Re: life as other than cellular/organismic

[Dan Fiscus <***>]

Folks,

Re: protocells and the spatial closure they represent, I'd
like to point out that the closure Rosen focused on was
functional or causal, not spatial. I am not sure we need
spatial closure to have functional closure, or that the two
necessarily are synonymous or how they co-vary. These
issues relate to why I favor a non-cellular (and
non-protocellular), non-organismic origin of life theory
that focuses on a functional closure between a
"production" aspect (like primary production or
composition of molecular species or strings) and a
"respiration" aspect (like a consumption or decomposition,
with secondary  production, of molecular species). In
Howard Odum's 1970 view of this scenario for ecosystemic
or community origin of life the spatial closure is abiotic
and large scale (not like a protocell) and is facilitated by
"circulating seas" that bring outputs from the respiration
sub-function occuring at depth back up to the surface to a
zone where  the production sub-function operates (photic
zone).

Another place where a spatial closure and a functional
closure *do* coincide is at the atmospheric scale where we
see long term cycling operation in the hydrologic cycle.
Note the two phases and complementary phase changes
involved between water as liquid and gas phases, evaporation
and precipitation.

In both these cases it is important to note complementary
roles for an energetic or radiational factor (like solar
energy that evaporates water and drives runoff into
circulating seas) and a gravitational aspect (that drives
precipitation and also tidal cycles). The near equivalence
of radiational and gravitational energies is to me an
important factor when looking for conditions right for
OOL. We could think of radiation as an entropic form of
abiotic evolution, gravitation a "syntropic" form of
abiotic evolution, both of which have closed futures at
"heat death" and "ice death" (crystals, diamonds, etc.),
respectively. Life then becomes a hybrid form of evolution
that is neither/both of these - it has an open future, does
not dead-end into either inert gas or frozen crystalline
lattice, but it achieves this only by way of maintaining a
continual synergy and functional balance between the
physical entropic and syntropic forms of evolution.

Dan



Jannie Hofmeyr wrote:
> Tim
>
> With regard to Harold Morowitz ideas:
>
>
> > I've not seen this idea mentioned elsewhere, but then again I'm not
> > well-read on origin-of-life theories. It seems to me plausible in
>
> comparison
>
> > to other o-o-l theories. I found this in Morowitz' book: Beginnings of
> > Cellular Life: Metabolism Recapitulates Biogenesis (1992) Yale Univ.
>
> Press.
>
> These ideas have been taken much further by Doron Lancet and Daniel Segre.
> Worth a read! Their papers can be found online at
> http://ool.weizmann.ac.il/publications.html
>
> Read, as a starting point,
> http://ool.weizmann.ac.il/Segre_Lancet_EMBOrep_2000.pdf
>
> Jannie