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Hi Folks,
In light of how quiet the list has been, I thought perhaps it
might be useful to include some of the off-list discussions I've been having.
The excerpt below (with all personal references removed) may be of interest to
list subscribers because of the subject matter regarding life evolving on other
planets...
ORIGINAL MESSAGE-- (personal content edited
out): I was intrigued by your comment on creating applications from
my father's work for remediating unsound political and economic systems. I know
quite a few people who are doing the same thing! The insights he voiced in his
book, "Anticipatory Systems", are some of the most useful in this regard,
especially the exposition at the beginning and the discussion at the end, all of
which are available for free on the BioTheory page, if you don't have a copy of
the book. (A republished version of the book is also available.)
He spoke of the fact that what people fight over are not
necessarily any given situation or thing, itself, but our mental models of that
situation or thing. Our perceptions, definitions, the meanings we attach, etc,
which are often not communicated well (if at all)... these are the things which
combine to form the source of human disagreements and, ultimately, are what we
end up killing and dying over. The year my father spent at Robert Hutchins'
"Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions" was an absolutely pivotal year
and is discussed at length in those sections of Anticipatory Systems. He was
able to see how relational descriptions/models of life provide useful insights
into human social, political, and societal/civic systems and problems. In other
words: "The first lesson of biology is that there are lessons to be learned from
biology."
His conclusion was that, in dealing with complex systems, the
trick is to avoid "an infinite regress" in applying some therapy or implementing
some "improvement"... The only way to do that is to recognize the nature of
complexity. Unfortunately, most of what I see on the web having to do with
"complexity" isn't really about complexity at all. It's about "complicatedness".
There is a huge difference.
On the subject of possible different evolutionary paths of
life, particularly life on other planets:
It's instructive to look at the many "re-evolutions" of life
on THIS planet, after each of the mass die-offs in Earth's past history.
Each time, completely different types appeared, and what we learn from the
fossil record is just a tiny glimpse of the true variety and scope of what was
living here in each evolutionary epoch. When the composition of the atmosphere
was radically different, before plants were able to change it so that
enough oxygen existed for today's familiar life forms to evolve, Earth
must have been a truly alien-looking place. But it was still
Earth.
While it's true that all life on our planet shares many of the
same raw materials (of which those 20 amino acids you mentioned are
composed), it's also true that there is enormous variation in how those raw
materials are used to perform similar functions. For example; the fact that many
creatures have blood based on a mineral other than iron, such as the octopus
(based on copper), illustrates the simple fact that it isn't the iron that
matters. The fact that many creatures have no blood at all illustrates that
is isn't the blood that matters. What matters is the function provided by
various components. In functional terms, what we are doing is dealing
relationally with systems. That's what my
father's "(M,R)-System" (Metabolism, Repair) description is: a relational
description. In functional terms, it doesn't matter what a living system is
made out of; what matters is the type of organization such that the
system is capable of metabolism and repair.
Regarding the notion that a planet "must be Earth-like to
support evolution of life"...
I think it's important to recognize that while
conditions here on Earth are (currently) what they are... and seem to be very
unusual for our solar system... Earth is part of a larger community of
what could be viewed as raw material and is, therefore, not some isolated case
but is composed of the same "stuff" as the rest of the universe. The tendency
for complex organization is actually one of the "Natural Laws" underpinning
the universe, in my father's view. The fact that atoms are complex systems would
seem to be proof of that, it seems to me. He also pointed out that,
underlying the tendency for spontaneous, complex self-organization of
systems is the fact that causality, in this universe, is relational.
What that means is that "interactions" are more important than "things". In
fact, that's the only way "things" come into being! So, it also becomes clear
that the nature of any interaction is actually more important than what is
interacting. Indeed; how else could copper and iron both be the mineral basis
for blood, serving the same basic function in different living organisms? This
set of thoughts was how Robert Rosen came to regard organizational
matters as being of paramount importance. Organization specifies the nature of
all relational interactions.
--END OF ORIGINAL MESSAGE CONTENT.
Cheers,
Judith |