode entitled Ice Cream Trucks in Outer Space.
Its really about a hypothesis called panspermia.
contributed by on Jan 31 3:45pm
Well, life itself? Came from God. No other explanation. Sure people can say that organisms, just 'happen' to come about by some huge stroke of luck, and evolve into what life is today. But don't you think that is a little far fetched. Grasping at straws is what I think. There is too much that life depends on to think that it come from happenstance. If life was totally randomized, then explain symmetry. Explain a need for vitamins, or water, or substance. Explain a need to survive. Randomized luck does not explain the complexities that we live in. It's a cop out.
contributed by on Feb 5 7:17am
Some folks don't like the explanation that "In the beginning God created" (Gen 1:1). However that doesn't mean it is a false statement. God doesn't need to be approved by his creation. In fact, he requires us to approach him by faith, without scientific proof. Why? because the things that are created clearly declare he exists - read (Romans 1:20). The creation declares the glory of God and his designing hand. If we choose not to see that evidence as we look upon it, then it will seem foolishness to us. On the other hand, if we give faith a chance, He will meet us there in our hearts.
God always deals at the heart.
ChuckSchwandt.com
contributed by on Feb 5 7:22am
That doesn't mean it's true either. Throughout the centuries, the "God of the gaps" has gotten smaller and smaller as we've come to find explanations for things that were heretofore considered "miracles" or "acts of God". Such things as sickness, plague, hurricanes, gravity, etc were all thought to be acts of a creator which can now be explained in scientific terms. Now, does that mean that there is not some God out there who wrote these rules? No, that is always a possibility, I'm just saying that as time passes there is less and less that we fail to understand and soon I believe this question will be one of them.
God gave us minds, he expects us to use them to "test everything to make sure that it is good". Otherwise, we're no more than cult members. If we eschew logic for pure faith, how does that make us different from any other religion? Christians have no problems attacking the historical accuracy or logical accuracy of Mormanism, or Islam, but when it comes to questioning their dogma, all of the sudden it takes faith, and when you present them with logical flaws and contradictions that seem to expose the weakness, it boils down to "god's ways are different than our ways" or worse yet "if you had the Holy Spirit you'd understand..."
To step back a moment in time, as well, and answer the one fellow who said, "evolution is as much a religion as creationism", that is not so. By the same theorum, atomic theory would be by faith. People think the term "theory" is some nebulous guess with no backing whatsoever. What they fail to realize is it takes a LOT of scientific scrutiny to become a theory in the first place. Otherwise, it's just a hypothesis. There are many theories that we take advantage of every day that we count on to be true and accept to be true because of the overwhelming logical evidence for them. Evolution does have a mountain of evidence in its favor, enough to raise it to theory status. However, the "spark" of what created life is still to be determined -- and in fact Darwin never sought to address that at all.
The place where creationism and evolutionism diverge is to accept creationism, you must accept on PURE faith that a creator put all things into being in 6 days (hence the earth only being roughly 5000 years old) even though a plethora of scientific evidence proves this to be unworkable at any means. Evolution has knowledge gaps, but the evidence much more strongly supports it. It is curious that young earthers take so much time to attempt to find scientific proofs of the youngness of the Earth when they seem to totally disavow all scientific evidence supporting evolution.
But they have to, if you don't have a literal Genesis account ehn you don't have the fall of man, and if you don't have the fall of man then you don't have original sin, and if you don't have original sin and the inherent "evilness" of man, there is no need for salvation. It's curious that the Jewish people have NO concept of original sin or the inability of man to save himself, that's all inventions of Paul and later Christian fathers. Perhaps that's why the Jews are much more willing to accept the gensis creation account as alegorical.
Stephen Roberts said it best, I think, "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
check: adon olam
_contributed by on Feb 5 7:48am _
I have heard the begining explained, and did not understand. Then I found this explanation and understood.
Consider the following parable:
“Once upon a point of infinite density, Nothing that was Something went ‘Boom!’ Then there was Everything. Everything eventually named Something ‘Matter,’ the tragic character in our story. Sadly, Matter had no mind, yet this makes our tale all the more amazing!”
“Now matter had only one companion, the hero of our fable, a mysterious stranger of unknown origin called Chance. Chance, though blind, was a brilliant artist. Chance taught mindless Matter to paint and paint our pupil did. Matter painted a universe from center to rim on the canvas of a vacuum. And lo, innumerable galaxies emerged filled with infinite wonders, beauty, order, and life. The inspired brush strokes of ignorant Matter, guided by the hands of blind Chance, created together a cosmic masterpiece. But as Matter and Chance were working away they failed to spot out the villain called Time. Time crept in unnoticed back at the boom and was extremely wound up about being stirred from his sleep. Time determined there and then to wind down again and thus rub the masterpiece out—as soon as he got hold of that Chance! Chance, being blind, didn’t see Time coming and mindless Matter was helpless to intervene.”
“Now, Time ruins the painting little by little and brags that by Chance it’s just a Matter of Time before the canvas is blank and the boom will swoon and Everything that was Something will be Nothing again, once more upon a pointless point of infinite nothingness, with no Time for Chance to Matter anymore.”
contributed by on Feb 5 8:29am
God chose to be found by faith - interesting isn't it? He could have chosen another way. But He chose FAITH as his royal pathway to be found by man. In fact the scripture says: "it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe" (1 cor 1:21). He set it up that way. So We believers are simply the messengers. Someone said it this way - we are all hungry beggers just showing other beggers where they can find bread. I do take my sharing very responsibly, knowing that human beings are precious to God.
contributed by on Feb 5 9:15am
So many people here are saying that God must have created life because life happening on its own is too unlikely. To those people I say this, consider how big the universe is. Think of the probability of life evolving here. Surely it should become clear that if it is unlikely (but still possible) that life could happen here, then it is almost certain to happen somewhere in the universe (e.g. here)
Whatever one gets in a laboratory by "random" processes, one will still need an intelligence to step into the process and separate the laevorotary from dextrarotary amino acids or one has nothing but a paramecium's stew. By definition, intelligence must be present at the formation of life. Without it, life does not happen. It really is just that simple. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" says as much, only adding who did the screening.
A long time ago a group of scientists called the Elohim came to Earth to create life.
Using DNA and genetic engineering they created all life forms on Earth,
including: plants, animals and eventually human beings,
literally in their own image.
Respecting us as individuals with the freedom to choose
they decided to let us progress by ourselves without direct intervention,
but has maintain contact with humanity through their messengers,
the prophets, such as Moses, Jesus, Muhammad and Buddha.
The prophets were sent to guide humanity towards a time
where we will be able to understand our origins scientifically.
This time was referred to in the Bible as
The Apocalypse or The age of revelation.
After the first atomic bomb was dropped in Japan in 1945,
the Elohim decided to give their final message to humanity.
In 1973 a man called Rael had a face-to-face encounter with an Eloha,
during that time the final message was dictated to Rael
and he was asked to make the message known throughout the world
without trying to convince anyone.
The message contains the description of humanity's past,
our potential futures and
techniques for raising our level of consciousness.
The message also contain instructions for building of an Embassy,
where it will serve as the official place
to welcome back the Elohim on Earth before the year 2035 ends.
Is it just me or is this getting really, really weird?
It is worthy of note that there is an assumption that may be invalid here. There is no proof that something had to come from nothing. That is, there is no reason to believe (other than we've been told) that the universe had to be brought INTO existence. We ASSUME nothingness was the original state. However, we no that matter/energy can be neither created nor destroyed but only converted. Thus, it is entirely possible that everything (at least in energy form) already existed. We assume that everything has a begining because we are temporal beings, but it is not necessarily so.
If you say, "that's impossible, everything HAD to have a beginging" then how can you believe that and yet believe God DOESN'T have a begining? You're just removing the process back one step without solving anything. That's like the Catholic concept of Immaculate Mary being a special case of being born w/o orginal sin so she could have the baby Jesus. It's just removing the sin from one level, but causes a plehtora of issues in of itself.
Given enough time, anything will happen. Or, if you choose to believe, everything is happening in alternate universes -- which really is as much a leap of faith as anything. It's interesting how people think improbable means impossible. People may survive a surgery with 5% odds and think it's a miracle they survived. What they don't realize is 1 in 20 do survive and perhaps they were just statistically lucky. 19 are not so lucky.
The facts remain, this earth is proven to be very, very old which causes problems with the Genesis account. Now, it is possible some "thing" may have sparked the life or guided it, but the Genesis account in of itself is very flawed and even contradictory.
It's also interesting to note some people's impressions of God. If God is the heavenly father, and as the New Testament says, "if you who are human know how to give good things to your children, how much more so does you heavenly father" -- rough paraphrase -- then why do we attribute the WORST characteristics of humanity to him? How would we feel if our earthly father did not live with us, placed us in a playground of his making with disasters and tragedies that he knew would challenge and/or kill some of us, withdrew direct communication with only some vague notion of guidance through "the spirit" and a series of letters supposedly dictated from him through twenty plus various authors that often contradict or at least are extremely confusing when considered as a whole? Doesn't sound like a good dad to me.
For the record, I do believe in God, I just don't believe in religion.
_contributed by on Feb 7 6:30am _
Perhaps we need two threads here:
1) A scientific discussion of how life came into existence
2) A philosophical discussion of God and his/her role in creation (whether via evolution or directly)
_contributed by on Feb 7 6:32am _
Negative Entropy
Feb 8th, 2007
The following is expository writing. That means I take others' ideas and
words (attributed) and weave a slight narrative around them, to explain
how life begins. It is also like me: non-technical regarding the physics
and math involved.
It is extracted from a much larger rant against a surveillance society.
(The Cryptography Manifesto)
You are about to encounter the true use of the 'cyber' prefix.
Cybernetics is a cross-disciplinary science. The name was coined by
Norbert Wiener (pron. whiner), who was a professor of mathematics at
MIT, and did radar and firing-feedback mechanisms for the U.S. in
World War II. Cybernetics describes the complex of sciences dealing
with communication and control in the living organism AND in the
machine. Its application is sometimes called operations research.
Operations research is a difficult discipline --- I certainly don't
understand it --- but when it was desperately needed during World War II,
the U.S. War Department embraced it. Signals intelligence (SIGINT)
is the first step...the NSA grew out of these wartime operations
research efforts.
To seek out information from noise, then act on the information.
Targeting accuracy for precision high altitude bombing requires
a complex feedback mechanism to control deployment (pre-GPS WW II).
- My funny dad:
- Norden bombsights revolutionized aerial bombing.
- They were so accurate we stopped putting explosives
- in the bombs and just aimed for people.
Communications, Command and Control.
- "The Future of War - Power, Technology, and American World Dominance in
- the 21st Century", by George & Meredith Friedman, 1996, ISBN 0-517-70403-X
- A discipline named operations research had begun to develop prior to World
- War II that aspired to use quantitative methodologies to develop a science
- of management. snip
- For the physicists and mathematicians of the Rand Corporation, the
- intuitions of common sense were utterly insufficient as a guide to
- management. Mathematical precision was necessary, and operations
- research promised to supply that precision. snip
- It had not jumped from the management of particular, limited areas of
- warfare to the structuring of entire campaigns and wars. Operations
- research had not penetrated to the very marrow of conventional warfare,
- that is, not until an attempt was made in 1961 to revolutionize the idea
- of war. This was done by an industrialist named Robert McNamara, who
- had been president at Ford Motor Company.
Stafford Beer is a British cybernetician, and a 'research philosopher'.
In 1970, a Dr. Salvador Allende became president of Chile.
He was a democratically elected Marxist, with 37% of the vote.
Allende immediately embarked on a massive nationalization of
the banks and major companies/industries in Chile.
In 1971, Stafford Beer began a project for Allende
to put the Chilean economy under cybernetic control.
As far as I know, this is the only documented instance of someone
attempting this; deploying cybernetic controls nationwide.
- "Brain of the Firm", Stafford Beer, 1986, ISBN 0 471 27687 1
- All of this involved a massive and continuing exercise in (what I should
- call, in the original World War II sense) operational research. That is
- exactly what it was: research by highly qualified interdisciplinary teams,
- into operations, namely production companies, with the prospect of
- discovering models and sets of measures.
- We needed a group who understood the operational research techniques of
- data capture that were needed for project Cybersyn. As a Briton I knew
- whom I wanted --- they were a group of consultants within the London
- branch of the international firm of Arthur Anderson and Co.
- Project Cybercyn objective: To install a preliminary system of information
- and regulation for the industrial economy that will demonstrate the main
- features of cybernetic management and begin to help in the task of actual
- decision-making by March 1st 1972.
Under the circumstances of a nationalized economy, it was a positive thing.
It was a massive application of cybernetic feedback to help each industry
and each factory keep track of itself through a central location. All
communications flowed through the central location.
This is what Stafford Beer refers to as 'Brain of the Firm'.
It was located in Santiago, Chile.
- "Brain of the Firm", Stafford Beer, 1986, ISBN 0 471 27687 1
- Project Cybercyn consisted of four major tools:
- Cybernet, a national network of industrial communications to a centre
- in Santiago, through which anyone could consult anyone else.
- Cyberstride, the suite of computer programs needed to provide
- statistical filtration for all homeostatic loops at all levels
- of recursion, and provide alerts via an 'arousal filter'.
- Checo, the model of the Chilean economy, with simulation capacity.
- Opsroom, a new environment for decision, and dependent for its
- existence on the existence of the other three.
- Cybernet was a system whereby every single factory in the country,
- contained within the nationalized social economy, could be in
- communication with a computer.
- The intention of Cybernet was to make computer power available to the
- workers' committees in every factory.
- How could this be done?
- The basic idea was that crucial indices of performance in every plant
- should be transmitted daily to the computers, where they would be
- processed and examined for any kind of important signal that they
- contained. If there was any sort of warning implied by these data,
- then an alerting signal would be sent back to the managers of the
- plant concerned.
What are 'arousal filter' and 'homeostatic loops'?
The scope of Cybernetics is, in a word, awesome.
A cyberneticist can talk from atoms to cells to nervous systems,
to management of a company, country, world, solar system.
Whether an organism is mechanical, biological or social, it requires
a feedback mechanism to survive.
Your nervous system does some amazing things to fight off infections.
It creates custom anti-bodies to attack foreign microbes.
Custom living cells created through a system of feedback to spot that
there was a problem, analysis of the problem, action on the problem.
This is a life-sustaining feedback 'homeostatic' loop.
(parenthesized comments are mine)
When Stafford Beer says Cyberstride needed to filter 'homeostatic loops':
- "The Human Use of Human Beings - Cybernetics and Society"
- by Norbert Wiener, 1954, pre-ISBN
- The process (such as that employed by our nervous system) by which
- we living beings resist the general stream of corruption and decay is
- known as homeostasis.
Stayin' alive, stayin' alive...
So, "statistical filtration for all homeostatic loops at all levels of recursion"
means one is checking on the health of the monitored system.
Norbert Wiener even came up with a physics-based
description of how life is formed by information.
- "Platform for Change", by Stafford Beer, 1978, ISBN 0 471 06189 1
- The term 'entropy' began life as a subtle measure of energy flow.
- When something hotter is systemically bound to something cooler, the
- greater energy of the hotter stuff migrates---inexorably migrates---
- into the cooler stuff. This is one manifestation of the Second Law of
- Thermodynamics, which everyone of education has encountered.
- This is sometimes referred to as 'the universe is running down'.
Yeah, I remember 'entropy' from high school. Keep going:
Our solar system is a lot of matter that is NOT sitting in a situation of
entropy: the sun is radiating heat at the planets. Instead of just matter
smoothing out to a common low-energy state, a burning fireball is at work.
Cybernetics states that under conditions
like this, matter does something special.
- "Platform for Change", by Stafford Beer, 1978, ISBN 0 471 06189 1
- If we have a universe, which is improbable though it exists, it is
- because the Second Law of Thermodynamics has two forms.
- One is concerned with the pressure to even out energy; that is the
- form which belongs to our stereotyped conception of the universe.
- It betokens death.
- The other form is about information content, which leads to greater
- organization and increasing complexity. That form betokens life.
What would be a specific example of energy causing matter
to be formatted by information, becoming "more complex"?
- "The Human Use of Human Beings - Cybernetics and Society"
- by Norbert Wiener, 1954, pre-ISBN
- A light quantum is a very small thing, but it turns out the energy
- transfer which is necessary for an effective information coupling
- is quite small.
- Thus, for the leaf of a tree, photosynthesis uses radiation from the
- sun to form starch and other complicated chemicals necessary for life,
- out of the simpler atoms of water and the carbon dioxide of the air.
- An enormous local decrease in entropy may be associated with quite a
- moderate energy transfer.
Sunshine on a photosynthesising leaf. The Sun as direct life-giver.
Causing matter to become more complex. On purpose, to sustain life.
Ground zero, a soup-of-life mixture zapped with energy:
Scientists have absolutely no problem creating amino acids - the building
blocks of all life - from constituent chemicals. It takes a Darwinian
amount of time to get higher-evolved life forms, but it eventually happens.
This property of matter to spontaneously become more complex is called
negentropy (negative entropy), and it means 'matter formatted by information'.
- "Platform for Change", by Stafford Beer, 1978, ISBN 0 471 06189 1
- We human beings mean more than the few-pence-worth of our chemical
- constituents, because information informs those component chemicals
- by means of a genetic blueprint.
- Life itself is a negentropy pump. The universe means more than a
- collapsed energetic equation of 'x-heat = x-cold = nothing', because
- information structures the balance. The result is the sun, moon and
- stars...
We have a lot of different kinds of cells in our bodies; blood, eye,
brain, heart, liver, lung, skin... And they all started from one cell.
And they all knew where to go and which type to become. And how
to operate together in a large complex system.
A single cell, in its DNA strands, holds a massive amount of information.
Every cell in our body is structured by information, the DNA helix.
This information structuring is why we don't just splash to the
ground in a muddy puddle of our constituent chemicals.
We are matter structured by information.
....
"We are stardust,
We are golden
We are billion year old carbon
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden"
Woodstock lyrics (Crosby Stills Nash & Young, circa 1969)
http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/crosby_stills_nash_young/woodstock.html
Postscript.
(A messy but useful reference for "emergent property":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence )
Whether you believe it was God directly, or this physics-based
description of how life starts, you might ask yourself: where
did God come from, or where did the universe come from.
You might end up thinking: "it always was", or simply, "I don't know."
For the cybernetic explanation of the advent of life, matter itself
has the "emergent property" of being able to become so complex that
it becomes conscious.
It happens slowly, over hundreds of millions (or even a billion or two)
years. The earth is considered to be around 4.5 billion years old.
And there's got to be a sun-like fireball
heating things up during all this time.
Which brings us to the lowly hydrogen atom, the most abundent element
in the universe. The hydrogen atom: one proton, one electron.
The hydrogen atom has an emergent property
of being able to coalesce into a star.
Stars are said to have life cycles.
When hydrogen atoms gather to the extent that they
cause a lot of gravity amongst themselves, they pull
together and get very hot.
So hot, a fusion reaction begins.
In order to trigger a fusion bomb (hydrogen bomb),
it is set off by something very hot: an atom bomb.
In a star, it happens by the force of gravity,
one of the weakest forces in the universe.
When the "ignition point" of a star is achieved,
it already has all the hydrogen atoms it will use
during its multi-billion year life cycle.
Who'd a thunk the lowly hydrogen atom could form
a large and complex object that has a life cycle?
The smallest atom and the weakest force in the universe
combine actions to create a mighty star, and eventually life.
It's elegant beyond belief.
The universe is probably teeming with life.
So, where is it? Why haven't we detected it?
Sad thoughts occur when contemplating the Fermi Paradox.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
- The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between
- high estimates of the probability of the existence of
- extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence
- of contact with such civilizations.
It might be that civilizations never advance far enough, before
they die. Perhaps due to a cosmic event (such as a quasar going
off in our galaxy), or nuclear war, or global warming.
Post Postscript.
At the same time Stafford Beer was trying to get a grip on the Chilean
economy, the U.S. was trying to destroy it.
- http://www.namebase.org/sources/BM.html
- Uribe, Armando. The Black Book of American Intervention in Chile. Boston:
- Beacon Press, 1975. 163 pages. Translated from Spanish by Jonathan Casart.
- Chile is a well-documented example of covert destabilization by the U.S.,
- and NameBase includes several books on the subject. The CIA had been
- passing out money since 1964 to influence elections in Chile, but Salvador
- Allende won the presidency in 1970 anyway.
- Under orders from Nixon and Kissinger, a broad economic blockade was then
- launched in conjunction with U.S. multinationals (ITT, Kennecott, Anaconda)
- and banks (Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank).
- According to notes taken by CIA director Richard Helms at a 1970 meeting
- in the Oval Office, his orders were to
- "make the economy scream."
- Street demonstrations and various dirty tricks were paid for by the CIA
- over the next three years to increase pressure.
The cybernetic project died when Allende was assassinated in late 1973.
contributed by on Feb 8 5:06am
Why is Gregg Easterbrook, a sportswriter, pretending to knowledgeably summarize the state of research into the origin of life? He displays no more knowledge of the field than he might have learned years ago in high school, and it's quite obvious he did virtually no research into the question since. The fact that someone with such a poor track record on science issues, who has no expertise in the subject, and who puts no effort into actually familiarizing himself with the field, was asked to write this section is just pathetic. The summary is, simply put, ignorant. Instead of actually talking about the specific questions real researchers are hotly debating, Easterbrook tells us that pretty much nothing has been learned since Urey and Miller... turning ignorance into contagious ignorance.
contributed by on Mar 25 4:34pm
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-me-miller24may24,0,3567729.story
#
- From the Los Angeles Times
- OBITUARIES
- Stanley Miller, 77; chemist was a pioneer in studying the origins of life
- By Thomas H. Maugh II
- May 24, 2007
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