Re: The difference between organism and ecosystem...

[Dan Fiscus <***>]

Judith and David,

Great questions/comments and I love this because it is
my favorite thread or angle within these life, complexity,
origins, discussions - the organismic vs community or
systemic views of life.

A few replies...

Judith Rosen wrote:
> *David Macy wrote: * if I were going to attempt to manifest an organism 
> from 'scratch', --then I would/could probably do it first via 
> the manifestation of community/ecology.
> **
> **
> *OK. How? *

For general functions and starters, it seems to me that
we could search for abiotic, environmental, physical
phenomena, dynamics, processes, "spontaneous"
tendencies that when combined, related, organized in
a special way leads to something qualitatively different
than any of the component, abiotic, physical processes
taken in isolation. So from the start the goal is about the
relations, organization, configuration of processes. And
such relations are ostensibly *non-physical* in that while
they may exist *between* physical processes, these
relations themselves may not be physical.

Also at the start let's go for something much less
organized, complex, complicated than a cell or organism.
To try to go from physics to organism seems part of the
problem with approaches so far - that gulf is so huge.
Perhaps there are many steps we have been leaving out
in the stages between that can be help.

My candidate general, physical processes to start with
are 1) entropy (or radiation) or the tendency toward
dissipation of energy and dissorganization of matter, and
2) syntropy (or gravitation) or the tendency toward
concentration of energy and organization of matter.

The next step is to imagine combining these two abiotic,
physical processes or dynamics in such a way to get a
new process that is neither/both entropic nor/and
syntropic. Taken separately both alone have closed
evolutionary futures - entropy (in a closed system)
leads to a stable end state of "heat death" and syntropy
or gravitation may be seen to lead to a stable end state
of a frozen crysalline lattice or solid matter, rock, planet,
etc. But as combined, the potential is to achieve an
open evolutionary future qualitatively different than
either physical process. This open future is a key
signature or quality of life.

Some more below...

> *If you can't use the soma of a living organism for the basis of your 
> manifestation, then how would/could you go about it?*
> ** 
> *See, science has been actively trying to achieve this for ages, and in 
> the past 5 decades or so has had some formidable technology at its 
> disposal to throw at the problem. Genetic engineering doesn't count as 
> /creation of life/, in my view. Instead, I would characterize it as 
> /manipulation of life/. The primordial soup kitchens are working more at 
> the ontological, pre-life level, but they don't know what they're doing 
> in terms of "creation" other than trying to arrive at the same happy 
> accident, by putting what they suspect are the same ingredients together 
> in the same proximity under the same conditions, and waiting... and 
> watching. When it doesn't happen, they tweak the soup recipe, but all 
> that the failed attempts to date have taught us is what /doesn't/ work. 
> Humanity is groping at this problem, piecemeal, without any kind of 
> underlying vision of what would entail success. They hope that if they 
> can provoke or trigger the same "accident" (self-organization of a 
> living organism), then by watching it happen, they'll be in a better 
> position to assess what "it" is. But RR suggested that this kind of 
> self-organization isn't accidental, it's entailed. By learning about the 
> entailment patterns in complex systems, we will ultimately learn why and 
> how different patterns of organization entail 
> corresponding characteristic behavior patterns.*
> ** 
> *It seems to me that if life in the organismal sense were due purely to 
> environmental factors, the primordial soup experiments would have 
> succeeded. Not only that, but living systems would be abundant in this 
> solar system, just as they would be all over the universe. It would be 
> every bit as crowded as it seems in Star Trek: Bipeds everywhere, which 
> can interbreed and everything! So, why is it not like that? Complexity 
> is rampant in the universe and in our solar system; that much we can all 
> probably agree on. But life as it exists in Earth organisms appears to 
> be rare, as far as we can tell-- at least in our planet's neighborhood. 
> In other words, while there are environments aplenty on all the planets 
> orbiting our sun, there are only ecosystems on Earth. Why? *
> ** 
> *How can there be a community of life if there are no organisms? To me, 
> that's like saying we can have a forest before we have trees.*
> ** 
> *Judith*

The proto-biotic community would have to be between
processes, functions, roles, transformations, reactions,
networks, etc. The basic coupled complementary process
I see as a cooperative, community, systemic or network
configuration potentially able to generate cells and
organisms is molecular composition coupled with
molecular decomposition. These follow in general the
two physical, spontaneous tendencies above (entropy
is akin to decomposition, syntropy akin to composition)
and they also link foward in time to autotrophic and
heterotrophic functions - the two irreducible core
functions of all ecosystems, and all life. (If one can find
a system with only one or the other, it would refute this
line of thinking).

Composition combined with decomposition can been
seen as figuring in both metabolism and genetics. So
rather than debate whether metabolism or genetics
came first, ecosystemic life seeks to find a more basic
set of functions common to both metabolism and
genetics. The formation (construction, composition)
and break down (deconstruction, decomposition) of
molecules is common to both processes.

I am running out of time today on this but one more
comment and I hope we can discuss more...

As for scarcity of life off-Earth and/or where to look
for it. If this combo of coupled complementary abiotic
functions - radiation with gravitation, entropy with
syntropy, etc. (same as Yin Yang as ni Judith's post)
in special relation (close to equality in that the two
tendencies need to be nearly balanced but this
balance variable so as to allow choices, anticipation,
etc.) is involved, it suggests a criterion for planets on
which life might emerge. Namely, planets which have
a near balance, or same order of magnitude, of stellar
radiation and planetary gravitation would be the best
candidates. Such a balance would enable a hydrological
cycle for example. Enough radiation to evaporate the
water, but not enough to burn it all off into space. And
enough gravitation to aid precipition and thus endless
hydrological cycling but not so much gravity to prevent
evaporation in the first place.

This could be a testable and/or operational measure -
look for planets with nearly matched radiation
impigning and mass/gravitation and then check those
for life. It could also help us consider the chances for
life on Mars.

This thread gets more fun and wild when we consider
that humans could decide to try to "prove" but more
like assert or actualize that syntropy is greater than
entropy if we set as our goal to establish life beyond
our solar system. If we succeed, it would seem to
demonstrate that the organizational capacity of the
universe (physical and life/non-physical) is greater
than the 2nd law tendency. And by extension over
turn the doctrine of the 1st and 2nd laws as being
supreme over things that are non-conserved and
non-entropic, like life, love, the mind, ideas,
information, creativity...etc...

Dan