Life without evolution/evolution without life?

[Howard Pattee <***>]

Hi Judith,

Here we have some healthy differences of opinion:

[Judith] Is it shocking to say that life has to exist first before life can
evolve into multiple levels/creatures/ecosystems?

[Howard] It is not shocking but it is unreasonable and explains nothing.
Life did not suddenly ?exist? but arose gradually from non-living
organizations of matter. There were several billion years of pre-Darwinian
types of evolution that is the subject of much study today.

[Judith] Or that it is possible to learn about life in the organismal
sense, without knowing anything about how certain organisms evolved into
what they are today?

[Howard] Of course one can ?learn about life? in innumerable ways. What you
learn will depend on what questions you ask. What is the problem that
arouses your curiosity? Following Bob, I would ask for a causal or
explanatory model of life, and this would have to include a theory of its
evolution. Any purely descriptive model of life, ?organismal? or not,
without any causal history I think he would call just simulation.

[Judith] Learning about complex, living, anticipatory systems may tell us a
lot about evolution of species, but theories of how evolution
happened/happens don't do much to explain how life "works", why it exists,
what causes it, etc.

[Howard] Here I?m afraid we just disagree on both counts. I will tell you
how theories of evolution explain how life works, if you will tell me how
anticipatory systems explain evolution.

Howard