Re: life as other than cellular/organismic

[Dan Fiscus <***>]

Judith,

Thanks for asking. I don't really think of life as a form of energy
flow, but that sounds interesting. I don't really even have a single,
succinct statement of what I think life is, or how it started, or how
best to distinguish it from non-life. The main thring I have tried to
do is understand how life and non-life can be unified or seen as
part of a single larger, more general, underlying process. So I try
to bridge the seeming chasm between life and non-life. One
statement I play around with is this: "Life is a fourth kind of
evolution of a physical/material system that is characterized by
open-endedness, self-transcendance and continual generation of
novelty. For comparison, the other kinds of evolution of a physical/
material system are 1) entropic, radiational evolution - closed future
evolution that dead-ends at heat death, like a random gas in which
there is too little order for life (99.9% kinetic energy, 0.1% potential
energy), 2) syntropic, gravitational evolution - closed future
evolution that dead-ends at ice death, like a crystal in which there is
too much order for life (99.9% potential energy and 0.1% kinetic
energy), and 3) neutral future evolution - periodic processes that can
continue for very long times but always repeat and are bounded (not
continual novelty, not self-transcending, etc.)

With these kinds of considerations as central, the focus on a cellular
origin or cellular/organismic emphasis for the size, scale, fundamental
unit of life, etc. are not really pertinent. I am picturing life more as a
non-local principle, potentiality or phenomenon rather than a local
one. In that sense maybe it is more akin to a field - extensive in space
and time rather than intensive in a small region like in a cell. For
similar reasons I see the main and most general questions to be related
to dynamics in complex networks like the communities and ecosystems
we see today. I admit that my bias toward ecosystems/communities and
away from cells/organisms is partly a reaction to to what I see as the
mainstream bias or over-emphasis in the other direction - total focus on
cells/organisms (and even smaller parts) and ignoring the larger
systemic/network processes. When I am being more balanced I see the
two foci as equally important and as likely to have co-arisen and
co-created one another - the cellular/organismic aspect of life
co-emerging with the network/ecosystemic/community aspect of life.
This would be akin to saying that both bottom-up (mechanical and
efficient) and top-down (formal and final) causes would have
collaborated in the origin of life. Also that time-forward (dynamics
and reactionary feedbacks) and time-reverse (anticipatory feedbacks)
processes are both needed, similar to things you have posted...

Some more thoughts...

Dan



Judith Rosen wrote:
> Dan Fiscus wrote:
>
> > Thus "why life?" is not the same as "why cells?" but is the
> > same as "why ecosystems/communities?". The answer to
> > "why cells?" would then be "because they were generated by
> > ecosystemic/community life via a process of "encapsulation
>
>  > and miniaturization" (HT Odum's terms). Thus ecosystems/
>
> > communities are not super-organisms, but organisms/cells
> > are sub-ecosystems.
>
>
> I developed my understanding of Dan's philosophy somewhat differently when
> we had a similar discussion before: Dan, I thought you said you believed
> that life may be a form of energy flow that is always present but that
> manifests itself in new ways when channeled through biological systems. Was
> I way off? If not, how does that fit into the above paragraph? (and just so
> you know; I ask because I want to understand, not as a preface to negative
> reaction! As far as I'm concerned, nobody knows how life began on this
> planet and my father didn't put forth any official theories on the subject,
> so either way, your theories are every bit as plausible as anyone elses.)
>
> Cheers,
> Judith

--

Dan Fiscus
Ecologist/Research Assistant
University of Maryland
Center for Environmental Science
Appalachian Lab
301 Braddock Rd
Frostburg, MD 21532
301-689-7121 (phone)
http://al.umces.edu/~fiscus/research